Granny Annie's Illustrated Alphabet, 2012

This nursery alphabet was made for a family in 2012. A pencil title reads “Granny Annie’s illustrated alphabet”, and the captions carry a personal note: under the rocking horse, “the real one is called ‘Blue’”.

Each letter is painted as a bold serif capital and lower case, in red, blue, green or brown, beside a small picture. There is a teddy bear for B, a giraffe and calf for G, a jack-in-the-box for J, a barn owl for O, a pig among poppies for P and a pair of zebras for Z. The drawing is careful and gentle, in the manner of English picture-book illustration.

Watercolour and pencil on paper. Titled, monogrammed and dated “2012” in pencil upper left, and monogrammed and dated again lower right. Each letter is captioned in pencil. In a white mount and light wood frame.