Liberty Bramall

LIBERTY BRAMALL

“PETER RABBIT AND FRIENDS”

SYNOPSIS.............................................................3

RESEARCH............................................................4

CONCEPT..............................................................6

SET DESIGN.........................................................8

DEVELOPEMENT...............................................10

FINAL ILLUSTRATIONS...................................30

FINAL MAKE........................................................54

The Beatrix Potter Tales are a familiar feature from childhood for many. Potter’s characters and their charming descriptions are deeply embedded in her fans’ imaginations and are regarded by past readers with such fondness that even years later many find they can still visualise the famous Peter Rabbit in his little blue jacket, or the unlucky Jeremy Fisher the frog in his mackintosh with ease thanks to their quaint representions in her much loved storybooks.

This production will draw on these existing ideas about how the small animals and their dainty dresses and neat pinafores should appear.

However, the show will re-imagine her early 20th century drawings for today’s audiences.

The animals’ clothing will reignite people’s love affair with her soft, watercolour drawings and recreate the lovable characteristics that

come through in her sketches by using imaginative millinery and bold accessories.

The costumes will be modernised whilst remaining sensitive to the picturesque world Potter created.

The designs will include appliqué, embroidered fabrics , extensive fabric manipulation and exaggerated silhouettes to recreate the creatures’ behaviour and movements through fabric. The production will tell the animals’ stories to a new generation, whilst leaving the older audience members with a fond feeling of familiarity as they reminisce on their early books.

The story would be performed at an outdoor theatre venue, possibly within the beautiful scenery of the Lake District where Beatrix Potter lived. The large set would have a vast circular wooden floor and there would be

large trees either side to frame the stage.

Two platforms will be built to look like giant piles of books stacked on top of each other and providing another level where action can take place. There would be several large sash windows hanging down on wires to form a backdrop that will frame the views of the scenery that lies behind the set. This will give the audience the impression that they are peeking out from a cottage window onto the surrounding land that would have once inspired Beatrix Potter herself.

Reading Beatrix Potter is often seen as a form of escape too as the reader enters a world full of fascinating characters, so the show itself will become an escape. The show will mimick the classic fonts of these adverts and place them on large painted , pastel coloured signs used on the set to point towards different locations in the stories.

Existing adverts from the 1950s have inspired many aspects of the design process. The stylaised campaigns produced in the 1950s to encourage people to travel by rail to rural areas such as The Lakes for their holidays (to escape from the bustle of busy cities) has guided the show’s idyllic aesthetic.

There will be rows of neat potted plants lining the stage like a vegetable patch, watering cans and plant pots scattered all around. Young members of the audience will be able to take home a little basket at the end of the play with a packet of seeds and a programme inside to encourage a new generation to sow the seed of storytelling.

The audience would be seated on old railway benches. This will create an air of excitement as audiences can take their seat in anticipation of the journey that awaits them.

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“There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you.” ― Beatrix Potter

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Helen Beatrix Potter, known as Beatrix, was born on 28 July 1866 to Rupert and Helen Potter in Kensington, London. Beatrix loved to draw and paint, and often made sketches of her many pets, including rabbits, mice, frogs, lizards, snakes and a bat.

Beatrix was always encouraged to draw, and she spent many hours making intricate sketches of animals and plants, revealing an early fascination for the natural world that would continue throughout her life. Two of Beatrix’s earliest artist models were her pet rabbits.

Her first rabbit was Benjamin Bouncer, who enjoyed buttered toast and joined the Potter family on holiday in Scotland where he went for walks on a lead.

Benjamin was

followed by Peter Piper, who had a talent for performing tricks, and he accompanied Beatrix everywhere.

The most exciting time of the year for Beatrix was the summer, when the family travelled north to spend three months in Scotland. The children had the freedom to explore the countryside, and Beatrix learned to observe plants and insects with an artist’s eye for detail.

When Beatrix was sixteen, the family stayed instead at Wray Castle, overlooking Lake Windermere, where Beatrix began a lifelong love of the countryside and of the Lake District.

