Almost every cartoon series has a major rivalry going on between the two main characters, from Tom and Jerry to Road Runner and Wiley E. Coyote. Soviet cartoons are not exempt from this, "Nu, pogodi!" in particular. "Nu, pogodi!" focuses on the rivalry between a little hare and a wolf. The wolf concocts elaborate schemes to catch the unsuspecting hare, which end up failing in some spectacular way. Each show ends with the wolf shaking his fist and crying, "Nu....po-go-di!!!" (Well, just you wait!)
The Wolf is quite a character. Aside from his usual hijinks to snare the hare, he plays the guitar, smokes, and rides a motorcycle. He is also quite fashionable: his trademark pants are his bell bottoms.
Because there is almost no dialogue aside from the "nu, pogodi!" cry at the end of each show, non-Russian speakers can watch the show without problems.You can watch a few episodes below:
We also have some Nu, Pogodi collectible pins in our shop. Here's one with the wolf trying to "romance" the hare, available here:
And here's one of the hare himself, available here:
We'll have more Nu, Pogodi pins available in the coming weeks, so stay tuned!
I've been thinking a lot lately about my experience with selling vintage with Misha the Bear. Misha will be 8 months old soon, which I think has been prompting a lot of reflection, as well as comparison with Chelleline Cards. It's been an enjoyable experience, and I've learned a lot. It's also made me think about vintage in a different way.
1) Running a vintage business is hard, but in different ways from handmade. First of all, selling vintage is harder than it looks. One of the reasons why I wanted to start selling Soviet vintage was because I was so burned out from making cards at Chelleline Cards. "Wouldn't it be nice," I said to myself, "if I could sell something that was already made? Then all I would have to do would be to pack and ship it! It's so easy!" (I don't carry a lot of inventory at Chelleline Cards, so I usually have to make a bunch of cards when I receive orders.)
In many ways, selling vintage on Etsy is easier than selling handmade on Etsy. Vintage items are well-known and people will specifically seek out your items. With handmade, not so much - you have to drive people to your shop more so than if you were selling vintage. However, photographing, listing, promoting (normally through team forums) is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. And after all that work, to receive only a $30 sale? It can be a little discouraging. Even during my best month of selling vintage on Etsy, the amount I earned would be considered paltry if I were to compare it to what Chelleline Cards makes per month - even though I do earn more of a profit selling vintage.
2) I'm developing an eye for spotting vintage. I've also noticed, after several trips to the flea market and area thrift stores and browsing through hundreds and thousands of vintage listings on Etsy, that I've started to develop a more refined eye. I've always been interested in the objects people keep in their home, but now I'm able to recognize styles, periods, even certain brands. I was very proud of myself for recognizing a Blendo bowl when a thrift blogger posted it on her blog and asked for help in ID'ing it. But I'm still hesitant to buy American vintage for resale, outside of books, that is. I guess I have to learn to trust my eye.
3) Welcoming the old, shunning the new, and then back again. During the first few months when I was selling at Misha the Bear, I started to develop the mindset (common among vintage lovers and sellers) that only old objects were worth keeping and that new objects were just "not as good." Being a maker of new things myself, I tried to resist this mindset but it crept in anyway. However, after I bought a few dishes at the flea market and a My Little Pony mug at Goodwill, I realized that I didn't want to actually use them. The thought of my lips touching the same rim that a stranger's lips had touched years ago gave me the creeps. The same with clothes - even though I do admire a lot of vintage fashions and I may try to work on this in the future with regards to clothes. So now, my rule is that I won't buy anything that I eat off of or wear used and if I do buy these things used, it will be for decoration or display and not actual use. Also, there are lots of nice new things being made and sold, and they will be old and valuable someday! All old things were once new, after all.
