A&S Sunday
So once a month we hold an A&S Sunday at our apartment. Today's was pretty good. House cleaned up fairly easily, I made chocolate cupcakes and lasagne, took some new people fabric shopping at Len's Mills, pulled out a mass of pretty portrait/fabric/costuming books, looked at fabric from our stash and finished off by critiquing Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nice time. And not too cold driving the folks home.
I told two of the girls I would help fit bodices for them Tuesday night at the meeting. One picked up some buttery yellow brocade; the other some pinky-silver brocade with gold patches. Both fabrics have potential. The ladies tried on my Venetian dresses previously and like 'em, and the essential style is not too difficult for a first dress.
Albrecht updated his YouTube Hallowe'en Mix (only slightly cheesy) and we used it to help us clean house earlier. I can do without the Monster Mash but I can't go without Bark at the Moon.
I've been eyeing a couple of my silk sarees for a potential new Venetian ensemble. One is a dark bluish rose, the other is a lighter rose with gold tones. We're not saying PINK here; rather something fairly restrained. Gotta think about it some more. But mayme Mama will have a new bag (warning: pun on obscure 80's pop song. Think City TV).
Have a scroll to do for next Saturday. Need to look at my research again and get inspired.
One thing I tried to express to the ladies today was the incredible continuity in fabric motifs from the Coptic Christian finds to the present. In my books are many beautiful examples of repeating, complex motifs in silk and linen-based brocades, and the same styles and pleasing shapes show up again and again across Europe and Asia for over 1700 years and probably longer. There are regional and religious differences, and sometimes colour vogues, but overall I am more struck by the consistencies.
The tree-of-life emblem is probably the most well-known repeat in fabric brocades, but there is a remarkable example in Great Italian Textiles of a dark purpley-red brocade with an abstracted leaf-like repeat that is very modern in feel. It's amazing it survived but it is truly beautiful. Looking at it few people would say it was a renaissance pattern, as the motifs are angled/flying instead of the straight x-y. I sure hope the dating is right.
One thing I like about the Arts and Crafts movement is that it remembered but lightened certain artifacts of renaissance and Egyptian design and other periods. I don't feel that Arts and Crafts is dilute, and I love the beautiful wedding of less-popular metals, enamel and semi-precious stones in the jewellery as well as some truly airy wallpapers created during that era. There is an air of delicacy mixed with practicality.
Over time I have come to believe that with age and experience the mind develops the formulae necessary to predict or identify certain small personal or family events. There are many small cues we receive or perceive and cannot immediately, consciously interpret but do not throw out just the same. A "vision" of a family member's onset of final illness when I didn't know he was going to hospital, a pregnancy identified over a distance of thousands of miles for someone I barely knew, prediction of jury duty for another family member, confirmed the following week, moments of real life. Nothing useful of course, just interesting.
There was a sidewalk sale at the local mall this weekend. Some better vendors lately, including a hermit crab stall (all the shells painted in bright patterns with acrylic paint) and more interestingly to me a hydrostone sculpter who made plaques and shapes with bas-relief renditions of Egyptian and Aztec/Mayan art. Some lovely pieces. Hydrostone is the kind of material that bongs when you rap it. We talked to him about Fair November, a craft sale normally held at the University of Guelph in November, and mentioned to him the Toronto store (don't know if it still exists) called Urban Archaeology. That store tended towards more Greco-Roman designs along with some Gothic-y stuff.
I told two of the girls I would help fit bodices for them Tuesday night at the meeting. One picked up some buttery yellow brocade; the other some pinky-silver brocade with gold patches. Both fabrics have potential. The ladies tried on my Venetian dresses previously and like 'em, and the essential style is not too difficult for a first dress.
Albrecht updated his YouTube Hallowe'en Mix (only slightly cheesy) and we used it to help us clean house earlier. I can do without the Monster Mash but I can't go without Bark at the Moon.
I've been eyeing a couple of my silk sarees for a potential new Venetian ensemble. One is a dark bluish rose, the other is a lighter rose with gold tones. We're not saying PINK here; rather something fairly restrained. Gotta think about it some more. But mayme Mama will have a new bag (warning: pun on obscure 80's pop song. Think City TV).
Have a scroll to do for next Saturday. Need to look at my research again and get inspired.
One thing I tried to express to the ladies today was the incredible continuity in fabric motifs from the Coptic Christian finds to the present. In my books are many beautiful examples of repeating, complex motifs in silk and linen-based brocades, and the same styles and pleasing shapes show up again and again across Europe and Asia for over 1700 years and probably longer. There are regional and religious differences, and sometimes colour vogues, but overall I am more struck by the consistencies.
The tree-of-life emblem is probably the most well-known repeat in fabric brocades, but there is a remarkable example in Great Italian Textiles of a dark purpley-red brocade with an abstracted leaf-like repeat that is very modern in feel. It's amazing it survived but it is truly beautiful. Looking at it few people would say it was a renaissance pattern, as the motifs are angled/flying instead of the straight x-y. I sure hope the dating is right.
One thing I like about the Arts and Crafts movement is that it remembered but lightened certain artifacts of renaissance and Egyptian design and other periods. I don't feel that Arts and Crafts is dilute, and I love the beautiful wedding of less-popular metals, enamel and semi-precious stones in the jewellery as well as some truly airy wallpapers created during that era. There is an air of delicacy mixed with practicality.
Over time I have come to believe that with age and experience the mind develops the formulae necessary to predict or identify certain small personal or family events. There are many small cues we receive or perceive and cannot immediately, consciously interpret but do not throw out just the same. A "vision" of a family member's onset of final illness when I didn't know he was going to hospital, a pregnancy identified over a distance of thousands of miles for someone I barely knew, prediction of jury duty for another family member, confirmed the following week, moments of real life. Nothing useful of course, just interesting.
There was a sidewalk sale at the local mall this weekend. Some better vendors lately, including a hermit crab stall (all the shells painted in bright patterns with acrylic paint) and more interestingly to me a hydrostone sculpter who made plaques and shapes with bas-relief renditions of Egyptian and Aztec/Mayan art. Some lovely pieces. Hydrostone is the kind of material that bongs when you rap it. We talked to him about Fair November, a craft sale normally held at the University of Guelph in November, and mentioned to him the Toronto store (don't know if it still exists) called Urban Archaeology. That store tended towards more Greco-Roman designs along with some Gothic-y stuff.