Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters from Around the World

By Ian Phillips

Book Overview

One of the first impulses of an owner who's lost a pet is to canvas the neighborhood with quickly made posters. And even if we haven't seen the wanderer in question, many of us stop to read these notices, which are often charming combinations of heartfelt pleas, humor, and handmade art.For the last decade, Ian Phillips has collected lost pet posters from around world. In Lost, Phillips selects from his vast collection those posters notable for their cleverness, humor, sorrow, entreaties, rewards, and-in several instances-sheer outlandishness ("Lost Lost Lost: one brown and white 'mottled' street duck. Does not answer to the name of Neither Norman"). For designers, artists, or anyone who wants to tap into the human and creative side of our everyday lives under stress, Lost is a book that tells a story on every page.As a collection, the posters represent an authentic folk art that expresses a commonality between the readers and the makers from the United States to China. For pet owners everywhere, and for anyone who has very stopped to read a lost pet poster, Lost is a heart-warming tribute.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568983379
• ISBN13: 9781568983370
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 7.0"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Lost and Found Pet Posters

This book is a collection of the cutest animals from all over the world. It's very interesting and funny to read. It's a great book for pet animal lovers who know what it's like to lose their best friends. Please read.

He's a Genius

I love his work and collecting these pet posters is a stroke of genius. Anyone who's ever had a pet and who has had to write one of these posters will be blinking back tears of sympathy, even if you acknowledge the ugliness of other people's pets, for some here are real lollapoloozas. Mostly you take your hat off to the eternal virtue of hope, for some of these people have faith deeper than rivers if they believe that you'd be able to recognize their cat or dog from the miserably scanned old photo of the animal, sometimes off in a corner of a photo looking completely anonymous or so dark you can't tell what you're supposed to be looking at. The texts Phillips collects are as heartbreaking as the photos, and again for every clearcut description of an animal, there's quite a few in which it's like the old parable of the blind man and the elephant As you pore through this book you can only hope all of these owners found their pets in this world and if not in this world, maybe in the next. LOST is a postmodern assemblage with old fashioned heart and soul, it looks good and it feels good too.

Heartbreakingly Honest

This fabulous, funny, poignant book is a compendium of lost pet posters -- homemade and heartfelt -- collected from around the world. Pets are depicted in everything from old photos (my favorite is the picture of "Pudding," a rotund and grouchy-looking cat) to children's scratchy drawings, and you will fall in love with every one of these poor misplaced animals and their ever-hopeful owners. They range from the strangely strident (witness the fellow who has produced a poster announcing he has found a Siamese cat, but will only return it if the owner can produce five forms of I.D.) to the hysterically funny (often unintentionally -- like that very same Siamese-finder). Ian Phillips has put together a charming, whimsical little book, and it would make a completely brilliant gift for any pet lover on your list.

One of my favorite books of the year

Lost is one of my favorite books of the year and one of my favorite illustrated book of all time. The combination of brilliant illustrations, fantastic design and real heart make this a true gem. I read it from cover to cover and wept all the way through. There is just so much poignancy here--so much said in so few words about the bond between people and their animals. You couldn't find a better gift for an animal-lover.

REWARD: Have you seen this book?

This fabulous, funny, poignant book is a compendium of lost pet posters -- homemade and heartfelt -- collected from around the world. Pets are depicted in everything from old photos (my favorite is the picture of "Pudding," a rotund and grouchy-looking cat) to children's scratchy drawings, and you will fall in love with every one of these poor misplaced animals and their ever-hopeful owners. They range from the strangely strident (witness the fellow who has produced a poster announcing he has found a Siamese cat, but will only return it if the owner can produce five forms of I.D.) to the hysterically funny (often unintentionally -- like that very same Siamese-finder). Ian Phillips has put together a charming, whimsical little book, and it would make a completely brilliant gift for any pet lover on your list.