Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Smiles and Tiles




Kenneth Townsend (1931-99) was a British artist and freelance designer 
based in Hastings. His humorous pictures were utilized by various companies
 to decorate pottery, textiles, children's games, and glass trays.
He also illustrated six books, one of which,the 1968 children's book 
Felix the bald-headed lion, was written by him.




The animals on the tiles of the "Menagerie" series are among Townsend's 
most famous designs. There are around 25 different tile designs,
including the ones shown in this gallery.












The games designed by Townsend look delightful, too...

Marble Fun, a scoring game by Merit

Tiles from Remember, Remembera memory game by Galt Toys.
As you can see, some of them are very similar to the ceramic tile designs.

Townsend's work is still popular and loved by many, especially in Britain. 
Thanks to Hazel Terry for the discovery, and to the members of the flickr group 
"Lovers of Kenneth Townsend's workfor uploading a majority of the images in this post.




4 comments:

  1. I remember remember playing with those cards at school. Happy times.

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    Replies
    1. We too!
      Congratulation Laura for your blog! All are you posting is so interesting and beautiful!

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  2. Great post Laura and some more info on Kenneth here too http://fishinkblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/kenneth-townsend-illustrator-for-ceramics-glass-games-and-more/ What an amazing illustrator !

    ReplyDelete
  3. Charlotte, lucky girl, I would have loved to play with these as a child!

    Thanks Madeby, and nice to meet you.

    Hi fishinkblog, thanks for the compliments and the link to your post, I wish I had seen it sooner!

    ReplyDelete

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