We don’t typically get our Christmas decorations up quite as early as we have done this year. I know some people are good about regularly getting things set up the weekend after Thanksgiving. We aren’t that prompt and sometimes things don’t get set up until the week of Christmas itself. This year, with less ‘out of house’ activities, we put our tree up and started decorating on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Dorothy set up the traditional nativity scene on the piano. As usual, all are welcome at the manger and Dorothy makes sure there are many representatives from various places.
Tagged With: Objet d’art
Nativity Scene
Painted Box
I don’t really know anything about this painted box. We assume it’s Persian but don’t know if it was bought in Afghanistan or Iran (Cathy’s family lived in both). It has some writing around the top edge (not seen here) and if I can find someone familiar with the languages, perhaps we can get it translated and that will tell us more. It was difficult to get a good picture of this, because it has a high gloss finish and getting a picture with a large area of reflection was tricky. This one turned put pretty well, though.
Another Strange Ornament
We don’t remember where this little Christmas ornament came from. Cathy thought it was made by the woman who cleaned her mom’s house for so many years but the things she made were more homespun. This is different. Just about as strange but different. It’s a Christmas caroler and it’s one we put out every year, but we don’t really know much else.
It’s a funny little thing but as one person commented on Instagram in reference to the Strange Little Ornament post (see Tuesday, December 01, 2020), our house “is a haven for strange little things.” I think perhaps she was including us in the “strange little thing” category, but I can’t be sure.
I’ll post a photo of a nativity scene that Margaret’s housekeeper did make in a few days. I think you’ll agree that they, along with this, qualifies as folk art.
Stuff
This is the top of a small hutch in our dining room. Most of the things on the shelf have appeared on the blog at one time or another but I thought I’d post a photo of the whole collection (or this shelf’s worth, anyway). On the right is a nurse that my grandmother made the clothes for and that was in a store window during the war as part of a display about collecting for the community. In front of her are three matryoshka sets including a traditional one on the left, one with Russian political figures in the middle (that’s Leonid Brezhnev), and a east Asian one on the right. The wine bottle was found in what is now the ghost town where my grandfather was born. Next to that is a figurine that Cathy got from her family of a baby sucking on its thumb.
Mini Art Gallery
We were over at Dorothy’s this evening and enjoyed dinner and a short visit. I only took a few pictures, because it wasn’t really a picture sort of evening but I did take a few. She has put up a fair amount of art in the bathroom nearest her bedroom. This picture doesn’t really do it justice and I’m not sure any would, unless I did a 360 panorama. And even that would be tough. As you can see, it’s a fairly eclectic collection of things, from a key chain to a partially painted deer skull, with various prints and photographs as well. I’ve been to a few art galleries that were more like this, with a wide variety of things on the walls, not just one painting after another, evenly spaced and all at the ideal height. The old Barnes museum, before it moved into downtown Philadelphia was something like that, although it’s collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings are clearly in a class of their own. Nevertheless, it uses a lot more wall space than in a more traditional gallery. I have no idea if the new location has preserved that look and feel, but I would assume so.
Another gallery with the walls more crammed with things is the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. This is one of my favorite museums and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Boston, unless of course you don’t care for art. But I love it. Of course, I’m not saying Dorothy’s bathroom reaches the level of the Barnes or the Gardner. But it has that same feel to it.