Memory of my Family

Old slides from 1970s. They have such a romantic atmosphere that they illustrate perfectly how memories of our childhood resonate in us: the trees were bigger, the grass was greener and the sky bluer... My mum has a dreamy air of a film star and my brother is immersed in happiness. The setting is like 19th century.
The last picture shows me when I was something like 4 years old. Check out the amazing plastic tablecloth (I wish we still had it, but of course it had to be cut up and used for something useless)! The picture is actually badly taken but now it has what it requires: unfocused picture, memories long gone. You won't make one like that today with digital camera. Or maybe you will but I have no idea how.
(Was going to post my new dress, but the photo scared me out. Next time!)

Sewing projects

Summer is full of sewing in the air and my son is sitting on a flying carpet. The cloth designs in the book are from my adored 50s and the cloth that takes after them has come to me from Sew mama sew.

Groovy Cat and Other Stuff

The reason why I started to dig in my parents attic in a trunk with my old toys was that I felt like my son needed a stove to cook on with his little pots and pans. And the stuff they sell today is too pinkie girlish for him (and of course he is a good man who cooks so he does need a kitchen equipment) not talking about slightly tasteless appearance of the thing (which I would love as a little girl, lets not be hypocritical). So I went and pull out not only the stove but also this beautiful cat that I believed had been gone to eternal fields. I mourned for it especially after I found out it was listed among hundred Czech design icons and was sold for an incredible amount of money in the art auction few years ago. And I still have it! Aren't the green glowing eyes amazing?



The brass stove is too nice for him to destroy in a minute so it just sits on a shelf as a decoration for now. He can cook on the small white one which as a girl I thought was very ugly but compared to the contemporary toys I find it OK now. Other vintage looking stoves and nicely furnished kids' rooms here on Sanctuary's blog.



Making textile dolls was mostly a reason for me to do some craft work then really give my son some toys. He doesn't play with them much anyway. The middle red one was done by my mom and is kind of gigantic. It is made of two flat pieces sewn together. In the same way I made the gently looking one below. This one is much smaller, something like 20 centimetres and the same is for the Mr. Sun alias Master Sun above the red doll. Other pictures here on my Flickr page.

Some old things of mine

My confidence has had a boost after the positive respond to my comment on old things at 36 Shea's blog and here I am to tribute with some of my things that are either older than me or are dear to me in another way, that have been in this house before me or I have brought them here from my parents' house.

The fish is ceramic and I traded it with a 12 years old girl who made it and exhibited at the kids' art show (one of these few years ago), I gave her textile dyes for it. I still feel little strange that I pulled her into the world of commerce. She didn't want anything, didn't care about the fish at all, she had made many things like that and what had been done didn't exist for her anymore.

Puppet made by Artěl, group of artists designing things for everyday use in a simple modernistic way at the beginning of the 20th century in Prague.

I like bowls, I find it little obsessive about me, there are more of them than you can see, they are hiding inside of the bigger ones. 50s like design, but probably produced later that that. I bought the stripy ones in a thrift shop because I just felt nostalgic for completely the same ones that my parents used to have. The mug is a folk design, done very nicely with a shivering hand.



If any Czechs are reading this, they will recognize these puppets immediately, they are evergreen of the Czech children' rooms. I had these when I was a little girl, later they went on their own venture and they were hanging out in my cousins cottage for pretty long time. What a party! They needed little restoration work after and now they can't wait to get into my son's hands.

We inherited this rocking horse from our friend and it looks like it has been on duty since the generation of my parents. Dominik likes it.

Click on the images to view them larger.

Lot of Pants

This magazine came out in 1980 in Czechoslovakia (MONA publishing) and I have always thought that the graphic design is something above the time, especially for these latitudes where any sign of extravagance was either oppressed or more likely did not appear at all. The magazine has probably a lot in common with the stuff that used to come out in the west and I bet that the major source of inspiration came from there for this designer (from where else?), it even has few pictures from foreign magazines, one can say just by looking. Anyway, this MONA publishing had other good magazines that are waiting for me somewhere, in some forgotten spot, where I'll save them from destruction.




One interesting thing that caught my eye when checking out the imprint, all the pants designed for the magazine (there are patterns in the magazine) were designed and sewn by one man, Jiří Enoch, so the whole thing is actually an author's issue without mentioning the author at a more visible and appropriate place!  

To see the images bigger, click on them!

Mushroom Entry

I like this dress, there is lot of giant mushrooms on it. They have started to appear quite often on clothes, I guess that Japanese design has something to do with it, as far as I am able to say from searching the internet. Maybe I am wrong, does anybody know?



Mushrooms in general are nice subject for design, there are few around my house: a T-shirt (above, 2007), a scarf (follows, 1950s), baby overalls (1980s) and a cup (pre-war), the latter from the time when it started to be a highest scream of kitsch - toadstool and a dwarf or a child like on the cup presented here. It is interesting to trace it back, where this image comes from, apparently from Victorian British painting of fairies and pucks where mushrooms started to appear randomly every now and then. The style of paintings became popular in magazine illustrations in subsequent era and that is how it all started. At least that is how it seems to me after I did some research on it. There were also Bavarian fairy-tales involved in this evolution, they liked red mushrooms with white spots there a lot. And, of course, a mushroom and a frog themselves are much older, mythological, still, the 19th century illustrations gave the image its appearance.


Anyway, the fact that Czechs are tempted mushroom hunters doesn't have any mystical reason, it is a pure education of public through good mushroom guide books published here in larger amount since the beginning of the 20th century. That way people stopped being scared of poisonous kinds and also started to pick other species than just boleti. These two illustrations go with a folk poem from the pre-war time, so are the illustrations, general stuff from my little son's books.


These pictures come from an exhibition in a little school somewhere out in mountains where I come from. I liked how they had it done artistically, not just like a scientific mushroom guide book but also the way that mushrooms could be an inspiration. And they did not mean the psychedelic ones, of course, they just felt there is something creative in them.

Now the giant mushrooms are especially appealing to me right now, they are painted a lot but I haven't been able to find any reference to it in some kind of a written source. If I ever do, I'll let you know. This painting is by Barbora Motlová.

Green Overalls in Detail