Tagged With: Arts and Crafts

Blue Glass

Photograph taken on Wednesday, October 24, 2018 by Henry
Blue Glass

Blue Glass

Today was another day when I didn’t really get a chance to get outdoors and by the time I was home it was too dark for much photography in the yard. I looked around for things to photograph in the house and found a few things that were a bit interesting. This blue glass vase is nice. The picture is close enough to it that it’s more an abstract image than anything specific. I love deep blues and in fact I like most colors when they are really deep and rich like this. The darkening sky at dusk, the deep orange or red of a brilliant sunset, all the varied greens on a rainy day in the woods, even some peoples’ eyes. Color is all around and it’s really something to be thankful for.

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Porcelain Rhinoceros

Photograph taken on Thursday, November 01, 2018 by Henry
Porcelain Rhinoceros

Porcelain Rhinoceros

We don’t know a lot about this porcelain rhinoceros. In fact, I don’t know for certain that it’s made of porcelain. It’s some sort of ceramic and it’s white, which generally implies kaolin clay and porcelain. It’s glazed mostly green and it has an interesting pattern in the glaze, possibly from the firing technique. It gives the figurine a more natural appearance, because rhinoceroses are not a uniform color (or course, they aren’t green, either, but that’s another matter). There are currently five extant species of rhinoceros, two native to Africa (the white and the black rhino) and three to Asia, the Indian, the Javan, and the Sumatran rhinos. I’m going to go with this being an Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) and guess that the figurine came from central Asia somewhere, but of course it could easily have been bought in the United States.

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Plate of Many Faces

Photograph taken on Wednesday, November 14, 2018 by Henry
Plate of Many Faces

Plate of Many Faces

We don’t really know much about this plate. It appears to be Japanese, although we don’t actually know where it was produced. We also don’t know how old it is. This is not the whole plate, clearly, but a detail of the center, not quite reaching the edges in the corners of the image. There is a style called “Thousand Faces” and when you search on that, you find a few images that look a bit similar to this but for the most part, that seems to indicate a very particular style (or possibly two styles). Some show many fewer faces than this plate and only perhaps a dozen faces, so I’m not sure where the name comes from. Others fit the name better but not as well as this one, perhaps. On the other hand, this may not be particularly old and doesn’t even qualify as anything in particular. It is nice, though, and I like the fact that most (if not all) of the people depicted are different from one another. In any case, that’s what I have for today.

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Dot’s Plate

Photograph taken on Wednesday, December 05, 2018 by Henry
Dot's Plate

Dot’s Plate

This is a plate that my mom made in 1955 and I’ve always loved it. She was at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She insists it wasn’t graduate school because she didn’t get a degree, but I still think of it as grad school. She had finished college and was in art school. Ceramics wasn’t her main thing, but they did a little of everything including painting and sculpture, as well. Her interests were in textiles and she did a lot of silk screening. I still have the curtains that she made and which we now use as drop cloths for painting. But this plate is, I think, really nice. I wish we had some clue about the composition of the glaze, which is lovely. We have her wheel and kiln and would really like to get around to using them again.

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Table Inlay

Photograph taken on Monday, February 04, 2019 by Henry
Table Inlay

Table Inlay

Looking around for something new to photograph this evening I decided on the inlay on a small side table brought from my mother-in-law’s house. The pieces of the inlay are pretty small, mostly on the order of 1.5 to 2.5 millimeters. The table has what would be described on Antiques Roadshow as “condition issues” but they aren’t terribly obvious at a glance. Partly because there are always a few books covering them up. It could probably be repaired but it would be fiddly work.

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Dot and Some of Her Art

Photograph taken on Sunday, February 17, 2019 by Henry
Dot and Some of Her Art

Dot and Some of Her Art

As you know, if you’ve been following me for a while, my mom moved from the house she lived in for 59 years into a retirement community nearby. As they do with most new residents they published a short bio of her for the community paper. In that she talked about some of the art she has created over the years and she was asked if they might display a sample in their small gallery. They have a dozen or so display cases like the one shown here and she gave them some painted china and some small quilt work that she has done, to be displayed for six months.

I saw the display a month or so ago but Cathy wasn’t with us that day so after brunch with mom today we went to see it. The plates she painted include a nuthatch in the upper left, which is actually displayed incorrectly with the bird appearing to be on the ground instead of creeping down the trunk of a tree, as they do. At the upper right is a white-throated sparrow and the two birds on the lower plates are a black-capped chickadee on a wild rose (left) and a Carolina wren. The small quilt at the back of the bottom of the display was inspired by a Pablo Picasso painting of fish on a plate.

She has much more, of course, and has made quite a few much larger quilts but they would not fit into the display case. Also, most of the quilts have been distributed to her children and grandchildren. She showed us one she is working on now and I took a picture of her with that but decided to keep it secret until it is finished and given to its recipient.

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Embroidered Robe

Photograph taken on Monday, March 25, 2019 by Henry
Embroidered Robe

Embroidered Robe

On Saturday we stopped at the storage locker and brought some things home to go through. That included a clothes rack and one of the items on that rack was a large, hooded robe all covered with embroidery. This photo is a part of that embroidery. Neither Cathy nor her mom know where it’s from but probably Cathy’s dad bought it somewhere. It’s in pretty new condition but it’s too long for either Cathy or her mom to wear (and not really their style, in any case). The embroidery is pretty, with flowers and plants in orange, yellow, and pale green.

