12 & 13 May 1957 “Everyman an Artist: Paint By Number”

I am reposting yesterday’s post, because something is up with blogger. I hope today the post shows up and people are able to comment.
The other day, while thumbing through one of my vintage magazines ( a 1954 copy this time) I came across this ad for Picture Craft Paint by Numbers sponsored by the popular Ozzie Nelson family of TV fame. READ MORE

13 January 1957 “A Do It Yourself Coffee Table and Clowns:Once The Darling of The 1950’s”

I thought I would share this lovely little ‘Do-it-yourself’ idea from one of my magazines. It is a very clever mid-century modern design for a coffee table, utilizing a door. I think it could also be made more Early American by some clever painting or decoupage techniques. Or, simply paint it a solid color. I think it would be fun to attach some metal office baskets underneath (you could do this easily when it is turned upside down) so you could store magazines and things underneath out of sight, but easy to get to.
In the 1950’s and earlier, the clown was seen as an endearing character. Usually funny and jovial, though sometimes a sad clown, it represented the fun and excitement of the circus.
Here is a kid’s show featuring a Clown from the early 1950’s:

Clowns played a major role in graphic arts/advertising, children’s books, fabric, wrapping paper, even household items such as lamps and chairs. Even Food was often given these delightful creatures as a theme.
These battery operated toys were very popular during the 1950’s. And of course, the clown played a major role here as well.

The fear of clowns must have come after the 1970’s because I recall, as a small child in the late 70’s, having one of these type of Jack in the box with the clown face.
  These Hazel Atlas Milk Glass tumblers and Cookie jars are Kitsch today, but the bright colors exemplify the 1950’s kitchen palete of red/pinks, soft blue/teal, yellow and red.   They show that the clown was not meant only for children. Many a homemaker would have been proud to have these in her kitchen. These, to my modern sensibilities, are a bit more menacing. Before Ronald, Clowns were still considered good fodder to sell food.And toy clowns abound during this decade. This McCall’s pattern features one as part of this sew your own toy collection. To my old modern sensibilities he almost has a sinister grin, but I think this is due to my modern view of clowns.
Certainly Clowns played a major role as a ‘go-to character’ in arts and crafts. (This thanks to Kitschy Kitschy Koo)  And toys such as these would have been happily received and possibly wrapped in papers such as this.
Today, many of us have a very different view of the clown. We often view them as kitsch or sometimes even menacing and evil. That is probably due to the Poltergeist films where a toy clown attacks the family. There is also the horror writer Stephen King to thank for menacing clowns as well. I am not sure why they recieved that eventual position in the collection of frightening creatures. That is of course unless those children of the 1950’s (who King and Spielberg certainly were) had nightmarish moments as children with toys or bedroom furniture.
Though this looks darling to me it might have frigtened King or Speilberg late at night, with the long shadows cutting across it. Or perhaps the moonlight hit this just so, and nightmares ensued.
We do know that the Clown was one of the major choices for children’s Halloween costumes, both in the happy variety and the clown’s wayward cousin, the HOBO .
Even the art world was subject to these characters as we see in this 1955 painting by the artist Bernard Buffet. He was a French Expressionist and was a member of the anti-abstract group "L 'homme Témoin”. I suppose the irreverence of representational art in the form of the clown was their way to counter the growing popularity of Abstraction in the 1950’s.
Since that time, the clown has made many appearances in art, often with much irony or again with the ability to menace either out of fear or fear of good taste.
Any way you slice it, the clown elicits some response. There is no middle ground for these bright characters. You either coil in fear, raise your nose in disgust of Kitsch, or hold out your arms in a ‘Gimme Gimme’ stance, wanting to take them home with you.
I have a love hate relationship now after living two years in the 1950’s. My once clean cut hatred has become a see saw response of joy and disgust. Again, a response for sure, no hum-drum indifference.
How do clowns make you feel?

1 January 1957 “Happy New Year! and The Coming Project”

Happy New Year all. I hope you all can say you have had a wonderful year. My Hubby made a nice comment last night at our little party we hosted in our home. He said, “Well, I can say honestly at the end of this year I am not saying Thank God it is Over!” We all laughed and reflected that we have had a rather nice year. With all the changes in the world and the increasing fear of those changes, it was a good year for the pair of us, at least.
As you may know I have been contemplating for the past month on my possible return to the present or to simply walk naturally into 1957. My solution is for the most part, go forward with the 1950’s. HELLO 1957!
Now, with that, I have decided that I want another focus to my year. With my usual continuation of news and research of 1957 and my ever striving for more homemaking skills, I have decided that art and craft will play the major focus for 1957. That is not to say I will limit my posts or my interests only to the art world, on the contrary, it has been the past two years of my varied interests and study that have finally made me want to get back to creating tactile art.
I, of course, consider all the Homemaking skills art. I KNOW a loaf of bread baked to perfection and the shine of a kitchen floor is art and it takes creation and skill, believe you me. Yet, I feel the need to want to digest all that has been happening and will continue to happen in the 1950’s into tangible art and craft I can see, feel, touch.
The coming year, as well, will surely be ripe with many changes.
Music is continuing to grow ‘wilder’ and more beat driven. Here Jerry Lee Louis reminds us that a piano IS a percussive instrument.

And as is usual for me, I will not only focus on the good. I might still wear my rose-colored spectacles, but sometimes there appear smudges on them. The radical changes in our world are increasing. Things like Elizabeth Eckford attempting with 9 other black Americans, to attend a Little Rock AR High School later this year. This will result in some amazingly scary results.
To the happy items such as Theodor Geisel, writing as Dr. Seuss, created The Cat in the Hat.
The art world is increasingly running the gambit from more classical painting, such as this portrait of Princess Margaret by Pietro Annigonni from this year.
To  this child like sketch indicative of either children’s or mental patient drawings done by Picasso this year 1957.  With that the world of Advertising and the amount of images we are becoming bombarded with create Art in more places than once were. Products, TV commercials, magazines, even a box of detergent can be a thing of beauty. And the increase production in Books and Children’s books creates a boom world for artists pre-computer graphics. So, to me, the expressive arts, 2-D and 3-D are even more relevant.
Add to this the growing craft of Needlework, knitting, sewing. Endless offers are available to the homemaker and crafter to make and create by ordering patterns or easy instructions in magazines. Even paint by number is an expression for the burgeoning middle class to ‘pick up the brush and have an artistic hobby’.
So, how will my project work you might ask? I plan to, each month, propose to myself an ‘art & craft’ task. One month might be to write and illustrate a children’s book to creating and constructing 1950’s inspired wooden/paper dolls. Sewing, embroidery, what have you. I shall, for the most part, allow one month’s task to help me decide what the next should entail. Also the study and research of what is happening in that month in 1957 will most likely greatly affect my view and therefore ‘artistic vision’ for the next month. I hope to fuel my desire to create and nurture into this project even more.
You will also have notice that the blog has changed. After a year of learning, frustration and annoyance with the site and the seeming insurmountable work in it, I have finally figured out the best way to make my blog BECOME my website. This will allow me to have links to all my past posts (which I am still going through but it is SO much faster than trying to redo them all for the site). There will still be the Forum and the Corner Store and hopefully in the future, depending on which direction my ‘art and craft’ takes me, an actual little store of possibly my things for pin money. The site and the blog will become one so that rather you go to apronrevolution.com or the blog they will lead you to the same place. This will allow me to better make use of what I have, easily file away what I shall write for future use and have the time to focus on my art while still running my home and garden.
I hope all of you will still want to join me on this journey this year. I still can’t believe it has been two years! And so many lovely friends I have made. I would like to get back to my Q & A Sunday’s and still try to blog M-F with Saturday off for any blog tweaks and to focus on my art.
Our once featured Apronite of the month will make a return to the site/blog but I am not sure in what way. As I would like still to feature one of you a month. Perhaps you could suggest what you would like to see in that vein and that will help me to make it happen.
Well, after all that, my first art challenge for this month (which might need to spill into February as well, as it is a shorter month) is to write and illustrate a children’s book. I have been imagining a story around my favorite Hen, “Buttons” for some time. I hope to use she and her comrades as ideas. My first few sketches are greatly influenced by the more simplified forms of the 1950’s illustrators.  Here is a sketch that I started a few days ago to decide what direction I would like to take for this first art project. Here you can see our little Heroine running about. It is merely a beginning now, but part of my project will be to share sketches and idea’s so you can better see, as well as help me, get to a final piece I am happy with. As always Please give me your opinions good or bad, I want to grow and improve.
Thank you all again for your continued interest in my little project and I hope the coming year of 1957 will keep you at least amused. Again, Happy New Year and as always:
Happy Homemaking.

