Sepia Saturday 315 : 30 January 2016

My apologies if this call for submissions for Sepia Saturday 315 (post your posts on or around Saturday 30 January 2016 and then link them to the list below). The reason is the same one as why my Sepia Saturday contribution never materialised last week and all I can say that it is bound to get better in a month or two (or maybe a year or two). I would sustain my poor old body with a cake or two (all you need is some flour, eggs, butter and a nice big oven) but I am on my post-Christmas diet. So no cakes for me - but at least I can look - and where better to look than at this 1940s image from the National Library of Ireland.I really don't need to say any more - the theme image contains all the ingredients you will need to make a tasty Sepia Saturday cake all of your own.

And whilst you are waiting for the cakes to bake you might want to see what is next in the sepia recipe book.

 

So get your contributions prepared for the Great Sepia Bake Off. Good luck.

Sepia Saturday 314 : 23 January 2016

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week, like the vast majority of our theme images, comes from the wonderful Flickr Commons initiative. Not only does Flickr Commons provide a platform for museums and archives to make their collections available to the general public, but it also provides a forum for the collaborative exploration of those images. This photograph - which has been contributed by the National Library of Ireland - provides an excellent illustration of this. The original catalogue details are as follows:

The Fannings
This family is almost certainly from Newtown in Waterford city, and Mr Fanning may have had something to do with a Butter Store. I'd say from the clothes, etc. that this is quite early for a Poole photo? (1884 is our earliest Poole glass plate.)

It's a great shot of parents, children, and puppy all en famille, and their freckliness (officially recognised medical term) is fascinating...

Date: 1880s??

Whilst that is interesting in its own right, the discussion which follows adds extra layers of fascination - in exactly the way we Sepias are very familiar with. As far as our Sepia Saturday 314 efforts are concerned (post your post on or around Saturday 23 January 2016 and add a link to the list below) there are a host of potential themes to go with - I know which one I will be following and the reason why (but you will have to wait to discover what that is). Here is our normal look ahead at what is waiting for us around the sepia corner.

I will leave you with the Fannings and their collection of toy boats. Talking of boats, I am off for a few days to the coast for reasons that are beyond me. I will be back for the weekend but then I have to go back to the coast on Sunday for reasons that are anything but beyond me. Time will tell.

Sepia Saturday 313 : 16 January 2016

Our Sepia Saturday theme image this week features two little children, their faces full of hope and expectation, photographed at a time of great tragedy. It is a photograph of two "Titanic Orphans" - the French brothers Michel (age 4) and Edmond Navratil (age 2). To board the ship, their father assumed the name Louis Hoffman and used their nicknames, Lolo and Mamon. Their father died in the disaster of the RMS Titanic, which struck an iceberg in April 1912 and sank, killing more than 1,500 people. The photograph comes from the Bain Collection, part of the Library of Congress stream on Flickr Commons. 

There are, of course, endless possibilities as far as themes are concerned (you don't need me to point them out to you). All I need to point out is that you should post your posts on or around Saturday 16th January 2016 and add a link to the list below.

Before you embark on your Sepia Saturday journey this week, you might want to see what is over the Sepia horizon.

 

A full list of themes for the first quarter of 2016 can be found in the link on the sidebar. For now, jump on board Sepia Saturday 313 - who knows where we might finish up!

Sepia Saturday 312 : Saturday 9th January 2016

Now, what on earth is going on here? What we do know is that the photograph - which is our Sepia Saturday theme image this week - comes from the Flickr Commons collection of Miami University Library. The title is "Push ball competition at Miami University freshman-sophomore contest 1910", but I, for one, have no idea what push ball is! But with Sepians all over the world following our weekly theme prompts, no doubt someone will have some explanation of this strange scene. I have no idea which direction to push you in when thinking of ways of linking this photograph to one of the old images in your collections - but those Sepians all over the world have a knack of finding the most obscure links between a large bouncing ball and, for example, a photograph of Uncle Jack in his bowler hat.

Whatever bounce of the ball your choose to follow (or, if you so prefer, not follow) all you need to do is to post your post on or around Saturday 9th January 2016 and link it to the list below. Before you do that, take a look at what is waiting around the corner.

But all of that is in another ball park, for the moment let us keep our eye on the ball that is Sepia Saturday 312.