Cathy has a roll-top desk that we got from some friends who where ready to get rid of it. Along the top of the roll-top, which is never closed, there is a little ledge where the top doesn’t go all the way into the carcass. She has a few little things sitting on that ledge including a line of dice of various sizes and side-counts. In the middle is this line of little bird statues. I don’t rightly know where she got them (I suppose I could have asked) but there they are. They are quite colorful—as you can see—and they stand about an inch tall. This green on is one of my favorites, along with the dark blue peacock colored bird in the center of the photo.
Tagged With: Knicknacks
Glass Duck
As you may know, we’re going though things at Cathy’s mom’s house. There have been many “treasures” found and one of Cathy’s favorites was a box filled with little glass animals. They belonged to her dad and she had never seen them before. Presumably they were packed up when the family moved to Afghanistan long before Cathy was born. They must have stayed packed up when they returned and so they were a real surprise. Happily they were all in really good shape, that box never got crushed by other boxes, or anything. This little duck is one of them. I may post more pictures in the future, if I have a day when it’s getting late and I haven’t taken any photos yet.
Green Ceramic Frog
This little green, caramic frog is sitting on our piano. I’m not sure exactly where it came from. Cathy probably knows but I haven’t bothered to ask. It probably showed up in a box at her mom’s house sometime in the last nine months. I don’t remember when it appeared on the piano, but there it is. As you may be able to see, it’s front left leg has been broken. It doesn’t affect the frogs ability to hop, though. That’s mostly because ceramic frogs don’t move very much, I suppose.
Square Peg, Round Hole
Cathy’s mom got this in the mail today. A lot of organizations send out solicitations for donations and some of them send “gifts” to entice potential donors. In this case, it was a Catholic charity of one sort or another and their “gifts” was a small, wooden crucifix. It came in a foam board with two places cut out to hold the two parts, the cross itself and the base. They obviously went to a lot of trouble to cut the foam to fit the pieces and they also seem to have gone to a fair amount of trouble in making the pieces themselves. The base, for instance, has a nice chamfer all the way around and the tenon on the end of the cross has been very carefully cut. Perhaps the two parts were made by different groups and they didn’t communicate the plans or perhaps no one happened to actually try to put them together. Whatever the case, we ended up with a very nice example of trying to put a square peg into a round hole. Now that I think about it, sometimes I feel like I’m the square peg an the world is full of round holes.
Pakistani Doll
This doll was found at some point in the process of clearing out my in-laws house. It has a tag on it that says “Pakistan” so I assume it’s a Pakistani doll, although someone who actually knows these things might say differently. My assumption is that it was labeled by whoever bought it.
Anyway, it’s a little misshapen. Somewhere along the way it seems to have been subject to either excessive heat or pressure or possibly both. The neck is bent into a somewhat unnatural angle the left arm and wrist are effectively broken and the “bones” fused back together with the arm bent twice into a 30° angle or so. Also, the joints, which appear to have been functional at one time, are “calcified” and won’t move. It’s a pretty doll, otherwise, but the angle of the head, in particular, is a bit disturbing.
She is currently standing on the piano but she moves around a bit (not on her own, as far as I know) and she’s been seen lying along the top of the piano and on bookcases, etc. around the house.
Have I Got Dogs?
When Dorothy was little, one of the books we got from the library that we all really enjoyed was called Have I Got Dogs! by William Cole and illustrated by Margot Apple. It’s a really fun book and we had most of it memorized, as you do with children’s books that you read over and over. Cathy happens to have a small collection of dog figurines and they are on top of a short bookcase in our sitting room. It needs to be dusted and I’m sorry for revealing that even to my very limited audience, but the dogs themselves don’t seem to mind, so why should we. My personal favorite is the dog with the bone in his mouth, just to the right of center in this photo. I also like the little fellow eating or drinking from a plate in the lower left. “Have I got dogs, pedigrees and mutts, I have so many, some people think I’m nuts” (or something to that effect).
Post Office Desk and Knicknacks
Some of the individual items in this photograph have appeared here before but I don’t think I’ve posted a picture showing the desk at large. On the left, hanging by one hand from the bookcase, is Edmund, a paper mache (a.k.a. Papier-mâché) monkey. Actually, when I asked Cathy if he had a name she said he did not. Then she said if he did it would be Edmund. Coco the stuffed baboon in 3,5, the bridal couple in 1,3, and the little blue pitcher in 2,4 have been photographed for posts before, so if they look familiar, that’s why.
Opera Glasses
I don’t know for sure but I think these old opera glasses belonged to my Uncle Ralph and his wife, Aunt Florence. Technically my great uncle and aunt, because he was my grandfather’s brother. Assuming that’s where they came from, I have to assume also that they went to the theatre from time to time. I can’t say that I knew them well. They lived in New Jersey and he died when I was only ten years old. He grew up in the west, having been born in what is now a ghost town in a mining area of Nevada. After earning an undergraduate degree in Utah, he went to St Johns College in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar where he earned a B.A. degree and a year later a B.Sc. degree.
Samovar Lamp and Ceramic Dog
a few of Dorothy’s friends are passing through the area and asked if they could spend the night here tomorrow night. Naturally we’re happy to have them and I was cleaning up the guest room, which we have used as something of a store room for things we don’t know what to do with. I was in there this evening and this do caught my eye. I don’t know why but I think the composition with the dog in front of the samovar lamp just works. It’s all I have for today, so I guess it has to.
As I mentioned a few days ago, with the shorter days, if I don’t get out during work and if there doesn’t happen to be a nice sunrise or sunset, I have a hard time getting an outdoor photo this time of year (and for the next few months). Because of that, I’m afraid you’re going to have to put up with this sort of photograph. This happens every year and I really should look back at previous years and see if there is anything I did that I might do again now, to deal with this issue.
Letters
When was the last time you wrote a letter? For me, I know it’s been a while. I’ve sent a few business letters, generally accompanying a check or something of that sort. But a real, honest to goodness, hand-written letter? It’s been a while. I wrote one to a friend who ended up in prison for a little while but that was hard. I’ve probably only written one or two others in the last five years or more. I’m not sure what that means for the future. I guess in one sense it means “less stuff” and maybe that’s a good thing. But it’s sometimes fun to see old letters that were written by our parents or grandparents (or even earlier) back in the day. That’s what these are.
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.
Knicknacks
I’m nearing the completian of ten years taking at least one photo every day. As you know if you’ve been following me far any length of time, I started this on January 1, 2011, posting the photos on Facebook. I started this blog with my second year (and have posted some, but not all of that first year’s photos, as well). I’m pretty sure that I will stop taking a photo a day at the end of the year. I’ll still take plenty of pictures but perhaps you won’t be subjected to pictures of knicknacks quite so often.
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.