Merry Christmas from Sycamore Hollow!

I've taken an extended break from all things Sycamore Hollow-related and will really be back after the holidays with some, relatively-speaking, big news. In the meantime, here is this year's original holiday card, which can be custom-printed in cobalt, green, black or aqua. Or printed in red, which is what I've chosen for my own personal self. I also decided to print it on newspaper in an effort of one-upmanship in awareness of the costs of over-consumption, both of cash and of environmental resources. Not sure if the US Post office mail sorters will rip the newspaper cards to shreds, but I guess I'll find out.

Changing Times

No, I'm not referring to the upcoming Daylight Savings Time change (didn't we just have one of those?), but rather the changing times at Sycamore Hollow. Things are happening, involving lots of heavy lifting. I'm cleaning out the shop, literally and metaphorically. More later on exactly what this involves, but for now, enjoy a fresh new blog from Abigail Cahill O'Brien, someone who has helped me do some of the cleaning by purchasing some key pieces at Sycamore Hollow. I'm always happy to know that the items leaving the store are going to a good home.

A Chill in the Air

I wandered around Rockport this morning running errands and experienced a distinct chill in the air. I forgot to put a sweater on my oldest son and felt like a bad mother. It seems like just the other day when I forgot to put shorts on him instead of pants and felt like a bad mother. Maybe the common element here is that I usually feel like I'm failing him, at least when it comes to listening to the weather report. Last year we grew gourds at the old Ohio homestead - here they are in all their glory.
This year the crop was not so bumper-ish. In fact, my brother, who has been faithfully tending them, reported to me that it is likely that not a single pie could be made by combining the entire crop. Needless to say, the crop from the old Ohio homestead will not be taken to market in 2009. So it's a good thing that I have my vintage furniture and handpainted pieces to fall back on. Can you hear a tinge of sarcasm? What I really wanted to feature in the photo is what the gourds are arranged on: an industrial cart painted in aqua with just the right amount of wear and tear. One of my all-time favorite pieces.

We are gearing up for our Harvest Festival here in Rockport. Put it on your calendar now folks. Plenty of homemade pies, wacky scarecrows, wacky Rockport-ers, and a cider donut or two.

Rocky Neck

I went to Rocky Neck - billed as "America's Oldest Working Art Colony" - or maybe it's just "America's Oldest Art Colony" - but no, I do think there's a qualifier in there somewhere. Anyway, the point is, Rocky Neck hosts monthly events every late Spring through early Fall, with open studios, lectures and music. Rocky Neck has a shabbiness that ranges from the slightly deranged to the genteel, but all of it is interesting. And like all places with personality, the people who live there seem to really, really love it. Reminds me of the goon docks in "The Goonies" (which I just re-watched) and I mean that as a compliment. The moon was full over the harbor that night and it was pleasant beyond words. I even bought a painting, a small study by Eugene Quinn, who is at the genteel end of the spectrum. Great work. I stood in his studio staring at his work for a long, long time like a child counting her pennies at the candy counter, trying to figure out how to make the most out of a severely limited budget. He graciously makes his studies affordable for the rest of us. I would include an image of the painting but my photography skills don't quite measure up to the necessary standard.

If you can handle my sub-standard picture-taking abilities (not quite as important for the following photo), here's an image of a Sycamore Hollow tripod lamp in its habitat. I never get tired of seeing where pieces from the shop end up. This one is in a friend's lovely summer home in Rockport. I wish I was sitting on that couch right now, reading a book (okay, maybe a newspaper. Or a magazine) by the light of that tripod lamp.

Art in the marketplace

One of the most difficult things about creating pieces for the store is balancing artistic interests with commercial ones. Unless you have a sizable trust fund or the ability to go for months without eating, you have to be concerned about making items that people will buy. The trick is to make pieces that you actually want to make that people will buy. It has taken me a long time to figure this out. One of the ways to address this commercial/artistic tension is to look to the traditional decorative arts for inspiration. These contain design elements that have stood the test of time, and don't usually involve a decorative piece with an image of a dog sitting on a pumpkin howling at the moon with the caption "Happy HOWL-oween!" for example.

