Grand Opening & new releases!
This coming Saturday, 13 July 2024 is the grand opening of our physical gallery in Potsdam! Don’t miss it!
Here is the program for the day:
14:00 Opening of the gallery
18:00 Introduction to the work and mission of Riekeles Gallery
19:00 Japanese finger food and drinks
20:00 End
We are very much looking forward to our new location! To celebrate this big step for our small enterprise, a whole range of exciting new products will be available from 13 July both at our new shop as well as online. It might prove difficult to choose from all of them!
To make you move to Potsdam we’re offering a 20% discount on all products until the end of next week at our new physical gallery. We hope to welcome many of you. For all those who can't make it to a personal handshake, we have a consolation: from Sat., July 13 to Sun., July 21, we are offering a 10% discount on our entire catalogue and free worldwide shipping for purchases over €100!
This is our new address:
Am Bassin 10, 14467 Potsdam, Germany
Don’t trust Google at this point. Trust me, we’re here!
Solegraph for the 35th anniversary of Kiki’s Delivery Service
The original production background with production cel overlay of Kiki’s Delivery Service, cut no. 146
The highlight among our new products is undoubtedly the new solegraph of Kiki's Delivery Service. To celebrate both our opening and the 35th anniversary of the film, we have done something special for this new print: we have reproduced an original production background together with a production cel. Usually, we scan the paintings without any character cels on top, since we’re working with the art directors. In this case, however, because it is a special occasion, we decided to keep Kiki on her broom. The background was painted by Hiroshi Ohno, the film's art director, in 1989. He will also number and sign each of the prints.
We are offering the strictly limited edition of 100 solegraphs at our regular price of 360 EUR. You can also get 10% off this print during our opening week in the online store and 20% here at our physical store. Shipping is free worldwide.
I particularly like this solegraph because the superimposition of the cel on the background is so well done. The "shadow" of the celuloid is visible, but doesn't detract from the overall impression at all. I also find the scraps of Scotch tape and staples very striking. The pictures we have already published for Kiki's Kleiner Lieferservice were Hiroshi Ohno's imageboards, meaning they were basically studies and drafts in preparation for the actual scene. That's why I'm particularly proud to be able to publish a final production background for this film as well.
This artwork is available as a poster print from 13 July as well. Hiroshi Ohno's illustrations from Kiki's Delivery Service will also be available from tomorrow in a smaller format and as postcards. You can find more information about this further down in this long update.
Patlabor - the Movie poster
Original production background for Patlabor - the Movie, cut no. 186, painted by art director Hiromasa Ogura
Patlabor - the Movie was also released in 1989, on July 15 to be precise. We have already published three beautiful solegraphs for this classic, but so far no poster. We're making up for that now. From 13 July you will find a poster of the original production background for Patlabor - The Movie, cut no. 186, painted by art director Hiromasa Ogura in our shop!
Anime Architecture Poster Portfolio
On July 1, 2021, I founded Riekeles Gallery to offer high-quality reproductions of classic backgrounds. This idea was based on my research work on anime architecture and the book of the same name. Since then, including the new Patlabor poster, we have published a total of 13 posters from this subject area. Some of them are no longer available because we have sold almost the entire print run of the motifs, most of which were limited to 500 copies. However, we have kept a few of each poster.
For our 3rd birthday, we are offering the opportunity to purchase the entire Anime Architecture Poster Portfolio (13 posters) in our beautiful collection folder for 777€. This offer is limited to 20 folders. The 10% or 20% discount does not apply here, but shipping is free worldwide during our opening week.
The posters are all mounted in the folder and can be easily removed individually to frame them and hang them on the wall.
Here is the overview of what you get in this bundle.
Heidi
Original production background of Heidi - Girl of the Alps (1974), painted by Masahiro Ioka
I am particularly pleased to finally be able to offer a small series of posters of the original production backgrounds for the 1974 TV series Heidi - Girl of the Alps, directed by Isao Takahata.
The first “anime”, that is “Japanese animation” I have seen in my life was Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Of course, at that time I didn’t know this was a Japanese production. However, since I started my adventure into the realm of anime background art the paintings of the ideal alps by Masahiro Ioka (1941-1985) have been even more fascinating to me. For a while now I had been trying to track these pieces down and to see whether we could make prints of some. Finally, during this year’s February trip to Japan I saw the original artwork at the great Isao Takahata exhibition in Shizuoka. With the help of the exhibition’s producers at NHK Promotion, the kind assistance of Studio Ghibli and the amazing support of the rights owners at Studio 100 International I achieved this long term goal. Here they are, prints of Masahiro Ioka’s stunning backgrounds for the Heid, Girl of the Alps TV series from 1974.
For these motifs we offer posters and cards only, no solegraphs. The reason is that we couldn’t get the original artwork to be scanned at our solegraph production partners in Japan because it’s on display in the touring Takahata exhibition and we don’t know how many stops the tour will have. Without the high-grade scans and color correction we can’t print solegraphs. But I'm very happy with the result we achieved anyway.
New posters in smaller format & postcards
Our series of posters in the smaller B3 format is also new. Until now we have offered all our posters in B2 format (50x70cm). Now we will also offer the motifs from Kiki's Delivery Service and Heidi in half the size, which is B3 format (35x50cm).
With this format, I have refrained from placing the color bar with the logos at the bottom of the posters. This bar gives the larger formats a movie poster look. However, this effect did not work so well with the smaller formats. I therefore decided to focus entirely on the images and, as far as possible, also depict the interesting edges of the illustrations.
Finally: Postcards
And we go a second step down the format ladder, to A5 (148 x 210 mm) for a series of cards. These are slightly larger than you would expect your average “postcard” to be, which is because these too, after all, are art prints. They can be sent in the mail if you like – but they are just as suited to be put up as a mini gallery in homes where wall space has become scarce. This format has been especially popular when we launched it at the Dokomi convention in June, because it is arguably the most accessible, and we are stoked to bring our new postcards to fans worldwide.
Thank you for reading this far and we sincerely hope that you enjoy our grand opening as much as we do!
With warm greetings from Potsdam,
Stefan and the team of Riekeles Gallery