Tramp Art (1900's-1940's Americana Knickknacks)

Good morning!

How's your Monday? The day's moving by like molasses over here at the library, but the better to tell you about vintage stuff with, my dears. :) This weekend, I was looking at a local vintage shop's instagram when the following picture made my heart skip a little beat. Have you ever! Seen so beautiful! A lamp in your whole life! You may have, but I know I have not:

Savant Vintage...I'm coming for you. And this lamp. I hope it's not $1,000,000

UHHHM! What a sight for sore eyes! The color and the texture and the ordinary-turned-extraordinary of this marbles-and-Popsicle-sticks craft confection is making me want to throw caution to the wind and install it in my office, toute de suite. What are we looking at though, folks? I know from my obsessive thumbing through titles like Outsider Art and The Complete Book of Retro Crafts that this lamp has its roots in a collectibles genre called "tramp art". I immediately call to mind David Carradine in either Bound for Glory or Boxcar Bertha, a poetic rambler riding the rails, living outside of society, and taking time to whittle a cigar box here and there. In case I was wrong, I decided to look through the internet for more concrete examples and explanations of the the delightful art pieces.

From a website appropriately named Trampart.com:

What is Tramp Art?

Tramp art is an art movement found throughout the world where small pieces of wood, primarily from discarded cigar boxes and shipping crates, are whittled into layers of geometric patterns having the outside edges of each layer notch carved. The artists used simple tools such as a pocketknife to carve the recycled wood. It was popular in the years between the 1870s to the 1940s after which the art form started to decline. It was made in prodigious numbers. The most common forms were the box and the frame. Although there were no rules or patterns to lend commonality in the artists’ work there were objects made in every conceivable shape and size including full sized furniture and objects of whimsy.

So you don't actually have to be Oklahoma Red/Wallace Beery in Beggars of Life to make tramp art, but because of the easily obtained, discarded materials, it would be feasible that you could make this kind of stuff whatever your station in life. One of my chief gripes about modern day crafting is how much money you often have to lay out to get started in jewelry/felting/needlepoint/whatever. This stuff, if you have a pocket knife, a piece of an orange crate, and some artistic vision, you can make some pretty amazing stuff.

Check out what I was able to find online (ebay, Etsy wise, anyway). You'd better believe I'll be looking for similar pieces out in the wild:

Folk Tramp Art Cigar Band Glass Bowl

I love how packaging in the first half of the 20th century was just better. These are made from cigar bands, and you'd only have to smoke about 66 stogies to get a high quality piece of collage art like the piece above (for Al Swearingen, that's like half a day's worth of puffing). Another piece of tobaccoania this non-smoker is into are those tobacco silk quilts and filmland tobacco cards-- again, you're lucky if you can get a coupon towards future merchandise, much less beautiful, printed pieces of silk or cards of your favorite movie stars along with purchased item these days. Still, for pure, horror vacui loveliness, I am really into this bowl.

1930's Tramp Art Hand Mirror, Nice wood tramp art mirror.

Doesn't this hand mirror look like something they'd have at World Market right now? The woodburning process is also termed in some of these listings as "pyrography", which may sound like a mid 90's alternative cd, but is actually just any kind of wood decoration through controlled burning. 

Antique tramp art crucifix with hanging metal Christ suspended on carved wooden cross with emblems

I'm not much for collecting religious iconography, but this crucifix is beautiful.

1930s Vintage Tramp Art Pyrography Dresser Top Lamp, Primitive Folk Art Red Fringe Wood Lamp

Now we're talking! I just love looking at each of these and thinking of someone's grandfather being like, "You want a what! I can make you one of those! Gimme some time, I'll make you one up in the garage", and setting to the task of diligently creating whatever kind of decorative art the fairer sex saw as necessary for setting up housekeeping. "You wanted a lamp, here's you a lamp!" See how it comes complete with little drawers for keeping knickknacks in and built in picture frames?

Bottle Cap Lady Tramp Art Carmen Miranda Style

Now, this bottle cap lady I actually remember from the Retro Crafts book. However, if you can get a couple hundred thousand more bottle caps, you can dream big and think outside the house in terms of what to do with these discarded pop tops, à la this Russian woman and her bottle cap house. You heard me. HOUSE. It's amazing, too. How about this snaky basket made out of bottle caps? Start drinking now!

