THE RETURN OF THE AMERICAN QUILT

 AHEAD OF THE CURVE

In fashion and then out of fashion and now back in again: the American Quilt. It was no surprise to us that the quilts made by our grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond would come back into the world of appreciation and veneration.

As recently as this past fashion season the quilt has become the fabric of desire in of all places the men's fashion runways. Even the New York Times came on board with an article, "Men's Wear Is on a Quilt Trip". With an eye toward recycling and repurposing jackets and vests made from vintage quilts and quilt tops were paraded down runways and then sold in high-end Soho stores for very high-end prices. 

As has been evident in many of our, well almost all of our, posts we're incurable collectors. For me it started back in college when my pockets had holes in them. My mom was the one who indoctrinated me into the art of garage sales. She'd start out her week going through the newspaper aligning an itinerary for the weekend tour of the best garage sales. She put into order hunting lists by  proximity to each other and whether they included the words antiques and or vintage in their advertisement. We quickly grew the list of antique and vintage hunting by adding auctions to our list of activities. The only criteria was to limit our finds to what we could fit in the car. I was able to furnish every undergraduate apartment I ever had with the bounty we scarfed up on these weekend jaunts.

Vintage and antique quilts became an early obsession on our scavenger hunts. When Rick got added to the mix the obsession grew exponentially.  Antiquing, snooping around flea markets and sniffing out bargains at shops specializing in brocante has become our paramount leisure time pursuit and quilts became a major covet. Once we were into it we did have to do some self-educating along the quilting trail. 

The first thing we began to look at when we spied a new quilt hung on a hanger or folded up on a shelf was the stitching. We looked to see if the quilt was stitched by hand or put together using a sewing machine. The stitching is the quilt maker's signature. It's a little disappointing when you see the uninspiring uniformity of a machine's work.

A quilter's handy work can be as simple as the binding stitches that hold the fabric together or as intricate as the embroidery work found on a crazy quilt. Needlework in the form of herringbone, chevron and blanket stitches are the masterwork of nimble hands. 

There are steps before piecing a quilt together that require creative decision-making. They require gathering material and then deciding on a design.

Quilts new and old rely on collecting enough fabric to construct a quilt from a lap-sized version to one large enough to cover a bed.  The choice of fabric is going to dictate the color palette and hand of the quilt.

Most of the fabrics on traditional quilts were the scraps left over from the making of a home-made dress or shirt or an empty feed sack.

Probably the most famous quilts made from scrapes of old work clothes are the quilts of Gees Bend,  a small remote Black community in Alabama. These quilts have been featured in books and in major museum exhibitions. The designs are freeform geometric focusing on complimentary rich colors.

Most quilts in our collection are traditional patterns dating back to the eighteen hundreds, patterns like the Wedding Ring, Lone Star and Log Cabin.

Other designs can be botanical or use representational images from the animal kingdom or a history of the maker's life.

Most early quilts were done with a dual purpose. The first was necessity. They provided warmth and comfort but secondarily they were art. The making was frequently done as a group. Before we had TVs and the internet people frequently socialized over a quilting frame gossiping and stitching away. 

Some of the most beautiful quilts are the crazy quilts stitching stories with their pictorial choice of fabrics and their embroidered imagery and edging. Once again, our daughter has followed in our footsteps collecting an impressive collection of these amazing quilts.

Whether you use a quilt for a winter or summer bed cover,

find one so beautiful you decide to hang it on the wall

or lovingly use pieces of a damaged one to reupholster a chair the quilt is definitely back in fashion. For those with a good eye and stamina to enter the hunt there are still many out there to be picked up for prices well below their worth. 

We recently found these amazing pieces at a resale shop for $25 a piece. So way below their worth if only in the hours spent to create them. Please go out and save these pieces of our artistic heritage. When you find one you've saved a piece of some artist's sole.

THE GALLERY

Grandmother from Oklahoma and Her Pieced Quilt, 1936 Dorothea Lange, photographer, Represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery

FROM TRASH TO TREASURE

 DON'T THROW IT, REPURPOSE IT

For decades we've been doing our version of taking befores and making them into afters.  We've scavenged 1930's barkcloth and vintage French ticking for pennies at flea markets way before Martha put them in her magazine.  We are notoriously unscrupulous when it comes to curbside finds and bargain furniture.  With an eye to seeing beyond what it is to what it could be we were not at all phased by our daughter's mortification when as a little girl we would pull the car to the curb to pick up a piece of discarded furniture.

It was the sense that her parents were going through someone's garbage she objected to. Although, once the piece was back and we had nursed it into good health her mortification eventually disappeared.  After about twenty years of her having observed our transformations she has finally come around and under our tutelage has become a first rate scavenger herself.

Nothing is a better example of her trash to treasure education than the living quarters she has created for herself.  Her style might not be ours; her sensibility is more a reflection of her generation. It's hip and retro and progressive all at once. It reflects a strong woman secure in herself with a bold bohemian approach.

