Photo Friday: September 1968 Edition

Good afternoon!

I had some errands to run this morning, and yet more to run after I finish this post, so I hope you won't mind a lightining fast Photo Friday-- I gotta get a jump on the weekend!

These Polaroids are helpfully labelled with the year and month on them-- don't you wish you could still get pictures developed like that?! It looks so much better than the little digital time stamps or weird, back-of-photo print outs you get nowadays! All four feature the flickr user's gorgeous blonde mom, with hair I'm coveting so hard it's making me angry. Take a look!

Are these cute or what? Do you not want a Polaroid Land Camera and a blonde bob NOW?

I have to get a move on, but listen-- have a great weekend, find awesome stuff, and we'll meet back here Monday! Is it a deal? I'll see you then! :) Take care.

Dirk Bogarde Sings (Lyrics for Lovers, 1960)

 Good morning!

Whew, boy, do I have something crazy for you guys to check out this morning. When movie stars meet jazz records meet KITSCH TO THE NTH DEGREE... you come up with one of my favorite internet finds of 2014, thus far-- folks, meet devastatingly handsome British heartthrob Dirk Bogarde. Dirk Bogarde, movie star, say hello to my She Was a Bird readers. Dirk has something very important to share with you, courtesy of Decca records in year of our Lord 1960 (click on the player below the album cover to hear the audio):

I was reading this post on Dangerous Minds about Blow Up star David Hemmings's psychedelic folk rock record, David Hemmings Happens (you can't make this stuff up), when I scrolled through to the bottom of the post and saw this video, which may or may not have changed my life. Dirk Bogarde, actor, decided to be Dirk Bogarde, singer in 1960, and my, my, my. What happened next.

Let's let a better man than me give you an idea of what happens when needle touches groove, with regard to this album. Elvis Costello, quoted on the Dirk Bogarde website:

“Ever needed to get rid of unwanted guests in the early hours? Just reach for Dirk Bogarde’s Lyrics for Lovers, on which the actor inhales audibly on his cigarette before reciting Ira Gershwin’s ‘A Foggy Day’ amid a swathe of violins...”

Apparently, more than one person thought it would be a good idea to record twenty-five consecutive minutes of the actor just....READING....the lyrics to songs like "You Go to My Head" and "As Time Goes By". The Eric Rogers Orchestra provides a decent background of pretty, soft jazz/sixties' movie soundtrack versions of the songs (I'm reminded of the title credit music in something like Written on the Wind, Three Pennies in a Fountain, or The Best of Everything), but I cannot stress emphatically enough that this is not poetry, free verse, or selections from a play...this is just straight Bogarde reading the lyrics to "The Way You Look Tonight".

No, I get it, he's cute...but nobody's THAT cute.

I guess if I were a besotted teenybopper in post-war England, I might be able to better understand the appeal of this record. However, being grown, even being a fan of his movies, I can't lie, I kept literally shouting "HE'S NOT...NO! NO! WHAT IS HE DOING?!" as if I was watching some terribly mismanaged football play by my favorite team while listening to this record.  IT'S. SO. BAD. It almost comes back around to being good for how bad it is, but not quite. Dirk stammers and demurs and intones through track after track in a seamless, almost thirty minutes of weird, weirder, and weirdest. The CONCEPT is bad (though not new-- Rex Harrison and Richard Burton both speak through their musical selections in starring roles in My Fair Lady and Camelot, respectively, but their performances are far more charming), but the performance is worse. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" may be the nadir. Track listing:

1. A Foggy Day
2. The Way You Look Tonight
3. Our Love Affair
4. You Go to My Head
5. Can't We Be Friends
6. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
7. Just One of Those Things
8. Get Out of Town
9. I Get Along Without You Very Well
10. These Foolish Things
11. Where or When (From Babes in Arms)
12. As Time Goes By

These are some of my very favorite jazz standards (very Judy at Carnegie, which is the highest compliment I can pay a setlist). You could make a VERY GOOD mix cd of mid century vocalists and instrumentals, even, out of that lineup, but all the king's horses and all the king's men could not make poor Dirk into a crooner, and God, does it show on the album. I want to like it just for how crazy it is, but something about the way he murmurs his lines is so put-on and weird that you almost feel embarrassed for him. It reminds me a lot of The Transformed Man by William Shatner, which people have spent the last forty-five years mercilessly deriding (and which, I not so secretly kind of love). Yet, everyone KNOWS William Shatner is terrible at story songs! How is Dirk Bogarde not a million times more famous for similar crimes against popular music recordings? The recording also brings to mind James Mason's stab at the spoken word record market-- I have some tracks of him reading "Annabel Lee" and "The Tell Tale Heart" from this site, and apparently he also won a Grammy for selections from Lolita on an LP around the time the movie came out! The difference being, Mason's recordings are actually really good...embarrassment factor of zero. Maybe Dirk should  have listened to them before starting on his own project.

Straining plausibility and a pair of leather pants as a "ruthless bandito"
 in  The Singer Not the Song (1953).

This contemporaneous review from Billboard magazine must have been written by someone taken in by those chocolate brown eyes and pillowy lips-- me, I'm no sucker for him! I see him for what he is! Take a look anyway:

It probably helps that he has some major street cred from his late career movie output. Though he'd been in the business for almost two decades by the time Lyrics for Lovers was released, Bogarde really didn't get serious about acting until the sixties' and seventies', emerging as a major art house star in movies like the groundbreaking Victim (1961), Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963), John Schlesinger's Darling (1965, with Julie Christie), Visconti's The Damned (1969), and Liliana Cavani's The Night Porter (1974, with Charlotte Rampling). I love each of those movies and his performance in them; I can't say the same for Lyrics for Lovers. Everyone is bound to have a hiccup or two in their professional career-- am I just glad this crazy of one is out there on the internet for all of us to see! (Courtesy of Kate at Scathingly Brilliant...without her Youtube upload of the whole record, I might have never heard this!)

