Vintage graphics

I have been noting often on my blog the nice examples of decor trends. The vintage graphics, especially those in the 18/19th century style have been going strong for a long time. But since most of my clients are men, I do not actually receive many orders that bring Shabby Chic to mind.

A Festoon rather than Garland...

However, this one, a current order - still hanging on the wall of the Studio - is the quintessential Restoration Graphic. 

For a background a was able to use a photograph of textured faux wall painting.
The overall effect is very "aromatic" and almost architectural.










As for my personal finds - I enjoy few gorgeous pre-war bowls.
The light salmon pink resembles the popular in the US depression glass.
But the strict, modernist cut pattern suggests that this was simply a nice quality cast glassware of the thirties.

I cannot wait to mix it with my Grand-mother's (now inherited by my Mom) cast round large vase of the same colour.
Also a treasured pre-war artifact.

This is Colette.

And this is her book.







 







This is the original front cover of 1st edition Claudine a l'école, 1900, published in Paris by Société d'Editions Littéraires & Artistiques, Librairie Paul Ollendorff, Chaussée d'Antin. And this cover sucks. Claudine looks like a tramp.

But that was still belle époque (shabby chic incarnated) and Claudine even at 15 was good looking and sexy. She was falling in love easily - with women and the sky did not fall.

I was about 12, the book belonged to my mother and I've  read it five times over in one summer (of course).

The edition I read was plain-covered (thanks God).
I read several from the Collette series but my favourite will remain the first one, Claudine à l'école.
I still like the memory of pleasure reading the well crafted narrative and a little erotic thrill coming from the story. The sun was always up, the linen were all white, the living was slow.
As if the belle époque summer was never ending.
When you look at it - lesbian relationships in literature ca 1900 ?!?!


Collette was a revolutionary.  Once scandalist, or controversial at best she died revered at 81, the officer of the highest honours, including Legion of Honour, received the state funeral and is interred at Pearle La Chaise cemetery, where so many of the stars live.

Canada Day and the Shabby Chic enrichment

Yes, of course I am an avid collector of old, used, reclaimed objects, yet I rarely buy them.
Somehow, many of those objects just find me, by way of being a gift or sometimes being just a found object.

Today I have fallen victim of a temptation and I have made a purchased acquisition, which will become a treasured member among my shabby chic collectibles (that include books, mannequins, china etc etc)
The statue is about 12 inch tall and really shows the passing of time. I do not know whether someone was removing the surface paint or it just came off.
Perhaps it is the surface wear that gives it charm, makes it intricate and feeling wanted.
As JP Sartre said, ----> "from the distance like that it doesn't do any harm, you'd almost let let yourself be caught in it...."

I am photographing it still at the studio, with an atmospheric drop-back my reproductions of stylish 19th century watercolours.
The statue of Our Lady will achieve a prominent place atop a vintage-looking sconce shelf, not far from the statue of Buddha.

I love images of women and various messages and other functions their portrayals were fulfilling. That is always of great interest to me.

Since it is Canada Day weekend I am analysing again the symbols of feminine divinity and taking another close look at the image of our Monarch on the face of our most circulated banknote, the Twenty.

I have lived in Canada for only 30 years now and the role of the Monarchy and that of the Queen of England as our monarch is not completely clear to me.
Well, I am patient, not everything has to be clear in merely 3 decades.

I am noticing that as I get older so does the venerable Monarch. That linear relationship and the image's omnipresence made me even more comfortable with the not fully understood political idea.
Hmmm, I don't know, but it is great...

Dundee Marmelade

Vintage labels and labelled food containers are soooo trendy.
Here is some goodies I have scouted on the internet, unspeakably gorgeous stuff:
Here is the orange marmalade jar which I have spotted in some blogs, obviously hot collectible.












Equally amazing are those meat pots.
I have not seen those before and they are surely a great.
It's not quite obvious how those pots were sealed - by wax? Anyone knows?

Antique meat pots (Pinecrest)

I guess this pic may explain the many ways of sealing a jar...

This image comes from an amazing site that tells all about jars, lids, bottles and ways of naming and identifying them: http://www.sha.org/bottle/food.htm#Canning/Fruit%20Jars

This site is manned by the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA).

Antique glass jars with lids

Someone's blitz marmalade recipe, she (he) said:
Marmalade is one of the easiest things to make. I’ve made.
Sour Apple
Orange and Lime
Butternut Squash and Chilli
Lemon
Cinnamon and Ginger

Shabby chic - the Course Syllabus

Somethng ROSY*
trouvais.com

This passion is almost as deep as the one that bound Frost with Nixon.
I am about to make a serious personal disclosure:
I know - it's women's porn - but it is irresistible.
Especially when the radio propaganda and the grimy grayness outside is trying to convince us that  world is in shambles and we head for the poorhouse because of what Greece and now Cyprus is doing to the world of international finance.

