Huzzah for the weekend!

Hello, apologies for being somewhat incommunicado this week, work is rubbish and taking up way too much of my time right now. However I am off for a few days - HUZZAH! - so hopefully I'll have a chance to catch up over the weekend.

While I'm here, many thanks to dear sarlania for sending me this gorgeous postcard from Sydney.


The picture is titled Sydney in all its glory and it's from the sketch book of Edward Close, 1817. I just love the little marines infantry soldiers lounging in the corner :)

In other exciting news, if the travel gods smile on us, I might get to meet kittycallum while she is on her travels next week. How exciting is that?!

Algiers Toile!

I know a lot of you will be familiar with the Trafalgar toile, but how about this?! I came across this little gem among the National Maritime Museum's recent acquisitions - Bombardment of Algiers toile! I wonder if Susan reupholstered the drawing room suite with this rather fetching print of Ned's famous victory?!


The NMM catalogue entry read as follows:

Length of glazed cotton roller printed with red depicting the Bombardment of Algiers, 1816. The scene shows the British fleet in the foreground with the city wreathed in smoke and flashes of light from exploding bombs. In the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century, roller printed cottons were one of Britain's great exports. These could be cheaply manufactured and commemorative themes were extremely popular.

This rather reminds me of the ikea Benzy Skepp fabric that joyful_molly posted a while back. Do you think we could presuade ikea to reproduce this?!