Friday 7 May 2010

Alice

"The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. "No room! No room!" they cried out when they saw Alice coming. "There's plenty of room!" said Alice indignantly, and see sat down in a large armchair at one end of the table"
Having recently seen Tim Burton's wonderful take on Alice in Wonderland with a returning grown up Alice to Wonderland, and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter striding down the table, here is the original Tenniel drawing.
I loved Lewis Carroll's Alice as a child and still have my book of Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and always will love the characters and the poems.
 The card was produced by Alice's Shop in Oxford which is supposed to be where Alice Liddell, (Lewis Carroll's Alice) used to buy her barley sugar sweets. Tenniel sketched two illustrations for the book here and it appears as the Old Sheep Shop. The story goes that the owner of the shop had a voice like a bleating sheep so Carrol made her into a character in Alice Through the Looking Glass. Could she knit with fourteen pairs of needles all at once like Sheep in the story? A useful skill.  The shop has been in existence since 1830 and became an Alice themed gift shop in 1965.  I looked on their website but there were no sign of postcards only greeting cards.

I have never visited Oxford but according to the Qype reviews the shop is very small, so difficult to move around. Like the original:
"The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things - but the oddest part of all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: although the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.
"Things flow about so here!" she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at."
But I mentioned Johnny Depp at the beginning so I couldn't leave without a very short trail from the film could I:


For more lovely postcards visit Postcard Friendship Friday' hostess The Best Hearts Are Crunchy

10 comments:

Snap said...

Wonderful, fun, entertaining post! Do you know -- I've never read Alice, but I'm going to .. summer reading! Happy PFF!

Shaunna said...

Hey! Thanks for stopping by! I haven't seen the new Alice yet, but I would like to. :) Happy PFF!

papel1 said...

I would see the movie just to see Johnny Depp. Happy PFF
Judy

MuseSwings said...

I LOVE the new Alice movie - and Johnny Depp was magnificent as the Mad Hatter. Thank you for sharing the postcard and the fascinating information about the shop!

Postcardy said...

I like the tea party scene on the postcard. By coincidence, I just made myself a cup of tea.

viridian said...

I love Johnny Depp - Meow, stay away ladies!

Stacey said...

What a fun post... I love the original Alice illustrations. The movie was good and quite whimsical ... Happy PFF!

Lyneen said...

A wonderful Alice card... and the shoppe history is very interesting. I never realized that such a store actually existed. Thanks for sharing. PFF

Thanks for stopping by.

Sheila @ A Postcard a Day said...

Strangely, I never really took to Alice in Wonderland as a child. It's become incredibly popular now, of course. I sent out a similar card through Postcrossing and it's been "favourited" 19 times while another Winnie the Pooh one has only managed 5.

Carole said...

Great card, and the back is as much fun as the front.

I haven't seen TB's version yet, but will when it comes out on dvd.