American TRAMP Folk ART Hand Made Bottle CAP Basket 

Vintage Folk Art Cigarette Wrapper Purse 

Remember when making purses out of Capri Sun pouches and Levi jeans and every other kind of thing was the latest fashion trend, circa 1998? Here's its non-PC precursor,  the cigarette wrapper purse. I've also seen wallets like this made out of Juicy Fruit and other gum wrappers. I should learn something like this to pass slow moving lunch hours at my desk (as if my desk needed to look more like a kitsch trash heap than it already does...).

More cigar band decoupaging. I'm telling you, I need one of these things in my life:

Decoupage CIGAR BAND LABEL Tray Tobacco Tramp Folk Art

I was particularly attracted to this heart shaped wooden shield with the name "Carmela" carved into it. I see so many things like this where someone's tried to make something look old and hand hewn like this, and it's a night and day difference between the imitated and the imitator.

TRAMP ART WOODEN BOX HEART SHAPED NAME CARMELA

AAAH! ANOTHER MARBLE LAMP! Maybe there's hope for me yet!!

Vintage Folk Tramp Art Popsicle Sticks Marbles Table Lamp

There were lots, and lots, and LOTS of boxes, as you could imagine, but this one was the prettiest to me (and has one of the most intense price tags..YEEKS, people). I love how the texture of the wood plays of the shape of the box and the little velvet and brass inlays.

Exquisite Tramp Art Ornately Decorated Box

This is probably something more like I could actually make, minus the lettering. Doesn't it make you want to scrabble through your junk drawer at home and just paint everything gilt? I know I have geometrical whatnots every which way but loose in my house...now, to formulate them into a plan...

San Francisco Exposition 1915-Folk Art -Tramp Art

This one looks more like a birdhouse to me, if said bird lived in an Indonesian temple:

Antique American TRAMP Art Wood BOX

And last but not least, this just may be some folk art, but I loved the display of it on black velvet, with a red velvet matte, with the gold frame. So turn of the century and so ornate and so something I need to have in my house. Now, the same thing, but with the rosettes in the shape of a bird or a tiger or a human face. Let's get on this!

Victorian Antique Paper Tramp Art Cross Folk Art Naïve Flower Frame

You can see more examples of tramp art here, and here, but the one I really want to see is that marble lamp in next to my computer at home. The lovely glow it would give off! How happy I would be!

How about you? Have you had your interest piqued by any collectibles lately? Which of these tramp art pieces are your favorite? Have any hand-hewn heirlooms in your family or in your personal collection? Tell me all about it!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more vintage tips and quips. Have a great Monday! See you then!

Weekend Finds: How Did I Start a Quilt Collection? (Vintage Quilts + Tops)

Good morning!

How's tricks, kids? I'm back again this Tuesday workaday to showcase one of the things I actually found weekend before last, but what can you do. Behold! A MOST wonderful vintage quilt (and the kickstarter to the story of how I started a quilt collection without knowing it):

Lisa H------, quilt model

I was at a sale in Hermitage weekend before last on one of the Bonna's, a fifties' and sixties' series of houses on streets all beginning with that prefix (Bonnacreek, Bonnacrest, Bonnacroft, Bonnabrook...it's easy to get turned around back there!). The house itself was no exception to the neighborhood-- stolid 1950's ranch with an adorable knotty pine/ formica counter kitchen, but nothing much left in the way of interesting items left on the third day of the sale. HOWEVER, the people running the sale, cognizant of the fact it was the third day, were wheeling and dealing in the classical sense. Example, the salesperson and a young couple were discussing a cedar wardrobe in the back bedroom, marked $220, and the sales guy was offering it to them at $75. Seventy five bucks?! That's thrift store prices! This quilt, in gorgeous, like new, usable condition, was sitting across a desk near the cedar chest, tag priced $165. And why not! It was a lot nicer than ones I've seen for more! As I looked it over, same dude was like, "Forty bucks, take it home!" The lure of a great deal on something I wanted anyway took over. SOLD!

