Beam Me Over Scotty!

I'm going to Scotland in a week.  I'M GOING TO SCOTLAND IN A WEEK!  This is a big deal for me, a homebody who has never even left the country.  It's true.  I'm quite content to stick around home.  Bucket list?  There isn't one.  My greatest travel aspirations might include road trips around the country to see the national parks.  That would be nice.

But my children are very different than me.  Well, at least two of them... so far.  The two oldest.  They get around.  If you have read my blog from the beginning, you know those two boys have lived in Taiwan, Japan, China, (Utah) and now, you guessed it... Scotland.  Glasgow to be specific.  My oldest and his wife (front center and front left in this picture of my family) are living in the West End for a year while he gets a masters in International Politics-China at the University of Glasgow.

And yes, said university looks like Hogwarts to me.

Well, it WAS founded in 1451.

Anyway, something happened last summer and now there's this...

And that's why I'm going to Scotland in a week.

Yes, my first grandchild.

A pale, blond or red headed, freckly baby girl should arrive

about the same time I do... keep your fingers crossed. 

Knock on wood.  Say a prayer.  Whatever works.  

My plans in Scotland are to be a homebody there, too.  

I need to take care of the new mama so she can take care of her new sweetie pie.

No other big plans while I'm there...

well...

Ok... maybe I could sneak out for a little while and see this:

I mean... it's located right on the university grounds.

I'm talking about The Mackintosh House, a reassemblage of interiors

from one of my favorite architects, leader in the art nouveau movement,

and legendary Glaswegian, Charles Rennie Mackintosh!

 Among his gorgeous designs:

The iconic trademark Mackintosh rose,

the 1898 Argyle chairs and the famous 1902 Hill House chair (center)!

I used to have a Mackintosh Rose poster up in my kitchen in Provo

when I attended BYU for Interior Design back when this boy I'm visiting was born.

So, it's meant to be.  I need to sneak over there...

...and maybe on the way I might come across a thrift shop or two...

or a fabric shop here and there.

There's a Cath Kidston in Glasgow.

And not that I've been cruising all over the google map of Glasgow

and obsessed with street view and checking out fabric shops called

Timorous Besties, Mandors, Remnant Kings, or Zum Zum...

or thrift shops with fascinating names like

Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor... but, I digress...

Anyway.

We'll see about all that.

First, I need to concentrate on someone who

I used to think would someday look like this:

An early Victoria magazine picture cropped from an article about something vintage that I loved back in the 90s.  This beautiful little girl, whoever she is, is all grown up now.  I used to think if my son and his wife had a daughter, she might look like this.  But now I think she'll be even more fair and more blond.  We'll see, won't we?

Until then,

Cheerio and Haste Ye Back!

Vintage Decorator Fabric

Currently loving these big samples of 70s decorator fabric.

Love 'em all.  Love 'em together.

Hmmm... the more I look at these,

the less sure I am that they are from the 70s...

What do you think?

Era - Gone

Ok, I need a distraction.  School board has been so stressful lately.  How about I pull out my 1956 Better Homes and Garden Decorating book and share a few pictures.

Let's talk about interior design.  I do like late 50s/early 60s design.  Some call it "Atomic."  Some call it "Eames Era."  It's all the same.  "Atomic" refers to post war and post atom bomb.  "Eames" is the name of an iconic designer of that time period.  Charles Eames pioneered moulded plastic chairs, wire mesh furniture and moulded plywood.

 

  

All classics - all Eames.  All worth thousands.

We actually studied these chairs in college.

This was an era of scientific progress and it not only showed in the innovative technology put to use in making furniture, but also in the amoebic design motifs employed.  This was a time of optimism which was manifested in the bright colors used in interior design.  This was a time when Americans were very interested in the space race.  Many pieces of furniture reflected the long spindly legs of the Sputnik satellite and the starburst shapes of outer space.  

You recognize it when you see it.

Let's look at a few pictures.

Furniture of this era was often supported by spindly legs and had sleek upholstery without gathers or tucks.  Note the organic, amoebic shape of the coffee table up on tapered legs, of course.  Check out the bright touches of primary colors.  I love the lamps.  They seem to be built right into the end tables.

Here's another coffee table with an organic shape.  Bold fabric prints were also the order of the day.  And of course, we have Fifi the family guard dog standing sentinel.

That light fixture has sputnik written all over it.  Note the Danish Modern chairs and table - also hot during this era.

Here we have Ricky Gervais returning home after a hard day of work with his wife patiently waiting in her day dress and earrings.  Plastic fruit was big.  Note the wire candle display on the wall.  Wire was "in."  See the wire mesh chair in the foreground?

More bright colors in this living area.  There always seemed to be a little black in each room to set off the bold colors.  Note the wire in the picture frame, the lamp and the coffee table legs.  I absolutely LOVE that lamp.

 

Check out the olive and turquoise color scheme accompanied by touches of orangey rust from the other side of the color wheel.  What I don't understand is why there is a woman peeping in the window.

I like two things in this picture:  the wire and moulded plastic chair and the Coke everywhere.  I guess product placement is nothing new!

OK, distraction accomplished!  Now back to answering emails and reading school board information.

Pink, Turquoise, Atomic? It's Mid-Century!

