Hello From the Snow. May I Show You Some Plates?

Oooooh but it was cold and windy on Saturday morning here on the US side of the Canadian border! I, nontheless, got up and out of the Last House and out onto the trails at dear old Jay Peak just as the sun was coming up. The wind had scoured a lower, exposed section of the trail clean down the grass and it was blowing so hard in my face that I almost turned back. Intrepid middle-aged broad that I am, however, I knew if I got into the woods it would be OK, and so it was. As you can see, I didn't have the benefit of a matched pair of gloves on this hike. I combined a pair from the dollar store on one hand and used the superior single glove on the other. When I got to the highest point on my walk I was nice and warm and stopped to snap this picture for myself and you all. Thanks for stopping by.



About the Plates

Shackleton and I spent a happy New Year's Day at the "high end" auction at my beloved Degre Auction House in Westfield. (See the link on the side bar). Shackleton got two wooden boxes(we both liked them) and I bought all manner of things. We were there for hours! My very favorite items were two groups of some old, very old, plates and platters. I am going to ask at the experts Transferware Collectors Club to swing by here and help me to identify some of the patterns (their website says posting a URL is the best was to ask for this info. and I happen to have one). So, if you are bored by old plates, I guess you can go now.



I am just in love with this item. I would really like to know more about it (which is where those hoped-for experts come in). There are no maker's marks whatever on the back. It's about 10 and half inches in diameter and is some kind of vegetable bowl. It's about an inch and a half or two inches deep. Lovely, no? Here's a bit more detail. I don't think we're in England here - Greece or Rome?

Urns repeat around the edge:

I want to look at this all the time. I like it that much. I put it in my bedroom, for cripes sake. Taking these pictures, however, did reveal what, to my eye, is the, what shall I say, "slightly unfortunate" appearance of the young girl figure. Perhaps she and her dog are going to her mother, or Athena or whomever that lady is supposed to be, for some sympathy?

I also got this, clearly marked "Pagoda" by EW&S (which I know is "Enoch Woods and Sons"). The mark was in use, I learned at the potteries.org website (link in the sidebar) between 1818 and 1846. Also nice. Is it a dinner plate? It's about 10 and a half inches in diameter so I think it may be, but perhaps it a serving plate?





Pattern Identification Challenge

In another lot, I picked up these three lovely old platters. How about a little quiz for you experts? Non experts, feel free to admire these (or not) and then go read someone else's more amusing or informative blog. All remaining, consider yourselves put to to the test.

Two of these are marked by their makers and have a pattern name. One has no makers mark at all. If anyone gets the two marked ones right, I'll certainly be happy to believe you about the third one. Any information would be gratefully received, of course. Really helpful people might even be rewarded with a little treasure from my store house. Do you hear that! Prizes! Here are the pictures. Ready, steady, GO!

Here's Number 1:





2.



3.



Sorry the pictures aren't better. I had to use a flash. Write if you need more (or better pictures). Thanks for sharing.

Inspired by Shackleton

Another brilliant T-Shirt:

WILLING TO MESS WITH TEXAS by woolfoot
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His Mom Thought This Was Funny

The thing about Christmas vacation is that the whole family is jammed into the house in a cold, dark season. This gives us expanded opportunities to hear from the children. The Understudy, at nearly 11, is a poised and reasoning girl. Shackleton, at 7, is a gentle and surprising creature. He says things that we feel we should write down, but, as with so many things, we generally fail to follow through. Since we have a bit of a break now, I managed to get a few onto the hard drive. Here ya go. Forgive me if it turns out these are things that only near relations would find amusing.

Things Shackleton has said that amuse us.

1.) Yesterday, while building with Legos on the stairs:

“I made up a song about Iraq Obama [he’s confused by the new President’s name. No matter how many times we explain]:

“Mr. O- ba- ma!”

(to the tune of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch”).

That’s as far as I got.”

2.) While riding in the car one day, a propos of nothing:

“Actually, some people do mess with Texas.”

3.) Shackleton does not like to go upstairs alone . When his sister asked him why, he said:

"Because if you come with me and we see a ghost we can fight him -
Together!"

3.) After changing into his swim trunks at the community pool this week (in the manner of the announcer on those endlessly repeating “Bowflex” commercials).

“If you want to get ribs like these, call 802 977-9999”

My New T-Shirt

I like this one especially. (Available at Zazzle! See the sidebar!).

A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF THOSE WHO WANDER ACTUALLY... by woolfoot
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Tell Me Something Good

There are a few members of my acquaintance who will say - I won't say "admit" because they don't seem embarrassed about it - that they don't like to read. One of these is a near relation and non-stupid. Two others are, well, questionable.

When a grown person, who has clearly learned how to read, says that he or she doesn't like to read, a moment of polite silence prevails while the hearers work out whether sympathy or astonishment is the appropriate response. Is the person handicapped in some way? As in, "I can't see the color red," or, "I can't hear from my right ear"? Or is he or she a Philistine who deserves an argument? As in, "I don't like Audrey Hepburn" or "I don't like ice cream"?

