Recently in Art Category

My recent entryway project inspired a 5-minute makeover over on my desktop, which faces the Jane Austen mirror.

I dusted.

I moved things around.

I also changed the cardstock behind my token collection from white to light blue.

This is one of my favorite collections around the house. Each transit token and the Hobo nickel were purchased about 15 years ago at a flea market. The Ts are for Tampa, Florida. The R and S are for Rochester, New York.

Transit tokens and Hobo nickels, categorized as Exonumia, are an interesting and unique art form. I wonder why more people are not collecting them. I've always collected coins, mostly foreign, and my little collection seen here is just another facet of my interest in the beauty of circular bits of metal. 

I think my bluebird looks quite fetching next to the token collection.

Prior to the unfortunate theft and vandalization of our property, I decided to give the entryway mirror a little makeover.

This mirror was gained at a yard sale - way back in 2006. Can you believe it was free? The seller had broken one of the side mirrors. Each side panel is about 8 1/2 x 11, so the whole thing is rather large. It hung in my son's room for a long time, but he never really used it. Turns out boys aren't as into mirrors as girls are. Go figure.

So, I kind of stole it from him.

But, look, the size and shape is perfect for that entryway wall.

Convinced? Okay, back to the mirror makeover.

I decided to print out a picture of Jane Austen for the left panel. My shamelessly purloined version of Dear Jane is, I believe, the 1879 engraving which was based on Cassandra's drawing.

For the right panel, I chose one of Miss Austen's witty quotations, printing it out with a downloaded Jane Austen font.

"Pictures of Perfection make me Sick and Wicked."

When we return to our normal balmy weather, I think I might use this instead:

"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance."

The portrait and quotation are printed on turquoise paper and I have placed three turquoise glass votives from Big Lots betwixt the two panels.

So, what do you think? Would Dear Jane approve?

***More lovely transformations are linked at Between Naps on the Porch for each Metamorphosis Monday.***

I hate to keep special items buried in boxes in the attic. Precious mementos should be enjoyed, not forced into servitude as long-forgotten clutter.

This philosophy is how I ended up hanging my silver baby spoon on the kitchen wall.

This is truly the most-viewed corner in the house and now I can see my baby spoon everyday without it taking up valuable storage space.

If you, like dear @JacobiteRose on Twitter, are looking for a St. Patrick coloring page, here are a few links which might help:

One

Two

Three (PDF) - This is the one I like best.

Four (PDF)

If you take one Martha Stewart poster (about 13-years-old) and you remove the cheap plastic poster frame and you take a free picture & frame from the Eighties and you remove the tacky pastel print, you may get a sunflower poster in a wooden frame with an interesting mat.

This is hanging in my hallway, by the school closet and visible from the living room. Sorry for the awkward angle and using the flash.

What do you think?

I think I like it but the mat is throwing me. But see how perfectly it fits the poster? Also, see my ugggggggly door bell box? That needs to be painted or disguised.

Back to the picture. Yay or nay?

Don't forget that today begins Extreme Shakespeare.

I also wanted to mention this post regarding Vincent van Gogh and his love of the Bard. Thanks to the internet we can read Van Gogh's letters and we find that he was very pleased to own his own book of Shakespeare and reread it often.

Not too long before his death, Van Gogh writes that he read this passage from Henry VIII (Act III, scene ii):

'And when I am forgotten, as I shall be,
And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of, say I taught thee;

Appropriate for Shakespeare...and Van Gogh, don't you think?

This weekend, H went after his Honey-do list with a passion and one item he marked off the list was hanging some items above my sewing desk in the Family Room.

I know it's a bit late in the season to think of snowmen, but I wanted to show you this adorable miniature that D made for me. He's only 1 3/4 inches tall!

I asked her to make him look like a traditional snowman and she did. However, this little guy is made of polymer clay and toothpicks and he's been baked in the oven so I can keep him forever. No melting in the sun for this snowman. 

As we study the Medieval Age this term, D is reading and discussing with me Thomas Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization". Yesterday, she came upon a very interesting quotation from mystery and fantasy author and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

Isn't that so accurate? I have yet to meet an Irishman who didn't love a good fight, a melancholy song,..and a strong drink. I think many would agree with Chesterton.

The quotation comes from Chesterton's "The Ballad of the White Horse," a narrative poem published in 1911 about King Alfred the Great's defeat of the Danes in England.

Chesterton explains the ballad in his Prefatory Note:

This ballad needs no historical notes, for the simple reason that it does not profess to be historical. All of it that is not frankly fictitious, as in any prose romance about the past, is meant to emphasize tradition rather than history. King Alfred is not a legend in the sense that King Arthur may be a legend; that is, in the sense that he may possibly be a lie. But King Alfred is a legend in this broader and more human sense, that the legends are the most important things about him.

The cult of Alfred was a popular cult, from the darkness of the ninth century to the deepening twilight of the twentieth. It is wholly as a popular legend that I deal with him here. I write as one ignorant of everything, except that I have found the legend of a King of Wessex still alive in the land. I will give three curt cases of what I mean. A tradition connects the ultimate victory of Alfred with the valley in Berkshire called the Vale of the White Horse. I have seen doubts of the tradition, which may be valid doubts. I do not know when or where the story started; it is enough that it started somewhere and ended with me; for I only seek to write upon a hearsay, as the old balladists did. For the second case, there is a popular tale that Alfred played the harp and sang in the Danish camp; I select it because it is a popular tale, at whatever time it arose. For the third case, there is a popular tale that Alfred came in contact with a woman and cakes; I select it because it is a popular tale, because it is a vulgar one. It has been disputed by grave historians, who were, I think, a little too grave to be good judges of it. The two chief charges against the story are that it was first recorded long after Alfred¹s death, and that (as Mr. Oman urges) Alfred never really wandered all alone without any thanes or soldiers. Both these objections might possibly be met. It has taken us nearly as long to learn the whole truth about Byron, and perhaps longer to learn the whole truth about Pepys, than elapsed between Alfred and the first writing of such tales. And as for the other objection, do the historians really think that Alfred after Wilton, or Napoleon after Leipsic, never walked about in a wood by himself for the matter of an hour or two? Ten minutes might be made sufficient for the essence of the story. But I am not concerned to prove the truth of these popular traditions. It is enough for me to maintain two things: that they are popular traditions; and that without these popular traditions we should have bothered about Alfred about as much as we bother about Eadwig.

One other consideration needs a note. Alfred has come down to us in the best way (that is, by national legends) solely for the same reason as Arthur and Roland and the other giants of that darkness, because he fought for the Christian civilization against the heathen nihilism. But since this work was really done by generation after generation, by the Romans before they withdrew, and by the Britons while they remained, I have summarised this first crusade in a triple symbol, and given to a fictitious Roman, Celt, and Saxon, a part in the glory of Ethandune. I fancy that in fact Alfred¹s Wessex was of very mixed bloods; but in any case, it is the chief value of legend to mix up the centuries while preserving the sentiment; to see all ages in a sort of splendid foreshortening. That is the use of tradition: it telescopes history.

G.K.C.

You can read the entire ballad online. You can view the actual White Horse in Uffington, England.

An aerial view of the 374 foot White Horse. 

It is an amazing Bronze Age landmark that was, sadly, unbeknownst to me.

Just another discovery made on a homeschooling rabbit trail.