Ever since reading "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker in middle school, I have been the Wangero/Dee of the story, looking reverently on beautiful, handstitched quilts with a watchful, collector's eye. Yes, I know, the story's about how the one daughter actually participates in and values her culture whereas the other just pays faddish lip service to her people's history, but dang-- I can't lie and say I wasn't a little heartbroken that Maggie was going to use the thirties' and forties' folk quilts until they wore out and then just make another....isn't there a middle ground between treating them like museum pieces and treating them like old shoes (says the marrow-deep sense of collectorship in my bones)? I guess I'm a little biased because there aren't any super-heirloomy quilts in my family-- both grandmothers made one here and there in the eighties' and nineties' but as far as I know there aren't any great-grandmother's antique, hand pieced things anywhere in a relative's closet. Which is whhhhhhhy....I have harbored a secret, lifelong yen for these gorgeous, time-intensive, kaleidoscopic textiles.

Problem being, that is at direct odds with my frugality. Half the game of collecting to me is how good a deal I can get on something, and quilts are ne-e-e-e-e-ver cheap. Never not ever! You know how my little fingers start to twitch when I spend over twenty dollars, so you can imagine the sticker shock my nervous system has endured over the years of hopefully looking at the paper tags and string usually affixed by a safety pin to antique quilts. You'll have something that looks like it hung on the side of a barn since slightly after its creation in the 1930's, and a price tag of $200. "That's folk art, you know," someone working the sale will breathe reverently at me, "All hand stitched," as I feel the sting of my pursestrings/heartstrings drawing tight with disappointment. At one estate sale a couple months ago when I was trying my darnedest to add a crazy quilt to my collection, I was heartened to see two or three 1910's crazy quilts still at the sale, and on half off day! Problem BEING, the retail asking price on it was $240. TWO HUNDRED? AND FORTY? DOLLARS? And these were not like the ones I was crying about on Antiques Roadshow in this post, these were actually relatively uncomplex, ordinary, kind of boring for their kind crazy quilts. I would never want to dismiss the work and time and artistry that goes into creating one of those, but in a real world context, I have to consider one, it's a hundred year old piece of cloth, not exactly the hardiest or most built-to-last material in the world, and two, it's not exactly like Grandma Moses herself was the architect of the design. Le sigh.

So! I was freakin' my kix to get this one in miiiiiiiint condition and this beautiful, beautiful pattern, for only four sawbucks. The colors are still so bright and fresh! The combination of the pieces, in strips, rectangles, and squares, are frankly gorgeous! While I intend to use this quilt, I also intend not to eat Cheetos on it or drag it along after me like Linus's security blanket, because, after all, it's got to be seventy or eighty years old, and deserves a leetle bit more care than your average Target duvet cover.

The funny thing is-- so begins a collection! I realized, bringing this boon home, that I actually have another full quilt, and four quilt tops hanging around in my linen closet! How do these things multiply as quickly as they do, when it feels like I only have one?

This guy is less intricate in design than the other, but boasts just as much of a wallop in the visual interest category...polkadots and peonies in these beautiful 1930's cotton squares caught my attention immediately at a sale a couple of years ago. 

I can remember feverishly dickering the saleswoman down to $20 and then having to borrow that from my mom (in days where I thought if I only brought a couple bucks with me I would only spend a couple dollars...someone cue Sammy Davis Jr's "What Kind of Fool Am I", right?) in a swelteringly hot, air conditionless house in West Nashville, in the height of summer estate sale season. Carrying the bundle to the car, I was trying my best not to actually perspire on the quilt, which was in good shape though a little faded from that everyday use Ms. Walker was talking about-- still, see how it's not in rags? And how it was dead cheap? And how it looks different than just any quilt? Love at first sight. It needs some places sewn up and maybe a few patches to the backing, which is why I haven't used this quilt yet, but I'm hoping someday I live in a house where this would look just like a tapestry hung along a wall the same size, with a love seat in front of it.

Speaking of, I have three different quilt tops that I had hanging in the office by curtain clips until I decided to go with the seventies' textile pieces for that one wall-- one came from the flea market (the strips and large squares one), one came from Goodwill (the all-squares one; and seriously, $5.99 in the blankets section-- you never know what you're going to find out there), and one from a sale this past weekend (the one with the strips of patterns and plaids; $4 and I couldn't pass it up). Look at all the individual pieces of clothing and scraps of fabric that went into making these things! I know that's the whole idea of a quilt, but I feel like a lot of modern quilters go buy fabric and select colors for patterns out of books, rather than using what was laying around the house (and how!), creating the wildly varying color combinations that make me like these things in the first place. Here are some closeups from the three tops:

The lunch hour is singing its siren's song to me (and I have Omaha Yakisoba from Isa Does It waiting for me in an ET lunchbox in the fridge....talk about a persuasive argument for breaking bread), but let's talk! Do you have quilts, heirloom or otherwise, here there and everywhere in your home? Are you more of a fluffy comforter person, or do you like the wild patterns and visual stimulation of a patterned, handmade quilt? What's the best bargain you've ever gotten on a quilt? Is this going to be like some gateway drug where suddenly I'm spending exorbitant sums on granny crafts before you can say Jack Robinson? You tell me! :)

Have a great Tuesday! I'll be back tomorrow with more goodies from a golden era. See you then! 

All I Want is Home (Shaped Purse) Somewhere (1970's Craft Purses)

Good morning!

We are inching towards the weekend on this Thursday work day...did you fellow Nashvillians hear that Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel is in town? THIS IS NOT GOOD NEWS. The cold and the warm weather fronts are threatening to mix it up later today, to the point that we're in a severe weather warning riiiight about the time I get out of the library downtown. Nerts to that, I say. I parked in the garage here (as opposed to the free lot in LP Field) as an extra precaution, but I'm sure we'll make it one way or the other. If my house doesn't get blown away to Oz, that is!

Speaking of houses, I've been looking at the CUTEST purses on Etsy and Ebay lately. I was originally trying to find a needlepoint pattern for this purse, which, though sold, is possibly the most darling thing I have ever seen in lo, these twenty-eight years on planet earth:

Could you DIE it's so cute?

As I continued combing through listings with the search terms "vintage house purse", I saw about a dozen OTHER purses, these done in a much more doable for me painted and decoupaged style, that are just the kind of real estate I'm in the market for. Want to see what I saw?

Funky Little Hand Made "House" Purse

What's neat about THIS purse, for example, is that I'm sure it looks exactly like the house the girl who made it lived in at that time in the seventies'. Look at the little shingles on the roof, the cross hatched windows, and the sliding glass doors in the back that would have gone out onto a patio. These whimsical little creations inspire in me the same thrill miniature doll house furniture would have twenty years ago-- but look! It has a semi-practical application! I can haul around my lipstick and gloves and cell phone and bank card in it!

Purse Vintage Wood Box Purse House 1970s

I love how representative of the seventies' fiercely proto DIY craft scene these purses are. While my mom wasn't much interested crafts (she was more of a baker), almost everybody I knew in high school had a mom with a teenage past that included making macrame purses, ceramic cookie jars, painted panels of nature landscapes... if there was even an inkling of artistic temperament in these women, they put on a Joni Mitchell record and set about the business of hand-crafting some great, hand tooled leather purse or needle-pointed thicket of thistles. "Oh, that?" they'd say, as me and my gal friends ooh'd or aah'd over some seventies', fringed and embroidered jacket in a photo album, "I made that. I used to embroider stuff for people all the time." At a time in the late nineties' when embroidered jeans were as hot as they were exactly thirty years earlier, they might as well have said they could effortless conjure spirits or play Rachmaninoff-- if you are secretly gifted at this, why wouldn't you be doing it all day, all the time, 24/7?!  Us: "WHERE IS THAT JACKET NOW?!" They: "Oh, it got torn or thrown away or given away, I'm sure, that was a hundred years ago." Le sigh.

Vintage Wooden House Purse - Folkart House Hand Bag - 1970's Wooden House Purse - Folkart Box Purse

Another thing brought to mind was how neat, in a pre-social media world, it would be to make one of these crazy things and take it to school on Monday morning like "Yeah, Tina and I were over at Jessie's house and we all decided to make these decoupaged purses in the shape of our actual houses. How long did it take us? Ahhh, about five Joni Mitchell records. Maybe a little longer." [Time was computed in the seventies' in Joni Mitchell record lengths]. That the idea had to come from a magazine or another one you saw, and that the volition to do it would have nothing to do with how many likes you would get when it was done, is such a dear thought to me.

Check out the little blue bird of happiness above the window on this "Happy House", the floral accents, and that the house itself is winking at you from the west side of the structure.

Vintage Novelty Happy House Log Cabin Wooden Handmade Purse

Vintage Wooden Dollhouse Purse

The one above is heavily shellac'd, but look how well it's stood up as a result of that. I noticed some on Etsy, which I just didn't share in this post, that were probably brought into being by the less artistically accomplished of those seventies' girl artists-- it was funny looking at one or two like, "Huh? Is that...is that a window or part of the tree?" I bet that's what mine would look like! I would start out with these grand aspirations and end up with one of those houses that looks condemned in the lower end of the Zillow search scale.

Look at the pine tree looming over the roof in this one! The girl that made this one was actually VERY TALENTED:

Vintage Wood Box Purse of House

The 3D door and window boxes and plant on this one are especially nice touches, not to mention the formerly-a-necklace? bird and nest over the door:

Whimsical Hand Painted Wood House Handbag c 1970

Simple, but professional:

VINTAGE WOOD PAINTED HOUSE PATRIOTIC HANDBAG PURSE

And one of the best/weirdest ones-- while I saw several that were shaped like buildings-other-than-houses (a general store, a one room school house, other appropriately vintage and sentimental settings), this one just slew me. "The American Opinion Bookstore"-- this artist made a bookstore specializing in politics, complete with their sweet ride parked out back of the building! Click the link to see the other two sides, this purse really is BURSTING with personality (PURSEsonality? Oooooh, so bad...).

VINTAGE VERY RARE 1960's USA AMERICAN House Wood Box Purse PATRIOTIC Handbag

Well! I have to wrap up a few things before I meet a friend down here for lunch (grape leaves, watch out! We're coming for you!), but let's talk! Do you have any purses like this in your collection? Have you made or known someone who made one of these back in the day? Which one are you ready to put a down payment on if it's available for immediate occupancy? I'd love to hear your thoughts! :)

Have a great Thursday, pray that the tornadoes don't blow us off the map, and God willing, I'll see you tomorrow for Photo Friday! Take care til then.

Closet Confessional: Vintage Purse Hoarding (1960's-1970's)

Good morning!

Well! Isn't it a no-good, very yucky, blah kind of rainy, windy day in Nashville, of a Monday? I walked from Union Street with my umbrella clamped to my head to keep my hat from blowing away, and I fairly well bent the handle trying to keep it and said hat from cartwheeling down the street without me! Days like today I do not like being part of the 2014 workforce, and would prefer to stay in bed with a movie star book. However, time marches on! As one of the highlights of my workaday schedule is telling you about junk I like, let's get down to business!

People-- I have a problem. That problem, is called purses.

Specifically, sixties' and seventies' box purses and hand-tooled leather purses. I think I can date this obsession back to high school, when the rivers ran thick at thrift stores like the Gallatin Road DAV and Salvation Army with $2.99 purses that would tear at your heart strings. Macrame. Decoupage. DIY madness. Anytime I see something fifteen year old me would have to have to go into Jolson-like grief-stricken, knee bent implorations for my parents to buy me (I never had any pocket money!), I snap it up out of habit these days. I cleaned out my closet, like I was telling you last week, and managed to purge a massive number of dresses-that-never-quite-panned-out and shoes-I-wore-once, but these box purses and their tooled-leather seventies' counterparts had a free pass, as far as I'm concerned, to sit unused forever above my hanging clothes, because by godfrey, I love them!

Something about the "handmade" ness of them speaks specifically to my magpie instinct. I've been reading a book called The Hoarder in You: How to Live a Happier, Healthier, Uncluttered Life, by Robin Zasio, and she specifically calls out the hoarder's tendency to one, have a more sentimental vulnerability towards physical objects and two, be more drawn in by "seeing a value no one else would see" in an item to make it worth buying. Now, I know everyone has some shades of these feelings in their shopping lives, but most people wouldn't feel a near physical pang of regret in leaving something seemingly one-of-a-kind behind at the thrift store. At the age I am now, I do manage to self-talk myself through the paces of "Even if you did live in the forties'/fifites'/sixties', you would buy everything you saw, you'd just buy things you like" and trying to see the difference between "you want this because it's old" and "you want this because it's old and you like it". I can't save all the tchotchkes! Still, seeing a lot of these purses, they hit both markers of something I like and something one of a kind and old, so home they went, jiggety-jig.

