MY GRANDPA'S ART

I was lucky enough to grow up in western Pennsylvania in a small town north of Pittsburgh.  I was even luckier to live within walking distance of my grandparents and cousins.  I fondly remember the times spent with my siblings and cousins at my grandma and grandpa's farm.   We loved watching my grandmother can fruits and vegetables from the garden and make goat cheese.  I can still see the cheese in her colander.   I can also see the faces we made when we refused to taste it.   

My favorite farm event was the day my grandma, her sisters and her cousins got together to make pasta.  Their Italian heritage was still evident.  They added all the leaves to the table, covered it with a cloth and sprinkled it with lots of flour.  It reminded me of  a quilting bee with flour, eggs, and water instead of needles, thread, and fabric pieces.  I can still see that huge kitchen table draped with strands of fresh pasta and the fun they all had while we observed and waited for a taste.

One other memory is the day she baked bread.  We could count on her to slice it and lather it with butter while it was still fresh and steaming from the oven.  I can still feel the texture of the warm spongy bread, the crispy crust and  the taste of the melting butter.  Yum.

Grandma sometimes put us to work.  In retrospect, she probably just wanted to get a break.  She would pull out all her pots and pans and set us up at the picnic table under the yellow cherry tree and hand us Brillo pads.  We thought it was fun to scrub pots.

My grandpa was different.  He was very quiet and kept to himself.  He was a voracious reader and created his library retreat in one of the out buildings.  The walls were floor to ceiling shelves crammed with books.  The only furniture was a chair, a side table and a lamp.  It was his refuge.

What I remember most about him though was his art.  On the spur of the moment he would grab his easel and art supplies and paint.  Sometimes his spot was on the farm, other times it was a nearby countryside.   He was prolific.  We all were able to have some of his art. 

I have several of his small oil on board pieces.  If you look at the back of the art, he basically stretched canvas over a piece of cardboard.  I never framed them.  I cherish the front and the back.  They move around, but their current location is on my pair of family room bookshelves.

I mixed them in with my books and nature-inspired collectibles.

 

 

I have a large collection of trophies.  This mini loving cup is for Whist.  

 I paired it with a Whist rule book.

FIRST PLACE WHIST TROPHY 

These are two of the shelves on the other bookshelf.

Do you have family pieces that you treasure?

If you made it to the end of this long sentimental post, thank you for reading. 

 Everyone is allowed to digress from design for a bit, aren't they?

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Pops of Orange in My Family Room

There's always a change up in the works at our house.
 This time I'll introduce browns, yellows, metallics and my decor favorite----orange.

I moved this ottoman from the living room to my family room.  It originally had a very traditional solid blue cover, but of course I updated it with some Trina Turk fabric in a bold orange geometric.  I draped it with a tasseled throw and added the orange tray that I normally use on the patio in the summer.  Inside are a stack of vintage books topped off with a moss orb and faux antlers.

I think it's just what the room needed to break up all the green.  The green chairs in the background are new to that spot.  They originally were torn red vinyl.  In the background is my much loved MCM buffet.  It supports our huge TV that I conveniently cropped out.

Detail of My MCM Buffet

Check out how the faux antlers hug the moss orb.

Flanking the buffet are a pair of brass, glass, and chrome vintage MCM bookshelves.

The backs were open to my very uninteresting beige wall.  I filled the space with some architectural prints in leather frames.  They're a good back drop for the nature-inspired vignettes.

Take a closer look at the shelves of the bookshelf on the right.

I'm using my orange Hermes scarf boxes as risers.  The antlers are naturally bleached, 

and resting on the top shelf is one of my spikey spheres.

I stacked some mini books under a cloche and added a turtle shell on top of the pile. 

I found the shell on a walk in the woods.

The antler alongside it is faux.

Gotta share the other shelf too.

The Other MCM Shelf

Another sphere is on top, the Santos traveled from another spot to be on the shelf, the skull is resin.

One of my covered bottles helps hold up one of those always wobbly brass birds.

This lantern also decided to come in from the cold.  

(It will go back to the patio when the weather warms.)

I filled it with my growing collection of velvet pumpkins and some seed pods from a neighbor's tree.

The fabulous brass cube table is from an estate sale.

What colors direct your decor?

Kathy




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