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Balloon Mail. Fook Island

Item date(s): c 1975

Walter Whall Battiss  (1906-1982)


Size: 16.5 x 23cm
Technique: Watercolour on envelope
Inscription: To Graham. Yours sincerely Walter Battiss

Category: Found
Type: Painting

ART 1140

Additional notes:
This envelope has the Fook Island stamp (Shadow of Fook by Norman Catherine) in the top right corner.

It has been franked with Battiss' FOOK ISLAND - FOOK IS FREE stamp.

There is also the Battiss stamp FOOK IS THE NOW and the inscription.

The top of the envelope contains a watercolour with a hot-air balloon with two figures and the text "BALLOON MAIL. FOOK ISLAND. 1000 years of LIFE, LOVE and LEISURE" in white paint over a mauve rectangle.

At the bottom is a blue ribbon over which text in Fook script is painted in white. It reads: Celebroo Fook Koof.

[Fook appealed to Battiss as being slightly transgressive and the KOOF, the reverse of FOOK, in conjunction with FOOK as in FOOKKOOF was even more so. One can only speculate why Battiss wrote "Celebroo" rather than, say, "Celebrate" apart from wanting the repetition of the double OO sound.

Ref: GB/50032



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