From the monthly archives:
8 days of pure vacaction!!!! I’m packed up, checked the work email one last time and I’m ready for a break. We’ll spend 4 days at the lake in NH, 4 days with my parents in N.C. and then back to NY to recover for a day. NH has me thinking of picnics. More Ebay for vintage photographs, vintage tin picnic baskets and finally, a modern retro inspired basket.
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We have our day jobs and then we have what we do at the end of the day. Afterhours, my friend Karen is a fashion designer, my sister Tate is a filmmaker, my husband a graphic designer. It seems everyone I know is juggling two (or more) parts of themselves. And, increasingly, we’re all proud of each. But, how to present yourself when you do two very different types of work (one corporate, one creative)? Increasingly, I see friends using the old fashioned calling card to represent their creative sideline businesses. These minicards from Moo are fresh.
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So, in my Flickr searches I stumbled upon the Re-Ment Addict Pool and just had to look them up. A japanese minatures company, their website sheds some light on why I’m so drawn to miniatures. “Your world, your memories… in miniature”. It all comes back to memory with me. I’m fascinated with the human desire to remember, to memorialize, with the tendency toward nostalgia. Even if you don’t share my academic interest in memory, the site is flat out cool and worth checking out.
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Via Flickr some delicious miniature rooms to inspire. I can’t quite tell you what fascinates me about mini models of everyday things. My favorite of the lot is the first image which is a model of the kitchen at Monet’s house outside Paris. I was charmed by its yellow cheeriness when I saw it in person, and this model is brings back that sense of wonder at seeing Monet’s talent turned toward his interior.
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The Hutton couch arrived on Saturday at 8:49am via two very nice Room and Board delivery folks. First came the awesome blue seat cushion… the color looked as amazing as we thought it would. 9:04am the couch makes it through the front doors. 9:10am the couch won’t make it though the second doorway (1 inch of extra lovely frame). Horror. However, 9:20am a peppy Room and Board customer service person calls and offers to ship the couch to Dr. Sofa. We google him, note that one of the illustrative examples is OUR couch (relief, we’re not alone) and send it on its way.
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After a long hiatus I’ve made some new abigail cards, inspired by high school science. They are up on etsy, too. While most of my old cards are from wallpaper or gocco‘d, these are professionally printed and usher in a new era of abigail cards. With school and work and the new apartment I’ve been neglecting craft and my love of making things, so I felt such relief at making these and using my creative brain.
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This russian nesting doll pillow from Urban Outfitters.com caught my eye this morning as I was trying to throw out catalouges old mail and generally tidy up. I had a set when I was 5 and loved the nesting aspect. This pillow is fun (the couch will be delivered in 10 DAYS!!!). Not to mention, I’m inspired to make Russian Doll greeting cards … cool, no? And, speaking of cards, I just got a delivery of my first patch of non-gocco cards. EXCITING. I’ll post later on here on and on Esty.
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While I try not to “collect” things (bad feng shui, I hear), I do have a growing pile of snapshots I’ve picked up here and there when my will is weak. Or, if the pile in the flea market is big enough and I have the pleasure of winnowing down to a few really wonderful photos that I simply can’t bear to throw back into the mix.
Needless to say, if I let myself, this would become pure mania (look below, from ebay!). Before I can buy a single additional photo, I need to figure out how to display the photos I already have. Somehow the idea of these photos just sitting in a book or box bothers me — I want to see them, be inspired by old colors, old perspectives. Many little frames — a rotating gallery — pined up plastic sheets.
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I am without words to describe the pleasure that discovering there is a specific ebay for France caused me. Silly that I didn’t know sooner — I’ve read tons of profiles in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, etc on Ebay’s global expansion (into China, and all that) and somehow had never connected the dots…. well they are connected now. I started looking for more scraps like the ones I bought at the Paris Flea Markets and discovered literally hundreds of them on ebay.fr.
This last one is my favorite … as it shows how the scraps would have been used. This seems to be a happy spring card, with multiple signs of good luck pasted onto the pig.
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The reason I’m so into landscapes on ebay is that I’m looking for a painting similar to this one of my mother’s (which was my great-grandmother’s — a souvenir from a trip to Italy). My mother refuses to part with it (with good reason) and so I’m hunting for one of my own! (See below — sorry for the horrid photo and flash marks… its an old snapshot). From my unofficial research on ebay, it seems that these painting must have been realatively common and inexpensive at the time — there seems to be a genre of “tourism” painters — I suppose much like today when you go to Paris or New York and there are people selling you photos and paintings/posters on every corner. I love the idea that there is such continuity of human desire to remember a trip via a painting/photo/poster. As much as we change we stay the same. As I hunt, I’m finding some lovely landscapes that are less in the tourism genre (and of course cost more). Anyone else know more about tourism water colors?
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How fantastic is this photograph? There is a third person standing behind them, making it look like they have 6 arms. Â I love the vitality of the people, and the laughter and good vibes (and ice cream!) nearly jumps off out of the photo. $3 on ebay…Â Â From the material culture perspective, I’m interested in our love affair with photography, cameras, memory, illusion.
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Someone should snap this up!
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T. spotted what turned out to be a “pond boat” or “pond yacht” at 2nd Time Around in Brattleboro, VT — the local antiques/used furniture place in town. It was overpriced and we don’t exactly have room for a yacht of any size in our New York apartment. However, ebay offers many different models at different price points and they are beautiful and a nice touch to any room.
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