To sum up, running any sort of business is hard. I think I would be sorely disappointed if I were trying to sell vintage full-time on Etsy, but as it's a side gig, I'm pretty satisfied with getting a few orders a week. If I were to sell full-time, I would probably expand into eBay and look into selling in person at a flea market, for example. And while it's tempting to do so, I have to remind myself where my priorities are (with Chelleline Cards). But I'll keep chugging along with Misha, too! I'm here to stay.
Culinary historians, vintage advertisement fans, you can click on the link above to see the catalog in its full glory. There are lots of Russian vintage food illustrations to drool over!
When my husband and I were first dating, we took a 10-day trip to the Ukraine. While I'd wanted to visit Russia since forever (and did so earlier that year), Ukraine had only briefly registered once on my list of places to travel.
Well, having no expectations helped, because I fell in love with the Ukraine. From the romantic hills of Kiev, the beautiful pastel Beaux-Arts style buildings in Odessa, the charming canals and grape harvest in Vilkovo (a small town in the delta of the Danube, known as the "Venice of the South"), to the decaying elegance of Lviv, and the rustic Carpathian mountains - Ukraine enchanted me. It was and is a highly underrated place among Americans.
The events of the past month have got me thinking about Ukraine again, so I decided to look online for vintage and contemporary photos and postcards that would help give people - especially Westerners - an image of Ukraine.
The postcard above and below are different views of Andrew's descent, which is a road that spirals down from Upper to Lower Kiev. Today, souvenir stands line this street (I actually bought a few vintage pins for Misha the Bear off this street!). The house where Mikhail Bulgakov (of Master and Margarita fame) lived in is also on this street; today it's a pretty neat museum.
Modern-day Andrew's descent (photo by me):
The postcard below is of the now famous Independence Square, where there have been massive protests in the last month.
Kiev's railway station (I included this because I love the car and the family in the foreground).
Some postcards of Lvov, in the west:
Lvov opera house then:
Lvov opera house now (photo by me):
Lvov main square (known as "rynok" or "Market"; contemporary photo by me):
And, saving the best for last, the enchanting town of Vilkovo:
When we came to Vilkovo, they were having a grape harvest, so we saw many people ferrying buckets and bags full of grapes on their boats to the center of town. The people there were very friendly and we were offered so many grapes to take with us. We also had a boat tour of the canals and a birding tour the next morning.
This man was one of many people we saw paddling a boatful of grapes over to the center of town. (All Vilkovo photos by Dmitry Gimon)
There are two ways to get home: one is by boat along the canals, the other is by taking this elevated wooden pedestrian walkway.
This is how you reach your neighbor on the other side of the canal:
You can see more Ukraine pictures here and here. I hope you've enjoyed looking through these photos and that they've given you a sense of the country!
What blew me away during the Sochi Olympics closing ceremony last night was neither the humorous reference to the snowflake mishap (pictured above), nor the nostalgic tribute to Misha the Bear during the 1980 Moscow Olympics, though both were enjoyable. No, what surprised me happened in the first few moments of the ceremony, as the performance began and the music started playing. I recognized the music.
What was remarkable was the choice of music. It was the score to "Giant", a 1956 film starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean - some of the major movie stars of the period. "Giant" tells the story of a woman from the East (Elizabeth Taylor) who marries a rich cattle rancher in West Texas, and their life together. Quite progressive for its time, it tackles issues of racism, poverty, and sexism. It is, in my opinion, one of the best movies ever made. It is epic in every sense of the word, in its story, length, theme, and its score. It is also notable for being the last of James Dean's three films; he died in a car accident shortly after filming.
That aside, why on earth would a score from a movie about Texas be playing at the closing ceremony of the Olympics in Sochi, Russia? As it turns out, Dimitri Tiomkin, the composer for Giant's soundtrack, was born in the Ukraine (at the time of his birth, part of the Russian empire). He was from a Jewish family, and studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He supported himself by playing piano accompaniment for Russian silent films. After the Russian Revolution, he organized two revolutionary mass performance shows (think: North Korea's Mass Games) celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution. In spite of his political sympathies, however, work for musicians was scarce in the newly formed Soviet Union, and he ended up moving to Berlin, then Paris, and then to New York where he and his friend performed in the vaudeville circuits. He also gave a piano recital in Carnegie Hall, which was a great success and resulted in a tour to Paris.