Long before she was a published author, Beatrix Potter drew illustrations for some of her favourite stories, including Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland and Cinderella, as well as her sketches from nature. Her imaginative art led to the publication of her earliest works – greetingcard designs and illustrations for the publisher Hildesheimer & Faulkner. There followed more publications, including a series of frog illustrations and verses for Changing Pictures, a popular annual offered by the art publisher Ernest Nister, which cemented Beatrix’s desire to publish her own illustrated stories.

One of Beatrix’s earliest stories, Peter Rabbit, came from a picture letter originally sent to Annie Moore’s son, Noel. After

being rejected by several publishers, Beatrix decided to publish The Tale of Peter Rabbit herself, printing an initial 250 copies for family and friends in December 1901.

The book’s instant success encouraged Frederick Warne & Co., who had previously turned it down, to reconsider their decision, offering to take it on as long as Beatrix re-illustrated it in colour. On publication in October 1902, it was an immediate bestseller. The following year, Beatrix published The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin with Frederick Warne, and the rest of her legendary tales followed.

All this painstaking work paid off: Potter developed the eye of an expert investigative scientist, able to draw living creatures with great conviction - throughout her life her work was guided by the principle of portraying nature as accurately as possible. She used a fine, dry brush to define meticulously and minutely the anatomy of even the most delicate specimens.

At the age of eight Beatrix Potter was already studying and recording the characteristics of a wide variety of animals, birds and insects in a home-made sketchbook.

Her accuracy at drawing the animals from life meant she had a strong feel for the movement and shape of the creatures once she started to dress them in human clothing.

Each tale often includes a naughty or silly protagonist who’s behaviour results in chaos, like a rabbit who strays where he shouldn’t, a squirrel who is rude to his elders or a kitten who doesn’t listen to advice. The animal’s mischievous streaks led me to look at historical and stylish rebels from the past such as the 1950s teddy boys and girls, who were a British subculture typified by young men and women wearing clothes that were partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period. I found this link to their fashion choices (mimicking the Edwardian era in which the early books were published) to be a fascinating platform to explore Potter’s own rejection of the values of her time along with the rejection of post-war austerity in the 1950s.

She faced an array of setbacks due to her gender and I would like to give my production a gender neutral cast in her honour, where men and women can play either sex without it altering the context of the story.

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“If I have done anything, even a little, to help small children enjoy honest, simple pleasures, I have done a bit of good.”

- Beatrix Potter

The 1950s feels like the perfect era to influence my designs as it gives me scope to reference the original stories, whilst allowing me to reinvigorate the drawings with a more modern silhouette to bring a sense of playfulness and fun.

In my interpretation , the millinery, jewellery and accessories will all emphasise the animals’ behaviour so I would like to produce masks, headwear, scarves, handbags and shoes using a range of textiles including felting, reverse applique and embroidery to mimic the textures of the fur, feathers and scales of the animals within the stories. I’d like to use a bright colour palette to reimagine the original watercolour illustrations, drawing on inspiration from the photographer Tim Walker, his dreamlike tones and his wonderful use of extravagant and oversized props. I have also looked at the milliner Bes Ben and his humorous hats and the designer Elsa Schiaparelli and her colourful and novel fashion designs.

Beatrix Potter’s Hill Top farm in The Lake District

Plant pots, ladders, watering cans and cloches will be scattered around the stage to appear like a working allotment, like that owned by Mr McGregor.

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Railway benches to sit on with blanket and picnic baskets to create an inclusive and interactive theatre environment.

The stage revolves around the scenery. The set should act as a window into the beautiful setting that the play would be performed in.

Potter’s illustrations communicate her obvious appreciation and love for the humble pots, onions, and flowers of the garden. This is something that the stage production will shine a light upon. The set will draw attention to the undervalued aspects of the everyday allotment.

Thom Browne’s menswear collection for Fall /Winter 2014 is both sartorial and satirical.

Models walked down the runway wearing unusual grey flannel, plaid hats and headgear. Designed

by Browne, the hats were made with the help of well-known milliner Stephen Jones.

Rabbits as top hats, masks, caps and eyepatches, elephant heads, badger and frog caps, pin stripe bowlers as bears, hunting caps with antlers, driving caps with eyes and cagelike construction.

Beautiful animalinspired photography that combines contemporary fashion with the animals’ characteristics.