I forgive you, Dirk...look at those eyes!

I was going to grab the copy of his autobiography I know the library has because I'd checked it out before- sadly, our weeding process has gotten to the "no circulation in 7 years" stage, and this book had last been checked in (returned from a patron) April 16, 2003. There's a little button where you can click on the last patron who checked it out....and guess who it was? Yours truly! I should have re-read it a month or two sooner and it might not have been on the bin on the way to the book sale. Oh well. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. You can actually buy this album on iTunes, I am not kidding...I'm trying to decide whether or not I should, given the sheer joy/indignation this album has tindered in my cold, cold heart.

So! Did you listen yet? What do you think? Hilarious or just flat horrible? Am I being too brusque in my blanket assessment of the album as awful/wonderful/awful again? Are you a Bogarde fan or have you seen any of his movies? What's the worst celebrity side project you've stumbled across lately?  Let's talk!

I gotta get back to work, but guys...check this out. IT'S ALMOST FRIDAY. We're almost there! Have a great day-before-the-day-before-we-don't-have-to-go-to-work, and I'll see you tomorrow for Photo Friday! Til then.

Mixing Modern and Traditional Furniture and Furnishings (1948)

Good morning!

Guess what I did when I got home from work yesterday? Kicked off m'shoes, picked up my Surface with my Barbara Stanwyck book on it, poured a glass of wine, and basked in the off white glow of my living room! Thanks for all your kind comments about Monday's painting adventure-- my legs and arms are still a little achy from the sustained effort, but I am yet enjoying the benefits of my dad's and my hard work! :)

Speaking of rooms I like, though, I was flipping through a 1948 bound volume of House Beautiful (whoo WHEE are there some beautiful houses in there), when I came across a spread about which I just had to break the good news. Please look upon the following panels as I work up some musical accompaniment. ((clears throat)) Could you beeee, the most beautiful roooms, in the wooooorld....

I sincerely can't get over the happy, busy vibrations humming off the pages of these rooms. The article, titled "What's All This Feuding Between 'Period' and 'Modern'?", offers the peacemaking suggestion that one needn't chose between the two schools of interior design, but embrace a middle ground of integrating old into new and new into old. From the opening paragraph:

Take a long, level look at the rooms you see on these eight pages. They reduce to absurdity, where we think it belongs, the notion that furnishing a home is a grim choice between stark Modern and cluttered Traditional. They prove that you can go two ways at once, cleaving to the warm familiarity of the old, enjoying the clean beauty of the new.

Staff writer Laura Tanner is sticking up for the new wave of modern furniture flooding post-war American homes in the late forties', positing that you don't necessarily have to have a to-the-minute up-to-date house in order to have up-to-date-furnishing, and that this moon man style furniture WILL complement the things you already have. Drexel's "Precedent" line, designed by Edward Wormley, and bright pinks and acidic greens dominate the modern angle of the styled rooms. In the above photograph, those plastic laced Precedent chairs blend in fine with shaggy carpeting, floral print, and mother's china displayed on the box shelving. "Because its design is basically good," Tanner says of the Wormley pieces, "it mixes with everything."

This bedroom is in the same house as the dining room we were just talking about, and see how there are all-modern furnitue pieces and mostly antique accessories-- the clock on the wall and the two lamps are both decades older than the Precedent furniture. I am in love with the Neapolitan scheme of the stripes on the bed, matching the stripes on the chair, harmonizing with the crazy barkcloth curtains... All this color should drive me up the wall, but instead, it just feels like a cheerful, harmonized room. That I want to live in. Did I mention the bedside tables have recessed shelves that pull out so you can get to books/magazines more easily? They do.

I think because we're so used to things being all mixed up, interior decorating wise, in the 21st century that none of these seem even vaguely out-there to me. A well put together house nowadays  may have a weather beaten farmhouse table in the kitchen, a fifties' atomic age sofa in the living room, 1920's china in a 1960's hutch and a huge "EAT AT AL'S" vintage neon sign in the den. Nary a single eyelash would be batted at that multi-decade conglomeration, but in the more conservative forties', it might have raised a homemaker's blood pressure to think about how to integrate grandmamma's silver tea service with George Nelson's wild mid century end tables. Above, essentially the brown pieces are Precedent (floral chairs, coffee table, console near fireplace), and all the other pieces are traditional (checked print Victorian setee on the left, red arm chair, lamp, fireplace, painting, etc). I am personally impressed with how the curtains, lampshade, and modern chair upholstery all match, as well as how these two Precedent arm chairs are pushed close together to serve as an almost loveseat. Good thinking, House Beautiful; good thinking.

Oooh, this might be the best one! Same living room, with curtains opened and closed (for a day-to-night look):

Could I be more in love? Pinch me, I'm dreaming. From the article:

Don't try to give this room a style name. It's just a comfortable mixture of pleasing new furniture and old bibelots, looking fresh yet familiar at the same time. Sofa is a line-up of sectional chairs. Lamp table, which creates a corner, can nest under the table at the left of the picture. And note that this furniture could fit into any kind of room. Bookcase might be a china cupboard; chairs could go anywhere.

I am the last person you are needing to convince to buy late forties' MCM furniture. The side chair in the living room is a Conant Ball chair designed by Russel Wright in the late forties'-- I snagged it off Craigslist for $20 and every time I see it, it's like looking at a little piece of art you also happen to be able to sit in. With this in mind, it's funny the almost beseeching tone of the article-- give this furniture a chance! You don't have to be George Jetson to have futuristic furniture in the house! Again, a modern reader wouldn't have to have their arm twisted, their leg pulled, or any other extremity man handled...wouldn't you run not walk to a reasonable sale of this kind of interior decor? Even more so than you would say a bonafide antique Queen Anne or Heppelwhite-style furnishings. The modernity of these pieces is just as fresh as it was in 1948-- isn't that something to think about!

There are a few black and white photos that are more convincing of the "old things go with new things, too" argument, but they're way less eyecandy, eyecatching than the color inserts. Here's one with a Victorian fireplace in New York, combined with those gorgeous chairs and some antiques upon the mantelpiece.

And here's your super traditional Early American dining room, but not entirely. Along with your Hitchcock chair, painted-tile fireplace, and photo of great-great-grandfather Whozit on the wall, you have a thoroughly modern dining room set, complete with the-biggest-set-of-candlesticks-I-may-have-ever-seen. Wow! I'm sorry, I'm honestly too distracted by the brass candlesticks to go on at any length about the furniture. But you get the idea.

Well! What do you think? Does it make you want to run out and buy some mid century living room suite IMMEDIATELY? Are you more drawn in by the clean, modern lines of MCM or the stately, sometimes baroque feeling of 19th or 18th century pieces? If you could furnish your dream house, what would the ratio of new-to-old be? In my case, it would be something like 2% new, 98% old, but I, too, would mix a lot of decades in together to get everything that I want. Which of these rooms is your favorite? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here Thursday morn with more vintage interiors (I'm on a tear, I can't stop myself!). Have a great Wednesday, keep crawling towards the weekend, and I'll see you then! Take care.

WE DID IT (Living Room and Kitchen PAINTED)

 Good morning!

And what a good one it's been so far-- I got up this morning and threw back the bed clothes like it was Christmas Day, so I could make sure the day before hadn't been a dream-episode of my favorite tv show. It was no dream, folks. My dad and I really did paint the whole living room, trim work, and dining area in one day. Now, granted, it was a fifteen hour day with a lot of tall-people-stretching-for-the-ceiling kind of paint-oriented cardio, but we got the whole thing done and boy, am I pleased with the results! 

Enough with the preamble; let's look at the goods!

Nice, huh?! I feel like I live in a grown up catalog spread! For comparison, here's yesterday's living room next to this morning's. Brand new day!

Avant....et apés! The difference is startling.

I woke up at seven o'clock yesterday morning and started comparing paint colors using a Sherwin Williams app called Color Snap to make sure I hadn't completely lost my mind. While it kinda-sorta works on some photos and not at all on others, I managed to get the app to show me the picture on the left with white on the wall instead of aqua, and it looked fine! Resolution: proceed with Operation Paintbrush. I swung by my folks' house, picked up dad, and loaded up on paint supplies and actual cans of paint. We got a gallon for the living room and a quart for the dining area of the kitchen, the lamely named "Bistro White" and an Olympic color that reminded me of a post-it note, respectively. I was too busy roller-brushing my heart out to the sweet, sweet strains of seventies' FM gold (songs like "You Got the Best of My Love" by Emotion and "Sad Eyes" by Robert John were blaring while most of these photos were taken...this is how you motivate my family and me!) to take a lot of pictures, but here are some "befores" or "in processes":

I kept making allusions to Dexter with regard to this plastic cover. My dad
hasn't seen that show and kept ignoring me.

I learned a lot of things about the living room while I was working so closely with it throughout the entire day yesterday, as well as some things about myself. Yes, introspection (and paint fume inhalation based introspection) is a big part of the painting process. One, I am NOT THE DUSTER I THOUGHT I WAS. Every time we reached up to the ceiling there was some heretofore invisible cobweb coming off in my hands like I live in an actual haunted house. Boo! Add that to the list of improvements for year 2014. Two, my living room is not as cavernous and dark as I give it credit for-- as you can see in the above photo, sans blinds, that room is as bright as you could ask for. I'm thinking about getting three separate blinds for the living room, two small and one big, so I can open up the dang things and let in some LIGHT when I'm home on the weekends. Three, the room is oh-so-large without furniture crammed into every square foot! I'm thinking about rearranging things in the house so there are less just "things" in the living room and was careful, when reassembling the room, to pare down tchotckes to a minimum. You know those little gewgaws and doodads mean the world to me, but the room is so much more peaceful with a spare number of really neat things as opposed to a crazy amount of "just ok" things. Also, special shout out, I couldn't have done any of this without my Pappy. He worked like a Turk with me all dang holiday day to get this thing finished and kept me laughing when the paint fumes were starting to kill off valuable brain cells and morale was low. Not to mention he taught me a lot about both how to and how NOT to paint a large space like this, which I will be using in the future for certain. So thanks, Dad!! :)

Note Pappy in his painting overhauls and me in my 1976 "Panthers do it with pride!" blood drive tshirt. We
were rollin' our hearts out!

More after photos...doesn't it look like an entirely different house?! I pulled some saffron yellow/gold curtains I'd been hoarding out of the utility room to replace the old beige Colonial pattered curtains (these were from Southern Thrift in Donelson, $10 for the pair). Be on the lookout, fellow estate salers, for gold pinch pleat panels, as I'm in the market for at least two more! They needed ironing but I needed to rest my weary head, so they're just up there wrinkled for now. C'est la guerre. What do you think?

I still need to organize the under-coffee table stuff...board games everywhere!! But I'm also
kind of in love with the house now.

I donated some excess glassware to Music City Thrift and made sure the bar cart had pretty much just things we need on it, and doesn't it look happier and healthier with just a few, nice items? I sure think so:

Which way to the bar? Would you PLEASE direct me to the bar?-- "The Story of Bo Diddley"
by the Animals

One of my favorite things on the cart is this "Bar Aid" that I bought a dog's age ago in a Knoxville Salvation Army...you can dial up the cocktail you want and it gives you the recipe, lickety split! Now, how many for a zazarac? Brony X, anyone? I have you covered, whatever your poison (PS bring liquor-- as you can see, our bar cart is woefully understocked in that department! We'll build it back up).

At night, the wall color kind of reflects whatever light is being cast upon it-- in most cases, this is the amber-yellow of the pole lamps' shades, plus the white light of the other two lamps (#lampaddiction). I was worried the white I chose would be "too white" (Dad and I looked at other shades that had a more sandy kind of color, but I thought those would make the room look dirty/aged), but I think it's actually pretty much perfect! And look how the couch and the wood-tones in the room just pop out of the picture at you now! It's just as vivid in real life, too. I'm so pleased, people. I always get so anxious before a major "push" like this, but it turned out fine.

I replaced Laura Palmer for the time being with that mask the drunk lady at the flea market made me buy... and I hung a little floral hat over it so it almost looks like the mask is wearing a lady's topper. These should be hung lower but I was using the existing nail holes, so it might just have to ride high for a little while. I love how all the beiges and browns and golds in this room look now.

And the other side of the room! I'm sorry the floor lamp looks like the hand of God is coming down into the picture, but it just wouldn't photograph any better this morning and if you turn it off, the room's too dark. You get the idea! Here is where I watch my Joan Crawford movies. 

Last but not least, portrait of a happy camper after the whole thing was said and done! I couldn't help posing with my handiwork. Even though it took something like fifteen hours from buying-the-paint to sitting-down-with-everything-back-as-it-was, I think it was worth it!!!

So! What's the verdict? Do you like the after? Doesn't the room look so much more open without the whimsical-yet-oppressive paint color of its former life? What's the best switcheroo you've made in your own home? Any ideas for what my next BIG HOUSE PROJECT should be? I feel like a million bucks having made such a large scale task in 24 hours; it makes me feel like taking on the world! :D

PS Thanks everybody for your painting tips and encouragement yesterday! Don't think they didn't help me get through the crazymaking parts of running back to Lowes for more paint and lightswitch covers, paint tracked on the hardwood, plastic wrap that went on forever, etc, etc. I needed all the good thoughts I could get!

I gotta get back to work, but I'll talk to you guys tomorrow! Have a great Tuesday. Til then.

Changes Afoot! (Folks...I Am Finally Painting the Living Room)

Good morning!

It's a bank holiday, so I know some of you are reading this from the comfort of a day-off of work-- what did you decide to do with your day off? Wash the car? Run some errands? I have decided to go off my ding dang rocker and paint the house. The living room and kitchen, specifically. AAAH, WHY LISA, WHY. Can't you just lay in the bed like normal folks, eating bon bons and flipping through US Weekly in your leisure time (FYI, replace that with lemon sorbet, and I totally did that on Saturday). Five years with Miami blue cerulean in the living room has been about two too many...I was so happy when the couches were gold and the blue was a beautiful counterpoint to their Graceland-like over-the-top-ness, and my walls the colors of a glam rock three piece suit. However, I think a change will do me some good, so I'm heading out in a few minute to choose paint colors with my dad). I AM Towanda, but as you may well know, it takes as long to bake a good batch of cookies as it does to bake one where you used too much salt and they taste like cardboard. In the one day that I have off, I want to metaphorically bake some prize-winning cookies, so we're going to Pappy for the know how I'm going to need to get through this!

Take a picture, folks-- it'll last longer! Let's have a long last look at my front room in its "blue" period.

I think I'm going to set up the living room exactly like I have it now, just with a different wall color, so I took photos to remind me exactly how far things were apart/how close to the wall/how near each other. I might change up this wall arrangement with some of the kooky accouterments from other parts of the house, but I might just put them back as is. With off white, some of my crazier flea market hauls might be just the pop of color the room needs! See how much better my new phone camera is at taking pictures in low light situations? I myself am impressed. That round woven rug is one of my favorite things in the house, though you wouldn't know it to look at it-- it took about four different idea for this one to finally sink in as perfect! And it needs a rug-- there's a weird dark stain in the hardwood from where my parents tried to fill a kerosene space heater indoors in the eighties' (valuable lesson learned: do not fill kerosene space heaters indoors, even if it IS freezing outside).

I know, I know, I still need to get rid of those nasty white blinds in the front window-- and truth told, I wouldn't mind a pair of marigold colored curtains to match the accent chair there. What kind of blinds would you go with in the front window? I think I should thin out some of the barware on the bar cart-- while the penguin icebucket, martini shaker, high ball glasses and wine glasses get a lot of use, most of the other glasses were impulse buys at estate sales. If I'm not inviting the entire office of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price over for cocktails, I should be all right (miss you til I join you, Lane Price, RIP). On the coffee table is that Claude Rains book I was telling you about, a book of horror comics from the fifties', and the book that got me started on this whole craze, Entertaining is Fun!, by Dorothy Draper. I'll have to do a whole post some time on the book and the magnificent DD herself as I've been using her books as a kind of manual for living, but there's a chapter in this book that exhorts the reader, in the course of encouraging them to make their home inviting, to "pick up a paintbrush and not read another line until the [room] is painted!". How did she know I'd been dragging my feet for weeks/months/years on this? DD makes the call, I just follow through with it. Au revoir, what once was! Bienvenue, what will be!