Our point of view is a bit tamer.  Our new kitchen renovation is an amalgam of Fiestaware, depression glass and DYI stools made from inexpensive big box store stools topped with cushion seats upholstered with vintage French ticking and fire engine red leather. 

The most important part of the art of repurposing is imagination.  This is something either you have or you don't. We believe we have it and that is why clients hire us.  It is why Rick can find a jar of buttons and know that if you string them together skillfully and artistically you can make a magical garland. 

It is how we can see a pair of metal bins and know that they will make perfect planters to anchor the corners of our deck once filled with Japanese maples and cascading vines.

Of all the trash we've picked up and transformed I do have a favorite.  It happened in a lucky moment when we were in the process of the first renovation of the house my parents had built and we bought from their estate.  It was in the summer two days before junk day.  We were still exploring the neighborhood.  The area around my parents house had expanded between the time when I had grown up in that house and decades later when we moved back to Madison, bought the house and began turning it into our own home.  On my way to the grocery store I decided to take a shortcut trough an area I hadn't been through before. Growing up this area had been pastures and cornfields.. As I turned down one of those uncharted streets now lined with thirty-year-old ranch houses and split-levels I spotted something that I knew was too good to pass up.

The remains of a Hollywood Regency style sofa missing its seat cushion and upholstered in a dreadful green crushed velvet with a fringed bottom.  It had been pulled out to the curb.  It was way too large to fit into or on top of our car. I was also a little skeptical about running off with it without knowing that indeed it was being cast away or just resting on the curb before being moved back into the house. I had to calculate whether I was going to be a thief or savior. I also had to figure out a plan of how I was going to abscond with my treasure. My youngest sister had a little pickup so I called her and asked if she could be my getaway driver.  She agreed.  We met up and were off to the rescue.

I was a bit worried that maybe we had let too much time elapse giving someone else the opportunity to cart off the sofa but when we rounded the corner the sofa was still  there. I went up to the front door to ask about the sofa. They said,, "If you want that thing take it, it's yours", so we did.  Now I had to see if Rick could see my vision as well.  He did.  We figured out fabrics and design upgrades complete with handmade accent pots Rick fashioned from knitting yarn, We had it fumigated and reupholstered.  Now it sits in our living room looking marvelous.

Never underestimate the restorative ability of your imagination.  Think beyond an old chair and a bunch of feed sacks. You never know what you might come up with.

THE GALLERY

Satiric Dancer, 1926, Andre Kertesz, photographer

Represented by Gitteman Gallery, NYC

THE CHRISTMAS TREE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

 VALENTINES

Artificial Christmas trees were never an acceptable way of celebrating the holiday season for my family, my extended family, our neighbors or anyone we knew living north of the Mason-Dixon line. For anyone in my family it was a pledge made from birth along with never questioning the existence of Santa that our Christmas tree would always be real. The smell of pine was essential to completing the Christmas experience.

It could be Blue Spruce, Scotch Pine, Fraser Fir, short needle, long needle or on the wild side flocked. Once erected and decorated it required daily attention keeping the water level at a sustainable level making sure the tree lasted as long as possible. You took care of your tree. Each morning you woke to the olfactory cues that indeed Christmas was still on its way.

The smell was as essential to the holidays as the smell of peppermint bark or fresh baked cookies. Dressed in sparkling white lights and dangling glass ornaments our tree was always the most significant decoration for the holiday dominating the living room its branches stretching from what looked like wall to wall through the eyes of my siblings and mine.

The conundrum with a real tree ultimately comes once the holiday has ended and the death of that particular year's tree.  There were various timetable rituals for disposal dictating when the tree was to come down. Those who might have put theirs up early or had had their fill of the holiday could take their tree down as soon as the 26th. These people were usually in the minority. The majority of Wisconsinites left their trees up through the New Year's holiday reluctantly dismantling their trees even though by this time most of the tree's needles were now embedded in the rugs. There still remained one more small group,  a tiny group who continued to leave their tree up beyond the customarily acceptable few days after New Years.. They either lived with a floor covered in sap and needles or their trees were fake with plastic needles and built in lights. God forbid.

You can only imagine what a shock it was to me to discover that the bulk of aluminum Christmas trees so popular in the nineteen fifties and sixties were primarily made at the Aluminum Specialty Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, but were only minimally sold in Wisconsin as if they were contraband items.  I'm assuming they were mostly exported to outside the state. The people who had gone faux Christmas were normally shunned and a great deal of talk happened behind their backs

This year, I fear we've generated a great deal of talk as well. We went artificial, and yes, it's Valentine's and our glorious artificial tree is still up. The blame for this is not going to fall on me. I've tried to get help taking the tree down on the acceptable dates around New Years but a pleading partner and daughter weren't going to hear of it. I think it was their need to hold on to something that represented joy when there was so little of it around. I kept hearing one more week until the one more week ran out and the plea turned to let's keep it up until the end of January. When the end of January passed I put my foot down and demanded that the first week in February was the date we all would have to live with and the tree would need to come down. I thought I had won out. The tree was made of straw and could easily be disassembled and packed back into a box. With an artificial tree I'd avoid the ultimate humiliation of having to drag a needle bare Charlie Brown tree out to the curbside to the ridicule of all our neighbors and anyone else who might pass by.