For about a year I visit those gorgeous, fun, nostalgic, entertaining blogs devoted to staging, photography, home decorating, vintage and antique decorating, textiles, patterns, silly but sometimes seriously marketable stuff.

It is a Colour Therapy of sort in white, rosy, and rustic.

The blogs are mostly edited by women, many sell their products at Etsy, some own Antique dealership operations, some are professional photographers and others just enthusiasts of Fine Living in a certain vintage/rustic style.
There's got to be a fair load of nostalgia. In reality the danger of kitsch that nostalgia tends to evoke or demand is there. That very danger and the balance make styling sooo much fun...

While scouting over German, Polish, UK and above all - the Scandinavian blogs, I did some detective work to sort out what gets on IN. There are certain characteristic of the style, including:

• combing and mixing vintage or rustic looking objects with art in modern or older architecture
• using textiles that suggest artfulness or craft
• creating atmospheric scenarios within populated space
• promoting found objects, originality, art and style

Here are the "obligatory" accessories that are must-have among blog-loving hive.
See if you have it, if you really speak the lingo, if you belong.
Judging by my research some of the essential props of the Shabby Chic, Rustic, Vintage etc are:

http://theoldpaintedcottage.blogspot.ca

Tureen - une soupière, a soup vase, preferably white.
I don't know why, this is an absolute pre-requisite,
they ALL have it and broadcast it very adamantly;
During my times it was used only during great occasions and it was always present at organized vacations - in resort, when several people dined at the same time.

Manneqins
http://miss-elvin.blogspot.ca/

Mannequin - this too, you do not belong if you don't have one, I was a bit nervous because the item did not strike me as a common item, but probably, like a secret masonic sign - you either have it, or you just don't make it. 
 like here  

 Other MUST-Haves follow:

Old Armoires
http://lantlif.blogspot.ca/

Old books with gilded spines
http://theswenglishhome.blogspot.ca/

Rustic wood
http://madeinpersbo.blogspot.ca/

White dinnerware
http://g-style-g-style.blogspot.ca/

Cafe au lait bowl
http://lillablanka.blogspot.ca/

Reclaimed chandelier
http://lillablanka.blogspot.ca/

Angels, folk art
http://storaochsmadrommar.blogspot.ca/

Old cupboards with white dinnerware
http://madamepetite.blogspot.se

Strategically positioned B&W photography
http://franciskasvakreverden.blogspot.ca/

Oh, in Swedish interior decor lore, there is one more item that is distinctly and firmly required:
Antique, painted Portrait of the Ancestor, 
an important proof of noble protoplast tissue...

Portrait of an Ancestor
http://princessgreeneye.blogspot.ca/
(could be unframed but definitely better in some
gilded frame)

 

http://minlillaveranda.blogspot.ca/

Hmmm, when you look closely it almost appears that the two portraits below are of a same man, he just turned the other way for the second sitting...

That's the beauty of a trend, a fashion - it makes us look so much alike...

Butterfly collections
http://g-style-g-style.blogspot.ca/

This lady, who posted just a drawn facsimile of the "mandatory butterfly collection" must be congratulated for her sense of good taste.





Oh no, I almost forgot, most IMPORTANTLY:

• CATS - the more you have, the more seasoned your position...
• lots of things with French writing...
• Something French, like Eiffel Tower
• and something rosy...
  

* Note: The amount of rosiness in your styling is a variant that will determine whether you are an American stylist of Norther European. The Scandinavians dispense with the rosy, but the English don't. The Americans love it...



I have tried to see if I "measure up, my realization was powerful - I think that with age, before I knew it I have started to speak the lingo and I even do own a white Tureen!
I speak PROSE!

The Shabby chic essentials

ÅKERKULLA Fabric - IKEA

Fabric pattern that fits all my most fun graphic/vintage interior decorating blogs.
The filigree pattern befitting the weather patterns of today... 

I could easily imagine an wonderful window film application inspired by this. Or a vinyl cutout vinyl application. I don't want to think of weeding this.....
Such inspirations have produced some nice effects in my practice, see here - my 8 Jan 2012 post.

Lion anyone? (something to beat the winter grays....)
Happy patterns and many more from one of my fav blog's: printpattern.blogspot.ca

Victoria Johnson

Discovery of Shabby Chic and Reclaimed

Somewhere in the older posts I have confessed that for a while I was suspecting myself of being a deviant, trying to isolate, building a suspicious museum of myself, filled with found or given objects and trying to evoke the climate of nostalgia for the era gone by...
But then - here is to the Internet - I noticed that it is not only me. I felt consoled and relieved.
I felt like poor Mr. Jourdain form The Bourgeois Gentleman who upon learning that he speak in prose and has been doing so for a long time feels adequate and so much closer to being an aristocrat!

So I  have been speaking Shabby Chic and Rustic and Reclaimed and all this without knowing it!
I am so relieved...




Here is some good Mr. Lully, who even set some music to Moliere's Le Bourgeois gentilhomme just to set us in a mood of French style...