• Martha Stewart’s Arts & Crafts Christmas dinner

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    Reader Bob Sindelar of Sindelar & O’Brien Antique and Design imagines the following bit of holiday humor: Martha Stewart’s planner for a very special Arts & Crafts Christmas dinner…

    DAY I: Build pavilion for the dinner — something in a bungalow motif. Use native woods. Strive for a Greene & Greene look. (Use original hardware from the collection if time gets too short to hammer my own.)

    Quarter-saw white oak from the stand I felled last year. Build manger. Use through-tenons and pegged construction, adding corbels to the underside (Joseph may have been a carpenter, but he was no Gustave Stickley!).

    Fume and set aside.

    DAY 2: Shear sheep. Card and spin wool. Weave. Fashion into swaddling clothes.
    Phone Dale at the Boathouse. Book time at furnace. Pick up Lino at airport. Blow life-size glass putti. (Use gold foil inclusions; the silver looked tacky in that eight-foot, sand-cast sleigh Bertil and I did last year!)

    Swaddle. Place in manger.

    DAY 3: Pluck goose. Fashion quill pen. Make red ink from the crushed skin of holly berries. Address 250 dinner invitations in a calligraphic hand.

    Design award-winning new typeface. Carve from heart pine. Set type for dinner menus. Pull 250 prints, hors commerce, and pencil sign. Illume in six colors, plus gold. Bind in limp covers. Set aside.

    DAY 4: Run off individual linen place mats and napkins on loom. Embroider with guests’ initials in original Arts & Crafts design based on the Dard Hunter sketch book I found at that wonderful yard sale last week for 25ยข.

    Design and cast bronze mounts for those terribly plain, Tiffany salts.

    DAY 5: Fuel the Aerocoupe. Fly to Colorado. Select and fell Blue Spruce for the Great Room. Fashion sled from trimmed branches. Recruit dog team. Mush tree to front yard, waving gaily to ordinary folk along the way. (They will remember this for years!)

    DAY 6: Soak frostbitten toes in Weller jardiniere filled with fresh mountain spring water, to which has been added 8 oz. arctic ice. Reserve water for the ice sculpture. (Remember to wash jardiniere before serving the mulled wine!)

    Clean funky old sideboard I found on the trash pile yesterday. Paint in colorful Peter Hunt design. (I’ll need a place to put those three-color Grueby bowls for the soup.) Be sure to cover up that "R"-inside-a-sawmark carved on the back, probably by some bygone child.

    DAY 7: Melt down old copper tubing removed from Victorian house I restored last week. Pour and let cool. Roll into sheets. Radially hammer individual place card holders. Patinate and set aside.

    Hit local flea markets and garage sales. Gather enough "Ruba Rombic" in seasonal colors of Jungle Green and Ruby Red to use as party favors. (Don’t tell dealers their Consolidated "Ruba Rombic" is really Kopp "Modernistic." They don’t want to hear it. Particularly not from Martha Stewart!)

    DAY 8: Strip Thanksgiving turkey carcass; dry. Paint red. Distress. Apply gold leaf to highlight. Invert and hang on front door. Fill with freshly cut pine boughs and cones. Add left-over mashed potatoes to pine cone tips to simulate snow. Top with jellied cranberries for that festive note.

    For dinner music, record traditional Christmas melodies on period instruments, playing each myself and mixing in my studio later. Laser CDs, enough for each guest.

    DAY 9: Harvest bee hives. Make wax; color with crushed and pureed fresh cranberries for that just-right Christmas-red. Line 120 toilet paper rolls saved over past year (waste not; want not!) with wax paper. Using as molds, cast bee’s-wax candles. Remove and discard TP rolls.

    Line drive and walk with Loetz oil-spot vases. To each, add 1-1/2 cups Gulf Coast, summer sand, to weight. Insert red candles (wick up). They will look lovely, glowing warmly, against the snow! (If summer sand is unavailable, substitute winter sand, but increase to 1-2/3 cups.)

    DAY 10: The Day of the Dinner – E-mail holiday greetings to the 37 on-line discussion groups I moderate. Be sure to preface with "Off Topic." Remember to ask them to respond by PRIVATE e-mail!

    Greet guests, asking after each of their children or grandchildren byname. So as to reduce guests’ well-deserved feelings of inadequacy,carefully add a light splash of Beaujolais Nouveau to the skirt of the country suit I whipped up this morning.

    Smile modestly. Try (sincerely, this year!) to appear slightly flustered.

    Sign and dedicate 250 copies of "Martha Stewart Collects."

    Collapse.

  • this month’s ebay finds

    Plenty of interesting furniture, metalwork, glass & more on Ebay this month, with more than the usual number of small gift items available:

  • Jay Curtis: “ArtGlass & Metal” in the Arts & Crafts tradition

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    Jay Curtis is a craftsman specializing in etched glass and metal, and his techniques include "water-jet cutting, hand painting, airbrushing, leading, beveling and glue-chipping." His work ranges from the whimsical to the elegant, and much of it is very strongly influenced by the floral designs of the Arts & Crafts Movement.

    One recent line of products includes etched "special occasion" bowls, available for sale through the website.

    Photos of Jay’s more Arts & Crafts-influenced work are up in our art glass album on Flickr.

  • DIY Networks’ Wood Works: a mission-style ottoman

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    From the episode abstract:

    Based on the design motifs of the Arts and Crafts style of the 1920s, the Mission-style ottoman in this Wood Works
    project features strong lines, mortise-and-tenon joinery and a natural
    wood finish. Precisely milled wood and subtle details such as the
    beveled through-tenons suggest strength and fine craftsmanship.

  • Arts & Crafts on Ebay: September 2007

    Lots of A&C copper, furniture & various knick-knacks of interest to Arts & Crafts collectors and aficionados up on Ebay this week. I’m not including prices since I’m writing this on Monday and by the time it goes up on Tuesday morning, the current bids may all be a bit higher than they are now; I did try to select only what I thought were underpriced / good bargain items.

    copper: Lots of copper, some nice and some crap. Ignore all the "I was told this was Roycroft but it’s unmarked" claims (or this guy, who inexplicably includes the word "Roycroft" in the name of an Joseph Sankey copper pitcher) – they diligently marked all their pieces, and while some of these unmarked pieces are nice items, they are not Roycroft so don’t be tricked into paying a premium for them. Same goes for the folks who list items as "Stickley era" or "possibly Gustav Stickley?" – they’re just using the shotgun approach to get as many people to see the listing as possible, and while you can’t fault their sales acumen, you certainly shouldn’t give money to these ethically-challenged dealers. Here are some attractive pieces which seem to be sold honestly and without the tricks listed above:

    furniture: Again, avoid the folks who have no idea what they’re selling. If it seems too good to be true (a Stickley Bros. armchair for $100?), it probably is; there are many dozens of cases of unscrupulous dealers affixing labels or making fake marks on unsigned pieces to drive the price up, so be careful. The following pieces seem to be listed accurately and fairly:

    lighting: You would be amazed (or maybe not) at the number of jerks who list their cheap made-in-China knockoffs as a "Dirk van Erp original." However, not all ebay sellers are ripoff artists:

    architectural salvage & etc.

  • Oaklawn Portal, South Pasadena


    Greene & Greene’s 1906 portal to the Oaklawn neighborhood in Pasadena; found in mins3rdkid’s Flickr photostream. Unfortunately, this pretty bit of stonework, wood and masonry is often overlooked in books and studies of the work of the brothers Greene; local artists, however, know it well – here’s Liz Reday’s painting.