Walker strives to create his pictures within what he calls “the parameters of the impossible” – something has to be physically, rather than digitally, possible for the picture to register with the viewer. “Otherwise the ring of truth goes flat.”

His work is theatrical, bordering on surrealist and incredibly romantic. Every scene is created with carefully arranged props to give presence to a dream- like fantasy.

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Miss Potter is a 2006 Anglo-American biographical fiction family drama film directed by Chris Noonan. It is a biographical film of children’s author and illustrator Beatrix Potter, and combines stories from her own life with animated sequences featuring characters from her stories, such as Peter Rabbit.

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Royal Ballet Founder Choreographer Frederick Ashton created Tales of Beatrix Potter for television in 1970, for a balletic film that was the brainchild of Richard Goodwin and his wife, designer and filmmaker Christine Edzard. They wanted to replicate Ms Potter's gorgeous watercolours as closely as possible – and the results were astutely padded costumes and an array of magnificent fibreglass heads, created by Rostislav Doboujinsky.

Cabbages & Roses is a wholesome and comforting interpretation of British fashion. the clothes have a grown up romance and artful femininity that is kept firmly grounded by being made from practical, old-school fabrics such as soft tweeds, thick woven linens and slubby check cottons.

Beatrix Potter had many animals which she kept as pets and inspired her drawings.

Her views on the need to preserve the natural beauty of Lakeland have inspired both my set and costumes.

Potter wanted to preserve the beauty of the landscape and its natural beauty.

Hats from the 1940s were trimmed with a bizarre assortment of items, including: miniature bananas, pedigree dogs, palm trees, cigarette packages, bugs, skyscrapers, and doll furniture. Bes-Ben also made war-themed hats at this time, using everyday objects like kitchen utensils, cookie cutters, ice tongs, and kitchen towel fabric, trimmed fetchingly with napkin rings.

Benjamin B. GreenField is the “Mad Hatter” designer behind the hat label Bes-Ben.

“Anything that makes people laugh at this point in world history may be said to have its own excuse for being.”

Bes Ben

RABBIT HEADWEAR

“That’s the point of hats.

They have to communicate to people; they have to be eye candy.”

Thom Browne

Designing for the rabbits to include a host of different styles of wire manipulation and felting- looking at how aspects of the storyline can be visually represented through the accesories. The millinery will transport audiences back to the vegetable garden.

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Mrs. Tabitha Twitchit is a tired shopkeeper and the long-suffering mother of three unruly kittens, Moppet, Mittens and Tom Kitten.

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In the books, she is shown as standing on her hind legs and wearing fashionable clothes.

She and her kittens live in a house based on the Hill Top farmhouse while her shop is based on one in Hawkshead, a local market town.

Squirrel Nutkin, his brother Twinkleberry, and their many cousins sail to Owl Island on little rafts they have constructed out of twigs. They offer resident owl Old Brown a gift and ask his permission to do their nutcollecting on his island. Nutkin however is rude to the owl and dances about impertinently singing a silly riddle.

Mr Alderman Ptolmey is a very fancy and very important tortoise who is invited for dinner with Jeremy Fisher. Mr Alderman Ptolmey is a vegetarian so he only eats salad, which he brings along with him in a string bag.

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Benjamin Bunny and his cousin Peter Rabbit venture into Mr. McGregor's garden to retrieve the clothes Peter lost there in The Tale of Peter Rabbit. They find the blue jacket and brown shoes on a scarecrow, but Peter is apprehensive about lingering in the garden because of his previous experience. Benjamin delays their departure by gathering onions, which he wraps in Peter's handkerchief, hoping to give them to his aunt, Peter's mother.

He then takes a casual stroll around the garden, followed by an increasingly nervous Peter.

Aware the type of story she was writing was set primarily in colours of fawn, brown, and soft green, Potter wrote that, "the red handkerchief will make a good bit of colour all through the book.�

1950’S GLAMOUR Jemima is inspired by 1950s starlets.

Unlike the fiesty, tomboy aesthtic givn to the maughty rabbits, Jemime has the air of a sophisticated and gamourous lady, albeit incredibly daft.