One such timeless motif is the birds-and-vine chinoiserie style, which has the added appeal of being a trend right now. Hopefully it won't catch on at the level of the toile craze of the early part of this decade. I knew we had reached a level of insanity with that look when I saw women actually wearing capri pants made out of toile. Very strange to see women wearing upholstery patterns as clothing, like Scarlett O'Haras for the 21st century except not nearly as attractive as their fictional counterpart. Anyway, the point is that I painted the tables in the above photograph in the chinoiserie style, which I find challenging artistically and also am happy with at a commercial level. I had just brought the tables into the shop when they were purchased by Francesca, also known as motherblogger. She has a great sense of design and I was very glad to know they were going to go live with her.

I've also been making these composite images with paint and old books. I've created images on boxes out of these elements but this is the first canvas I've done. Obviously, it is not breaking new ground artistically but it is a fun design nonetheless.

Summer is winding down. The small upright dot in front of the boat is my 3-year-old son getting in some beach time before he heads to work with me. The only good aspect of the end of summer is the prospect of Fall - the only season more beautiful than summer on Cape Ann...

Visit from Katy Elliott

Katy Elliott stopped by the store this week. She posted some photos on her blog - be sure to check it out! She has worked for several shelter magazines and has an editor's eye for good design, so it was nice to have her in Rockport for the afternoon to see that our town has something to offer besides t-shirts (not that there is anything wrong with t-shirts - it's just that we have so very many, many of them).
www.katyelliott.com

For the last few months I've been staring at my kitchen wall. No, I'm not crazy - at least not to my knowledge - it's more that I'm very happy with the juxtaposition of our red vintage wall phone against our kitchen wall, painted the color of asparagus. Not canned asparagus, mind you, but fresh asparagus, perhaps artfully steamed in a bamboo contraption. Our home's color scheme is a very basic black, white and beige. This includes our kitchen, except for what is fashionably called an accent wall. It provides a little respite for the eyes, a spot of color in a sea of greige textures. So today's post is a tribute to our wall phone. Which also actually functions, as an added bonus. Though my happiness with the tableau the phone presents is often undermined by actually using the phone, tethered to the wall as I often am in a conversation I would rather not be having.

What's (not so) New in the Shop

The thing about buying vintage is that, along with the piece itself, you are buying a bit of history. A vintage lamp has lived its own life, or several lives, long before coming into yours. Of course, old stuff is not for everyone. Not for new-house people, for instance. I was watching a t.v. show a few days ago in which the viewer follows the adventures of a couple looking for a house to buy. My husband, by the by, thinks I'm slightly nuts for spending a half-hour watching complete strangers tour houses, but it's one of those things with an appeal that you just can't explain to people for whom watching such a show would be akin to being poked in the eye. Anyway, this home-buyer was insistent on only looking at new builds. The prospect of taking a bath in a tub in which another human being had already bathed was so repulsive she wouldn't even consider it. Wow. She, and all her fellow lovers of the newly-manufactured, will clearly never be a customer of this store, but that just leaves more old stuff for the rest of us. Incidentally, the venerable NY Times has officially recognized buying vintage as a bona fide trend. You can read about it and view a slideshow here - very interesting to see what yard sale & flea market decorating looks like when maneuvered by the hands of the urbane.

I have a couple of new old charts in the store this week. One of these charts features geographical terms with great graphics. You can even write on it & clean it off with a wax pencil.

The other chart features botanical terms. I have a detailed photo of it here, highlighting Boston Ivy in honor of the Massachusetts connection.


An aqua bureau for a shot of summer color year-round.