6 November 1956 “1950’s TV Drawing School & Site Day”

As some of you may know, my new schedule has Saturday’s as my site day. I am working on making it more functional and so on. In the future this can be the day I simply continue to sort blog post content into a more usable stored reference materials.
And for any of you who have signed up for my monthly newsletter, I will try and get that out tomorrow. For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, if you go to the main page of the WEBSITE on the right hand side under my bio is a ‘sign up for newsletter’ button. Simply click that and do whatever it says, I think it just asks for your email, and you will receive it. I want to give some info and scanned vintage images that won’t necessarily be on the website. Sort of a fun, ‘let’s check the mail and see what we have’. I would love to do an actual newsletter, but that I know would be too expensive and far too much trouble with stamps and all.
In the future it will come to your email first of the month, but again, I am but one person. I know based upon my continuing experience of adding more to my schedule, that in time it will become normal and simply be ‘part of my day’. That is what I increasingly love about my two year project, that I can keep pushing myself, setting the bar high, and then achieving that aim. Almost making up for all the lost time of my modern youth of aimless rote and mindless entertainment. Though I do still enjoy a good movie or show now and again, and of course reading and vintage fun times with my friends. But, I digress…
So, for Saturdays, rather than just leave you with boring info on what I am working on the site, I will share some fun video with you.
Today we are going to see a video of a 1950’s TV program with Jon Gnagy, a self taught artist. His show was the not only the first of its kind on early television, but  On May 16, 1946, Jon Gnagy was the first "act" on the first program broadcast from the antenna atop the Empire State Building. HERE is a quick biography of his interesting life.
You can also watch more of his fun and helpful videos on my APRON TV simply go on the right under playlists and scroll down until you see Vintage Educational Tv and click on that. It will open many videos of his 50’s art show, enjoy and Happy Homemaking.
Here is the intro to his show followed by an episode.

17 August 1956 “Jackson Pollock: An Artist OF His Time”

On 11 August of this year, Jackson Pollock died from a car crash due to his drunken driving. He had his girlfriend (though he was still married to artist Lee Krasner) and her friend with him. The friend was killed and the girlfriend survived.
Pollock rocketed to everyman’s fame due to a 1949 3 page article on him. I won’t get into all the aspects of what I think of his work or the work of abstract expressionism at the time. What was happening was timing. Prior to this period Paris was the epi-center of art, but a group of Harvard educated art critics changed this. They presented the rough and tumble avant-garde American artist as the new voice (or eyes) of a new world. His connection with the wealthy gallery and art guru, Peggy Guggenheim didn’t hurt. In many ways Pollock is a good example of life and art mirroring one another. We are coming out of the 1940’s into the post war 50’s and image, advertising, and persona are becoming more important than ever before. As TV will appear and magazines by the score, advertising will kick into full drive, so an artist who is all about HE is the perfect ‘Greatest Living Artist of Our Time” as the Life article told us.
His work, which is to me at best decorative, is certainly a good back drop for the time. Here one of his images from the 1951 Vogue is in perfect harmony with the early 1950’s color scheme of pink, black, grey and taupe.
His work even affected the interiors of the 1950’s and spatter painted floors were available on counter tops and floor tiles as well as ‘How to’ in ladies magazines. Many rumpus room basements received this treatment. Even ceramics felt the effect.
After his 1949 Life article he all but abandoned the ‘drip style’ and his work became darker and reintroduced the figure as seen in the 1951 piece.
I think his death of self-indulgence, alcoholism and sudden fame is very fitting for the coming decade. Many stars and singers will succumb to such. Too much too fast and already someone to step in and take their place was to be the new marketing of the human creative individual. Like the new paper towels, simply rip, wipe and toss away. In so many ways the roller coaster was beginning.
I shall return tomorrow hopefully with some images of my finished dress and some Blackberry Jam. I may have made my decision on a tenant and am trying to get as many things done along with that so as I do not focus on the frustration that is being a Landlord.
Until tomorrow, then, Happy Homemaking.