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Peanut Creche

Photograph taken on Monday, December 16, 2019 by Henry
Peanut Creche

Peanut Creche

This little creche is made with bits and pieces from the kitchen. Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus are peanuts with Halos made from Cheerios. The magi—or maybe those are angels, it’s in some dispute—are made from Hershey’s kisses. The sheep are pumpkin seeds with broken toothpicks for legs. I’m not entirely sure what is in the foreground. Perhaps that’s food for the animals (and the baby didn’t fit in this manger so he’s next to it instead. The yarn person, which is perhaps a shepherd, is not to scale but is definitely part of the composition. The frog, however, is almost certainly apocryphal.

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Metal Embroidery

Photograph taken on Thursday, February 06, 2020 by Henry
Metal Embroidery

Metal Embroidery

This is a detail of a piece of cloth with a sort of metal embroidery on it. The metal is actually wrapped in tight curls around some sort of thick thread which is then sewn into the cloth. There are also clear and blue glass beads, as you can see, and metal sequins. It’s quite intricate, with the small curls of wire being less than a 16th of an inch in diameter. It came from Afghanistan but I don’t know how old it is or much of anything about it, really. The entire piece is about 8 inches across. It sort of looks like it’s meant to be used as a trivet but I don’t think I’d want to do that. It really should be displayed, framed in some way.

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Dorothy’s Quilt For The Yorks

Photograph taken on Wednesday, June 10, 2020 by Henry
Dorothy's Quilt For The Yorks

Dorothy’s Quilt For The Yorks

Dorothy and three of the folks she’s living with came down for a three day visit. It was really nice to have them here and we had a really good time with them. They left this morning and stopped to see friends in two different places on the way home. One of those stops was to see Andrew and Rachel. Dorothy had made this quilt as a wedding present for them and wanted me to take a few pictures of it before she gave it to them, so we’d have a record of it. I think it turned out quite nicely and of course they loved it. I took one picture with Dorothy looking over the top of it, but we decided to feature just the quilt today. I also took pictures of Dorothy with Peter, Marissa, and Renee before they left (I know you’re shocked that I’d do that).

Beyond simply having them here, which was really, really nice, I really enjoyed our trip to Pennsylvania. It was a lot of fun and yet quite poignant. Memories.

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Dot’s Latest Quilt

Photograph taken on Sunday, July 12, 2020 by Henry
Dot's Latest Quilt for Ramallah Friends School

Dot’s Latest Quilt for Ramallah Friends School

Cathy and I were able to get into mom’s gated community today and had a nice visit. We had our temperature taken when we arrived and again when we left and we didn’t actually go inside her building. We visited with her on a bench out front, which was pleasant enough. She showed us the quite she’s almost finished making. It’s for the Ramallah Friends School in Ramallah, in the West Bank, about 8 miles north of Jerusalem. The children at her Friends meeting drew robots and she incorporated their drawings into the quilt. I think it’s turned out quite nicely. For the last third of a year (exactly today), we have only seen her via video chat, except for two times when we met on opposite sides of the fence so she could pass out some tax documents (and one of those times it was pouring rain). It was good to be able to just sit and chat.

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Afghan Wedding Shoes

Photograph taken on Wednesday, November 11, 2020 by Henry
Afghan Wedding Shoes

Afghan Wedding Shoes

These embroidered shoes were in a box in Cathy’s parents house and along with a lot of other things, they made their way to our garage. We think they are Afghan wedding shoes. They are definitely shoes and they are Afghan. Beyond that, we don’t really know much. They don’t really look comfortable but then wedding clothes aren’t designed primarily for comfort. They would be more comfortable than Afghan pizors (see Wednesday, March 28, 2018), but that’s not saying much. On the other hand, the pizors are pretty durable. The embroidery on these shoes is nice and they certainly are festive.

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Menkapalooza

Photograph taken on Saturday, July 17, 2021 by Henry
Menkis Works

Menkis Works

Menkis Works

Menkis Works

Little Cellar Shop

Little Cellar Shop

Little Cellar Shop

Little Cellar Shop

Sewn & Thrown

Sewn & Thrown

Sewn & Thrown

Sewn & Thrown

We visited the home of some friends today. Three of their four sons and the three sons’ wives had a craft sale today, which we dubbed the Menkapalooza. They each had a booth showing their wares, starting with Brian and Naomi. Their company is called Menkis Works and as you can see, they specialize in hand crafted pottery. Then comes the Little Cellar Shop, run by Jon and Meg. They specialize in handmade candles and carved wooden utensils, as well as various other items. Finally, there is Carol and Joseph with Sewn & Thrown. As the name implies, there are fabric good and ceramics.

All three couples make lovely things and we bought a few. I’m sure they’d love to have you drop in on their respective web sites, linked above. If you do, let them know you saw this here.

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Dot’s Quilt

Photograph taken on Tuesday, September 13, 2022 by Henry
Dot's Quilt

Dot’s Quilt

I went over to mom’s this afternoon to take photos of a few quilts that she’s made. One was a fairly old quilt, made in 1996, which was patterned after a photo of Iris and Steve in a hammock. She is giving a talk on that quilt and needed a good picture of it. While I was there I also photographed two other quilts. One of those two is made up of 12 rectangles, each made by a different person. Mom took a photograph and cut it up into 12 equal pieces and enlarged them to the size she wanted the quilt pieces to be. Then each person in the quilt group got one and made their section with the only real requirement being the overall size. Mom combined them to make the completed quilt. The final one was the unfinished quilt shown here. It doesn’t have a name yet (or if it does, I don’t know it). But it’s quite nice, I think.

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