19th Century Linen Tags

Since today is Presidents Day and tomorrow is George Washington's birthday, I thought I'd share this interesting piece of ephemera. It's a tag that was sewn onto a bolt of cloth sometime between 1846 and the Civil War. One can still see where the corners were sewn to the fabric. This piece is a fine example for explaining the nature of my collection of antique ephemera. Certainly this tag was never meant to be saved, and yet, perhaps out of a sense of patriotism, it was. Would you ever consider saving the tags from the clothes or accessories you buy? Maybe your would if they were beautifully designed.

Incidentally, I looked up Washington Mills and was heartened to discover that the original buildings still exist and are now a stylish apartment complex.

And now I will make a segue from the Washington Mills to my collection of other linen tags. Remember that in the early part of the 19th century, Americans especially desired cloth from Britain, which was exporting both fabric and fashion to the United States. With the exception of the first Swiss tag, I think all the other linen tags are from English and Irish exports.

With the exception of the last tag, these are all approximately 2" x 3". Below are larger tags, brightly gilded.

6.875" wide

9" wide

Have you seen any labels lately that you'd want to save for future generations?

.

My Sandblasted Glass

Back in the 1980s, a quarter of my income was derived from sandblasting window and door designs. The current owner of the glass shown above, Katie Pemble, was kind enough to allow a photo session of my very first door. For a number of years after this door, I had steady glass work, all by word-of-mouth.

My clients were uniformly interesting people and I had my share of unusual requests — from the lady who wanted a door featuring her pet peacock, to the psychologist who wanted a window depicting the brain as a tree, to the gentleman who was enamored of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and wanted a 12-ft. mirror of seagulls — and I pleased them all. After the initial meeting, I'd usually provide a client with a tissue of four or five designs.

Kemerer Museum  |  Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Eventually I started working with flashed glass — I was inspired by beautiful pieces like this Bohemian presentation cup that I saw on a visit to the Kemerer Museum in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Here's one of my own designs on flashed glass, a piece I call The Pointer. Below is what the same pane of glass looks like if viewed from the side:

Flashed glass is usually clear glass with another color "flashed" onto it in the glassblowing process. Using a frisket, the design is sandblasted away to reveal clear (and at that point, frosted) glass. Notice in my cross section that the orange is a little thicker on the bottom, or right-hand side. That makes the color a little deeper, and in fact The Pointer glass is a gradient of color.

Because certain colors of glass (like red) were so expensive, flashed glass was developed to save money. The flashed glass appears as rich to the eye as if it were a solid pane of color, and so the price of colored glass could be greatly reduced. Ironically, flashed glass is rare today, and more expensive than solid colored glass.

This stained glass Christmas cover for the Floridian magazine was a collaboration between Geri Willingham and I. The magazine's logo is etched out of the glass and Geri included clear marbles as bubbles. Sadly, this glass image didn't print well because the photo editors, who had lots of fancy new equipment, could not believe that natural sunlight is still the most effective way to photograph stained glass.

In a moment of great serendipity, my brother and I came across a full door of pressed glass, a detail of which is shown here. I don't know how old it is, but it's what would have been used at one time as an office door. The pattern looks like an M. C. Escher design, doesn't it?

I reconfigured the pressed glass to make a window for myself, and I incorporated flashed glass in the border. In this case, the flashed glass is blue on yellow. The interior design is a copy of a window in an Oxford College dining hall.

Each of the border's flashed glass flowers represents an aspect of my own life. The flower above is a Florida orange blossom.

Today I sandblast small pieces of glass for my own pleasure. Sandblasting glass is not without its hazards. As the sand hits the glass, it creates a dust of glass (silica) so fine that the glass can be ingested through skin pores. Needless to say, every inch of my body was always carefully covered, and I always wore goggles and a respirator. All that layering and the humid Florida weather would cause my goggles to eventually fog up, so I relied on my brother to sight where frisketed areas needed additional sandblasting. For that reason, all of my sandblasting has certainly been a collaborative effort.

