Summer White

I grew up in Atlanta just on the border of women’s liberation. There were certain codes about seasonal dressing that had acquired the weight of propriety. We hadn't heard yet that propriety is not important for women who make history. Hoggirl of welltrainedmind.com states the Rules well. One must not:

"(1)  Wear white on the bottom half of my person before Easter or after Labor Day; (2) Wear open-toed shoes before Easter or after Labor Day; (3) Wear linen or cotton voile before Easter or after Labor Day; or (4) Wear velvet before Thanksgiving or after Valentine's Day."

Somewhere in there is also a seasonal restriction on patent leather shoes. Of course, the exception to the rules was Resort Wear, if you were fortunate enough to be in Deauville for the season. To this day, I just can’t wear velvet in the summer. The very idea makes me perspire ... not just the heat and humidity, but the social embarrassment.

When Memorial Day had passed, Rich’s, The Store for Everything, stocked its jewelry counters with loads of cucumber-cool, chalky white jewelry: “ear bobs” of Haskell-esque wired-on white beads, necklaces of mixed chain and milk glass, white bangles to pile on the suntanned wrist. Just looking at them seemed to lower the temperature at least five degrees; they were cool to the touch and appropriate for the season.

Here’s a summer white treat for your neckline – a statement assemblage necklace of many elements gathered together to evoke those days when a lacy shirtwaist and the right accessories made you quite respectable, so long as you also had on clean, white shorty gloves.

The elements are an antique Dresden doll’s head of a boy in cap, a white enameled bow that was a lingerie pin in a former life, white beads from ear bobs, and a brass plaque from a fine furniture manufacturer, the well-known Maple & Co., which, with the antiqued, pale, syrupy Czech beads calls up the memory of maple ice cream. Oh, so cool and smooth!

Singing Bird Pistols

Christies recently auctioned this precious and lovely pair of automatons for $5.8 million.  It is one of two known such treasures, created by the Swiss watchmakers, Freres Rochat, in the early 19th Century.  Don't expect bullets, expect something wonderful and sweet, embellished with diamonds, pearls, gold and enameling.  Ditch the Game Boy and visit the Age of Enlightenment.  Feed your imagination and give your thumbs a rest!  These beauties call to mind the poem of W.B. Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium":

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Many thanks to my Honorary Cousin, Bambi, for bringing this exquisite kernel of delight to my attention!

Chaucer's Purse

The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse

To yow, my purse, and to noon other wight

Complayne I, for ye be my lady dere!

I am so sory, now that ye been lyght;

For certes, but ye make me hevy chere,

Me were as leef be layd upon my bere;

For which unto your mercy thus I crye:

Beth hevy ageyn, or elles mot I dye!

Now voucheth sauf this day, or yt be nyght,

That I of yow the blisful soun may here,

Or see your colour lyk the sonne bryght,

That of yelownesse hadde never pere.

Ye be my lyf, ye be myn hertes stere,

Quene of comfort and of good companye:

Beth hevy ageyn, or elles moote I dye!

Now purse, that ben to me my lyves lyght

And saveour, as doun in this world here,

Out of this toune helpe me thurgh your myght,

Syn that ye wole nat ben my tresorere;

For I am shave as nye as any frere.

But yet I pray unto your curtesye:

Beth hevy agen, or elles moote I dye!

Lenvoy de Chaucer

O conquerour of Brutes Albyon,

Which that by lyne and free eleccion

Been verray kyng, this song to yow I sende;

And ye, that mowen alle oure harmes amende,

Have mynde upon my supplicacion!

A marvelous antique coin purse battered for generations, despite supplications that it be full, suspended on an old spliced wooden rosary chain and a brass chain from Latvia (Alchemyshop, again), fastens with a vintage lanyard hook, a collection of Victorian buttons (always more of them than cash) and one evil eye bead to discourage thieves, with a pendant watch fob, most likely Victorian, but indeed quite as battered as the purse. A sweet embroidered basket of posies relieves the dark patina with green details to attract something green to go in there.

The real wonder of it all -- how did I remember Chaucer wrote a poem to his purse, when I often forget where I put my reading glasses?

The Cat Who Walks Alone

HEAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild -- as wild as wild could be -- and they walked in the Wet Wild Woods by their wild lones. But the wildest of all the wild animals was the Cat. He walked by himself, and all places were alike to him.

Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories, 1902.  A wonderful story in its full length.

A marvelous (even if I do say so myself) bit of repoussage and chasing in hefty copper) creates a portrait of the Cat Who Walks Alone. A plaque of fine dimensional handwork has been riveted to a deep cuff. This piece is from my earlier work, made in 1982.

Daily Lessons

I have boxes of ephemera and a box of scraps left from using the ephemera.  So yesterday I began a personal challenge -- a collage a day.  What popped up?  Scraps from a very old grammar, with labeled lessons.  It's funny how the lessons pop up from odd scraps of things, and you are able to put the simplest things you learned very young into a higher context.  For instance, "don't cry over spilt milk" seems to be a teaching from Lord Buddha.

My friend Jenny Fillius of Lady Bug Circus gave me the beautiful hand-made paper cards, three-and a half by two, which add so much to this exercise.  There's a link to her wonderful website over on the right column here.

I recommend this daily effort to anyone out there who feels caught in a creative block.  Grab what comes to hand, clip it, shove it around, and a Lesson may come your way.  Enjoy floating.

Between Wars

The years between WWI and WWII were difficult for all Europe and the US, as well, almost as though one war had not truly ended before the next began. A whole generation of young men, those who had survived trench warfare, mustard gas, artillery, and hand combat, came home wounded in body, mind, and spirit. In France they were the "blesse de guerre," in the US, we sang "Buddy Can You Spare a Dime," in Germany, the Weimar Republic experienced hyperinflation and cultural decadence, culminating with the rise of Adolph Hitler.

This bracelet is made of old, antique, and vintage parts from that time -- a huge British penny with the image of King George, the reluctant king who took the throne abdicated by Prince Edward, his brother, in favor of Wallis Simpson. The main link came to me from Alchemyshop, of Etsy, as a bracelet link, beautifully patinaed to the color of khaki, with a distinctly martial air. To this I have added a segment of gorgeous three-sided chain, also from Latvia, a huge, natural crystal of garnet, very rough with matrix visible, and finished it with a steel clasp. It is 8 inches long.

Different millennium, same old stuff. Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.

Reliquary for A Castaway

Supposed to Be Written by Alexander Selkirk, During His Solitary abode in the Island of Juan Fernandez:

I am monarch of all I survey,
My right there is none to dispute,
From the centre all round to the sea,
I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
Oh solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
Than reign in this horrible place.

William Cowper, 1854

A reliquary for the castaway, made of a sea bean (entada giga), hollowed and filled wiith curiosities and a scrap of antique text (said curiosities are: a bit of egg shell, a bit of nacre from a seashell, skull of tiny mammal from an owl's cast; glass beads, kanji script, a scrap of skeletonized leaf), held fast on waxed died cotton twine, suspending also a mysterious nut that looks like a chicken heart that I can't find anywhere on the net (it originally came on a string of tulsi, most likely from India). For more on the use of natural seeds, beans and such, visit the lovely collection of Ruth J. Smith, online.  You won't find the mystery nut there, however, but if you know what it is, please, please oh please, leave me a comment, otherwise I'll be thinking there's a chicken heart tree out there in India somewhere.