One for all you knit-wits...
Walter Bernadini, a former commercial advertising artist and illustrator and a regular contributor to the LG Group, sent in this brilliant ad he'd done for the old John Smith & Co's wool shops.
Walter says: "Here's one of my ads. designed to catch the eye all the knitters in the seven towns where John Smith & Co were located.
"I enjoyed doing the wee drawings using my zippatone technique to enhance them. Sadly I wasn't given a ticket to go and draw the towns at first hand but had to be satisfied with using photographs for reference."
Seeing the illustration of the Sauchiehall Street shop, I went off searching through the anonymous, 1951 contact sheets I bought the other month, to find this beauty; it's almost sunset, and the long, low rays have cast a magical shadow from the sign of the gold spinning wheel.
Perhaps it's something to do with being read old fairytales but, as a wee boy, I always saw something slightly sinister and spooky in the giant spinning wheel.
Back in the days of make-do and mend, just think of all the millions of jumpers and cardigans which would have been conjured out of this shop. The less said about the millions of itchy balaclavas, and droopy knitted swimming costumes and trunks, the better!
