Ah..., as Saint Nicholas might say, naughty children are just that, pains, and fortunately in the alpine regions of Europe he has a helper Krampus (exactly 12 of them on the panes of this vintage-style collapsible paper lantern) to assist with disciplinary difficulties.
Last night, Bindlegrim posted a super short 3-day only auction (ending Dec 20, 2012
19:47:55 PST) for a new lantern, and the last Bindlegrim lantern of 2012. GRUSS von KRAMPUS vintage style HALLOWEEN-CHRISTMAS lantern BINDLEGRIM: 3rd of 3. This lantern (of which only 3 were produced) features 12 scenes of Krampus shenanigans, with a look inspired by vintage postcards of this strange Christmas character.
It's a little hard to photograph all the scenes in a single image when the lantern is set up for lighting, so here are some working files for the panes. This shows Krampus doing what Saint Nicholas hired him to do --- capture particularly naughty children in his sack and carry them away... (wikipedia entry on Krampus).
Fortunately most children must be good here in America, for I have never seen Krampus set foot on this soil. However, with his underground popularity increasing, I wonder if he might finally make it across the water some day, as did one dear friend of ours, the Jack O'Lantern...? Until then, for more images of this lantern check out Bindlegrim on flickr and Happy Holidays and by all means, be good!!!
A quick entry just reminding everyone to be good tonight, Krampusnacht. Here's a little 3 panel comic as a cautionary tale... (for some works in progress for a possible lantern release by Bindlegrim for December 2012). In the meantime here are just a tiny few of the many fun Krampus links out there: wikipedia, or krampus.com, and there are at least 2 books with vintage Krampus imagery collected by Monte Beauchamp.
I've been rediscovering my love for a certain vintage palette while perusing the vintage Christmas cards on flickr, loving any graphics and/or illustrations that are in the high contrast combination of red, black, and white. (Below is a vintage card that I had found recently at an antique store that re-sparked this interest).
I started checking out many more vintage images in this palette that others have found and posted on flickr. Here are just a handful that I have spotted over the last days that I really love and, beneath them are now four links to galleries created to house eighteen images in each.
There were also a couple more that I couldn't get into a gallery that I thought were really wonderful - and I had to include at least one of those too:
