Curtains

This One Is For My Mom


I have a love/hate relationship with curtains. To begin with, I love to look out windows and see the view. I love to watch the sunlight move across the floor of a room as the daylight changes. I love light streaming into a room, in the daytime, and I love the way the windows become mirrors at night, reflecting back the cheerful images of the warmly lit room. I love the very architecture of the window frames and hate to cover them up with anything at all! And on the other hand, I love the fabrics and laces that are used for curtains. I love the elegant drapes and swags and tassels that go with the truly well dressed window. I love the gauzy billowing mystery that is a lace covered window, coyly revealing only a hint of the view!

Perhaps I could blame it on my mother. When I was growing up we had minimally dressed windows, even though we lived in suburbia and had neighbors who could see into our windows. My mother has never been overly concerned with the "look" of her rooms and windows. Comfort and functionality were the important things. She was into the casual, even bohemian way of living, and curtains were so, well.... like her PARENTS' home! Besides, fancy curtains were expensive! I remember my grandparents GIVING my Mother the curtains for our house because they thought the naked windows were just not okay! So we had curtains, nice simple cotton ones for the most part, but we almost never closed them. The sunlight and the street lights and the moonlight were all free to come in at any time!

My Mother was more inclined to make use of curtains in imaginative ways than conventional ones. I remember one Halloween when I was six and my sister was five, Mom sewed us matching Princess costumes. She made our dresses from beautiful old marroon brocade curtains that she found in the attic. They were much too Victorian for her to EVER use them on her windows, so she blythely cut them up and made them into our princess gowns with lace doilies for collars! We never had such beautiful costumes before or since! I am afraid it set a dangerous precedent, and many times in my teen years I happily cut up old brocade curtains to make my clothes.

And when it came time for me to have my own home, I wrestled with the curtain issue constantly. The practical need for something to cover the window and block the extremes of light and dark, battled with the desire for the open unobstructed view. I usually ended up with a compromise.... minimal coverings in the city apartments as modesty required, and mostly naked windows when living in the rural countryside.

So, you can see that when it comes to deciding on curtains for my Lovely Old Dollhouse, I have had to wrestle with this very old dilemma. Because, even in the dollhouse, I love the way the sunlight pours into a room through an unclothed window! And having worked so hard at MAKING all those window frames, I hardly want to cover them up at all!

Below, you can see the way the front hall looks with the sunlight pouring in.

I am NOT going to put curtains on these windows!

But, recognizing that I would need to have curtains on SOME of the windows, I decided to put in the curtain rods for all the windows, and decide on the curtains later. I used small eye screws and cut "rods" from old metal coat hangers. Here you can see the bathroom window with a rod at middle height in case I decide on cafe curtains here, as well as one at the top.

And I gave the window at the top af the stairs the same double rod treatment in case I decided they needed to be matching windows......... there is something about the stark, bare window that I find very beautiful.

As for the kitchen window, I was going for a striped effect, probably because I remember the curtains in our kitchen when I was growing up were a beautiful yellow, gold, brown and white striped fabric. I could not find anything to match that, but found some woven linen cocktail napkins that make lovely curtains! I hardly had to cut them up at all! And while they mute the sunlight more than I would like, I am going to keep them for now.

The curtains for the Chinoiserie Bedroom were the simplest of all! I had been saving these two small panels of lace for longer than I can remember! The first time I saw them, I said THOSE are going to be curtains in my Dollhouse! I didn't even have to cut them AT ALL! they were EXACTLY the right size for this window! I just LOVE the way the sunlight comes through them!

Here below is a close-up that shows the lovely pattern of the lace. I tell myself that it is perhaps a Tree of Life lace pattern! Perfect for the Tree of Life painted bedroom! I am VERY happy with the way it turned out!

But when it comes to curtains for the Parlor, I am not so sure. This is partly because I actually made a set of lovely green velvet curtains trimmed in gold satin and underlaid with lace gauze curtains when I was working on the dollhouse in my teen years. And I packed them up and have carefully kept them all these years! Here below you can see them, only slightly worse for wear. I think at the time I had in mind the beautiful green velvet curtains made so famous by Scarlett O'Hara.... the same ones she cut up and made into a dress! These looked really elegant against the cream walls of the Parlor back then.