Our street is on a bus route compounding the amount of strange eyes that would have been witness to my shame. The dread of some neighbor, family member or Jehovah Witness showing up at our door was a constant concern. I really didn't want to be exposed as Christmas tree slacker.

The first Saturday in February arrived. Emmy had been enlisted to help me retrieve the storage boxes for the tree and our ornaments. As I called down to her to come help, I heard Rick wail "Wait! You can't take the tree down. I've got a surprise!". I couldn't believe my plan was going to be foiled again. Emmy was relieved and Rick was delighted. The two of them not having been born in Wisconsin and therefore still considered transplants do not know the significance of their transgression.  I waited in fear.

It was mid-afternoon when the UPS truck pulled up and delivered a small package.

Our fake tree is a beautiful straw color and to Rick's specifications had been decorated in shades of copper and rose gold with strands of strung vintage buttons and blush rose gold ribbons gracefully draping its circumference.

With a bit of pomp and ceremony Rick gathered all of us including the dogs around the tree and sliced open the Amazon box. Inside he pulled out four dozed rose gold heart ornaments and declared we now have a Valentine tree so it could remain at least another two weeks until the holiday has finally passed. What was I to do?

I would appreciated it if any of you have found and then get the idea to tell Rick you've located a sale on President's Day ornaments, please keep the information to yourselves. I'm in fear of this tree never being put away as decorations for May Day,  The Fourth of July, National Pizza Day, The Annual Corn Festival Week might all become excuses for redecorating the tree with a new set of Amazon purchased rose gold ornaments American eagles, scary pumpkins, pepperoni pizzas or god forbid little Trumps.

THE GALLERY

                                

A Christmas Tree in a Living Room in Levittown, Long Island, 1962 Diane Arbus, photographer Represented by Fraenkel Gallery

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES

 WHAT FANNIE FARMER TAUGHT ME

Mrs. D. A. Lincoln set in type some sage advice in her 1884 cook book Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book "It has been said that good cooks never measure anything.  They do, they measure by judgement and experience.  And until you have a large measure of both of these essential qualities, use your spoon and cup or scales."  Mrs. Lincoln's book was the official textbook of the Boston Cooking School established in 1877 and is considered the first U.S. school of real consequence devoted to the art and science of cooking.

Fannie Merritt Farmer graduated from the school in 1889 and was asked to stay on as assistant principal and head instructor.  In 1891 after the death of Mrs. Carrie Dearborn the third principal of the school Fannie became principal and in 1896 published her first version of the school's cookbook.

She is believed to have introduced the first system of standardized measurements for cooking in the United States and because she insisted on scooping and leveling ingredients she has been dubbed the "Mother of Level Measurements".  Before this advent cookbooks instructed such measures as "a walnut size knob of butter, four fingers of marzipan and a handful of sugar".  However Miss Farmer's system of kitchen measurement was not globally embraced since it is based on volume.  Europeans and most of the world depend on the more precise system of weight.

If you have ever delved into a British cookbook you will not find instruction containing a cup of anything rather ingredients are measured in the metric system of grams, liters and milliliters.  Just dial up an episode of the Great British Baking Show and watch the contestants pull out their scales to weigh the ingredients for a dozen identical biscuits or a dozen petit fours.

However I am a true red-blooded American completely incapable of sifting though the conversion from grams to ounces so I'll stick to my cups and spoons.  Compounding my mathematical deficiencies, I'm embarrassed to admit, I can never remember how many ounces in a pint, how many pints in a quart, how many quarts - well you get the picture.  So I'm here to tell you after cooking for most of my life, acing culinary school at Peter Kump's New York Cooking School and even assisting Peter for almost a year, to bastardize Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire famous line "I rely on the kindness of measuring cups, spoons and scales".

So don't be embarrassed to refer to the ever helpful Charts of Weights and Measures found in many a cookbook cuz god knows I unabashedly do! As proof of this just look at the mini chart I proudly display on my kitchen counter for all to see and me to use.

Still there are a few things to know and do to insure more accurate measuring.  Equip your kitchen with both dry and liquid measuring cups.  For dry ingredients Miss Farmers advice to scoop and level is sound advice indeed.  When using brown sugar or any moisture containing ingredient make sure you pack it because moisture can create air pockets resulting in inaccuracies.  

Measuring flour is very different, you want it light and fluffy and most recipes even recommend sifting before measuring.

Finally, cooking is very different from baking.  In cooking you can easily riff on a recipe making it your own using your fingers to measure quantity and your nose to detect proportions.

Baking is an exact science, so exacting that if you want to be a failsafe baker, even if you're an American baker, you need to invest in a kitchen scale to make sure that your puff pastry is flakey and layered and your biscuits have the right density and rise.

We all aspire to hearing Mary Berry taste our pastries and tell us that they're "scrummy!" 

THE GALLERY

The Fork, 1928 Andre Kertesz, photographer Represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery