When I am Mendocino I sometimes let the day be what it wants to be. Maybe it is the air that dictates this mood and feeling. Maybe this is why so many artists choose to live in this magical place. When I returned from my beach walk, I noticed my neighbor the next street over was having an outdoor sale as the fog was giving way to sunshine. I smelled some textiles from a distance, but stopped in front of a box of museum postcards. I bought this set by the artist Eugene Grasset, a Swiss artist who moved to France and became an illustrator, decorative artist, and printmaker. He was born in 1841 and died in 1917, two years after my mother was born. I think these are charming. I am missing the months of July and November but the rest are represented.
I really love Kandinsky. His forms and colors are so energizing and refreshing. He was introduced to the Impressionists and saw his own vision of art, one of modern expression and ensuing change. I always thought I was not one to favor modern art, but when I see his works I feel his zest and exuberance and want to enter this mood.
This is the art that pulls at my heart every time I see it, “The Shepherd’s Star” by Jules Breton. I think this is pure poetry. And this has been a subject repeated over and over again, but every time I see any of these revealed by various artists, I melt into the feeling of this image.
These are the textiles that were calling to me…..
I love how this piece was so carefully mended. There is a piece of very delicate cotton netting that was sewn to the back to repair a tear on the front. This speaks volumes of love and care about this treasured hand crafted piece. I hope only to care for it in the same manner that it was so tenderly mended.
textiles talk to you like they do to me. there is something so tender about that mending. we can learn so much from it. it creates a conversation with the cloth.
Of all the people I know that work with cloth, you have a sensitivity that is rare and beautiful. The conversations you have with cloth truly are the stories that we as readers love to experience and see. I learn something from you every time I visit spiritcloth. Yes, that mending is so touching and endearing. It is also something one does not see anymore in our throw-away society.
The postcards would have distracted me from fabric too. I have a calendar which is supposed to have all the family birthdays on it, but I think there are some missing links, …… but the full 12 months of the Grasset illustrations are all there. Love those ladies and their gardens.
Judy B
There is a part of me that would love to enter this world of beauty, refinement and elegant dress. I admire women who still maintain this ability to create colors in their gardens that also reflect an elegance and joy in their everyday dress. I tend to wear the clothes that are easy and comfortable. I always toy with the idea of wearing more skirts and dresses with happy colors and feminine touches.
I use to buy cards I liked when I found them and now have a collection!
The fabric is another story…. My parents brought me a whole bag of things like the one you pictured the last time they went to visit my grandmother.
I’ll bet you have a wonderful collection of these cards! I am assuming the grandmother your parents visited lives in Mendocino or near this area. To have things that belonged to your grandmother would be a very special treasure. I cannot imagine a better granddaughter to inherit and respect such heirlooms.
Frame the doily. Or maybe stitch it carefully to a background fabric that would show it off [dark ecru?] and quilt around it. I love to show off boo-boos and mends. [i made a band-aid shaped/color patch for a granddaughter quilt.]
I have a table cloth [g.ma's] turned curtain in my window that keeps getting in the dogs way when she becomes Bad-Assed-Dog, and I keep mending it with other textiles of my grandmothers. Someday it will be quite the ‘crazy quilt.’
I think it’s a Kandinsky calendar my daughter has, we love the colors and shapes too. Grasset may not be a fave of mine, but I always admire the detail and colors of the work and the era.
Yes, I agree that this piece should be shown in some special way since the woman cherished it so much. As jude said, this cloth has a story.
I can see your dog in the window with the curtain, but honestly look how creative she is indirectly forcing this tablecloth turned curtain to become. Crazy dog turns cloth into crazy quilt. I love the visual!
What a treat and what a find. That repair makes me take my mind back to what life might have been like to the woman that used that piece. The gentle light that came through the window, as she sat there and did the repair. Then put a picture frame in front of it, so it wouldn’t be that apparent. Good grief, what fantasies I create for some other lifetime!
I think you and I must have lived in that same era. I see the “painting” you described too, kind of similar to a Vermeer. How nice to let these images immediately come to mind.
What a wonderful day and what wonderful finds!
“These are the textiles that were calling to me…..”
Oh, I can feel the same when I am on flemarkets!