But when I put them into the newly painted GREEN parlor, they didn't look nearly so nice! And they were too short! Hmmmmm.........

Helen isn't sure they will do at all... they are MUCH too faded for her liking!

Oh, did I forget to introduce you to Helen?

It seems that Helen's Great-Uncle passed away recently and left her the old family house. He was one hundred and three years old and never married. He traveled a lot in his younger years, but was pretty much a hermit for the last twenty years or so. NOTHING has been done with the place since HIS mother decorated it AGES ago........

Helen has NO idea what to do with the old place!

She brought her grandaughter Pollyanna to look at it with her. Pollyanna is studying Design and might be able to DO something with the old place! Helen's husband Charles is all in favor of letting Pollyanna take charge. Pollyanna LOVES the idea!

So does her boyfriend, Arthur. He's looking over the fixtures to see how much of a challenge they will be!

The kitchen is a bit primitive..... but Pollyanna is really excited by the old fashioned feeling to the place..... it is SO unspoiled!

Arthur agrees that it could be a great project for her to "practice" on!

But Helen is not sure.... Is it too much of a responsibility?


Charles says everyone needs to make a start somewhere!

And besides, they can't take it on themselves, they live too far away.... they wouldn't want to have to keep coming here just to check on the contractors all the time!

Pollyanna is looking the place over top to bottom.......

Oh MY! LOOK what she found in the attic! That must have belonged to her Great-Great-Great-Grandmother! And it fits her so well!

It's a SIGN! says Helen. This place was just WAITING for you!

(And isn't the dress just Stunning? Sewn by me in my teens and kept all these years.... she'll have to wear it to a costume ball.... !)












I think you're right Charles! We will let her have it!

But I do think SOMETHING is going to have to be done about these curtains. They just look terrible in here!

As I was searching through all my boxes and drawers full of fabric, looking for the perfect cloth to use to make new curtains for the Parlor, I came across a lovely silk scarf given to me by my Mother. She had been shopping at a local thrift store and saw the scarf and thought I could use it. Now, sometimes one receives gifts from loved ones and at the time of the gift, the reason for it seems less than clear, but one gladly takes the gift because it comes from a loved one. When my Mother gave me the scarf, I was in the process of packing up my house where I had lived for twenty years, accumulating waaaayyy too much stuff! I was holding yard sales, carting things to the dump and GIVING away tons of stuff. I had bureaus and bins and boxes full of cloth scraps, (and still do:)) what could I possibly need MORE cloth for? But she was right. It was very pretty with the irridescent silk and gold thread embroidery. So I added it to my boxes and forgot about it. Until I was searching for the perfect cloth for the new curtains.



Here below, you can see this scarf, in all its wrinkled glory, laid against the floor of the parlor. The irridescent redish brown and green is really very striking!

And when I bunched it all up as if it were cut into curtains and tried it for size on the window of the Parlor, I thought the colors tied together beautifully with the green and the red in this room!

Perhaps I HAVE found the perfect cloth for the new curtains!

My only question is how DID my Mother know?











But I AM going to have to do something about that bunched up effect! I don't care for that look at all! Sigh. I think I am going to have to cut up some CLOTHING to make some CURTAINS!

So thank you Mom! Thank you for knowing the cloth I would need before I did. Thank you for teaching me to sew and to fearlessly cut up curtains if they were the material at hand. And thank you for letting the light stream into all our windows! I love you!

P.S. All characters are fictional... and any resemblance to known characters is only SLIGHTLY accidental!

Curtains

Back To The Bases

Or The Tale of The Dragon



Who can remember when they first heard of dragons? Those monstrous, scary, fire-breathing creatures of legend..... maiden snatching, treasure hoarding, terrorizers of the land! It seems they are etched into the very deepest parts of our consciousness, as though they were the residual image of dinosaurs that once preyed upon our first human generations so long ago that the real has become the mythical. EVERYBODY recognizes a dragon when they see one! So it can be no surprise to anyone that they show up in art all through the ages. Here is a simple version I painted when in my twenties..... I was thinking of the Worm Oroborous who swallows his tail......
And throughout the ages, there have been heroes willing to take on the challenge of fighting the dragons that capture maidens and terrorize the land. Below is a medieval illumination of St. George slaying the dragon..... he is by far the most famous dragon slayer... although there were plenty of others who succeeded too. This was painted in the early fifteenth century and is from "The Hours of Catherine of Cleves." I am afraid that this particular dragon is not as terrifying as one would imagine!