.

Early Valentines

Printed valentines became popular in the United States in the 1840s, and the early ones were engraved and hand painted. Today I'll be sharing seven cards from my collection that date from that early period. I've heard dealers refer to these cards, not as valentines, but as "sentiment cards."

If you were to see these cards in person, you would notice that the card stock is heavier and whiter than most other paper of the time, and has a gloss finish. That's because the 1840s saw advancements in papermaking which included the incorporation of white lead into the paper. The result was a luster not unlike fine china. Cards like these, and especially the first of the next three, are sometimes referred to as "porcelain cards."

.

19th Century Lucky Strike Tin

 

This lithographed tin from my collection is in exceptionally clean condition. It probably dates between 1875-1885.

The front reads, "Lucky Strike Cut Plug, Fragrant & Delicious."

The back has a gold fan with the words, "No. 60, Second. Dist., State of Va."

The rest of the back reads, "NOTICE. - The Manufacturers of this Tobacco have complied with all requirements of law. Every person is cautioned under penalties of law not to use this package for tobacco again."

.

The Art of Mati Klarwein

click to enlarge each of the five paintings

Mati Klarwein (1932-2002) was born of Jewish parents in pre-war Germany. The family immigrated to Palestine in 1934 and Mati grew up there very much as an outsider. He often used the name Abdul Mati Klarwein. He traveled and worked around the world, from France to the United States, from Africa to South America, and from Spain to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Morocco and India. Klarwein's early paintings have a decidedly psychedelic look, while his later paintings are surreal and dream-like.

 

These images are all from a rich, 1983 paperback by Mati Klarwein, entitled Inscapes.

Klarwein's name never became a household word, and yet if you were alive and kicking in the 1960s and 1970s, you probably would have been familiar with his work. Carlos Santana used Annunciation, the painting below, as the cover of his all-time best-selling Abraxas album.

matiklarweinart.com

Mati Klarwein, photographed by Bettina Rheims

.

Greek Keys No. 3

Photo by Barbara and René Stoeltie, from Irish Georgian, Herbert Ypma, 1998.

This beautiful space was designed in 1742 by Richard Castle, one of Ireland's greatest architects. It's central to Russborough House, a Palladian treasure and home to the first Earl of Milltown. The fanlight serves to bring light to upper floor bedrooms.

I've recreated these Greek keys, which all originated as mosaics. Of course, they would not necessarily have been in these colors.

Eric Cohler Design  |  leejofa.com

History of Art  |  H. W. Janson, 1962

A detail of a Greek vase from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  H. W. Janson describes this as "the oldest characteristically Greek style in the fine arts, the so-called Geometric." It's 8th century B. C., which means that it was created close to the founding of the Olympic Games.

Skulls Wine, A Different Label

I recently had a festive dinner at Sandy and Greg's, with neighbors of theirs, Chris and Gary. Gary and Chris brought the main course and the second hit of the evening, an Australian red wine called Skulls. This is what Skulls looks like from the front ...

... and this is the Skulls bottle from the back.

Now take a closer look at the label.

Click to enlarge.

This ingenious drawing is by Istvan Orosz (b.1951), a Hungarian graphic designer, poster artist and film director. Orosz is very interested in illusions, and in particular, anamorphosis, which Wikipedia defines as "a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image." Below is an anamorph by Istvan Orosz.

The Ambassadors  |  Holbein  |  Phaidon, 1976

from sccart.blogspot.com

Another prime example of anamorphosis is Hans Holbein's 1533 painting, The Ambassadors, with its famous foreground skull. So there you have it, two skull illusions in one posting.

"And what about the wine?" you ask. It was good, but I'll let Robert Parker's Wine Advocate describe it: "The 2007 Skulls Red Wine is a blend of 60% Grenache and 40% Mataro raised in stainless steel. Dark ruby-colored, it offers up an expressive bouquet of garrigue, forest floor, spice box and cherry. Forward, medium-bodied and friendly, this savory effort will drink well over the next six years."