Monday, November 10, 2014
Overcast and seasonally mild
Overcast and seasonally mild
One of the Best
Websites About Toys
I have to hone (work on) my reporting skills because I can't really remember how I came to find
Mr. Derrick Clow and his fantastic website title "Collecting Keystone". But I found Derrick and his excellent website last week,and the rest is history - I got his permission to write about his site,and of course use his photos.
I'm going to have to see what I can do with this Google Blogger site, because Derrick's Wordpress website is definitely one of the best websites that I have ever seen about toys. The design, the page layout, photo quality, writing content, and on and on. I will definitely have to study Derrick's website and see what I can do for the new year!
I spent about 10 minutes trying to sort out the title for today's post. One of my titles was "and the winner for the best wood toy website is". I finally settled on the title that you see today.
You'll need to view Derrick's images in Blogger slide mode. I've made them extra-large for that purpose.Of course, you can go directly to Derrick's web site and browse there.
I know Derrick's spent a lot of time on his website design, and it shows well.
The history of the Keystone company. It's interesting to note that Keystone once also sold camera equipment. I remember when my father would bring home the NYTimes in the 1960's, especially the gigantic Sunday paper. In the photography section, you could always see the advertisements for Keystone. I think they also advertised in photography magazines.
People are often writing to me to ask if their toy is authentic.
derrick has this topic well covered, and you can see the photos that he's taken of the
Keystone company logos.
One of my favourite areas regarding toys - toy catalogues.
I have a small collection of old and antique toy catalogues (mostly reproductions). I like to scan the pages, then search for original toys to match up with the catalogue photos. Derrick had presented his covers of the catalogues, but I'm sure he has the entire catalogues as well.
Not only does Derrick have the catalogues, but he has a great historic background about the company.
I always enjoy old posters or old catalogue cover pages.
There's someone about the old design that just draws you into the images.
Maybe I'm just getting too old!
When you find a toy, there is a written description of the toy. Clicking on the image brings to nice large images to better study the toy. The toys below were made in 1942-43, when the USA had entered WWII. As a result, there were strict limitations on metal, and toy manufacturers quickly adapted to produce wood toys. Wood was a less-restricve material that could be found in large amounts across the USA and Canada.
As I mentioned, Derrick takes excellent photography. However, I still wanted to present the toys against white. Notice how he also likes to arrange his toys for nice compositions that allow the viewer to be more stimulated by the eye movement in the photo.
The collection of paper items such as catalogues, posters, boxes that toys come in, cars and so forth is called ephemera. Derrick had a fine compliment of ephemera (always use any new word that you come across, otherwise you'll forget what it means).
Once again we see the depth of Derricks' work on his blog.
The first photo of a large grouping of toys is well composed and arranged. from there, he places some oys to illustrate the realtime sizes of the toys. And finally, there is a large-sized image of the wood truck in the lower right corner.
I always have had a liking to natal over man-made materials. Personally, it's the ability of a craftsman or artist to word with 3-dimensional material to create a final pice of work.
I'm sure some of you are wondering if I left anything for you to read on derrick's website?
The answer of course is yes. However, as you already know, I try to create a very good (relative to Derrick) blog for people to visit. And when I find someone, or a company that I am very excited to have discovered, I have to share that with everyone. With space not being a limit of factor, I sometimes probably do present more than I should.
However, quality and excellence do not have any constraints as far as I'm concerned,
and in the case of Derrick Clow and his website - I'll be back!
(Arnold, please excuse me for borrowing your line).
Thanks for dropping by, and as always,
have a great part of the day or night,
wherever you may be
Stacey
toysearcher@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment