Show and Tell Friday: Wedgwood

OK, OK, I am awake and I do know it's Saturday morning here in Oz but I figure I can still do my bit for Friday's Show and Tell because for Kelli - who hosts it - it is still Friday in Texas, USA. And as Knox City Queen of the Hard Rubbish, Miss Eagle has to say that Kelli's curbside baker's stand is a find. Would love to find one on a curb in my neighbourhood.

This beautiful Wedgwood fruit bowl has been in my possession for more than three decades.

As a young mum living in Toowoomba, Queensland, I used to haunt auction sales.

One auctioneer held regular sales in his own rooms.

There, behind his counter, and along a wall would be "The Sundries".

The Sundries were magic boxes full of heaven knows what.

They could be filled with useful odds and sods

or you might, as I did in this case, find buried treasure.

Then once having found the treasure you would hold your breath and hope that no-one else discovered or wanted your buried treasure.

On this day, no-one had discovered and/or wanted what I treasured.

I paid $2 for my box.

I think there were other useful things in the box but they have faded away in my memory.

This, for someone who did not have much money to spend, was an affordable wonder.

Herself has been styling corners again and this corner includes the fruit bowl full of ornamental glittered pears.

Are you a New Victorian? And a crafty one at that..?

http://www.victorianamagazine.com/

One of the most enjoyable things in my life are the yummy mummy crafty blogs. Quite a few can be found on my sidebar and I have even more in my FeedDemon. These women amaze me. They have husbands and kids to care for. Give or take maternity leave, they have some form of participation in the paid economy. They blog. And they cook and craft. How do they do it? Whether the yummy mummy is a working from home architect or a creative spirit building up work and a portfolio of design, they are admirable.

Now dear yummy mummies, draw close.
Miss Eagle has a question for you.
Are you a New Victorian?

The Gen-X style, the Sex and the City style, seem - according to Lizzy Rattner - to be going by the board. They are old hat. Still seems, though, that the idea is "to have it all" but it is well planned. And this quote Miss E found interesting:

From the time they were tykes, New Victorians have been bred to ace exams, master extracurricular activities, land a coveted spot at a prestigious college, and then go forth into the world, ready to achieve. “This generation has been more strategically educated than any other generation,” said Mike Sciola, the Director of the Career Resource Center at Wesleyan University.

Mmm......perhaps this is what we are seeing in Australia as parents across the socio-economic scale flock to private schools if they can rustle up the readies?

This phenomenon is pretty amazing to Miss E too. While she could be said to be privately educated - just the local convent school full of working-class Irish Catholic kids - and while she might frequently plead gender discrimination in education and opportunity, the fact is neither boys nor girls in Miss E's neighbourhoods were strategically educated. In fact, in Miss E's home town one did not have all twelve years of education available. In the whole of North Queensland there was not one university. One technical high school in Townsville. Trade apprentices had to go away in blocks of study periods. No government seemed to think of investing huge amounts of money in the education of North Queensland kids in Miss E's generation.

Anyway, enough of the 'plaints. Times have changed for most - if not all - of us. But some things remain and there are marvellous clusters of women keeping the feminine traditions of home and hearth on the boil. But what gets me is the craft.

Once upon a time, craft and associated skills were part of the domestic skills necessary to feed and clothe one's family and to stretch the domestic budget further. In a time when after-marriage female participation rates in the paid economy were low and there was no television and life had a slower pace, women filled their hours with all manner of craft.

One would have thought that women's craft would have diminished with increased prosperity and the availability of mass-produced goods. One would have thought that increased participation of women of all ages in the paid workforce would have meant virtually no time for craft. But this has not happened.

While there is still an air of thriftiness in what is going on in lots of crafts, other traditional crafts have assumed the status of art forms and may require quite an investment in skills and materials. Simply amazing! And most encouraging to Miss E's simple female heart.

Italianate and lakeside in Ballarat

The one thing I really loved about my recent visit to Ballarat were the houses and the most beautiful collection of houses I found were the houses of Windouree Parade looking across to Lake Windouree. Go here to see them. Of all these beautiful homes, the one I fell in love with was this modern but classic Italianate place. Please excuse Miss Eagle, while she indulges in an orgy of photographs of this glorious, white house.

Where those we love abide...

Tell me, gentle traveller, who hast wandered through the world,

and seen the sweetest roses blow, and brightest gliding rivers -

of all thine eyes have seen, which is the fairest land?

Child, shall I tell thee where Nature is most blest and fair?

It is where those we love abide.

Though that space be small, ample is it above kingdoms;

though it be a desert, through it runs the river of paradise,

and there are the enchanted bowers.

Ibn Ahmed Attar, 14th Century Persia