Farmers

The Wind in the Willows

Plot summary

At the start of the book, it is spring time, the weather is fine, and good-natured Mole loses patience with his spring cleaning and dares to leave his underground home, heading up to take in the air. He ends up at the river, which he has never seen before. Here he meets Ratty (a water rat), who spends all his days in and around the river. Rat takes Mole for a ride in his rowing boat. They get along well and the two of them spend many more days on the river, with Rat teaching Mole the ways of the river.
Some time later, one summer day, Rat and Mole find themselves near Toad Hall and pay a visit to Toad. Toad is rich, jovial and friendly, but conceited, and tends to become obsessed about things, only to dismiss them later. Having given up boating, Toad's current craze is his horse-drawn caravan. In fact, he is about to go on a trip, and persuades the reluctant Rat and willing Mole to join him. A few days later, a passing motor car scares their horse, causing the caravan to crash. This marks the end of Toad's craze for caravan travel, to be replaced with an obsession for motor cars.
Mole wants to meet Badger, who lives in the Wild Wood, but Rat knows that Badger does not appreciate visits, and so refuses to take him, suggesting that if Mole will wait, Badger himself will pay a visit. Nevertheless, on a winter's day, Mole goes to the Wild Wood to explore, hoping to meet Badger. He gets lost in the woods, succumbs to fright and panic and hides among the roots of a sheltering tree. Rat goes looking for Mole, and finds him, but it starts to snow and even Rat no longer knows the way home. By chance they arrive at Badger's home. Badger welcomes Rat and Mole to his large and very cosy home, and gives them food and dry clothes. Badger learns from Rat and Mole that Toad has crashed six cars and has been hospitalised three times, and has had to spend a fortune on fines. Though nothing can be done at the moment (it being winter), they decide that once spring arrives they should do something to protect Toad from himself, since they are, after all, his friends.
With the arrival of spring, Badger visits Mole and Rat to do something about Toad's self-destructive obsession. The three of them go to visit Toad, and Badger tries talking him out of his behaviour, to no avail. They decide to put Toad under house arrest, with themselves as the guards, until Toad changes his mind. Feigning illness, Toad manages to escape and steals a car. He is caught and sent to prison on a twenty-year sentence. No longer needing to guard the now-absent Toad, Rat visits his old friend Otter and finds out that Otter's son is missing. Rat and Mole set out to find him. They receive help from the god Pan who leads them to the location of the missing child. Pan removes their memories of this meeting "lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure".
In prison, Toad gains the sympathy of the jailer's daughter, who helps him to escape. This involves disguising Toad as a washerwoman. Having escaped, Toad is without possessions and pursued by the police, but he shakes off his pursuers with the help of the driver of a steam train. Still disguised as a washerwoman, Toad comes across a horse-drawn boat. Toad lies about being a capable washerwoman to the owner of the boat, who offers him a lift in exchange for his laundry services. Toad, however, proves to be incapable at washing clothes, and he gets into a fight with the boat owner, steals her horse, and sells it to a gypsy. Hoping for a ride home, he flags down a passing car, which happens to be one he stole earlier. However, the owners don't recognise him in his disguise, and give him a lift. Toad asks if he can drive, and is allowed to, which of course quickly leads to an accident. He flees, and by chance arrives at Rat's house.
Toad hears from Rat that Toad Hall has been taken over by weasels, stoats and ferrets from the Wild Wood, despite attempts to protect and recover it by Mole and Badger. Although upset at the loss of his house, Toad realises what good friends he has, and how badly he has behaved. Badger, Rat, Mole and Toad enter Toad Hall via a secret entrance and drive away the intruders. Toad makes up for his earlier wrongdoings by seeking out those he wronged and compensating them. The four friends live out their lives happily ever after.

Stamp Collectors

Stamp collecting seems to be the sole concern, of the older gentleman and small children, it seems to be used as a way to create a common interest between family members of differant generations, grandfathers to grandchildren, collections would most likely kept as hier looms, depending on the passion shown by the collector for his hobby. Personaly speaking if my Granddad had been a massive stamp collector, I would cherish his collection the way he did, in respect of his memory. Thankfully my Grandad was a keen drinker so I get to "pay my respect" to the old goat every time I have a pint. I would think it is very rare for a child to pick up stamp collecting without the influence of some parental figure.
So how can this relationship between collectors be exploited to add value to my designs. the connection of the stamp image to an outside media is a good device, for example the Alice in Wonderland stamps ive shown in a earlier post, could be part of a collection and after being veiwed by the child the parental collector could then read the book to the child, or watch the film with them, so from a stamp the grandparent has traversed the generation gap and spent some quality time with his grandchild, its like a Werthers Original ad in real life.
my designs cant directly use these links without infringing on copyrights but i can use elements of other stories to add suggestion
What ive been interested in, is a modern re-working of The wind in the Willows, the classic children's book where animals are humanized, they wear clothes, drive cars , etc., the original story is set just before the first world war (aprox). If I now create a series of stamps that uses the wild life of Britain as well as the iconic professions or character stereotype we have in this country, I would answer the brief in regards of celebrating Bio diversity, but also create something which would pick up interest from fans of the original book.

More Interesting Stamps

The Badger man

He is as mad as a bag of said badgers. I love how he says "he's been working with these badgers for 25 years....." So sitting in a forest feeding some animals is work is it? To what end? What has 25 years of badger and crazy old man graft created? Are they on the verge of a bloody coup in mid wales? Will the old fella be crowned king of the badgers, a bloody black and white tyrant who will then sweep across Europe with his black and white storm troopers. I hope so.

The wind in the Willows

For the stamp brief, and the celibraton of British bio diversity, i am interested by both us the british people and the native wild life of our little island. To this effect i was reminded of "The wind in the willows" where animals such as toads, badgers, moles and weasel play out a story set in a pastoral version of England. The book is a mixture of folklore, adventure, morality, and friendship.

Peter Pan Stamps

Set of Royal mail stamps commemorating the book by J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy. The style is very similar to the Disney animation of the same material. why ive chosen to show these stamps out of the wealth of stamps available, i feel the cropping and composition is really brave and very good at telling the story of the characters, I really respect the nerve it must have taken to only show the main characters feet, but that tells us the story of his flight the same with the hook stamp, we know who he is and why he is called "hook", so its fine to be a bit more dramatic and having him rip through the stamp and look menacingly out at the viewer

Star Wars Stamps

The presentation of the star wars stamps differs from the british the way of presentation, the Royal Mail use a book or presentation pack, these star wars stamps are presented as a sheet image, some of the stamps are stand alone others are parts of the larger image.

Bond Stamps

I think finding these stamps really shows how small a image can be made and it still be readable, and that the scale of the stamps should not be a terrible concern i first believed it to be.

Character Stamps

All of these stamps celebrate differant characters, and show how cartoons work well on the small scale of stamps, high deffinotion and bright colours make the cartoons readable even at the reduced size. All but the Mr Men stamps are from America, which only have to show the price of the stamp (39) and USA, Unlike British stamps which have to show the queens head as well as the class of stamp (1st, 2nd, etc).

Cool Stamp Sets

This set of American stamps show the work of Charles & Ray Eames, quite simple, fresh designs, they are made a set by the text running down the right hand side, but outside of this element the stamps differ substantially from each other, some are photographs some diagrams.