After the 1929 stock market crash, Tiomkin and his wife (a ballerina whom he had met in his vaudeville days) went to Hollywood. His first major film score project was "Alice in Wonderland" (1933), but the film score that gained him significant recognition was that in Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon" (1937). During the remainder of the '30s, he collaborated with Capra on several more films, including "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1938) and "It's a Wonderful Life" (1939).
Tiomkin was well-known for his film scores to Westerns, such as "High Noon" (1952, starring Grace Kelly and Gary Cooper), "Giant" (1956), "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" (1957), and "The Alamo" (1960). The song he wrote for "High Noon" was considered to have saved the movie, initially feared to be a flop.
He also wrote scores for four of Hitchcock's movies, including "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), "Strangers on a Train" (1951), "I Confess" (1953), and "Dial M for Murder" (1954).
Tiomkin was nominated 17 times for an Academy Award for the "Best Music, Original Song" and "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture" and won 3 Oscars. He is, up until modern times, the only Russian who has become a Hollywood film composer.
Obviously, Tiomkin has an incredible legacy, but I'm not sure how much of that has been lost to history. I only know him because I'm very familiar with the film "Giant", but I'm not sure how well-known he is among people my age and younger. After I'd established that the song played during the closing ceremony was the score to "Giant", my husband commented, "Whoever chose this music, I don't know what kind of deep knowledge of music he must have to know about a composer from a half-century ago who didn't even live in Russia for most of his life." I hope that this blog post can at least help enlighten my friends about this remarkable and incredibly talented composer.
You can read more about Tiomkin here and visit his official website, where you can also listen to snippets of his film scores.
Here's the opening score to "Giant" (seriously, if you click on anything in this post, click on this! It's beautiful!):
As a side note, my husband's great-grandparents on his maternal grandfather's side are from the same town in the Ukraine where Tiomkin was born. His aunt's husband's ancestors are also from the same town. So...could they be distant relations with Tiomkin? One can only guess!
The Sochi Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony last Friday kicked off with "Dreams of Russia", showing a little girl reciting the cyrillic alphabet. Each letter of the alphabet was associated with one or several important Russian figures or landmarks, images that all Russians would know.
Since we were last on the subject of cartoons, I wanted to delve into the letter "ё" (pronounced "yo"). The word associated with this letter was ёжик (yozhik), or hedgehog. Those who aren't Russian and aren't familiar with Russian animation were probably wondering, "Why hedgehog? Do Russians really like hedgehogs?"
The image of the hedgehog that came up in the video comes from the animated short, "Hedgehog in the Fog" (Ёжик в тумане) by Yuriy Norstein, one of the most famous Soviet/Russian animators. The film was made in 1975, and it's an adorable story about a hedgehog who, on his way to his daily tea with his bear friend, sees a beautiful white horse in the fog and decides to follow it. As he descends into the fog, it becomes so thick that he can no longer see his paw. The fog thickens and thins, giving the hedgehog glimpses of strange and marvelous creatures.
Watch Hedgehog in the Fog here:
Norstein's first cartoon short, "Who Said Meow?", is also really adorable and worthy of watching:
He is also well-known for "Tale of Tales":
The hedgehog was billed as an image that all Russians would know, and now you know it too - plus a little more!
Well, we decided to keep the Cheburashka toy for ourselves and not sell it (which begs the question, are you a dealer or a collector? Make up your mind!), but the Cheburashka pin is still on sale! Hopefully we will find more Cheburashka-related items on our next trip to Russia.
In the meantime, here are a few Cheburashka stop-motion TV shows to keep you entertained. I have to admit that Cheburashka's personality was much different from what I'd imagined! I thought he would be really hyper and energetic, but he's very shy and sweet. Enjoy!