5 July 1956 “Our Town’s 4th of July Parade and Celebrations”

I hope all had a wonderful 4th celebration (you American followers I mean). Our parade was cute at its start. This old 1900 wooden school bus.
   The Soldiers and the cars made one feel it was 1950’s   This float was from our local book store, Titcombs. The have  a colonial figure out front of their business on our historic hwy (which I also live on) that is a famous landmark. Here they recreated him for the parade and the truck says, “Join the Reading Revolution” and they were followed by family members/workers dressed in Revolutionary hats. Titcomb’s has its own blog and here is the link to the post about how they were started, rather cute story. HERE it is.
After that, the parade took an odd turn. First off the remainder of the parade appeared to just be modern cars with random business names and then people in the back with high powered water guns and buckets of water. They squirted and squirted. Had they only done so to the youngsters up front who wanted it, fine, but they would spray up the lawn embankments and many had expensive cameras. Myself and Gussie were ‘dressed up’ (dress, petticoat etc per usual) and did not enjoy getting wet. I suppose for the throngs of t-shirt wearing cut off short individuals they didn’t mind. But it continued on like that. Then, on top of that, we had three fire trucks BLARING their sirens and horns. Now, in the old days, when the siren and bell was a darling little clang, I understand, but these sirens and whistles are ear piercing and meant to be heard by modern fast traffic of people blasting their music. At close quarters on a small town street, children were literally plugging their ears, and I joined it. It is rather easy to hurt ones eardrums permanently.
Then to top off the odd parades ending, everyone got up and immediately left with a huge mess and trail of candy half eaten empty wrappers and garbage all over the streets! How much effort to pick up your own garbage and all the children who had been collecting up the candy had no admonitions from any parents, we were appalled to say the least.
We ended the morning by going to our local tea shop for afternoon tea only to be stared at when we left by some out of town tourist all of 17 dressed in shorts TOO short and a bland uninspired Wal-Mart top. I had to laugh to myself when I thought she found US funny, we had nice dresses, ironed, earrings, handbags etc. I am not sure why style is hilarious, but it seemed to be.  But, I digress.
Here are the simple but fun parfaits I made for our gathering. The berries were picked from our local farm and the whipped cream is, of course, homemade. If anyone has ever had that horrid can stuff or the tub, then whipped their own, where in you can add the amount of sugar and vanilla or whatever you wish (chocolate, lavender anything) you will never go back to the store bought. And, of course, I do love photographing food, so here are two close ups. This was my centerpiece for our gathering, and I didn’t want it to be red white and blue. I decided to use the flowers from my yard and I think the hydrangea, lillies and Phlox, look like explosions of fireoworks, don’t you?
We returned downtown at 7p.m. to the Mill pond where a band performs and then at 9pm the 4th of July Boat Parade on the water begins. Any local can enter and you decorate your boats (canoes, dinghy what have you) with lights and affects but you have to have candle lit Chinese Lanterns as part of it, as it is the tradition.
Here is a shot by the Grist Mill and the pond to set the scene. This is fairly representative of my town and area in which I live. In many ways, very small town New England America, you can even see a couple fishing in the background. here you can see people settling in with the band in the background and the boats, later, will appear on the water from behind the old Burial ground, which juts out into the pond.
This part of our day was probably the most Vintage feeling. The band was playing older music and the mood was not as odd as our Parade.

   Here you can see the people working their boat lit only by the Chinese Lanterns. They set off a great fire display out of the top of their boat. This boat was called the Huck Finn and they had a nice campfire and tent going on their entry.
It was hard getting good pictures, as it was so dark. But some of the photos turned out to be so beautiful, that I think they almost have a surreal or abstract quality. These photos that only captured the dancing Chinese paper lanterns and one errant rocket  made me think of Whistlers painting Nocturne in Black and Gold. By no means exhibiting the depth and character of that infamous painting (he sued Ruskin for slander of his public hatred of the painting) but it has that quality to it for me; The abstraction of color and form with the reality of representation behind.  I think the images would look nice enlarged in a mid-century modern setting. This photo, again rather abstract, was beautiful to behold in person. This particular boat filled itself with beautiful large paper shapes that looked like jellyfish, which when they lit them and let them go, floated over us. you could almost feel you were under the sea in its deep dark depths. Two of these got caught up in trees and the crown began to worry and fret, “It’s going to catch on fire” many said and were worried. We were not. It soon burned itself out. Many seem to forget this whole town once was lit by whale oil then kerosene, very flammable substances, and has made it just fine. It did add to the excitement of the night.
It was very small town America. You could almost believe you were in 1950’s at points, as the local band played many 1950’s rock n roll songs, with some Beatles and Jimmy Buffet (not a fan) thrown in. At first, only the children were dancing on the lawn as all others sat and watched. I thought, ‘If this was 1956, the band would be playing dance music and the adults would be dancing, in couples.” It seemed today, only the children danced. Later, as the light ebbed and the excitement of the upcoming boats was upon us, many adults then joined in to dance. Only, it was modern in that all were just jumping up and down. I squinted my eyes a bit and imagined white gloves, sun hats and twirling couples. A Vintage girl can dream, can’t she?
One of the entries this year was interesting in that it was the same boat that had won 100 years earlier in 1910. Obviously, new decorations, as the rules imply, but I thought, my how the world has changed since that boat first tread the waters. We had not even had our first World War yet. So much innocence. The nice part is my town, in many ways, is still very much the same, only the people and their attitudes seem different. I can walk past houses and building hundreds of years old and the old grist mill, which still grinds corn meal to this day, but when I see a mother, clad in almost nothing, ignore her son as he unwraps the candy he just got at the parade and drop the wrapper to the ground with no repercussion, it feels very modern and cold.
I suppose we Vintage lovers have to found our world where we can and to make it today in ways we would think those in the past would have. We can let go of bigotry but still embrace common courtesy and general kindness. It might be old fashioned to dress nicely and appropriately for the occasion, say please and thank you and hold doors for ladies and the elderly, but whenever we modern people manage these things, I think the past smiles a little on us.
So, here is to your present and your future, may they be filled with the joy of the past. I hope all had a wonderful holiday.
Happy Homemaking.