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Special Delivery and Signed For: The Difference.
What’s the difference between Special Delivery and Signed For? Does Royal Mail track items at every step of the journey with both services? Signed For used to be called Recorded Delivery. And I’ve heard people say it is as safe as Special Delivery for items up to the compensation limit of £50. And if they…
Royal Mail – Is There Hope
Is there hope on the horizon for Royal Mail? In March 2023, under the title Royal Mail Is Undermining The Postal Service, I wrote that the parent company of Royal Mail had approached Government to ask for a five day letter delivery. The carrot they threw to sweeten the request was a declaration of continuing…
William Blake In Felpham
For four years William Blake lived in a cottage in Felpham, far from his life and friends in London. Blake is, of course, known for his drawings and his writing equally. They went together as he developed his ideas of freedom. In his world, freedom was what man was born for. And sometimes that clashed…
Ichikawa Ebizō
Woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai featuring the character Ichikawa Ebizō in a Kabuki play as a woodcutter who is actually the Priest Mongaku in disguise, as becomes revealed in the course of the play. Kabuki is a highly stylised form, with comic episodes mixed with dramatic themes. Often there is a mystical or supernatural element.…
Katsukawa Shunshō and Bijin-ga
Katsukawa Shunshō was a Japanese painter and printmaker known for his ukiyo-e style, particularly his prints of Kabuki actors and Bijin-ga paintings – paintings of beautiful women. He started life as a student of both haiku and painting. Painting drew him to become a printmaker of the actors he mixed with in the floating world…
Courtesan and a Handsome Youth, by Isoda Koryusai
Following on from the last post on the theme of Japanese art, this is a woodblock print I photographed in the University of the Arts in Taitō City ward in Tokyo. The print is entitled Courtesan and a Handsome Youth, and is by Isoda Koryusai who has an interesting story. He was a samurai employed…