Flocks of Buttons

Is there anyone who can't recall sifting through a button box, searching for just the right button to replace the one you lost off of your favorite blue blouse? Our household button box was a green MJB coffee can. It held other artifacts too, a dented brass thimble, a liberty dime, and a tape measure that pulled out of a small red plastic crabapple.

I'm following a long line of craft with my porcelain button offerings. Egyptians liked them, and the Greeks too. But it was the Germans in the 1200's that devised the buttonhole. And more button frenzy followed;

Porcelain 'calico' buttons from the mid ninteenth century.

Hand painted Victorian birds and mammals

My idea of high fashion which is not very. More of a country cousin look, where everything appears homemade, because most of it is. My buttons are two-holed and about one and a half inches in diameter. They are lightweight, and once attached to apparel, do not like to be thrashed about in a washing machine, but rather sloshed gently in lavender scented water then hung on a line to dry in the warm summer sun, country cousin style.

Now all this button talk has made me hungry for a piece of crabapple pie.

Care to join me?

xx

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

Stages

Elf light, bat light,
Touchwood light and toad light,
And the sea a shimmering gloom of grey,
And a small face smiling,
In a dream's beguiling
In a world of wonders far away.
Walter de la Mare

Now sleeps the crimson petal, Now the white,

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk,

Now winks the gold fin in the porphyry font;

The fireflly wakens. Waken thou with me.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Circus stages and woodland ones too.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend

xx

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com

Keats and Fanny

Now hold on just a darn minute. I see the month of May is nearly over and I'm not ready to say goodbye. I want it back. May has been good to me and I would like to do it all over again.
For instance: In the sky the swallows are swooping and spinning. Climbing roses have topped the garden with squishy pink clouds, and in the studio I am making Boombah pieces again. Like the two rabbits above, "Keats and Fanny" in honor of the English poet and his true love.

This shadow box is nearly ten and a half inches tall. It qualifies as a boombah too. The lady reaches up to a passing bluebird, who flies by with a heart in its beak. The word 'away' is written on the heart and there is her small suitcase too, just out of camera shot. The moon looks down on the whole scene.

But looking forward, June has good things brewing too. Fresh cherries, apricots and baseball games. Migrating pelicans, birthdays to celebrate and talk of a tea party at a friends wonderful house close by. So we will have to let May go. And one of these days, just like a dear friend, May will come visit us again.

xx

julie

juliewhitmorepottery.etsy.com