The pictures haven't 100% demonstrated, in their well-lit clarity, how blue the room is. It's a blue that almost blends in with the lighter parts of the couch, and make the turquoise and cobalt parts of the fabric look dull and flat instead of the snappy color they were when I found them in (coincidentally) a white living room on the other side of town. I've been like, "NO, NO, NO, I must find ANOTHER COLOR, some color OTHER than white," but honestly, I think it's ok, amongst the popsicle box like variety of colors in my house, to have one room that is more ivory than iridescent in its splendor. Am I wrong? I think I'm going to look for a white with a little pink in it-- white is white is white to me, I've never been one to wring hands over "oatmeal" versus "ostrich feather", but I will know the color I'm looking for when I see it. So take a long last look at the blue-- I may be crying to you tomorrow morning about the outrageous folly I've committed against both my living room and mankind, but hopefully, I'll be happier and possessed of a brighter living room this time tomorrow. We can hope, anyway!

You've seen the before (minus that wall with the tv and the record console on it, but I told you about that in the last post about redoing my house, and I didn't take a very good picture anyway...use your imagination)...now the before-after? The after-before? This is what it looks like after the furniture is moved but BEFORE I'm planning on painting it tomorrow:

AAAAACK. NO. SO DISORIENTING. My OCD tendencies are probably going to kill me before nightfall tomorrow, but hopefully I'll be too busy counting paint strokes to have an actual heart attack. We're going to drape cloth all these bad boys and avoid them with extreme prejudice during the painting process. I've removed some things to the green room office (so bad, I can't even show you..it's like Hoarders in there right now from the influx of wall hangings and the bar cart, etc), and some other furniture to the den. I left a foot path though, and I'll put things to rights by tomorrow night (I hope!):

Great balls of fire! I have my work cut out for me, don't I?!

All right kids, let's have it with the words of encouragement-- best painting or home improvement project you've embraked upon successfully? What are your tips for keeping your sanity in the chaos? Know any cheats to "cutting in" or masking out lightplates with extreme precision? What color have you most enjoured or most regretted in your room painting days? Am I going to make it through alive? I hope so! I'll have to let you know. :)

Keep a good thought for me! More from the other side of this painting adventure tomorrow (hopefully)! Talk soon. Til then!

Photo Friday: Awww, Ma Edition (1940)

Good morning!

Ugh, I am slugging my way through a terrible head cold this morning! I know everyone at my work has been talking about a nasty January bug going around, but kids, I thought I was invincible. I thought drinking 3 glasses of emergen-c and water a day was enough to keep me above the muss and fuss of a 4 AM fever and subsequent malarial-like sleeplessness... turns out, I was wrong! It happens. My plans for today look like this, which would be awesome if my head didn't feel like it belonged on another body, or possibly a string floating  high above my head. :(

Anyway, you know I wouldn't leave you hanging for Photo Friday. Neither wind, nor hail, nor sleet nor...the obtrusive number of times I have to get up and sneeze/drink hot water....would keep me from it! Let's get down to business.

Isn't this woman gorgeous? I love her dark, serious eyes. and crossed arms. source

A sneak into the Photo Friday process here at She Was a Bird...I usually spend my lunch hour on Thursday combing through Flickriver for photos of other-people's-relatives under a certain parameter. "Easter 1962" or "Mom 1950" brings up plenty of photos that were just the one thousand, nine hundred, and sixty second photo in the digital camera's reel, but it also can bring photos of people's moms and dads and brothers and sisters caught in the act of being vernacular photography superstars in those stated eras. When I find someone I like, I try and look through the rest of the user's photostream for other photos with a common element that would serve as a "theme" for the post-- were the parents sharp dressers in the sixties'? Is the one daughter preternaturally gifted at striking a pose that reads thirty even though she's three? Does one family have an obscene amount of mid century amazingness happening, furniture-wise, in their 1950's home? A thread is established, and we go from there!

Sometimes, however, I just stumble across photos that are one-off's-- not part of a larger archive of family history, but just a "This is my mom" type photo thrown in between dozens of modern pictures. Which is fine, but I feel like I'm gypping you, the reader, by not showing some of these uncategorized, but fabulous photos. So! These are one-at-a-time, "just a glimpse" snaps from the search term "mom 1940". Let's see what the cat dragged in (j/k, this is way better than anything the cat would conceivably drag in)!

source

In this photo, I know the guy is kind of the center of attention with his great pompadour and long overcoat, but I'm secretly just obsessed with the woman's tiny shoes and feet. Not in a weird way! In that my own feet are planklike in dimension (as my friend Kelsey's grandma said, of her own size nine feet, "I'd have to back up to a door to open it," and I have two sizes on her), there's something about tiny shoes or women with extremely small hands and feet that make me sigh a sigh of the petite woman I was never to be. And I love the car fender just looming partially in-photo, in front of this Yankee clapboard structure. Isn't this picture atmospheric of a forties' world? You feel like you could walk out of the frame and buy some Beechnut gum and a copy of Life at the nearest newsstand. Would that I could!!!

source

Check out this peach of an outfit from a forties' lady on vacation! Nowadays, you might wear old jeans and a flannel button up out fishing-- no such shirking from this woman of fashion. Flatteringly cut, wide leg trousers? Check. Matching casual playsuit-like jacket? Check. Brown suede brogans? Yep. And A SUNHAT TO BEAT THE BAND?! You'd better believe it! I hope some day my grandkids look back on photos of me from when I was the age I am now and say similarly nice things about my sense of style.  If this were me: "Grandma was a pip in her day, wasn't she?!" they'll crow, looking at old snaps of me that have been digitized so they read through the photo-viewing brain chip in my future grandchildren's dear little future heads. "But what's fishing?"

source

This next gal, I love her swing cape, her pendant pin, and her elfin expression. Another thing I'm going to try to do more of next week-- wear capes! Capes, and capes, and capes. I secretly worry that I look like a) Endorra (not the worst thing you could look like, but not what I'm going for) or b) a great big steamer barge of a woman because of the billowing silhouette of one, but nothing cries out "DRAMA" quite like a cape!

source

I can't even start with this one. What do I love most? ALL OF IT. The eff-off HUGE tractor everyone is posing on, the woman at the wheel taunting us with her thumb to her nose (did you know this gesture has a technical name? Wikipedia says it does, no joke!), the teenage girl with overalls and hat scrunching up her little face in a smile...I wonder if the dad/grandpa is taking the picture, as you'll notice there are no adult males in this photo! This could be on a nostalgia calendar for how good of a picture it is of a family on a working farm in the forties'. I can't get over it!