The medieval illuminators of manuscripts are well known for their great imaginations. They filled the margins and borders of the book pages with endless variety of subjects both religious and secular, humorous and strange, real and imagined. So it is no wonder that the same book that shows St. George slaying his dragon, on another page in the border margin shows a dragon being ridden by a harp playing dwarf!

And in my own lifetime dragons have gone from the Scary and Evil Smaug, who the Hobbits overcame, to the mystical Puff the Magic Dragon of childhood dreams, and on to the dragons of Harry Potter's wizarding world.

So, is it any wonder that from an early age I have been drawing and painting dragons?

Here is one from that book I was illuminating in my teen years.

And the partner to that on the other side of the same page....

And really, while SOME folks would NOT call these fellows dragons at all.... I think if you were a very small beetle, you might think otherwise.......

These were also painted in that same book in my teen years.

So, what on earth do Dragons have to do with bases you are wondering? Well, if I may be allowed to suggest that the tales of dragons are some of the most BASIC tales in our common wealth of stories, and that they go DEEP into our subconscious memories, providing the FOUNDATION for countless tales of courage, growth, triumph over evil, and even redemption.... then maybe you will see that, if you will bear with me, there is some BASIS of connection with BASES.

Okay, so lets get to the bases!

You may recall that when I first started to re-build the Lovely Old Dollhouse, the very first thing I did was to build a base for it. Really, this is a very essential (or basic!) part of a dollhouse. Any house needs a foundation to give it sturdiness and a small amount of elevation off the floor. All the very oldest dollhouses were built in cabinets, usually on a stand or a base which raised it off the floor for ease of viewing and arranging furnishings. So I envisioned eventually adding some ornamental legs.... but for starters I just built the platform. This allows for running electrical wires underneath and gives it that foundation that the house originally was lacking.

Here you can see the base, sort of....

I have not photographed it well, but it does show the raised effect.

And when I built the Castle Dollhouse, I knew that it would need a base to tie the parts together and give it stability and the elevation that makes it easier to work and play with.


Before I built the base, the Castle was perched atop a long, low shelf.......

but this was rather precarious and only temporary.......
You can see this arrangement below.

Here is a picture showing the Castle as it is currently.... very much in mid-construction!

And because the base was pretty boring to build I didn't take any pictures of that part!

I decided that it needed to sit solidly on the ground as the Castle is so large, no additional height is needed! And once I had constructed the BASIC box for the Castle to sit on, with structural walls dividing it into three sections for strength, I realized that it really looked like CAVES down underneath the Castle! Hmmmm.... caves could be used for all sorts of things! Merlin had a cave...... Ali Baba had a cave, Aladdin had a cave...... Smaug had a cave..... you get the picture........

Here you see the Castle on the base...... with the Caves mostly being temporarily used for storage........




But wait.... look closer, I think this one has been occupied!

Hmmmm........ he, or she, seems to have gathered most of the riches in the castle!

Ooooh, look again, it isn't just treasure it is guarding in there.........

there are BABY Dragons there too!

Hmmm.....
Do I see a bit of sibling rivalry here?

So, Deep Down inside, underneath everything else, there are a few Dragon Tales hiding!

Back to The Bases

Chinoiserie

This One Is For Sans!



I have admired the elaborate painted wallpaper style known as "Chinoiserie" ever since I first saw some in a grand mansion we visited when I was growing up. There were trees and flowers and birds and butterflies strewn with elegant artistry across entire walls! But this type of wallpaper was very expensive and not currently in fashion, so it remained just a beautiful memory to me. The heyday of these wallpapers was in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, and certainly only the wealthiest families could afford it. The origins are said to be the European attempts to portray the exotic flora and fauna of the Orient, versions of which arrived on porcelain and fabrics from India and China. The commonest motifs are pagodas, dragons, and elaborate Tree of Life designs, rendered with great imagination and little attention to reality. Or so it seems to those of us from the West who have never been to the East!