Par exemple, I got BOTH of these, somehow, at the Rivergate Goodwill in the last two months. This white one is in an odd, taller-than-usual size, and was sitting in the housewares section like "please, please, take me with you, Lisa". Of course, I obliged-- look at the dingdang raised, 3D decoupage doing on...can you tell the birds stand out from the flat surface of the box by a good quarter inch? I read online about how this effect is accomplished by using small pads under the 2D illustration, which seems easy enough-- however, not as easy as buying a 1970's teenager's handiwork forty years later for $3.99. I used to hate to admit when I was in school that the enormous, crocheted saddlebags I would carry as purses were not made by my own two delicate hands-- but leave unto crafters the things that are crafters! I'm much better at sleuthing out an inexpensive find than handling an Xacto knife, and it's good to know these things about yourself.

The second one, in a more common shape but with just as smart a set of little birds adorning the sides, was sitting near the VHS tapes at the same store a month later. I was idling through the aisles going, "Boy, I wish they had something as neat as that box purse I found here last time...holy smokes! Did I just 'manifest' this box?" I like it as well if not better than the first!

These enormous boxes, and the floral one beneath, were all from estate sales. I don't think I gave more than $3 for each. The one with the 1890's buggies on it was at a sale where I bought three enormous forties' suitcases (which are storing things in the attic as we speak)-- the homeowner had been a crafter in the seventies', and had lots of clothes from that era, all two sizes too big for yours truly. :( Truth told, I've thought of covering that and the pastel one over with something else, but every time I try to I have a pang of guilt for how much work went into making them as they are, and leave them alone! I think the flowers on the one below are hand painted. My favorite of the three is hands down the yellow-roses one on the right, which gets points for being woven like a picnic basket, big enough to tote a large book in, and decorated with a velvet ribbon around the opening in the best shade of seventies' moss green.

 

Carrying these kinds of purses is weird because of a) how stiff they are and b) how no one carries them anymore. Most of my bags I take on a daily basis are of two schools: little fifties' trapezoidal faux-alligator skin, or forties' black wool or cloth clutches (I have one right now from the flea market that seems to be of Mary Poppins dimensions on the inside-- it fits more than purses that look much larger on the outside!). These purses you can cradle in the crook of your elbow while shopping, or twirl by the handle, or balance under your arm if you need to look at something. BOX purses, on the other hand, feel like you're carrying luggage with you all day. There's no hanging these like a wristlet while you reach for something on the bottom shelf of a thrift store, you have to set it down. Which, in more cases than one, has resulted in said box purse being mistaken for an item I'm buying. Unthinkingly, I put mine down on the counter at Goodwill the other day and the clerk started turning it over in his hands to see where the price sticker was. "Oh, no, that's, uh...that's mine, I already bought that...before..." I mumbled as I awkwardly picked it back up. This makes them more difficult to carry, in my opinion, and thus relegated them to the back of the purse pile for a long time. Well, no more! Difficult or no, I'm making a resolution to carry these little gems out and about with me more often!

Starting today! Here I am modeling the newest one, I dressed as seventies' as possible to go with the vibe here (do you see one of my new roman shades in the background?):

Also out of the closet, came tumbling this triad of hand-tooled and painted purses, from when the Goodwill Outlet was still over next to Bicentennial Mall (glory days). How could I pass them up? The one in the middle is one purse (is that not insane? Like RuPaul's signature dress-modeling line "This is the front...and this is the back."). Again, if you want perfect strangers to come up on you with their memories of making similar handicrafts in their high school days, these are the bags for you (who I am kidding, it is my favorite thing for people to come up to me and tell me about their memories of making similar handicrafts in their high school days...teach me your secrets!!). It's a smaller category than box purses, but I am also remembering that I left two out that are still in there with the forties' purses and the Enid Collins bags (shhhh).

Enough about me though-- what do you think? Do have any of these in your collection slash have you made one before? What is there in your closet that you don't use a lot but would NOT pass up in a vintage sale setting? Are you one who has thirty different bags for every day of the month or do you default to a single method of junk-conveyance and stick with it? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I have even more closet confessionals (from the great purge of the new year) to share with you later this week! Have a great Monday and I'll see you tomorrow! :) Til then.

Jenny Hart Embroidery (Sublime Stitching)

Good morning!

