On-board dinner menu card on the Orient Line S.S. Oronsay, 'Orlando Goes To Sea', Monday 26 October 1953; Kathleen Hale.

Printed dinner menu for the Orient line S.S. 'Oronsay', dated Monday, 26th October, 1953. The card is folded once vertically. On the front is a printed image, from an illustration signed K. Hale, depicting children's fictional character Orlando the Marmalade cat.

The image is brightly coloured. Orlando, a ginger cat, is at the wheel of a funnel ship called 'The Saucy Puss'. On deck a dinner table is set for five, with five identical ornate gilded and blue upholstered chairs, three of them smaller in size than the other two. Orlando's wife, a cat with brown markings, is cooking using the top of the funnel as stove. She wears a blue hat with orange feather and pink and white flowers and a blue apron tied at the back with a ribbon. She stands on top of a red ladder to reach the saucepan, which is green. Their children, three kittens, are playing. One white and dressed in a blue dress, climbs the rigging; another half brown, half ginger, in a blue dress, sits on deck writing; a third dark brown and wearing orange fishes from the port-hole. At the port-holes are pink curtains. The ship has red hull and pink funnel. The sea at the front in mostly green and a small shoal of green fish swim into a fishing net attached to the boat. Behind the boat the sea is purple.The sky is white with some clouds. The image also features a cow wearing a bell and munching on a hay stack and above the hay stack is a white hen sitting in a nest sheltered below a pink parasol with green fringe. The title 'Orlando Goes to Sea' hand-written into the original illustration by the artist in pink capital letters, is featured on a pennant flag flying from a flag-pole.

The text on the back of the menu card, printed inside a box with blue stars at the inside border, is in black in serif font, mainly in italics, and describes Orlando and the characters in the image and their activities: Orlando, his wife Grace, the kittens Blanche, Tinkle and Pansy, Violet the Cow and Elsie the Hen. Below the box in a smaller font, also in black italics, is text mentioning that this is one of a series of six drawings on the same theme by the same artist; the V&A has one of the others, Orlando Sails to the Arctic Regions, E.354-2005.

Inside, the dinner menu is printed on the right half in a black sans-serif font with occasional italics, centered.

Given by Pamela Griffiths

Gift of Mrs. Pamela Griffiths, whose late husband collected them while a passenger on board.

Reason For Production: Commission

This menu card was made for a voyage on board the Orient Line cruise ship "Oronsay" in 1953. Illustrated menus such as this were printed in advance on land with the inside (menu part) left blank, to be printed on board ship. Passengers often kept them as souvenirs. The menus reflect the luxury of cruise liner travel during its heyday. "Oronsay" was a new liner, making her maiden voyage in 1951.

Orlando, The Marmalade Cat was a classic children's book character created by Kathleen Hale (1898-2000) in the 1940s and 1950s. He featured in 18 stories published between 1938 and 1972 and even in a ballet shown at the Festival of Britain in 1951. Known for their humour and their lithographed illustrations, the books earned Hale an OBE in 1976.

E.353-2005