HANNAH WEILAND- 'SHRIMPS' FOUNDER'S ILLUSTRATIONS
I just love the act of doodling, and actually, a lot of my prints are just called “the doodle print”. If I sit down and try to draw, I never like the results as much.
INT:
Do all your illustrations have a personal story behind them?
HW:
Everything’s a bit personal really. I had a childhood teddy called Dog Dog who’s often in my drawings. And I did a collection based on daffodils because it’s my birthday flower and my mum used to throw me daffodil birthday teas. Even my wedding dress had mine and [my husband] Arthur’s doodles on it, telling our story. But the faces will always be the heart of the brand.
INT:
I love how your illustrations feel so lighthearted, but then they’re printed on super high-quality material which is a great way to elevate the drawings.
HW:
I hate it when you paint something and it loses its texture through print. I love to see the actual brushstroke in the medium, so that’s why floral prints printed on organza work well for us.
NOVELTY SEASIDE POSTCARDS- https://rubbishseaside.com
ZOE MURPHY- MARGATE
British designer Zoe Murphy promotes the idea of ‘Loving what belongs to you’ by printing onto recycled furniture and textiles using imagery inspired by her seaside hometown (MARGATE)
The prints she uses to upcycle existing furniture and textiles draw their inspiration from her seaside hometown of Margate, Kent. This South East resort hosts its own theme park, Victorian rollercoaster, 1930’s cinema, and England’s first beach for donkey rides. However, with a sad lack of love and attention for these British seaside icons, and with many tourists choosing the quick fix option of foreign holidays, many of the landmarks have been closed, burned down or removed. Zoe uses Margate, with its gaudy unpolished potential, to reflect her core values. It is a place and thing that with loving attention and good design can be brought back to be something beautiful, desired and respected.
SEASIDE AMUSEMENTS
DREAMLAND MARGATE: After an 11-year campaign to save it from redevelopment, Dreamland – dating back to the 1860s – finally reopened in June 2015. Restored with the help of creative director Wayne Hemingway, the park features traditional rides re-imagined with a witty edge. Go for a ride on the Enterprise, Jumping Boats or Gallopers, or book for one of the hip events happening this season. Food is old school (fish and chips, candy-floss and Morelli's ice cream), and to top it off the Grade II-listed Scenic Railway rollercoaster is back in action.
Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Lancashire
Blackpool Pleasure Beach needs little introduction – and with more than 125 rides and attractions packed into its 42 acres, boredom isn’t really an option. Famous for its 235ft Big One rollercoaster – the tallest in the country – the Pleasure Beach has a new thrill ride: Red Arrows Sky Force, where you can step into the cockpit of your very own ‘plane’ and steer your way through an aerobatic display.
Brighton Pier, East Sussex
The enduring popularity of Brighton Pier – welcoming 6.2 million visitors a year – lies in its multi-generational appeal and the classic British seaside experience it offers. Fish and chips, sticks of rock, a ghost train and a helter-skelter are all present and correct. And it’s free to enter, if you simply fancy a promenade over the Channel or an eyeful of the Grade II-listed Victorian architecture from a freely available deckchair. Of course, there are more recent, stomach-turning additions: try The Booster, which is 130ft tall and rotates you 360 degrees in the air. Or have your coppers at the ready for the amusement arcade.
STRUGGLING IN WINTER?
The British seaside is tragically underappreciated and disastrously underfunded. A lack of year-round jobs and lousy transport links are driving its residents away: four in 10 coastal towns are forecast to suffer a decline in their population of under-30s, with those in the north worst affected. Even the south-west, which attracts nearly half of the visitors to Britain’s coast, is struggling. Places that are a hive of cute tearooms and sun-dappled tourists in the summer pull down their shutters at the end of the season; the holidaymakers leave and a bleak and empty winter sets in.
Part of the reason that seaside structures are so vulnerable to carelessness is, of course, that the sea is a wild place: maintaining anything is a constant battle against lashing winds and erosion. (Maybe the proximity to wildness is what made coastal resorts such as Brighton destinations for sexual freedom.) One of the thrills of going back to the same cliffs again and again is seeing the rocks reshape with each visit. The impossibility of developing fragile coastal land is a salvation for wildlife – a few steps from the road, you’ll find the air busy with insect life, and swallows feasting on the wing.
-Sarah Ditum
CASE STUDY: MARGATE
Until the mid-19th century Margate was at the forefront of the discovery of the seaside, but with the arrival of railways, visitors who had been restricted to travelling along the Thames could now explore stretches of coast further afield. However, by the eve of the First World War, Margate was as busy as any resort, with the exception of perhaps Brighton and Blackpool. The small-scale, intimate facilities provided for hundreds of Georgian visitors were replaced by large hotels and new forms of entertainment for the hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers and trippers who arrived each year.The prosperity of the seaside continued until the 1960s, but with growing leisure time, increased disposable income and easy access to foreign holidays, all seaside resorts have suffered decline, though none has probably suffered as much as Margate.
from the book: Margates seaside heritage: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/margates-seaside-heritage/margates-seaside-heritage/
DONALD MCGILL- 50s POSTCARDS
In 1894, British publishers were given permission by the Royal Mail to manufacture and distribute picture postcards which could be sent through the mail. Early postcards were pictures of famous landmarks, scenic views, photographs, lighthouses, animals or drawings of celebrities and so on. With steam locomotives providing fast and affordable travel the seaside became a popular tourist destination. The steam locomotives generated its own souvenir industry. The picture postcard was, and is, an essential staple of this industry.
In the early 1930’s cartoon style saucy postcards became widespread and at the peak of their popularity the sale of saucy postcards reached a massive 16 million a year. They were often tacky in nature making use of innuendo and traditionally featured stereotypical characters such as priests, large ladies and put-upon husbands in the same vein as the Carry On films.
In the early 1950’s, the newly elected Conservative government were concerned at the apparent deterioration of morals in Britain and decided on a crackdown on these postcards. The main target on their hit list was the renowned postcard artist Donald McGill. In the more liberal 1960’s the saucy postcard was revived and became to be considered, by some, as an art form.
The demise of the saucy postcard occurred during the 1970’s and 1980’s, the quality of the artwork and humor started to deteriorate with changing attitudes towards the cards content.
Despite the decline in popularity of postcards that are overtly saucy, postcards continue to be a significant economic and cultural aspect of British seaside tourism. Sold by newsagents and street vendors as well as by specialist souvenir shops. Modern seaside postcards often feature multiple depiction’s of the resort in unusually favorable weather conditions. These continuously draw tourist to the seaside. The use of saturated color and a general departure from realism have made the postcards of the later twentieth century become collected and desired by undiscriminating taste.
https://saucyseasidepostcards.com/?page_id=89
MAXINE SUTTON- MARGATE
With an interest in sustainable textiles, and a belief in craft making and community, for some years after graduating from the Royal College of Art, I combined making personal work and wall based pieces, with small batch production of crafted interiors products. I sold these collections of homewares from a small retail space below my studios in Margate. During that time I was committed to developing an atelier space with an eco-conscious ethos, and creating collections of sustainable, beautifully crafted pieces that were affordable and accessible. However the need to focus fully on my motivations and concerns as an artist, without the constraints of running a retail space and and interiors business eventually became paramount.
-written by the artist herself https://maxinesutton.com/bio/
SEASIDE STEREOTYPES::
- fish and chips
- helter skelter
- arcade
- bad weather
- wind
- candy floss
- sweets
- wooly hats
- shells
- SEAGULLS
- ice-cream- whip
- beach huts
- ferry
- vinegar
- chips
- mushy peas
- amusement park
- fizzy drinks
- deck chairs
- stripes
- pastel colours
AFFECT OF LOCAL BUISNUESSES
The coast has dealt with heavy rain and blistering heat in equal measure recently, both of which can put people off making the trip down to the beach.
Jonathan Graves, who owns Jump Warriors in Ingoldmells, agrees with Mr Russell and Cllr Brookes and says businesses have really suffered.
He said: "I thought we were doing something wrong but having spoken to other traders we are all in the same boat."
Attractions are a huge part of the East Coast and make up a lot of the businesses, but so do the small B&Bs dotted around Skegness. Holidaymakers are spoilt for choice on where to stay - but when less come to visit, the owners lose out.
Liz Collier, a B&B owner, said:"There have been days with no bookings. I'm starting to wonder is the recession is coming, food is going up so I think people have been more careful with their cash."
The question remains: will that be enough to bring people to the seaside and in turn benefit the smaller business owners? When footfall dries up, they are the ones who feel it the most and they are absolutely crucial to the coast.
While their is some worry among locals, there is also a strong sense of community and a willingness to roll up their sleeves and get on with it.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/poor-summer-could-lead-winter-16746959
MARGATE FROM 1736-
1736 was the pivotal year in Margate’s history. Reverend John Lewis published the second edition of his history of the Isle of Thanet, which included a plan/birds-eye view of the town (Fig 1), and a notice appeared in a Kent newspaper advertising Margate’s first sea-water bath.These two events were unrelated – one summarised the past, the other hinted
at the future – but what they reveal is that Margate was beginning the transition from a small working town into a fashionable seaside resort.
In 1586 William Camden had described the people of Thanet as: ‘excessively industrious, getting their living like amphibious animals both by sea and land’. Depending on the time of year, ‘they make nets, catch codd, herrings and mackerel, &c. make trading voyages, manure their land, plough, sow, harrow, reap, and store their corn, expert in both professions’.1 However, by the early 18th century parts of the town’s fishing industry had gone into decline. In the first edition of Lewis’s book, published in 1723, he described a struggling fishing industry,
but by 1736 the situation had worsened; some people involved with the North-Sea fishery, having met with little success in preceding years, had given up fishing.
Margate’s prosperity had depended on its harbour, as the base for a fishing fleet and as an outlet for agricultural produce from the Isle of Thanet. At the time of John Leland’s visit in the 1530s the pier was in ‘great disrepair’ and in 1662 ‘this Pier and Harbour was much ruinated and decayed’.2 On Lewis’s map it was depicted as a long, timber structure with a reversed-L plan, with a lamp and crane at the seaward end and a warehouse at the landward end.
In 1565 Margate had been a small town with only 108 houses, and Reverend Lewis’s view 150 years later suggests that the town had grown little. It was still huddled around the edge of the sea, with houses ranged along the coast from the base of the pier to where Marine Drive was later created. Houses had also been built along three main streets running inland: King Street, Market Street and the High Street. Although Lewis’s view may be naïve in its perspective, it appears to be a generally accurate and vivid depiction of the town.
from the book: Margates seaside heritage: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/margates-seaside-heritage/margates-seaside-heritage/
FISH AND CHIPS HISTORY
A prominent meal in British culture, fish and chips became popular in wider circles in London and South East England in the middle of the 19th century: Charles Dickens mentions a "fried fish warehouse" in Oliver Twist, first published in 1838, while in the north of England a trade in deep-fried chipped potatoes developed. The first chip shop stood on the present site of Oldham's Tommyfield Market.[27] It remains unclear exactly when and where these two trades combined to become the modern fish and chip shop industry. A Jewish immigrant, Joseph Malin, opened the first recorded combined fish-and-chip shop in London in 1860; a Mr Lees pioneered the concept in the North of England, in Mossley, in 1863.[28]
The concept of a fish restaurant, as opposed to take-away, was introduced by Samuel Isaacs (born 1856 in Whitechapel, London; died 1939 in Brighton, Sussex) who ran a thriving wholesale and retail fish business throughout London and the South of England in the latter part of the 19th century. Isaacs' first restaurant opened in London in 1896 serving fish and chips, bread and butter, and tea for nine pence,[29] and its popularity ensured a rapid expansion of the chain.
The restaurants were carpeted, had table service, tablecloths, flowers, china and cutlery, and made the trappings of upmarket dining affordable to the working classes for the first time. They were located in London, Clacton, Brighton, Ramsgate, Margate and other seaside resorts in southern England.
WHERE DID THE SEASIDE HOLIDAY COME FROM?
The great British seaside holiday came into its heyday in the post war years, the 1950s and 1960s. Now affordable to many through paid annual leave (thanks to the Holiday Pay Act 1938), the destinations of choice depended largely on where you lived. For example in the north, those from the mill towns, Manchester, Liverpool or Glasgow would most likely go to Blackpool or Morecambe: those from Leeds would head for Scarborough or Filey. Londoners might choose Brighton or Margate.
If you were heading some distance for your holiday, for example driving to the popular resorts of Torbay or the West Country, it would take a full day to travel there as there were no motorways in the early post war years. The first stretch of motorway in the UK to be opened was the Preston Bypass in 1958: not much use if you were heading to Cornwall or Devon!
Many industrial towns had local holiday weeks (wakes weeks or trades fortnight) when the local factory or plant would shut down for maintenance and all the workers would take their annual leave at the same time.
In the 1950s and 1960s it was unusual for families to holiday abroad, most stayed in the UK. Those lucky enough to have relatives living by the coast might holiday with them, some would rent a flat or house, some would stay in a guest house, B&B or hotel, whilst many would head for the holiday camps such as Butlins or Pontins.
Whether it was a day out at the seaside or a fortnight, all British resorts offered fun and escape from daily life. There were amusement arcades, candyfloss stalls and seafood shacks selling cockles and whelks in paper cones. Cafes with Formica tables and wooden chairs served fish and chips accompanied by mugs of hot tea and white bread and butter. There were donkey rides on the beach, crazy golf, helter skelter slides and dodgems. Along the promenade you would find shops selling rock, postcards, buckets and spades, along with plastic windmills and packets of flags to adorn the sand castles.
https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Great-British-Seaside-Holiday/