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...

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

"Christmastime is Here..."

...as quoted in the immortal lyrics of "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Charlie Brown needs to get with the program - someone needs to let him know that Holidaytime - and not just Christmas - is here. Yes indeed. Holidaytime is here, and I have the anxiety to prove it. I accomplished my two modest goals for the holiday season in the store: 1) Create my tower of boxes, to be crowned by a peacock (simulated peacock, for all you animal lovers out there), and 2) Change the playlist on my iPod to more accurately reflect the season (sorry, Ray Charles. Save your bad-luck, good-timing ways for next summer). I'm not sure which was more difficult: decoupaging dozens and dozens of boxes by hand or reprogramming the iPod.

So check out the tower of boxes - they are pretty awesome - and priced to sell as a gift in themselves or to fill with something amazing you purchased or created (Small: $12, Large: $18). I also am featuring a new line of cards and calendars designed by a very talented graphic artist that are quite holiday-ish (some are even Christmas-ish) without being scarily so. Those of you, such as myself, who fear purchasing and sending Christmas cards, agonizing over what will accurately represent you and/or your family (will it make me look stupid? Sentimental? Overly commercial? Overly Christian? Not Christian enough? Fat?) will be pleased with what Sycamore Hollow has to offer.

That's all for now folks.

p.s. Dear Media: You can stop informing us that the world is coming to an end, and that, by purchasing something (especially something not on sale) we are at best, stupid, and at worst, bad, bad people.

Magazine Talk

A few days ago I came home to a mailbox stuffed with magazines. My spirits soared, as I contemplated the prospect of spending an evening looking at things I cannot afford to buy and ideas I am not able to execute. Nevertheless, I was happy, as the point of shelter magazines is inspirational; they rarely function as real-world workbooks. I get a lot of magazines, and one of the three that showed up that day was Martha Stewart's Living. I have to say, Martha's still full of spit & vinegar, or whatever the appropriate 19th-century expression is. The one thing that disturbs me (no, not her stint in jail) is her increasing obsession with Halloween. Or Hallowe'en, as she likes to put it. (it's Fancier!) The magazine was filled to the brim with ideas for turning cakes into haunted houses, gourds into spiders, cheesecloth into ghosts, and you even had a template for sending out those Hallowe'en party invites that you're scratching your head over how to design. My shop is located near Salem, Massachusetts, also known as Witch City, and I've seen the people who prioritize Halloween. I can safely say that they are generally not 60-ish year-old women who wear Donna Karan and vacation on St. Barts. It seems to me that Martha's affection for the holiday has even clouded her perfect vision when it comes to ruthlessly editing the crafty portion of her magazine. I stared at the picture of gourds with pipe-cleaners jammed in the sides to make legs and thought for a moment that I had accidentally received Better Homes & Gardens or - oh no! - Woman's Day. Not that there is anything wrong with those fine magazines, but you expect more from Martha. Admittedly her gourds are especially cute ones, organic no doubt, and photographed as though they were highly-paid fashion models, but I'm not sure her demographic would know where to purchase pipe cleaners even if they thought the whole idea was charming. Oh, that's right. You can purchase pipe cleaners through Martha's website. I guess if you stay in her universe and never venture out you might think that all this Hallowe'en stuff is attractive just because she has deemed it so. I have great respect for her but I draw the line at buying a jello mold in the shape of a human brain so I can have a Hallowe'en party for people over the age of 25 who don't care and, more importantly, shouldn't care about such a weird holiday that we've elevated to its current status only because we're all so uncomfortable with Christmas now.
Continuing with my magazine rant, I also received Country Home. A nice magazine - it always encourages me to keep on truckin' with my simple homespun decorating. I feel as though my mother has given me a pat on the head after I read it, as though saying, "That's right -continue to put those black & white vintage photos inside old crusty bottles and line your fireplace mantle with them! You're a clever girl!" Country Home had a nice feature on industrial lamps, which affirmed my love affair with vintage lighting and brought fond memories of industrial lights I've sold through the shop, but I was startled to see the prices these lamps are bringing, at least on the pages of C.H. Sorry shoppers, but I guess I'm going to have to jack up my prices just to keep up.
The final magazine I looked through in the pile I received that day is the awesome-est: Domino magazine. It's like that super-cool girl in high school you were too scared to talk to and who strutted the hallways in outfits that you secretly thought were weird but knew couldn't possibly be weird in a bad way or she wouldn't be wearing them. Domino, I'll just say it, is way too cool for me. Annoyingly so. Yet I adore it and read its pages eagerly hoping that, even now, with my youth left in the dust, I'll someday have friends so amazing that I'll be invited to a party where the girls are wearing frocks, the dishware is mid-century, the upholstery is re-issued Josef Frank, and the cheese was smuggled onto the plane from the host's last jaunt to wherever the best cheese comes from (I'm too frightened to guess). It is never too late to hope, my friends. So you can imagine my disappointment when Kelly Wearstler, who, metaphors aside, really was that supercool girl in high school, and whose taste I really, really admire was featured along with her newly re-decorated guesthouse, and that guesthouse turned out to be... Well, I'll just say it. It looked ugly. So ugly that I was actually happy that there is no chance that I will ever be Kelly Wearstler's friend and invited to stay at her guesthouse (which is really saying something). Kelly, it seems, has "moved on", as the magazine put it, from Hollywood Regency into post-70's opulent grotesquerie, which involves lots of puffy upholstery sitting atop rounded chrome, metallics reflecting other metallics, and bleached oak.
Trends are moving way too quickly, and I'm sure KW has a vested interest in staying ahead of the game, and more importantly to her I'm sure, not getting bored, but we all had just adjusted to starburst gold mirrors against brown walls with white trim, and now we're onto the look of a Miami penthouse, circa 1982, and not in an ironic sense. The problem is, this look can't be dumbed down. You have to have money to do it properly (if such a thing can even be done), and if the masses start flocking to buy chromed pieces at Pottery Barn, I think I will be unable to go on. Besides, the whole look seems very incompatible with the zeitgeist. With financial markets failing and celebrities scooting around in hybrids, recycling rainwater and crafting old sweaters into handbags seem more suitable for the prevailing mood. At least I can only hope.

