I have once again been inspired to consider and write about a topic discussed on this blog. The post asked the question, 'is there beauty in decay?' and I was thinking about this and why l like old things, the vintage clothes, authentically distressed furniture, beautiful tea cups and saucers, old vanity items, the bold colours & prints of vintage silk scarves, to name but a few of my favourite things.
My mother is a lover of antique and junk shops and having followed her on endless outings I firmly caught the 'bug' at an early age. In fact my parents ran an antique shop for a time and I was their first customer as I recall I bought a cut glass perfume bottle, which I still have on my dresser. I like nothing better than walking into a shop, a market or a charity shop, wondering what treasure I will find and pondering on what I will be leaving with in my bag.
l love tactile old fabrics in jewel colours, velvet, devore, taffeta , chiffon, rayon, silk. My husband thinks I'm not a little weird in that I seem to him to live in the past, (pot, kettle, black, spring to mind) and perhaps I do or is it that I'm afraid of change? I think both may be true in small part, but it is much more than that ...
I love the history,
the possible stories,
the hidden secrets,
a life lived in full,
the glamorous nights and a sweet tryst
hidden amongst the frills, pleats and bows.
l may have a silk scarf tied to my bag today or be wearing an old silk petticoat under that LBD (little black dress), which I'm thinking of wearing to the Christmas dinner.
The dress, the bag, the scarf, they keep the secrets of a lady who once danced, who sang, who loved, who dreamt, who cried...
It may be a bold bark cloth printed skirt from the 50's or a confetti lucite box bag which harks back to a love lost or a friendship made, these are all memory keepers.
This fills me up, like the pages of a good book, like the warmth and comfort wrought from a roaring fire in the dark of a winter evening. Or like the light cast by the candle in the night, evoking what may be, what could be, what should be.
I don't inderstand the horror when people are aghast that I may be wearing a dead persons clothes .... LOL, I know I probably am, whether it is a 1940's dress, a 1930's coat or a flapper opalescent string of twinkling glass beads or a fine silk pouch bag, they are most likely the items of a woman no longer living.
Or perhaps they are sitting in a favourite comfortable armchair, staring into the fire and beyond, reminiscing about the party they once attended, wearing my dress, carrying my bag and being whirled around the dance floor or terrace, stolen moments.
There is the shadow cast from a young woman's whimsical dream, the yearning and the hope bound up in the weave of the fabric's lifetime.
When I'm alone, I often make a pot of tea in a 1930's earthenware teapot, which has a decorated band around the top of pastel flowers. I lay a tray with a cloth and place an assortment of mismatched china out and enjoy a long cup of tea or two. I like the experience, the comforting warm feeling it evokes within me. It is also a little self spoiling , which is what every good -or bad- woman needs. Cherish and indulge your good self.
I recently read a new edition of a fiction book originaly printed in 1936 and this too made me wonder if my grandmother, who was a voracious reader, may have read it. I'm now on a mission to find an original copy, just to have the essence of nostalgic veneer of things past in the present. It's all in in there somewhere, life's rich tapestry.
I find it fascinating and it pulls me in...
A contender for post of the day at Authorblog, thanks again for the mention David!