Recycled Plants, Recycled Bottles

I'm posting a picture, apropos of nothing, of my summer planters at the shop. They are composed of plants that I chose under self-imposed pressure (for some reason I allotted about 20 minutes at the garden center to pick out plants that I would be looking at for 3 months). As a centerpiece of each planter I recycled an ornamental grass that we already had. It even survived the hack job I did of dividing it for each planter. I'm not usually drawn to sweet peas, but I'm glad I chose them for this summer. It cheers me up to look at them, and we could all use some cheer in '09. And speaking of recycling, I just got these recycled glass bottle lanterns in the store this week.

A simple idea: cutting a circular hole out of the side of a glass bottle and creating a tin well for a tealight or votive candle at the bottom of the bottle. These bottles would look very cool hanging from branches for a little out-of-doors ambiance. And to those of you who look at the bottles and say "I could make it myself" I say: knock yourself out. First, you'll need to drink lots of soda or wine - don't forget to clean out all the sticky junk at the bottom! Then it's just a simple matter of acquiring a glass cutter with a circular bit (be sure to wear your commercial-grade safety goggles while cutting into the glass). Next you'll need to get out that pair of tin snips you've been saving for a rainy day and craft a tealight-shaped holder out of tin. After which you can head to the hardware store for the correct adhesive for attaching metal to glass - preferably one that will withstand high heat - and glue the parts together (in a very well-ventilated room, mind you! This stuff is toxic!). Next you'll get out your tool box and pull out the ol' wire cutters and a pair of hefty pliers so that you can twist 20-gauge wire onto the bottle - make sure the wire is mounted evenly so that the bottle doesn't list to the right or left. And that's all there is to it! Now you just need to hang that bottle in your backyard tree, light a candle and enjoy. It has cost you a weekend and half a paycheck, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you did it yourself. Unlike all those other slobs who simply walked into the store, grabbed a bottle lantern and slapped $8 down on the counter. Suckers.

All sarcasm aside, whether you make them or buy them, these recycled glass bottle lanterns would be a very cool addition to your outdoor (or indoor) life.

If Summer doesn't come to you...

...Then you have to make it yourself.  Summer, that is.  The weather - cold, rain, fog, and more cold - still isn't cooperating, and it's all anyone can talk about here in coastal New England, ad nauseam.  I feel the pain myself.  After suffering through our raw winters, the least we can have is 90 days of relatively moderate weather.  But not this year.  This year we have already lost the possibility of a happy June, and are now in the process of ruining July.  I need to move on from this topic, however.  I mean, how long can one complain about lousy weather?  I refuse to find out.  And to help myself along, I'm posting a picture of an electrically-painted antique piece that will provide the viewer with a jolt of summertime color.  If I can't have summer outside, then at least I will have it inside.  And I promise: no more complaining.  Until it gets too hot, that is.  Then I'll be sure to have something to say.

New Project

Usually I leave the personal stuff out of this blog, except for the occasional rant, but I just couldn't resist sharing this latest creation.  It took a lot of work - but here it is, coming in at 8 lbs, 2 ozs...

p.s.  So far he's not nearly as cranky as he looks in this photo!

Past Projects...

Yesterday a couple came in with a photo of a canvas they bought from me a few years ago. For a while I was painting these canvases with designs in the negative, putting blocks of color around the image I wanted to create, which was usually left as raw canvas. It was a bit more time-consuming, of course, than doing things the other way around, but has a great effect. Anyway, here it is, recorded for posterity, assuming that is, that posterity will care. So thanks, Customers (who shall remain anonymous), for bringing the photo in - it's nice to know that past projects have lives that extend beyond the shop!

June in Rockport

Things are quiet here in Rockport. We seem to go directly from a sort of April chill (with a few sunny days thrown just to remind us of how people live in other places) to the pavement-melting heat of July. It is technically June, almost technically summer, yet here I am ensconced in a sweater. And I am not alone. Most of the (very few) people I see passing by my window look dressed for another season entirely. I have had just three people in the shop today, two of whom looked dazed and confused, as if they meant to go on summer vacation in a nice little coastal town and ended up here instead. But just wait, I tell myself - in a few weeks, these same deserted sidewalks will be teeming with scantily-clad people who should, by all rights, be ensconced in sweaters. The shock of so much naked flesh here in Ye Olde New Englande juxtaposed as it is with what had been, just days before, chowder weather, is a lot for anyone to bear. Yet one must, in the retail business, take the bad with the good. Or, in the case of the current climate, economic and otherwise, the bad with the bad.

So on to the actual purpose of this post: Handpainted Wooden Boxes. These are useful creations, all one-of-a-kind, although the general themes do get repeated. The images are hand-cut from vintage paper and mounted on handpainted boxes. Here a few to spark the imagination. The rest of our current stock is shown at both our real store and our virtual one.

More Strange Vintage Lighting

Last time I featured a homemade star (see previous post), and in keeping with the offbeat, today I'm showing off a vintage lighthouse lamp that an ambitious person with a nice sense of scale created with plaster (for those realistic-looking boulders), wood and - best of all - the top of an old lantern. This lamp is not for those of you who are shy about their lighting. It measures 25" tall with a base of 8" in diameter. Still, it's not imposing. Just a friendly lighthouse that would work as a conversation-piece, bedside lamp, a welcome beacon in your window, et cetera. And to add to its appeal, the lamp has been rewired. Check it out at our online store. Clearly I can't get enough of vintage lighting, but there are worse things to be addicted to.

What's New?

I've been putting my little gocco (rhymes with loco) printer to work lately. For those of you unfamiliar with gocco, it's basically a tabletop screenprinter. It's great for creating original designs, all produced by hand of course, but in a relatively more streamlined way. Each design can be created multiple times using the same screen, but a screen does have a life - usually 50 or so printings. In that sense, each design is a limited edition. There are people out in gocco-land who create unbelievably complex designs with their printers - it is really fascinating once you check into what's out there. My images are more straightforward: here are a few designs I sell in the shop as hand-screened postcards and notecards. If your interest in them moves beyond just looking and into purchasing them, you can check them out at the online store here.


Whale - looking a little like a wood-block print.

Whale in aqua - a little bit more modern.


My nod to Motif No.1 - how much more amusing would it be to see the birds attacking all of us who endlessly photograph this fake fishing shack? Didn't quite have the nerve for that.

She's a Star!

I was in Ohio visiting my family when my mom, an inveterate flea marketer, auction-goer, and yard sale huntress, presented me with this star. It lights up! It's handmade! It's vintage! It's perfect! My mom is convinced that I am, in her words, hard to buy for. It's not that I'm hard to buy for, exactly...it's just that there is not a lot of stuff in this world that is worth having in your life. If you have an abundance of space and a lack of preference (or taste, to put it less charitably), you can fill up your surroundings in no time. But how much more enjoyable the process and the end result when you take your time in the world of home decor, picking and choosing what you actually want to live with? Case in point is this star. While it won't actually be living with me in my home (I have sacrificed it to the store), it certainly makes the cut, in my opinion. Some enterprising fellow, or lady, crafted it out of plywood long ago (if 40 years counts as long ago) and I like to imagine the Hanging of the Star became an annual family tradition - just before this same family trouped off into the back 40 to cut their own Christmas tree. Of course I'm just making this last part up, but that is part of the fun of acquiring vintage pieces. They all have a story.

Creative Customers

One of the benefits of having the store is meeting all the creative people who come in with strong ideas of their own. Of course I get plenty of "what do I do with this?" queries (especially when looking over my admittedly more bizarre pieces), but just as often customers don't need me around to give them inspiration. Take the wall hanging shown below, for example. A customer purchased some of this paper from Midori (a sort of Americanized version of the traditional Yuzen paper I also sell) and created this bird silhouette as an overlay. I thought this was a great idea and was happy for the store to play a small part in her project. Actually, I just stood behind the counter and sold her some paper, so my part was very very small indeed.

