A Little Tour of my Brain, Part 27 - vintage canning labels.

It is that time of year again, time for canning, pickling and preserving all of that produce from your garden, the fields, and forest. Many people still practice home canning but a generation ago it supplemented home cooked meals and earlier it was the main way of providing enough food to feed the family in the winter.

These two books of gummed paper labels were produced by Eureka Specialties of Scranton Pennsylvania. 

The lettering on each label in this book above is the same; clean, clear, and legible, with a space below the name of the contents to date it. It is the designs around the outside of the labels that are so interesting lifting the canning labels and ultimately the canned food to another level of utilitarian decor.

I will show the rest of the labels from this book of household labels in a later post but for now here are the remaining canning labels that have not been removed from this much used little book.

The labels in this book are much bolder in design than the previous book with no area to write the date on. The date would have been neatly written across the bottom, top or possibly hurriedly scrawled across the entire label, depending on how busy/tidy the cook was.

The scanned labels from each book are about the actual size of the original labels; copy them and use them if you like. Let me know if you use them, not because you have to but because I would love to see them used again. Send me pictures if you like and I'll do a post about the labels on the finished canning.

The canning labels may not seem relevant to the work that I create but they are; I love detail, the little extra details that are added into the sculptures give them depth, a sense of time, and intimacy. It will be interesting to see where these may be used in upcoming sculptures.

This is a close-up of "The Man-in-the-Moon will be having a party" showing the some of the shelving filled with items for everyday living. Go to my Etsy shop to see other photographs of this sculpture.

From my reference library - "Holidays on Display"

I mentioned to my wife earlier this year that I wanted to get this book; she gave it to me for my birthday this last June. I had thought that it was primarily about store holiday displays but it is about so much more.

The front cover of the book shows the main aisle of the Marshall Field Co. around 1956.

Unfortunately displays on this scale are a thing of the past. I remember seeing The Hudson's Bay Company Christmas displays in the 1960s and saying to myself that I want to do that. I did!

I did not know that the display men would also design and build parade floats and decorate halls for dances in the slow season.

Along with the demise of store display is the disappearance of beautiful parade floats, at least in Victoria. The Victoria Day Parade is generally an endless march of bands.

This pull toy that I created was based on Parade float designs of the past. Go here to purchase it in my Etsy shop. 

I would love to own some of these old catalogues, the ideas would be endless.

An example of artists watercolour sketches for possible parade floats.

This catalogue for the Chicago Artificial Flower Company would be fascinating to browse through.

Forget about the idea that this Christmas village, that eventually would lead to Santa Claus, is for the children; I would love to explore this magical little world that the carpenters and display people created for the public.

A behind the scenes look at the carpenters creating the coming seasons Christmas village.

A display company with an example of props that were for sale to be used in store window displays or in store displays.

The back cover of "Holidays on Display" showing a window display at Marshall Field and Co., ca 1972.

"Holidays on Display", by William L. Bird, Jr., is published by Princeton Architectural Press.

A Little Tour of my Brain, Part 26 - Popcorn Bags

It has been quite a while since I have done any of the "A Little Tour of my Brain" posts. When I was sorting out previous blog posts I decided I needed to revive it.

While cleaning my studio I rediscovered these three paper popcorn bags. What can I say, I am a collector of stuff that fascinates me!

All of these bags were picked up in big box stores.

This design brings back the feeling and images of walking on the boardwalk on warm summer days with the smell of the salt sea air and salty popcorn. Most people seeing this image now don't even know what that would have been like, but it does evoke a yearning nostalgic feeling for "the good old days".

This is a more contemporary image but still has a vintage quality to it probably due to the printing process and limited colour range. It is not a sophisticated image and that is why I like it.

This bag is printed on all sides whereas the two previous bags are only printed on the front. I love the lettering for the word popcorn, the balloons, and the "Pop Corn" character underneath all of this festivity. This is a whole lot of design overkill for a bag of salty, buttery popcorn but oh so worth it.

