Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, Faye Fuller's Vintage Climbing Costume

Faye Fuller, first woman to summit Mount Rainier,

posing in her climbing costume (1890)

The mountains are calling and I must go.

~John Muir

You will find a blog post about Faye Fuller here.

The Supremes. Vintage Rhinestones, Beads, Glass Pearls, Part 2

At the Experience Music Project, a music museum in Seattle, there is currently a fabulous exhibit for those of you who love vintage glass bits, baubles, rhinestones, pearls, costumes, and the Supremes. It is called Reflections: The Mary Wilson Supreme Legacy Collection.  This is Part 2 about my visit to this exhibit. You will find Part 1 here.

Check out the glass pearls on the Renaissance inspired gown above.  These are big, big teardrop glass pearls. Vintage glass pearls are one of my favorite vintage beads to collect and use, as well as to offer in Bumbershoot Supplies, so I just loved these.  This dress also has some interesting teardrop shaped topaz glass jewel sew ons. They have a slice taken out of the top of the jewel, so the top is like a table.

When I got home, I looked through my personal stash and discovered I have some of these topaz jewel sew ons, although mine are lucite.

I also have some of the same enormous glass pearls in my personal collection, although mine are baroque, and the ones used on the Renaissance dress were smooth.

All in all, I'm considering a return visit because it was so thrilling to see all these beautiful vintage treasures in their natural habitat.  Plus, it was really inspiring to see the designers' visions and how they came to life through the talented artisans who actually constructed these gowns.  

Hello Dolly. Mixed Media Monday

These are my pieces for this week's challenge of Hello Dolly, on Mixed Media Monday.  We watch A LOT of old movies and I knew I wanted to focus on the movie "Hello Dolly".  There are some wonderful hats in that movie. I love vintage hats, and I wanted to incorporate vintage hats into my piece somehow.

Then I remembered the set of 4 ink sketches I purchased at a local antique store...

The sketches were on heavy watercolor paper, pretty much already ATC size.  Not all have hats, but I thought you'd like to see them all, and I encourage you to enlarge them, the facial detail is so lovely.

I embellished them simply, with the goal of enhancing and extending, but keeping true to the spirit of the original artist and his or her subjects.

Women. Wednesday Stamper

This is a creation for the Wednesday Stamper challenge blog, where the theme this week is "women" in honor of Women's History Month in the United States.  This is an artist trading card (ATC) created in memory of my maternal grandmother.  She is the one in the center, in the lovely flapper dress. You probably can't see it, but her outfit is complete with a long strand of pearls and rolled down stocking.  Her family was British and her father served in WWI.  His pet name for her was Poppy (after the Flanders Fields poem). I have a couple of beautiful fabric post cards of his correspondence to her during WWI (see below).  I am so inspired by women I see around me, creating inspiration and history every day, whether or not we hear of them.

The background of this card was a photo of poppies from our garden that I digitally altered.  The photo of her family is placed over the background and I've used stamps in 2 places: for the words and along the side, where I stamped into modeling paste with a swirling stamp, then inked over the top.  Embellished with vintage beads.

Below are two of my great grandfather's post cards to my grandmother from WWI. My mother had these framed some years ago, so there is reflection from the glass over the card, but their beauty can still be seen.

Behind the Scenes. Before and After Vintage Collection Creation

Before...

A new series of all vintage collections.  Each package of inspiration complete with antique post card, vintage trims, beads, pearls, lace, buttons, baubles.  Each one one of a kind. Currently being listing at Bumbershoot Supplies now.  Here, and here, and here... For your art!

After... "We Dare You to Come Down"...

Any Scientist…

I have a lot of glass cabochons. I store some of them in these wonderful vintage jars.

Not only are these jars beautiful and practical, they can be seen in the Sherlock Holmes movie, The Spider Woman! “You called these glass cases ‘cages’. Any Scientist would call them terrariums.” Those are ours!(Okay, technically they aren’t the same ones that were used in the film but they look identical!) Next time you watch the film look for our “terrariums”.

Stars

I just got these vintage white star cabochons in my supplies shop.

Now, they remind me very much of some hair pins in a scene in Sherlock Holmes: The Master Blackmailer. In the big ball scene, one of the girls is twirling around having a great time (one of the few times in this movie where anyone is happy,) and she has a trio of little white stars in her hair.
So I say, why couldn't you do it yourself? Glue some hairpins onto a few of these stars, stick 'em in your hair, and twirl away.
Awesome Edwardian detective not included.

Dress up

So you're going to be Grace Kelly for Halloween. Well you must look the part.
We suggest to you these simple, elegant designs.

Perfect Classic Pearls

Graduated Pearls

P.S.

Playing Grace Kelly's leading man?

These are for you.

Classic Pearl Cufflinks

Mother's Day

I'm sure that being a mother is the most challenging and most rewarding and most wonderful thing to be in the world. I think the only thing that can compare is being a father.

Honoring all mothers everywhere this weekend, we're offering free shipping on any order that includes these vintage mother-and-child cabochons.

These vintage limoges-style cabochons are just breathtaking. The picture is a decal applied to glass and then coated. To me, these cabochons have an aged appearance reminiscent of the beauty you see in very old paintings. They are so detailed, yet so soft. You will find them in 3 sizes at Bumbershoot Designs on Etsy.

Faye Fuller: mountains, bloomers and chocolate

This is Faye Fuller, the woman to climb Mount Rainier (14,441 feet). She made the climb in 1890 when she was 20 years old. This photo comes from a book called "More Than Petticoats. Remarkable Washington Women" by LE Bragg, a book with fascinating stories about women in Pacific Northwest history. The photo shows Faye modeling what she wore to summit "the mountain". At the time, there was quite a lot of discussion about her “immodest” climbing attire. Faye seemed to take it all in stride. Faye's description of the mechanics of climbing Rainier over 100 years ago is mesmerizing. At one point she mentions that she put chocolates in the pockets of her blouse for ready snacks. "I put a good supply of chocolate in those pockets. You can imagine what happened when the sun came out hot on my back." Faye left hairpins at the summit.

You probably can't see it, but in my copy of the photo, if I look very closely, I can almost see earrings in her ears. That got me thinking, what kind of earrings would a proper young lady of 1890 wear to summit Mount Rainier?

Perhaps these?

Alki By and By

Last week we went to Alki Beach to see the place where the first white settlers landed in Seattle, intending to establish their community. It was 1851, November, in the middle of a torrential downpour when the party came ashore, only to find one building with 4 walls and no roof for the two dozen men, women and children. Mary Ann Denny sat down on a log with her two young daughers and infant son and cried.

"Alki" is a Chinook trading jargon word meaning "by and by" or "eventually". The settlers called this place "New York Alki", capturing their dreams in the name of their new community.

You can see from this photo that the central core of Seattle is not at Alki Beach. If you look closely, you will see the Space Needle peeking out from behind Duwamish Head, the land that is curving out on the right side of the photo. It turns out that the original party spent only 4 months living at Alki Beach before they decided to move across the bay to the area we now know as Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle.

Driving down the road a couple of miles to Duwamish Head, you get these sorts of views (see the Space Needle on the far left of the first photo):

We had a beautiful day for our visit, dramatically different from what the original Seattle pioneers experienced. Warm and cosy in the Alki Bakery, eating raspberry coconut muffins and drinking tea, gazing out on sunny Alki Beach, we read first hand accounts of the original settlement, and reflected on the spirit of Seattle's founders and just how much the city has grown and changed since then.

The sinful seamstress

I've been reading a lot of Seattle and Pacific Northwest history recently, and one thing I am really struck by is how prominently women figure in it. I don't even have to go digging to get at the women's history, it's readily available and included in the books I've found.

The title of this post is directly taken from a chapter in J Kingston Pierce's book, "Eccentric Seattle", one of the books I've enjoyed recently. He is referring to German immigrant Dorothea Georgine Emilie Ohben, known in Seattle as Lou Graham. From all I have read, Seattle was a pretty crazy place, well into the 1930's at least, a real frontier town, with all that you might expect from a frontier town. When Lou arrived in 1889, it was shortly after a series of reforms had (temporarily) closed all the gambing joints and various vice dens and the city was hurting, since vices paid for much of Seattle's revenue at the time. Lou set up shop in downtown Seattle, at the edge of the then red-light district and soon business was booming. Her business was regarded (at least by some) as a class act, a place for intelligent conversation, and a fine place to meet if you were a representative of Seattle city government (drinks were free to them). Lou paid the city large sums in taxes and fees. She also helped out some prominent Seattle citizens by making loans to them during the terrible country-wide economic depression that began in 1893.


A couple of tidbits about Lou: 1) Pierce notes that she loved jewelry and particularly loved diamonds. She even had a pair of gold garters in which diamonds were embedded. 2) As necessary, her girls described their occupation as "seamstress". The sparkly button bracelet shown above came from reflecting on these two tidbits.

Obviously I don't condone the activities in which Lou was engaged, but I find it interesting to think about her contributions to the growth of Seattle, and I wonder about her as a person and how and why she ended up where she did, doing what she did. By the way, Lou's original establishment still stands in downtown Seattle - it is now the Washington Court Building.

The bluest skies are in Seattle

The bluest skies you've ever seen are in Seattle.

And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle.

Like a beautiful child growing up free and wild,

Full of hopes and full of fears,

Full of laughter full of tears,

Full of dreams to last the years in Seattle, in Seattle.


Recognize that song? It is the theme song to the TV series "Here Come the Brides" that ran from 1968 to 1970 on ABC. The series was based on a piece of Seattle history: Asa Mercer's efforts to secure brides in the east for eligible Seattle bachelors. According to J Kingston Pierce's book, "Eccentric Seattle", the original party of white settlers arriving in Seattle in 1851 were evenly divided between men and women but after about 10 years, as the number increased to 200 or so, men outnumbered women about 9:1. Asa set out to solve Seattle's "woman problem". It turns out it was not an easy task to convince unmarried women to leave their homes and make the journey to the Pacific Northwest. Asa's first trip to the east resulted in 11 women returning to Seattle with him and his second trip, right at the time of Lincoln's assassination, resulted in 34 new recruits (he had planned for 500). These are "the Mercer Girls", upon whom the TV series was based.

Creativity is a funny thing. It's the first line of the song above that gave me the inspiration for this bracelet:


The song got me reflecting on whether or not the bluest skies really are in Seattle. I'm betting there are lots of places with amazing skies, but what I do know is that after weeks and weeks of rain, when the sun comes out, the sky does look pretty blue! (Check out the photo in the previous post...) It's all relative, I guess.