Still working...

It's 9:30 p.m. and I'm still here at the shop, trying to upload photos onto the website. My broadband service has decided to take a break from its busy, busy workload and has reduced online access to a trickle. A sad reality of doing business online is that you have to do business online. "Oh yes! I'll e-mail that photo to you!" I cheerily say to any interested party standing before my counter on a sunny retail afternoon. "Not sure which color you'd like? No problem. I'll e-mail 20 photos to you depicting your options and you can peruse them from the comfort of your own home!" I'm a genius, I tell myself. Until I find a moment to send the photos at the bleary-eyed (for me anyway) hour of 9 p.m. and my computer freezes. Control, alt, delete. Reboot, resend, re-freeze. And so the cycle of life continues... On to happier subjects: those Japanese papers just keep giving and giving! I decoupaged (yuck - not a good word when used as a verb.) a bunch of shadowboxes, then painted the frames white, and hung the whole group in the entryway to the store. One of these days I'll post the dimensions of the shadowboxes for your viewing pleasure, along with your options of paper with which to cover them, just as soon as my computer and I are friends again. Well, friendship might be asking too much. Just as soon as we are on speaking terms.

Summer is Here...

Memorial Day Weekend in Rockport means hordes of people flooding into town, looking for a vintage lamp or two to start their summer off right. No, the reality is that people will be looking for a hot dog or two. Or an ice cream cone or two. But just in case hot dogs & ice cream are not what you're in the market for, check out what is new in the store: pillows created by an artist in Kennebunk, Maine, with screenprinted images that appear abstract at first, until the viewer realizes that the image depicts a ship's rigging. Clever, beautiful, and handmade - it doesn't get any better than that!