Whale Trunk + Artist's Living Room = Great Decor

It's feeling festive in town today, as the holiday weekend has arrived - or maybe it's because the economic news hasn't been all bad lately (for a change). Perhaps reporting on the demise of life as we know it, economically-speaking, was not nearly as fun for news outlets once they themselves started becoming victims of the tanking economy... Whatever the reason (and I'm skeptical that the reason is based on facts), the news has been slightly sunnier lately, with hints that things might not be as bad as we thought. The tourists and locals wandering around town seem to sense this, and are deciding that buying a cup of coffee, or a throw pillow, or maybe even (whoa!) a painting does not make them bad people. Just people enjoying a holiday weekend in a small town. Speaking of not-bad people, Karen Tusinski, an amazing artist who happens to have a gallery across the street from the shop (www.karentusinski.com) sent me a couple of photos of her latest Sycamore Hollow acquisition, a small rustic trunk painted with a whale motif. I felt honored that she put it in her house!


Top left corner shows a little of Karen's work.


The tripod lamp next to the couch also came from Sycamore Hollow.

Spring, definitely.

Wow. Two months since I last blogged (is that a verb?). Been very busy at a lot of nothing. The shop is shaping up for the summer - just one short week until Memorial Day! For those of you who care, the website died a lonely death. Just as I completed updating it, my hosting service informed me they would no longer support my software. The software that I used in designing the website was, indeed, nearly obsolete, but what could be more appropriate for use in a store that sells vintage pieces? A vintage website for a vintage store. Sadly, my hosting service did not agree with the inherent charm of vintage software, and we have parted ways. But never fear, some sort of internet presence will be available by the Memorial Day deadline. Meanwhile, the town of Rockport is festive for Spring, as this weekend we celebrate Motif No. 1 Days. What are Motif No. 1 Days you ask? A two-day celebration of the arts, centered around a red fishing shack so beloved by artists as a subject that it was dubbed Motif No. 1 by an art teacher (perhaps tired of looking at so many renditions of the same building). Anyway, here in Rockport we love our Motif, and have set aside a time every Spring to ritually celebrate its existence. Here is our Festival poster, with artwork created by a very talented 9-year-old third-generation Rockport artist.

www.rockportusa.com/motif1days

Spring, I think.

Spring is in the air in Rockport. Hordes of people are walking around here today with their wool coats open and their scarves dragging behind them through the leftover little piles of dirty snow. Inside the shop, however, all is not so spry. The nice weather caught me by surprise, and my window display still looks trapped somewhere in mid-January. Dark looming trees and lots of brown. But never fear! By next weekend Butterflies will be fluttering by and creatively crafted flowers will be blooming in my window. If you're in town, stop by. No doubt we'll have a blizzard just in time for Spring.

In honor of this weekend's time change, and the presumably longer light it will bring into our lives, here's a little sampling of a few of the lamps I have in the store right now.






Check out more at www.sycamorehollow.net

Out with the Old...

Today I am kicking an old friend out of the shop. (No, it's not you. Don't be so paranoid.) In the spirit of trying to stay current, I am moving out this beautiful cupboard, to be replaced by a display piece that is a bit more streamlined. I find that the less stuff I have in here, the happier I am. Which begs the question: why am I in the retail business? I think people expect stores to be crammed wall-to-wall with items for sale, but I just can't bring myself to merchandise that way.

Anyway, goodbye to the cupboard - it will live with me for a while at home before moving on to greener pastures.


Speaking of streamlined, these new cloches I just got in are in a shape both current and timeless.


And speaking of timeless, peacocks (unless you're referring metaphorically to a real, insufferable person) will never go out of style. This is the Sycamore Hollow peacock watching over my winter window. It's sitting on the vintage mushroom-shaped wood piece that I picked up at the flea market last winter (after I paid for it of course). This piece is a bit on the weird side, and customers always ask "What do you do with that?" or "What is that for?" Why for putting a peacock on top of course! No, I don't say that. The wood piece is just for adorning your life, a bit of low-brow sculpture. Just go with it and ask yourself if it is always necessary to be so practical - rotten economy notwithstanding.