So! Which photo do you like best? Do you have a certain method of finding old photos and choosing them for your collection, either online or in real life? What really speaks to you about an old picture, be it somebody else's or in your own family? Are there any photos you have one of but wish you had a whole slew from the same time period? Let's talk!

Well, I gotta go lay my weary head down, hope I make through the weekend without too much sinus trouble! I'm going to take it as easy as possible, so I may live. You all have a great weekend, DRINK PLENTY OF WATER, and I'll talk to you Monday! Til then. :)

Vintage Leopard Print EVERYTHING (1940, Fashion Magazines)

Good morning, folks!

Well, I'm here with good news-- Matthew hauled off and got us iPhone 5s's yesterday! I BELONG TO THE FUTURE. This is the first smartphone I've ever owned and wow, is it a humdinger. One, I don't think I understood that iPhones had different models until yesterday afternoon; two, apparently, this is like the BMW of modern phones. Ecstatic is the word, I believe! And you know why? Now I can take high quality photos of the many, many vintage magazines that pass over my desk on their way to and from the Nashville Public Library's extensive bound periodicals collection (also, I can Instagram my own face off...why is it so appealing to photodocument my life? Why?)! And of weird things I see out on my vintage junking jaunts! Whole new ball game at She Was a Bird. People get ready! :)

I still have to learn how to manage the glare off some of the less matte of magazine pages, but I took a crack at the September and October issues of Harper's Bazaar, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but spots? SPOTS, EVERYWHERE. Let's talk leopards in the wartime US fashion world:

Like many forties' magazines, Harper's Bazaar is for the most part a black and white print publication, but when they do their color inserts-- watch out! The glamour might just knock you off your feet. In the two panels above and below, fashion models demonstrate how you wear a snazzy spotted fur accent with style and grace. I think too many people are reminded of Peg Bundy or mad, bad, and dangerous to know late nineties' clothes (ugh, gross, puke) when they hear the word "leopard print". This shows you how you can wear clothes that are dramatic without losing an ounce of class. Check out the woman above with her not-quite-the-same-print belt and enormous jeweled brooch. While there are plenty of advertisements that are very unmistakably 1940's (huge, spectator type hats, super victory rolls, wedge heels-- all the stuff we like!!), it's funny how the majority of the actual HB fashion spreads, under the watchful eye of fashion editor Diana Vreeland, are still as fresh as paint. Can you see the ensemble above with a knee-length hemline and different hair in this month's Harper's Bazaar? I think you could! See how the woman below has a full-leopard lining to her eye-poppingly scarlet coat. I want that and that padded, lacquered gossip bench like WHOA.

Here, a Dolores-del-Rio-looking beauty in a toque-type hat, collar, and matching envelope clutch. PS, if that is an envelope clutch, it would be a manila one-- think of all the stuff you could fit vertically in that sucker! A whole paperback book. The menu from your favorite restaurant. The script to a movie you were considering appearing in. I wonder if the collar, with its sweet bow, is the detachable kind that suddenly makes it look like your whole ensemble was made to order instead of "put together this morning." Gorgeous!

I lo-o-o-o-ove this. I initially thought it was a dressing gown/robe (I have one from the sixties' that essentially looks like this coat without the hood) but then realized it was outdoor weight for wearing whenever, wherever, out in public. I wish the waist was belted with a wide belt,and I would wear the hood down, but other than that, I wish someone would wrap this up and send it as a gift to me from the year 1940. One of the sidebars caught my eye when I was getting towards the back of the Sept. issue. It reads:

Wherever you live you can purchase merchandise advertised in this issue. The fine stores listed on the last page of this issue carry advertised articles which you may want to buy.

Heck yes! I flipped to the last page where there's a train-schedule like listing of cities and stores...then those cities and stores each have a letter corresponding to featured items in the issue. If you're looking for the Pattullo Modes dress Joan Crawford so beautifully models on page 31, for example, the closest a 1940 Nashville girl could get to the real deal is a boutique called Halle on Main in Memphis, Tennessee. Need the "kerchief of the moment" on page 113? The John Gerber Co in that city should be able to help. Isn't that wild to think about? If you could inquire about the price, you might even be able to mail order them to you (imagine, for a moment, shopping in the pre-internet, pre-a-Target-in-every-city world...can you?).

Another Pattullo original, though not modeled by my beloved Joanie...I almost wish the buttons were just gold or plain with all that print everywhere, but if you give me that hat and bag, I'll tell you what, I won't be complaining about a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. I found a little information on Pattullo and Jo Copeland, the designer behind these pretty silhouettes, at the Vintage Fashion Guild label resource page. Since discovering this wealth of information on the web about vintage clothing labels, I have to admit that I check their page a lot after making some good scores at the flea market or Goodwill. The more you know what to look for, the more you'll see it!

This is prettier, I think...I like the round, big-as-a-bus handbag and the scarf collar secured by a large pin/clasp. Plus her makeup has that procelain doll look I'm always going for in my eyeliner/lipstick selections, no joke.  I have to master the art of pinning/rolling my hair like this, I have been such a lazybones this week with a single braid and out the door.