It has been a while...

It has been a while, quite a while in fact, since I have made a blog post. I will remedy that.

One of the reasons for not doing many posts was doing a MAJOR tidying, sorting, and purging in my studio. My studio kind of reminded me of this early piece of advertising art; me trying to close the door of the studio and the contents of my studio trying to get out!

I still need to get rid of items that I will not be using or at least foresee that I will not be using. That will happen a little later but I must say that I am very pleased with the progress that has happened so far.

All of those voices concerning things that I should do; clean the studio, get this done, get that done have been harping at me. One of those voices was telling me to get my Pinterest page reactivated. Another voice was telling me to get my pictures on my blog sorted out. That last voice was daunting. When I first started my blog I was using a smaller image, then I went to a different size, and now I am using a larger size. Fortunately the original images used to create my blog posts were large but had only been displayed in a small format.

I redid all of my blog posts from the beginning. It will only take me a week or so I said. Maybe it will take me a bit longer I realized as I was working on the posts. Almost one month went by doing this project!

One very good thing that happened from all of the reworking of my blog posts was to see how much joy I had creating the posts. I had lost that joy. Now I can honestly say I am looking forward to doing more blog posts.

While I was rescaling the images I would post some of them onto my Pinterest page. Go to my Pinterest page here. I hope you enjoy looking around.

Happy Canada Day!

The following 12 1950's/60's social studies readers book covers are from a set 16 titles. It is the people that make up a country.

Happy Canada Day everyone!

Hand Painted Japanese Rice Paper for the Fireworks Shadow Box

I suppose you could call this post a bit of a tutorial, that is without giving a complete step by step process!

I use acrylic paint to paint the paper. I brought down a selection of paints that had been premixed for other projects, this is a great way of using up old paint.

The shadow box is in the background. I decided to attach wire mesh to the outside of the shadow box and then wire the fireworks to the mesh. The back and sides have been painted with the same paint that will used as an undercoat on the paper.

Our trusty garden work table, the remains of a picnic table that I disliked very much has been turned into a work station. I grabbed a piece of coreplast plastic to lay the paper on while I painted it. Once it is painted it has to be carefully lifted so that it won't stick to the plastic; then set on the table to dry. When the paint is dry then the other side is painted.

This long sheet of paper was the remains of a roll of heavier weight rice paper. This paper is so much easier to handle when wet than the lighter weight rice paper.

These small sections of ricepaper were from a pad of paper for brush painting. The paper was a little thin and would easily tear when it was wet.

The finished long sheet of rice paper. Both sides were painted with the undercoat of olive/khaki green. Once the paper was dry I dripped and daubed autumn leaf colours onto the paper, then blending them with a large brush and a sea sponge.

I didn't mention but that green paint was created quite a while ago for this sculpture. I wanted a generic packing crate paper green. I used some of my jars of paint from previous sculptures to create the colour. I ended up with quite a lot more than needed but most of it was used for this project.

This shows the base colour and the finished strip of paper with the variegated autumn leaf colours; both sides were painted. When the individual leaf is cut from the paper it will have the colours of an autumn leaf.  I will cut the paper into long strips of small leaf shapes that will then be crushed, opened up, and then wound around the wire stems holding the fireworks in position around the frame. I want to hide the wires but also add background interest and suggest the time of year that the fireworks will be used.

I much prefer using hand-painted papers because they are sturdier so they will not crush or tear as easily as crepe-papier. The paper colour is permanent and will not fade; something that I have noticed to my horror with very early items I had made many years ago when I used crepe-papier.

The party horn that the snowman is holding has a yellow painted paper frill and circles punched from painted paper to create the design on the body of the horn. The rose, green tutfs and yellow coils at the base of the rose are all painted paper as well.

This pickle's Hallowe'en party hat was created from hand painted papers and a large antique paper fastener. Buy him here in my Etsy shop.