How is your week so far? Made any grand outings into a holiday retail setting? I've been avoiding stores like the plague since Thanksgiving, but I had some McKays credit still in my pocket from the "Great Bookshelf Clean Out of 2013", and took a trip out to the second hand booksellers last weekend to make good use of said credit. I ended up redeeming a portion of the yellow slip with a VHS (I know, I know, why, but it's not out on DVD and it was only six bucks!) of They All Kissed the Bride, a DVD of In This Our Life (audio commentary by Jeanine Basinger, AND a favorite Bette Davis picture? SIGN ME UP), and some various paperback books about Victorian occult interests and 1960's clothes. Not a bad haul! On the way to the check-out, I was stopped by a book with this slice of heaven adorning the cover....wouldn't you be?

The book, turns out, was a mildly interesting survey of handicrafts in this, the 21st century, but what I REALLY wanted more of were these art-piece embroidery. Like the crazy quilts I was talking about last week, the heavily detailed, wildly creative stitches, and just the time and effort you'd have to put into something like this, set my little aesthetic whirligigs all a-twitter. The needlewoman behind these creations is Jenny Hart, who also maintains Sublime Stitching, a subversive needlepoint website I'd ooh'd and awed over before, but hadn't realized was the brain child of one entirely-too-talented gal. Looking like a French chanteuse and knocking out French knots like it was nothing, I can't lie, I kind of want to be her.

Other pieces, from her website, speaking of French chanteuse...

The depth of detail here reminds me of some of those amazing tapestry pieces or embroidery you'll see seventeenth and eighteenth century 'tweens turning out like it was nothing. "Oh this? Yeah, I made some beginner's mistakes, but it's pretty much 1,000,000 times better than a professional seamstress would do nowadays and I wasn't even trying...it helps that I've been stitching since I was two." I know its a young adult historical fiction trope to have a boisterous, proto-feminist female protagonist disdain embroidery work and other pre-home-ec style female creative outlets to prove "some people don't fit the mold", but look at this! I would much rather do this than learn to fence, if we're talking brass tacks. The texture that the dense needlework in France's Little Sparrow's forties' hair makes you want to reach out and touch it! And how about the solid-colors in her blouse and the neat little bow at her collar? And didn't she nail that vulnerable,  world weary expression of Piaf's with an economy of lines that would make an illustrator jealous? I LOVE THIS.

Here's Iggy Pop, with those puppy dog blue eyes shining right through the textile, just as laser like as they are in real life!

I wonder if this is a real concert-- I feel like it sounds like a "haha, in what world would the Staple Singers and the former Stooges frontman play an Iowa City nursery ward?" but stranger bedfellows were made at concerts in the seventies', I'm sure. Either way, notice the french knots around the word "December" and year "1972". I love how you can see all these techniques (which Hart is kind enough to have built tutorials around on her website) coming together to form this varied, visually high impact piece.

This one isn't a celebrity, but isn't it pretty!

That chalk-on-chalkboard like contrast of the white stitches, plus the tiny sequins and other embellishments! While I didn't have much luck at knitting (too monotonous for the stuff I COULD do, and too complicated/math-based/labor intensive for the things I wanted to do), and I can't sew more than a hem or a button, I love the idea of having this creative free reign in embroidery. Maybe I should try my hand at it. I have a whole secret stash of embroidery floss and hoops from when my grandma taught me to cross stitch as a grade schooler, this might be a handiwork I can actually get behind. The piece above might be my favorite of the lot except the next one. You will see why the next one is my favorite.

Could this be more fierce? I want this as the massive back panel of my black denim jacket...or blue satin baseball style jacket...or heck, any jacket! "No you can't touch my hair and you'd best not even try." I wish I could find more info on where she gets her ideas for embroidery projects, but I guess I'll have to read one of her books to find out!! Embroidered Effects is available as an ebook from the Nashville Public Library, and don't think I didn't just check it out. I also need to order this stitch pattern from her website. As good a place to start as any!

How about you? Do you have any beautifully embroidered vintage pieces in your collection? I have a bunch of table runners and table cloths and napkins I've bought at estate sales over the years on the merits of the high-quality hand-stitched birds or flamenco dancers or poodles wrought in floss upon the cloth, but other than that brief foray into cross stitching, I haven't made anything of my own! This should change. Have you created anything in the field of traditional handicraft lately? Which of these are your favorites? Who would you do a needlepoint portrait of given the skill and time? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow for Photo Friday. Have a great Thursday (we're almost to the weekend!). Til then.