Today, at further risk of exposing an ugly side of my character (my inner, and sometimes outer, Supercilious Pratt), we turn to books that even non-readers can love. The contents of these books don't much matter. What matters is how they look.

If you have been following along, you know that I have felt pangs of guilt in the past about admiring books for their covers or their illustrations. It's like going to church only for the music or the stained glass. The Internet, however, with its great therapeutic powers, is helping me over this. I have learned that there are whole societies of people devoted to promoting the book as art. One of my favorite places to window shop on the web is a Berkeley, California book store called Handsome Books, which, "specializes in books with decorative publishers’ bindings, designed and illustrated by some of the leading artists of the 19th and early 20th centuries." Their website, as I have mentioned here before, is my idea of a good time. I also recently stumbled in my wanderings over a book artist, apparently famous in the circle of book artists, who has assembled a couple exhibitions of such books. So, it's OK to love a book for its cover.

I have always been a sucker for good-looking old things - the Dickens set in the first picture was a find at auction this summer. Each volume weighs about 2.5 pounds and it was lovely to behold, though largely dilapidated. I didn't think I would ever read it. I thought I might sell it (no takers on Ebay) and if I didn't it would do well on the bookshelf. The better volumes went off to my brother for his birthday and I kept the others. Even with missing spines, they are nice. It was Handsome Books, however, that helped me narrow my main interest to the early 20th century.


I bought this book after seeing first on their website. I have this sort of unaccountable interest and love for England and English things so when I saw this I had to get my own copy. This, as I learned at their wonderful site, was part of a series of travel books published in Boston in the early 1900s. I haven't read much of it, but I do admire it. It has this fabulous fold-out map in the back.




I was back on Handsome Books recently and found this:






They attributed this cover as (possibly) by Blanche McManus. She, as it turns out, was one of the bright lights of early 20th century book cover art. As a bargain scrounger, I found a cheaper copy elsewhere, but H.B. has my gratitude. I have read almost all of this book. It is very much of its time. It's author, one "Thos. D. Murphy" no hotel prices or opening hours are included in the information for the traveler. The quality of the roads is often, but not always, noted (motor travel being a novelty when this was first published in 1910). Otherwise we have impressions of churches, ruins, crypts, castles etc. It was apparently a big hit with its intended (gilded-age leisure-class) American audience. It was revised and republished in 1924 (after the war, of course) as, In Unfamiliar England with a Motor Car. I like this cover even better (no attribution, unfortunately).







Even the title page promises romance:



There are lots of photographs, mostly of churches and other buildings. A slight organizing principle is to show and describe places in England, which is referred to periodically as "The Mother Country," of special interest to Americans: e.g., the Washington family seat and William Penn's meeting house. My favorites, though, are the dewey paintings commissioned for the book.





Here's "Old Whitby":



and Warwick Castle:



And, gentle readers, guess what turned up in the mail today?



Isn't it lovely? It was my Christmas present to myself. It appears that Thos. D. Murphy got back from England and got back in his car to start touring New England (this book was published in 1924, the same year his revised version of Unfamiliar England appeared. This volume is sooo wonderful, like an embossed, illustrated, cloth-bound brick - and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Really, I may have to lie down. As an aside, isn't it interesting that the American touring car (seen at the bottom of the cover) is so much more elaborate than the car on the English cover? Can anyone possibly identify the models for me? And look, bonus! Another fold out map:



Sorry for the lousy picture but it shows that our Thos. journeyed from nearby Plattsburgh, NY through Vermont on old Route 2. I really can't wait to read this. But just looking at it is pretty great too.

Sundown on Christmas 2008

I am always happy when Christmas rolls around...


and also when it is finally over!



The standing rib roast is roasting, the sweet potatoes are carmelizing, the table is set. Looking forward to dinner, I felt I had better get out and get a little air. I strapped on my snowshoes and knocked around the farm for a few minutes, just before sundown. This is what it looked like.

I hope you got what you wanted. I think I did. Merry Christmas.

Between the Storms

I left work an hour and a half early yesterday, not quite slinking off. I made sure the Powers That Be knew I was reachable by cell phone, etc. but the snow was falling fast, and in that sifting way that means it is going to snow for a long time and that it is cold. (If you live where it snows, you know what I mean). The ride home took two hours (usually an hour and twenty minutes) and every car that went by in the opposite lane boiled up a blinding cloud of snow (I guess I was doing the same to them). I was coiled like a spring when I finally made it to the driveway.

Mom (in Florida) fowarded me an email today titled, "Why I live in Florida." It included this amusing bit of video (Youtube embedding won't work so you have to click, sorry.)

Yes, we of the north have hard life. (And a sense of humor, Thank You Know Who). But we have our rewards too. Another storm is closing in as I blog, but we got a little sun this afternoon. I ran outside with the little happy snappy to show you all (and Mom) "Why I Live in Vermont."












Happy Solstice!