Keaton had a day off school on Monday and was persistent with his suggestion that we go "thrift bombing" all day.  He loves to look for old game systems or noise making electronic toys that he can dismantle or sample sounds from -- all this to make chip music.  Anyway, we didn't spend all day, but we did hit a couple of places that I hadn't been to in 15-20 years where I found this very mid-century, very vintage lamp.  How about those sputnik style atomic beads on the metal stems?  It even looks like it's sitting on a rocket ship base.  I think this lamp would go perfectly with the vintage radio from my November 7th post.

Check out those amoebic, spacey, pink shapes with the gold painted stars in the middle.   They look like asteroids or galaxies.   The American people were fascinated with the space race in the late 50s  and early 60s and our furniture reflected it.  The gold paint used in so much of the decor from that era was usually at least 22 karat gold.

Add a turquoise fiberglass lampshade and you have the quintessential late 50s living room lamp.  George, Jane, Judy, Elroy and Astro would love it.  Maybe they shop on Etsy...

Once Upon a Time, I was a Designer

I am unearthing more long forgotten possessions while cleaning out my sewing room closet.  By the way, it is a large closet.  I live in an old house and this closet could be a small bathroom.  And that closet was stuffed - literally.  When my oldest son and his wife came home for Christmas last year, we put a bed in the sewing room and shoved all manner of things into that closet, pushed a bulletin board up against the avalanche and heaved the door closed.  Everyone was directed not to open that door on pain of death.  While I am cleaning out the closet, the contents have filled the rest of the sewing room.  I should have taken a "before" picture.  You would have been disappointed in me.  I am ashamed.  However, I am making progress towards an efficient, highly labeled and sorted, organized closet.

Anyway, I digress.  What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, long forgotten possessions.  I found my markers from college!  My Prisma Color markers used for my design projects that stood upright in a neat little spinning carousel.  Every Interior Design major was required to buy a set.  I think they were around $70 back then.  Smelling their marker fragrance as I opened the caps to test them transported me right back to the early 80s at BYU.  Six of the markers actually still had juice!

Finding my markers took me on a mini reminiscence.  I wanted to see my renderings from college.  I knew they were in the back of my bedroom closet in their large black portfolios.  I dug them out. (Another closet to be cleaned.)  They were a little water damaged from when the roofers didn't tarp the house well enough during a rain storm, but that's quite another story.  Anyway, there were my projects.  I remember many a night burning the midnight oil to meet a deadline drawing at my drafting table while my roommate slept.  I photographed some of them to share with you.

A monochromatic project... a kitchen on plain old fodder.

A more traditional sitting area.

A formal dining room sketch in pencil.

I loved this house.

A living area in that house.

A converted shed in chalk and marker.

Looks like a place my artist, garden-loving, mother-in-law would like.

I don't remember doing this sepia of the house where we lived in college.  This was an old four-square on the corner of 5th west and University Avenue.  Our apartment was the upper right portion of the building.  Two apartments on each floor and one in the basement.

With this project, I tried to go against type and do something ultra modern.  Is the grey and mauve color scheme a dead giveaway that it was the mid-eighties?

A ski lodge... see the white snowy mountains out the window?

The kitchen in the ski lodge.

A country townhouse.  In the 80s, American Country was starting to take over.  Everything was Nantucket and stencils and grape vine and mini print wallpaper.

Gotta love the "Lotus" chair in pencil.

And if this doesn't scream 80s, I don't know what does.
Busy, busy, busy.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip down memory lane with me.  It was fun remembering those long lost projects.  And lest you think I am an artist - which I most definitely am not - these renderings and elevations were drawn with the help of a perspective grid.  There are lots of tricks that they teach you in school.

Wall Candy

For what seemed like a long time during my teenage years, the main wall in our turquoise kitchen was decorated with an orange fishing net. My mom had strung it up in sweeping fashion and tangled and dangled various ocean shells and starfish in it.  At the time I don't think I appreciated the artistic and complementary color scheme of the orange and the turquoise or the sentimental use of those shells collected along the beach in Florida where my mother's parents lived. That wall decor was creative, personal and colorful, but I don't think I appreciated any of it.   I remember asking my mom one day how long she was planning to keep the orange fish net up.  Her reply?  She said, "It's so hard to find something that I really like... something that I want to look at every day - I don't want to change it too often."

That's the way I feel about my soda bottle vignette in my kitchen.  It's been there for a long time, but I'm not tired of it yet... at all.  I love my soda bottle vignette.  My kitchen is kind of 50s diner modern.  I have three Stewart's Key Lime soda bottles in an old wooden Pine River cheese box next to some Davy Crockett Fire King pieces.  I like the complementary color scheme of the green against the red.  By the way, Stewart's Key Lime is very yummy.  We used to drink it every so often and just replace it with three new bottles until Stewart's changed their bottle design and it didn't look so vintage.  So these bottles have been there for years.  I'll bet all the fizz is gone by now.

 And even though Disney came out with it's Davy Crockett series before I was born, I still grew up knowing that theme song by heart and watching Fess Parker as Davy on Sunday night's "Wonderful World of Disney."  The Davy Crockett plate, bowl and mug are sentimental.

I never get tired of my kitchen wall decor.  I think my kitchen wall is creative, personal and colorful. and I don't plan on changing it any time soon...  which proves I am my mother's daughter.