Launching our new card range!
We are very excited to introduce our first range under our new Mabel brand. Teaming up with international retail business 1973 Ltd, we are launching a series of cards with gorgeous sculpted edging and classic original illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell, that many will recognise and we hope everyone will love.
From Fido’s cheeky look to cuddles and cuteness, Mabel’s wonderful characters appeal with a warmth and a sincerity that can’t fail to endear. We hope these carefully chosen illustrations will bounce off our pages to launch this exciting new venture. And there are plenty more surprises and smiles on their way, with a range of limited and other prints coming soon.
We are busy cataloguing hundreds of original works of art, exploring all kinds of interesting opportunities to bring you the very best of Mabel Lucie’s illustrations. The range of her work is stunning in its diversity. These classic characters are some of her most famous illustrations. But we are also uncovering her extraordinarily beautiful pencil line drawings, with which she has illustrated children’s classics from Peter Pan to Alice in Wonderland and The Water Babies.
In our new venture, we will be bringing this much loved and famous illustrator back into the limelight where she belongs – in the hearts and bedrooms of children (and adults…) all over the world. As we are delighted that her work is greeting with joyful exclamations of fond childhood memories. We look forward to rekindling that love and to introducing a new generation to the words, full of empathy and beautiful drawings of this iconic British artist.
Chubby cheeks and cheeky smiles
Impish expressions, cute poses and wide-eyed innocence characterise Mabel’s most famous illustrations – used by advertisers , postcard makers and national magazines alike. Her poster in 1913 for the London Underground Hullo! Did you come by Underground? launched her to new heights of popularity amongst the wider public for the first time.
However, her characters were not modelled on her own children, who she adored, but ‘They just lived up to the ideas I had already been drawing for years.’ Her captions, which captivate and instantly amuse, are in fact aimed more at adults than children. ‘My idea is not so much to draw children for children, as to introduce them, if I may put it so, with all their lovable and comical ways to the grown-ups’. Mabel was in fact, one of the first people to express things that grown-ups were feeling through children, her daughter Peggy Wickham recalled. Peggy died in 1978, just before Mabel Lucie Attwell’s centenary exhibition in Brighton Museum.In a similar vein to Keep Calm and Carry On, Mabel talks to adults with a lighthearted but deeply sympathetic understanding of the challenges that life throws at us all. It is this immediate empathy that found huge and widespread appeal amongst the British public: from busy mothers to homesick soldiers and the wider public.
But for all her easy appeal, her illustrations were the result of tireless hard work, dedication and a perfectionist eye. ‘My children look easy to draw, but they are not… I do many designs over and over again before I feel they are right.’
Introducing… Mabel Lucie Attwell
Mabel Lucie Attwell was a devoted mother and passionate artist – popular and successful throughout her life (1879–1964). She was perhaps best-known for her cryptic and amusing messages – empathising mostly with mothers facing the chaos of family life. Her delightful illustrations have filled the pages of children’s classics and motivated the national spirit through both World Wars. She painted cards for the Royal Family and graced the pages of The Tatler.
As family, we are proud to bring her gorgeous illustrations back to life. In this exciting new venture, we are rediscovering her most well-known originals and uncovering family memories and archives of her work spanning her extraordinary life – to share.
We are launching Mabel with a carefully selected series of illustrations for cards, prints and wrapping paper. If you remember her (or perhaps your granny does) they may lead you down memory lane, if you are discovering her for the first time, we hope you fall in love!
In the coming months, look out for new additions to our exciting new range of cards and gifts inspired by this great and much loved British illustrator. We really hope you enjoy them and want to share them too. Most of all, just as Mabel hoped, we hope her illustrations will make you smile.
Join us on Instagram and Facebook to enjoy and share the huge variety of illustrations that Mabel Lucie Attwell produced in her lifetime. Tell us what makes you smile, share your favourites and even your memories.
