My Collections: Vintage Christmas Ornaments–The Stripes

Posted on January 11, 2010
Filed Under christmas, collections, me and my brain, nostalgia, photography | 1 Comment

While taking down our Christmas tree this past weekend, I decided to take pictures of my vintage ornaments before putting them away. Over the next several days (weeks?) I’ll be posting pictures and any info I feel like adding about my collection of vintage Christmas ornaments. I won’t post every single ornament, but I’ll include quite a few of them. I also hope to post more about my much bigger collection of vintage Christmas postcards, and I may get into some of my other collections and treasures as well (socks, books, music). But I’m starting off with what gave me the idea–the ornaments.

In general, I collect what I like. I’m not looking for the most valuable items or necessarily for a particular manufacturer or artist. Instead, I’m looking for what appeals to me–and in the case of vintage ornaments, they have to be genuinely old, not reproductions. I think most of my vintage ornaments are from the 1930s-1950s. Perhaps someone with a lot of knowledge in this area will come upon these posts and tell me more about what I’ve got (and also let me know if I have any misinformation).

Just because, I’ll start with the stripes. Some of these are a bit newer–50s and 60s. I’ll share some older ones in future posts. The clear–or unsilvered–ones may be from the 40s. The story goes that during WWII metals were needed for the war effort, so Christmas ornaments produced during this time were made with unsilvered glass.

This next one seems older. The glass is heavier and sort of frosted and it shows a different sort of wear.

This next one also seems older to me. It’s a bit smaller than many, and something about the glass and the way it’s worn makes me think it’s older.

I love the colors of the one below.

Dolores Del Rio

Posted on January 9, 2010
Filed Under art, films, nostalgia, photography, the telly | 2 Comments

Watching Flying Down to Rio on TCM, I was moved to check out more about the film’s star, Dolores Del Rio. In my search, I came across some strange, wonderful, and sometimes creepy images.

(Photographer for the above two images: Slim Aarons)

A restyled doll by Juan Albuerne

And a beautiful one…

And a fabulous one…

Just a couple things I thought I’d share on a Saturday

Posted on October 10, 2009
Filed Under photography, sports in general, wide world of vacation | 2 Comments

Click on the links.

Amazing:
The Berlin Reunion
Photos
Video

Funny:
I’ve Seen My Share of Bodies (don’t worry–it’s not that inappropriate!)

For those who come looking for the latest Rainer photos…

Posted on August 30, 2009
Filed Under Blather, das kiddo, family, photography | 2 Comments

Rainey in the swing

Playing with the cow toy

Rainey, yo

Why we love Suki, part 3876559

Posted on April 22, 2009
Filed Under Blather, family, photography, the pusses, this old house | Leave a Comment

Suki

There’s nothing like the ways of a cat to make you stop what you’re doing, forget about stress and tasks, and just say “tee hee!” and be happy. I recently went through a lot of papers and files in my office and produced 5+ bags of recycling. In the midst of moving furniture out of the office, we discovered Suki as you see her here. Never to be deterred from perching in the sun’s rays, and as much a fan of little nesting places as the next cat, she found that this particular bag of recycling would do quite nicely, thank you.

A Visual Montage

Posted on April 22, 2009
Filed Under Blather, craft, daytripping, friends, knitting, photography | 3 Comments

I promised a picture of the little hat I knit over the weekend, so here it is!

Knit hat

And while I’m at it, here are a few others to catch you up on the last several months.

Union Square, New York January in New York’s Union Square

doorway, Portsmouth
A Doorway in Portsmouth, NH

And the obligatory picture of a cute baby, Lydia, who we finally met over the weekend.

Lydia and John

sundial

Posted on July 17, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, photography, the 'hood | 2 Comments

This one was taken on my Holga (so it’s 120 film). It’s a double exposure, and it’s from my first crack at developing my own 120 film.

More proof that Amy is among the best EVER

Posted on July 14, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, friends, photography, the interweb | 6 Comments

So dear pal Amy has been tagging some of my flickr photos to Bostonist, which has put them in consideration for photo of the day… and today the first photo in my previous post got the nod! Thanks so much, Amy my star!

I’ll have more for you soon, I promise!

So I owe you…

Posted on July 8, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, family, photography, wide world of vacation | 1 Comment

I owe you all four pictures–I promised one a day!

I mentioned that I had more pictures of the Rose Kennedy Greenway at twilight to share. Here they are.

These are coming to you all in one batch because we were away for the 4th of July weekend. We visited Simon, Frances, and Eva in Saratoga Springs. Simon and Frances teach at a summer dance program there, and as it’s only about four hours from here and as I lived there during college, it’s always a good place for us to get together. They are staying in a nicely fixed-up old house this year with some other dancers who are teaching in the program. We stayed with them and just had a good time relaxing and catching up.

On the way home from Saratoga Springs we made two previously unplanned stops. For lunch we decided to find somewhere to eat in Western Mass. We ended up in Great Barrington where we had very tasty organic-sourdough-wood-fired-gourmet pizza. Yeah, it was good. Then as we neared 495, inspired by the cool way the place we’d stayed in Saratoga Springs had been fixed up, I asked Ez if he wanted to stop at IKEA for some organizational goodies. He agreed, and we hit the joint around 6:30-ish, so it wasn’t too crowded (though it was ridiculously messy–IKEA has such a tidy aesthetic that it just kinda seems completely incongruous that their shoppers would leave potato chip packages and empty soda cans on displays). We found many practical and relatively inexpensive items for our little home improvement project–which is basically a home organization project. It was a successful tangent!

Yesterday the darkroom at MassArt was closed, but today I spent several hours there. The prints from today are still drying, but here’s one from last week.

Creation

Posted on July 3, 2008
Filed Under Blather, art, music, photography | 4 Comments

http://tercat.muxtape.com/

I made you a mix. That’s it up there. It’s pretty random.

More photos from this little shoot to come.

keep looking »

Song of the Day

The Essex Green-Sorry River

Photos

My Photos on Flickr

The Knitting Turnip

On My Needles

Rhapsody in Tweed cabled pullover for Ezra! using Tahki Donegal Tweed in Forest, from Fall 2004 Interweave Knits. I've just picked this one up again, so it's moving up in the queue!

Sweater with Cable Patterns pullover using Araucania Nature Wool Chunky in Mauve, from Rebecca Magazine Number 28

Heather Pullover using Classic Elite Wings in Larkspur, from Rowan’s A Season’s Tale... This needs the knit doctor. I'm going to have to frog back a little bit and redo the shoulder area. Long story.

Hush Pullover using Jo Sharp DK wool in Wine, from Rowan’s Calmer Collection

More scoop on my knitting endeavors can be found at my home on Ravelry (clicky here).

the shy turnip

My Collections: Vintage Christmas Ornaments–The Stripes

Dolores Del Rio

Just a couple things I thought I’d share on a Saturday

For those who come looking for the latest Rainer photos…

Why we love Suki, part 3876559

A Visual Montage

sundial

More proof that Amy is among the best EVER

So I owe you…

Creation

Song of the Day

Photos

The Knitting Turnip

On My Needles

Links

Another place or two to find me

Everything Else

Flickr

friends

music

Recent Reads

Recently

Categories

Archives