Happy New Year…in a year Chinoiserie style of course

China Rhyming strides forth into 2014….with more of the same….

Merchant Adventurers – Tudors Looking for China in the Wrong Place

James Evans’s Merchants Adventurers is the story of the English 1553 expedition to find a northern passage to Asia and so avoid Spanish controlled waters. Of course there is no northern passage but Tudors in search of China, what a way to end the year’s China reading, or start 2014’s….

A Little Festive Treat – Hermoine Gingold Sings “Cocaine” and Vincent Price Does Opium

What better at this surreal time of year than the great Hermione Gingold singing Cocaine with visuals added from the 1962 Vincent Price movie Confessions of an Opium Eater. Click here for some entertainment.

Some background – Hermoine Gingold was the great and much loved entertainer and actress who’s cabaret shows were legendary – Cocaine is featured on two of her cabaret albums – La Gingold (1955 but this song probably record in 1953) and Live at the Cafe de Paris ( a couple of years later in the 1950s). As an actress most people know her from Gigi and The Music Man. Who exactly wrote the words for Cocaine is somewhat of a mystery (to me at least) – nobody I can find is credited indicating that it was Gingold herself (she was a very funny writer – just try her autobiography if you don’t believe me). Interestingly, and also adding a hand in the song, might have been Eric Maschwitz who was Gingold’s husband at the time – Maschwitz had worked as a lyricist in the 1930s and 40’s and the two were married between 1926 and 1945. Here two China Rhyming interest overlap – during this time Maschwitz worked in Hollywood for MGM and while there had an affair with Anna May Wong and reputedly wrote the song These Foolish Things for her when they separated and he returned to London (see my blog post on Maschwitz and Wong here).

Now to Confessions of an Opium Eater from 1962, based rather loosely on the Thomas de Qincey book (giving de Quincey, who wrote the book in 1821, a rather deserved IMDB entry!). A Vincent Price vehicle, it was rather poor. It was known in the US – where apparently de Qincey’s book was thought to not be well known as Souls for Sale and Evils of Chinatown.

And a Final Merry Christmas on Boxing Day….

From the early 1900s….(when attitudes were different!!) – but you get the sentiment…

Merry Christmas in a Chinoisery Style from 1906

And, once again, a merry Christmas to each and all of you – this was the 1906 Christmas greeting from the lovely actress Gabrielle Ray, described as the most beautiful woman in the UK at the time and one of the most photographed of the Edwardian era. In 1906 she was starring in the musical See See …..Could anything lovelier come down your chimney? See See was a wonderful confection of Chinoiserie on the stage and so Gabrielle issued her Christmas Card in the same style with a snow covered Chinese hat and slippers atop a chimney pot…

A Christmas Eve Chinese Lantern from 1910

And a merry Christmas eve to you all…from a leprechaun with a Chinese lantern!

Occidental Flour Ad From 1915

Quite why Occidental Flour decided to theme their 1915 adverts with Chinese lanterns I have no idea but among all the adverts for flour I have ever seen this is the nicest! Obviously our young lady here is having a party and, in western culture in 1915, parties meant Chinese lanterns…

Christmas Shopping this Weekend? Your Crackers Won’t be as Good as These….

Batger’s were just about the oldest English Christnas cracker manufacturer, established in 1748. Nowadays Christmas crackers are fairly foul and rather lame things, generically knocked up by some chained up kids in China in somewhere for supermarket chains at rock bottom prices, but they used to be things of beauty and delightful design. Note here, on this early last century box, Chinese lanterns galore…..