In a movie star section in the October issue, Joan Bennett was the only starlet I recognized, and doesn't she look chic in the print-of-the-moment leopard on her jacket and matching muff? I just recently saw her in a pretty decent noir called The Woman on the Beach, costarring a lanky, handsome Robert Ryan. Thank you, Warner Instant Archive. It was directed by Jean Renoir-- Joan Bennett appeared again and again in these semi-B picture, not exactly A list features, but with some of the greatest directors of the twentieth century (see the pair of movies she made under Metropolis director Fritz Lang with Edward G Robinson, Scarlet Street and The Woman in the Window; she is often THE WOMAN in the titles, apparently!). Lucky duck. And she's pretty as a picture to boot, with that strange, sultry voice.

GIVE ME LIBERTY...AND GIVE ME THIS LEOPARD CAPE. I've been trying to impose a "use it or lose it" stricture on my dang coat closet (which, as I mentioned to dinner guests last night, actually has no room for strangers coats; it's so full of my own coats!), which has occasioned the wearing of two fur collar coats in technicolor red and blue, respectively, and a full on seventies' cape this week-- who knows what I'll pull out of there next week in the name of getting to keep my favorite (though little worn) pieces! I wish this cape was among them. See how the length accents her teeny-tiny waist.

Last but not least, let this be me! How about the shape of the hat, the veil, the brooch, the architecturally draped bodice, and whatever she's carrying in her lap (coat? muff? purse?). I don't think it is her, but this model reminds me of Gail Patrick, the girl-who's-not-Irene-Dunne in My Favorite Wife. Sleek as a racehorse! I want emanate the kind of style and effortless class this kind of a forties' look gives off in waves.

                

What do you think? Are you a fan of animal prints, or do you leave well enough alone with solids? I want to start treating these as a neutral you can pair a bright, solid color with (jewel tone, maybe) and get this wardrobe party started! What have you seen that set your stylespiration feelers humming lately? Do you have any old magazine favorites that deserve a modern day reassessment? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow for Photo Friday. Have a great Thursday, and I'll see you then! Take care.

Don't Paint Your Antique Furniture (PLEASE don't paint your antique furniture)

Hello, hello!

Are you ready for a first-thing-in-the-morning fright? Hold your pre-coffee hats, folks...I have a tale to tell that will shiver your timbers. The subject? Antique furniture. But not ANY antique furniture. Painted antique furniture. Ugh! I wanna hear your thoughts on this one, but first let me show you the goods. I apologize in advance that this is not a nice blog, but dang it, these are not nice things to do to these pieces of furniture!

I was trolling through Craigslist antiques, as I am wont to do, using the usual search terms: under the Furniture section, "vintage", then "retro", then "antiques", then decades ("1950s"...but no apostrophe or you won't get any results!). In the midst of combing through ads-with-pictures (most of the time I won't even fool with the no-image results, do you want to sell this thing or not?!), I came across...well....this:

From the listing:

Girls Antique Solid wood Vanity Dresser: $240 cash pick up for your special daughter this Christmas.. this one of a kind. 1920s circa vanity will bring a smile from ear to ear..Barbie will be jealous..call text or email me right away

PEOPLE. I agree whole-heartedly with the "if it's yours, you can do what you want with it to make it your own" philosophy of material goods ownership. Live in a fifties' ranch and want to keep some period details but change others to fit your lifestyle? Dude, it's your house (but if you go Lowe's commerical on that thing...I'm still going to be kind of mad at you). Nevertheless, in this case, it is a TRAVESTY that this art deco bench has been painted to ape some weird, Pottery Barn Kids looking crazy thing in the interest of selling it. "Will bring a smile from ear to ear...Barbie will be jealous..." And Lisa will be dropping a dime on you to the American Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Antiques. Would that there WERE such an entity. Do you see the curved wood bench that would cradle your little flapper looking self as you apply just the right amount of lipstick to perfect your cupid's bow pout? How about the hat-pin/glove box on the vanity at top right? I am honest when I am saying that I have never seen an antique deco dresser like this in real life. Plenty with the round mirror and four-dresser-drawer set up (including my own at home in my bedroom), but none with a built-in setee. And you murdered it! So you could make it look like an imitation of its lessers!

Here's another piece that just should not have been painted. And I know, you're going "But what if the finish wasn't fixable? What if it had seen a hard life before it was painted?" So stain it darker! Sand that sucker down! Sell it to someone who wants it and spend the money on a new thing you like better! There just isn't an excuse.

From the listing:

Antique Dresser / Sideboard $100 OBO I have an antique hardwood dresser/sideboard available. I'm reasonably sure that this piece dates between the 1930s - 1940s. It's in really excellent condition, it was painted white years ago (before it came to me) and the paint is wearing thin but underneath is a beautiful dark hardwood. There are a couple of minor nicks here and there but with a bit of re-finishing work, this will be a really beautiful piece. I believe there was originally a mirror attached at the top, the slit piece for it is still there. It has it's original hardware as well, although the filigree piece on one side is missing. I'm asking $100 or best offer.

I give this seller a pass because some foolheaded relative of his probably made the decision to "update" this sideboard's look before it passed into his possession, as stated in the listing, but that doesn't make it any less depressing. I have a boulder-sized chip on my shoulder from my own family's history of whitewashing antiques to make them look "fresh" and "new" again with little regard to aesthetic choices. The meager pieces of furniture that made it to my generation intact included a deco vanity (not as fancy as the one above, but with waterfall) someone had painted white in the eighties', and a large, French Provincial style sixties' dresser with a kind of neat/weird sickly green-tan-gold finish, that my parents themselves insisted we paint white after my aunt Donna gave it to me. "You can have it, but we have to paint it," they insisted at the time. Thirteen year old me was adamant. "I like it the way it is!" I whined. "I don't want to paint it! She gave it to ME!" My protestations went unheeded, and the piece was painted flat white, with the original brass handles spray painted gold. Like, gold in the way that Kraft Mac and Cheese is "yellow", by which I mean a fluorescent, wrong kind of gold. I hated the damn thing and was pleased when it ended up, sans mirror, in some other room as a sideboard. Eventually, my dad painstakingly sanded it down to the original finish (before Donna painted it the green-tan-gold that reminded me of Dark Shadows and which I really liked), and it sits in my parents' living room to this day. 