Jemima Puddle Duck is a domestic duck of the Aylesbury breed, whose eggs are routinely confiscated by the farmer's wife because she believes Jemima a poor sitter. Jemima searches for a place away from the farm where she can hatch her eggs without human interference, and naively confides her woes to a suave fox who invites her to nest in a shed at his home.

Like many fairy tales, Jemima Puddle-Duck belongs in a remote, but not-too-distant, past.

Jemima’s shawl reflects the typical farm dress of the Lake District at the time of the tale’s composition, but the poke bonnet does not, and the fox’s long tail coat and exquisite manners hark back to a bygone era. Jemima is a more interesting character when humanWised with the clothing; without it, she is just a farmyard duck. her costume has feathers galore and eggs adorning the hat, a handbag shaped like an oversized egg and a tightly fitting dress to make her a wiggle just like a duck when she walks.

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With carrots galore and a little blue Jacket, Peter maintains lots of hints of the original storybook illustrations, but with the inclsuion of three-quarter length trousers and loosely fitted shirts, he is channeling the laid back style of the 1950s teddy boys and girls.

Peter Rabbit wears a little blue jacket.

Peter, his widowed mother, Mrs. Josephine Rabbit, as well as his sisters, Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail all live in a rabbit hole that has a human kitchen and human furniture.

The large scale hat is a combination of millinery wire and felting technques to add texture and build size.

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The fox is a charming gentleman with “black prick ears and sandycoloured whiskers” who persuades Jemima to nest in a shed at his home.

Jemima is led to his “tumble-down shed” (which is curiously filled with feathers), and makes herself a nest with little ado.

Jemima lays her eggs, and the fox suggests a dinner party to mark the event. He asks her to collect the traditional herbs used in stuffing a duck, telling her the seasonings will be used for an omelette.

He dresses and behaves as a country gentleman of leisure, idling with a newspaper and living off the labor of others by luring their fowl to his feather-filled shed. Potter had little tolerance for indolence and lack of industry, but, as a country woman, she knew foxes were clever and managed to escape more times than they were caught. From the first encounter between Jemima and the fox, the reader realises the fox is more clever than Jemima and is forced to extend him a grudging admiration.

The simple dwellings, rustic pathways, and stone fences enhance the tale’s timeless aspect and suggest an unchanging countryside and its way of life. The costume has a pinafore and a washer hat with patchwork and ribbons decorating the edges.

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Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is the animals’ laundress and “an excellent clearstarcher”

Mrs. Tiggy-winkle is a hedgehog washerwoman who lives in a tiny cottage in the fells of the Lake District. A child named Lucie happens upon the cottage and stays for tea. The two deliver freshly laundered clothing to the animals and birds in the neighbourhood.

Although Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is set in an identifiable place and time period, the tale is mythologized by reaching back to an age when household chores were performed manually and without the aid of modern mechanical inventions.

“most terribly tidy little mouse always sweeping and dusting the soft sandy floors”.

Mrs. Tittlemouse is a woodmouse who lives in a “funny house” of long passages and storerooms beneath a hedge. Her efforts to keep her dwelling tidy are thwarted by insect and arachnid intruders who create all sorts of messes about the place: a lost beetle leaves dirty footprints in a passage and a spider inquiring after Miss Muffet leaves bits of cobweb here and there.

Poor Mrs. Tittlemouse wonders if her home will ever be tidy again, but after a good night’s sleep, she gives her house a fortnight’s spring cleaning, polishes her little tin spoons, and holds a party for her friends. The costume is inspired by the decorative insects that Elsa Schiaparelli adorned her garments with.

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Potter’s tale pays homage to the leisurely summers her father and his companions passed sport fishing at rented country estates in Scotland. The costume features a lily pad hat with an oversized fish adorning it, appliquéd fish prints on the raincoat and long boots so he can partake in his fishing activities.

Jeremy Fisher is a frog who lives in a “slippysloppy” house at the edge of a pond. One rainy day he collects worms for fishing, and sets off across the pond on his lily-pad boat. He plans to invite his friends for dinner if he catches more than five minnows. He encounters all sorts of setbacks to his goal, and escapes a large trout who tries to swallow him. He swims for shore, decides he will not go fishing again, and hops home.

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“What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?�

- Beatrix Potter

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