Perhaps it was in part that distant memory of these designs that prompted me to start painting trees and birds and flowers on the walls of my houses - in real life scale! I have included a couple of pictures from my former home where I painted the hallway with a mural of trees and birds.




These pictures were taken the day I moved out, so the house is completely empty.

This is the view from the top af those stairs.

And in my bedroom (in my former house) very much inspired by Persian illuminated manuscript miniatures, I painted trees and birds and flowers.

And below you can see the beginnings of my painting the walls of my bedroom in my new house with trees and flowers...... and the birds will follow in due time! And while this is not exactly "Chinoiserie", it is a very New England sort of version of the Tree of Life painting that is such an essential part of that "Chinoiserie" I admire so much!

Here I have included a few photos of pages I have torn from design magazines that show the type of wallpaper I am referring to. I realize it is difficult to see the details in these photos, so you will have to use your imagination!

And here is a sample of fabric printed in the elaborate Tree of Life pattern.

And another sample of wallpaper from a design magazine.

So, why am I showing you all these photos on my Dollhouse Blog you are wondering? Well, because then you will understand why I decided to paint the second best bedroom of the Lovely Old Dollhouse with a "Chinoiserie" mural - as if it were antique wallpaper! I have ALWAYS known that this room would be painted with trees and flowers and birds....... just as I have always known that it would NOT be easy to do it!

So some time last January, in the darkest time of the year, I began to paint the trees and flowers on the walls of the bedroom in the Lovely Old Dollhouse. You may recall that it looked like this when I showed you the newly painted peachy color.

This was before I had even finished the window trim or installed the lights over the mantle.

Here below, you can see the window trim and lights as well as the beginning steps of painting the murals. The tree stems are roughed in and the birds have been underpainted with white to show their position, but also so that their colors will be true when painted over the peach color.

Below you can see I have finished the glass window!

And also I have painted all the blue and white porcelain jars around the floor.

Gradually the flowers and leaves were added to the trees.

It was at about this point in the painting, that Sans! posted her blog about "The Tree of Life". Her story makes the true meaning of the Tree of Life so clear to me, in a way I had never understood before! We ARE all connected. In ways we cannot always understand. And her blog post made me realize that all this time, what I have been painting is called "The Tree of Life", in all it's varied and unique forms.... it is the Tree of Life that has been calling to me.





And even though I was not painting it in full scale this time, I was slowly making progress on the Lovely Old Dollhouse bedroom .

I added a painted "faux" baseboard, because I had started the mural before I remembered that this room would need a baseboard.........









The only part still to do are all the tiny birds in the trees.......

Mr Peacock has had his tailfeathers painted with gold.......

Here at last, all the little birds are done too......

Time for a closer view......

And on the left hand wall........

You will laugh when you hear that in order to paint all the smaller birds that were too indistinct to copy from the magazine references I had, I went to the internet to look up birds from China. I had always assumed (in my sheer ignorance and provincial outlook) that the amazing colors and shapes of the birds in these wallpapers were exaggerated or made up altogether. They just looked too fanciful to be true! Well, Imagine my surprise when I found the photos of the real birds and could recognize them all in the murals! Amazing colors and shapes are authentic ! Every One! So, you birders out there, go ahead and try to identify them! I just can't remember any of their names... except perhaps the Sunbird!








I am particularly proud of the job I did painting on the right hand wall! I am right handed and in order to get my hand in there and still be able to see where the paint was going, I had to turn myself almost upside down....... and somehow manage not to knock the lights off the wall at the same time!

Details.......



And more......

These are on the left hand wall, so were easier to paint... relatively speaking! I still couldn't get very close......

Left hand wall by the door.....

And more close-up of the right hand wall......

So I was painting the "Tree of Life" and never knew it until Sans!'s post enlightened me.

Thank you Sans!

Chinoiserie or "The Tree of Life"