Late to the Funeral

A customer just popped in to ruin my day with the news that domino magazine has shuttered. Beyond depressing, as this is just the latest in a recent string of magazine deaths. The first and worst to come to my attention being House & Garden. The Venerable House & Garden! I should have know that newer mags would not be long for this world. Domino, however, I thought would survive through the recession, as it's point-of-view is unlike any other shelter magazine's out there. I never felt cool enough for the magazine (see previous post) but I really, really loved its DIY perspective, as it made me feel like I COULD be cool...someday. And now that day will never come. So thanks Kelly, for the bummer news about domino. Happier to hear the news from you, however - someone else who loved it - than reading a sad little post on domino's website. *sigh*

Domino Magazine: RIP

Now, onto hopefully a happier subject: projects.

Here is a photo of a recent frame I made. Kind of Asian, kind of trendy-crafty.


A recent view of the shop. Arrange, then re-arrange, then re-arrange some more! is my motto. The very happening vintage glass lamp is sold, but the glass bottles I will always have with me. Love those and can't stop carrying them, even when I'm afraid that my glass bottle market has been saturated. The shapes are very compelling.

You are here...

Karen King of Boom Studios created these lavender-filled heart sachets with vintage linens. She's a wiz, that Karen, and can whip up just about anything on her sewing machine. And not just any old anything, but items you actually want to have in your life. One-of-a-kind pillows, cards, tags, sachets, and, best of all, hats. Yes, she actually makes hats. In spite of 3 years of intense 4-H meetings culminating in supposedly wearable projects, I have yet to create anything involving sewing that anyone - even someone genetically required to love what I make (that's you Mom) - wants to possess. So Karen's talent is a wonder to me. She will have her own online shop on Etsy soon, so you will be able to access her creations directly. Until then, this amazing sachet, acquired through Sycamore Hollow, will have to tide you over.

Craftytime, Part II

I have stacks of old books that I've been using for collage projects. For those of you who think it's a desecration to dismantle old books, I would posit that I am actually aiding in a sort of reincarnation for a book that was destined only for a landfill. What could be less dignified for a book than to slowly deteriorate amidst piles of diapers and banana peels? Instead the book lives on, hopefully in your very own home, in the form of, in the case of my current project anyway, little paper hearts cut from its pages. Awwwww. That's pretty sweet.


Tiny little Heart Boxes - perfect for candy or momentos or...

Book Box, with a nice little surprise inside (see below).

Look at us! A vintage cake-topper couple, with vintage wedding bells, preserved at the moment of perfect happiness for all eternity.

Wintertime is Craftytime.

Rockport is deserted. It snows every weekend like clockwork, and I just spent the last few hours of this cold Sunday afternoon staring out the store window at a total of ten people (actually more like five - they went up the sidewalk then down, so I counted them twice) struggling along, heads lowered against the blowing snow. But you never know, I tell myself, someone may brave the weather to buy a lovely handmade paper box. Or a vintage glass float. Or a birthday card. Birthdays don't stop just because it snows outside.

Well, I've been making things lately. That is, after I spent the first week of January curled up in a ball, in my usual post-Christmas state of sedentary misery. But now we're deep into the winter, and things are picking up, creatively-speaking. Rockport is about as quiet as it is possible for a town to be and still be inhabited by human beings, so there is not much to do at the shop, besides blow the cobwebs off the counter and fondly remember when people in this town shopped locally, at least during the winter months (actually I have no memories of such a time). Winter is a good time to stock up on all the items I make for the shop and brainstorm about rearranging furniture. Yes, there are more important things to contemplate during these uncertain days, but in the wintertime, I am not so nimble, physically or mentally, and am happy to consider the right epoxy for gluing seashells, or what color to repaint my walls. I'm sure I'm not alone. Below are a few photos of some pencil box collages I've made, as well as a few wintery displays in the store. May you stay warm and un-snowed upon this January!

Stack o' pencil boxes