Question though-- what is it that compels people to paint things like this? You're afraid of having a chipped/worn piece of furniture in your house, but then you intentionally not only distress it, but paint it the color of a circus clown and call it "shabby chic"? Throw some doilies on that m'f'n' chifferobe over the scratched parts! Buy some of that rub-in scratch recoverer! You are making me very angry labeling yourself a decorator or DIY'er and really just committing crimes against humanity one paint brush stroke at a time. I am trying to control my rage, but then:

For the record, this is (approximately, this one has a different type top-of-mirror configuration, but you get the gist) what this dresser should look like. It's an Eastlake-style Victorian dresser. Those little boxes at the top? Like the deco dresser, they're made to hold your gloves. UGH, I CAN'T LOOK AT IT FOR TOO LONG, IT BURNS MY EYES.

From the listing:

East lake Cottage Style Dresser circa 1890 The hardware is to die for and all brand new with exquisite large ornate crystal knobs and locks for the bottom two drawers w/keys of course. Shabby chic Patina among many shades in this dresser/chest of drawers would look beautiful in so many decors no matter what your style. Today this Amazing one of kind piece can be yours for $250.00

You're killing me, Smalls. Also, what is it about charging $250 for these things? UNPAINTED they would be worth $250, so why not just save yourself a $40 bucket of chalkware paint and leave the thing like it is?!

Ok, worst one:

From the listing:

Here is a custom hand painted bedroom set (minus actual bed) that a friend of my wife's did. Set includes Desk (with pink chair not pictured) Armoire (glass cracked in corner...can be replaced with a cheap standup mirror from any store) Dresser Mirror This would be perfect for a little girl. There are imperfections in the paint here and there but the set is still very nice and we've received a ton of compliments on the set. It was an antique set that was redone.

WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD. So you have a dresser, chifferobe, and vanity (minus the mirror, it probably had some kind of trifold thing) that has been intentionally, hideously painted by a friend of the poster's wife. This is one of those times where someone went out and bought some paint and then went "ok, I'll just go where the brush takes me!" Turns out, it took you to hell. I mean, hell itself. The biblical hell, with lakes of fire. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS. I guess you could sand the three pieces back to their original finish and then stain them, but my thing is-- how much harder is that than just leaving well enough alone? Or selling the things as was? If you REALLY need a mint green and pink finger paint splotches bedroom suite, why not sell this one to someone who wants an antique set, and buy a plainer, eighties' particle board type set, which you can THEN work the dark magic of your poor artistic eye upon? I just don't understand it. I know not everyone wants to live in some Deco Greta Garbo looking early 1930's Manhattan penthouse, but if it is the case that you don't, why not pass it on to someone who does?

I sincerely blame Pinterest for a lot of this. Even though you know I love Pinterest (see my OCD like pinning of paparazzi pictures of Burton-Taylor and vegan taco recipes). Every time I see a "FAIL" on someone's tumblr, where they've hideously botched the job of making turkey-shaped cupcakes or jello-smiley-faces or some other cooking misfire, I always wonder, "Why didn't you think about your own level of competency BE.FORE. you attempted to do a level 10 kitchen project with only level 1 cooking skills?" I've seen cookies where the person is like "Look! They totally turned out these formless blobs instead of Casper the Ghost shapes! They lied to me on Pinterest!" and gone, "You obviously used a pre-made cookie dough  roll instead of mixing your own from scratch-- I know that because I've done it before, and that's what it looks like." You wouldn't think, because you had flown in a plane before, that you could pilot it-- why would you think that because Martha Stewart or, more close to the target, Emily Henderson can re-do a piece of furniture with years of experience and an artist's sense of aesthetic and a good head on their shoulders to assess whether or not the piece even needs updating and a PROFESSIONAL WORKSHOP, that you can just drop in Home Depot and make something worth that magic number, $250, on Craigslist? That's insane!

Here's one that hasn't been hit yet-- Nashvillers, it's on CL for $100. ONE HUNDRED BUCKS. Go get 'im!

From the listing:

 Vintage waterfall vanity. In good condition. Use as is or perfect for a painting project. $100. 

Clarification: DO NOT USE AS PAINTING PROJECT. Instead, why don't you Pledge that bad boy and put it in a place of pride in your home? Throw a shawl over the very top of the mirror and channel your inner gypsy/Stevie Nicks. I swear to goodness, if I see this in the antiques section next week with a coat of pink paint and a $250 price tag, I might just lose contact with reality out of sheer, impotent rage.

All right, I've vented...I want to know what you think! I know not all painted pieces are so bad (I've seen good ones before!), but I'm railing in this post specifically against the bad ones, 'cos they are so, so bad. Have you, like my parents, lived and learned from a horrible painting accident that you initiated before you realized what you were doing to the furniture and possibly mended your ways? Do you think the above pieces, painted, are kind of cute or do you suffer from the same torments of the damned at seeing something perfectly good hideous disfigured with paint? Do you have old vintage pieces in your house in an UNpainted state or are you a devil with a paintbrush? What's the worst chalkware-ified piece out there you've seen? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with something in a more positive vein (we can hope so at least, right?). Take care! I'll see you then.