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Thursday 28 October 2010

Etsy Treasury

Quick post. I put together some 1920s themed items in an etsy treasury - http://www.etsy.com/treasury/4cc854468fb86d916a42e059/zelda-fitzgerald-eat-your-heart-out?index=0

Love the Ballet Russe sketch and the slouhcy cloche hat. The smoking flapper doll is creepy but amazing.


Sunday 24 October 2010

Roaring Twenties!

So to the next set of jewellery based on the 'roaring twenties'! I loved going through and chosing the images from this set and I think L. Stead did an extraordinary job with them. These are really wonderful little framed pieces of art. I wont post too many pictures but you can see all of them (nearly all, there's 7 designs and 4 loaded at the moment) at these two sites - http://www.artfire.com/users/rosesandhello















 
“I think a woman gets more happiness out of being gay, light-hearted, unconventional, mistress of her own fate.... I want [my daughter] to be a flapper, because flappers are brave and gay and beautiful.” Author Zelda Fitzgerald. 1924


Wednesday 20 October 2010

Project 1010

Just a brief diversion from the jewellery (waiting for the prints to arrive), there was a project happening on 10.10.10 dedicated to celebrating the ordinary beautiful little things that happen everyday. 10 photographers took 10 photographs of their day, no special event was happening, just an extraordinary date marking an ordinary day. I think this is a lovely idea.

As the 1010 Project mission statement explains,
"The 1010 project was devised as an antidote to everything in modern life always having to be bigger, better, louder and brighter than what’s been before.
"It’s an opportunity to slow down and appreciate the simple, everyday things that make life beautiful."

The photographs are from all over the world, London, Brighton, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Algarve, Amsterdam, Stellenbosch, Melbourne

I like this set from brighton - http://1010project.com/#710784/Kris-Atomic

Ha funny! --------------->

I like this one because it reminds me of the tiles that sit just under the front door step of nearly all the houses on a very long road I used to live on in Exeter. Really pretty little tiles that you hardly ever saw as you marched past, but once you looked, they were everywhere and each different. Though not quite as lovely as the ones in this photograph:


Here's the main page to see the other photographs - http://1010project.com/

Thursday 14 October 2010

Black and white miniature

Well as promised here is the next piece of jewellery:


Can be bought here: http://www.artfire.com/modules.php?name=Shop&op=listing&product_id=2159187
And here: http://www.zibbet.com/rosesandhello/artwork?artworkId=138189

Drawing by Lisa Stead, taken from a vintage fashion postcard from The Graphics Fairy. the Graphics Fairy is a brilliant free resource and hopefully I'll soon be creating a post about some of the things you can find on the blog.

This is the final product after a fairly long process of putting it together. I always knew I wanted to do something like this, based on the tiny portraits in renaissance miniatures, but in the manner of film star glamour photographs and I think that effect was achieved.
It's photographed on a background of a vintage shirt that my lovely sister bought for me. The ruffles seemed to suit the Victoriana feel.

I would just like to put a word in for my sister and my two cousins who were endlessly helpful (and amusing) when trying to pick a name for all this and thinking up ideas. You lot are super cool and wonderful!

The next piece will be based on 1920s fashion illustrations from magazines. I found some brilliant pieces which are going to look amazing in the antique brass version of this frame.

Monday 11 October 2010

Jewellery

Finally I am going to post a photograph of my jewellery. I made this piece for my sister hence the initials 'KS' at the base of the bird cage. The artwork was drawn by Lisa Stead (copyright remains with the artist).



It's on a black ribbon instead of a chain because it creates a more striking piece, matches the artwork and adds to the paste-broach Victoriana style. This was my first foray into this kind of customised cameo/miniatures style jewellery.

The next piece I will post contains a beautiful drawing, again by my collaborator - artist Lisa Stead, taken from a vintage fashion postcard. The inspiration for moving in this direction was partly influenced by the tradition of renaissance miniatures - exquisite tiny little portraits in frames. They have many amazing examples in the National Portrait Gallery in London which I visited this weekend. But I wanted to combine this very old tradition with the black and white portraits of iconic film stars from the films I love so much. So! That's how the next piece came about which I will photograph and post soon.

R&H

Friday 8 October 2010

I think she would wait for me if I had to go far away...

As I was browsing the Sartorialist (http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/) - a guilty habit of mine- I stumbled across a beautiful picture of a women outside some sort of fashion event:
This photo is absolutely beautiful, for the shadow, the contrast, the clothes etc, but more for her expression which manages to remain forceful even with the heavy shadow. Also the absolute brilliance of wearing such an elegant piece. A couple of interesting comments on the photo which generally said that she looked like an old fashioned italian film star, one comment said "I think she would wait for me if I had to go far away". Sigh. What a photograph, it seems to inspire each commenter to try to create a story around it.
Turns out this lady is Valentina Ilardi Martin - she even has a romantic name! The editor in chief of Grey Magazine - http://grey-magazine.com/

I looked up the magazine and it has a really strong aesthetic. Perhaps not to everyone's taste but to me it seems at least to have a mind behind it and as I seem to remember reading that Valentina Ilardi Martin was also the artistic director perhaps she is the mind. Her personal style is certainly coveted in many circles. Here is a taste of some of the pictures from the site (copyright obviously remains with the author):









Mostly I love the way the photographers use light in each case carefully and strikingly. I also LOVE the way they juxtapose an image of a person and an object/abstract image - like the material blowing out of the window next to a beautifully clean and angular close up of the woman's face, with the aggressive 80's/mens tailoring framing her picture. The photograph of the window seems to layer emotion on to the photograph of the woman. It reminds me very much of an amateur photographer I used to follow on DeviantArt, whose name I will try to remember and put up some pictures of in the future. The photographer's photographs also had this dream like quality and used juxtaposed images.

Tuesday 5 October 2010

Insane but wonderful

Something ridiculously wonderful I have stumbled across today - http://www.thecarrotbox.com/news/index.asp

It is a website dedicated to plastic and glass rings (because the author is allergic to metal), however she does discuss metal rings on her blog and there are so many beautiful and bizarre things on there I don't even know where to begin! I suddenly want so many things that I didn't even know I wanted, or even that they existed at all!

A Runway ring - http://www.nonethericher.com.au/:
A water splash ring -http://www.luisabruni.com/LuisaBruni/firma.html :





Many of the rings are pretty much unwearable for your average person, partly because of price, but partly because many of them are just insane. Insane but wonderful - I'd like to hang them all over my flat. :)


Monday 4 October 2010

Roses & Hello

The title of this blog and the etsy shop I'm hoping to set up comes from one of my favourite e.e. cummings poems:

into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness, friends

i charge laughingly.
Into the hair-thin tints
of yellow dawn,
into the women-coloured twilight

i smilingly glide. I
into the big vermilion departure
swim, sayingly;

(Do you think?) the
i do, world
is probably made
of roses & hello:

(of solongs and, ashes)

Now, whilst my favourite part of this poem is the final line "(of solongs and, ashes)" - that doesn't make for a very cheerful label for jewellery. The part of me that prefers melancholy romantic poetry loves the idea of 'solongs' but combined as one word it looks a lot like a name for a bad r&b group. So the more sanguine 'Roses & Hello' won out.

R&H