Three little black porcelain bears,recline and relax on the top of my curio shelves. My friend, June, recently gave me these three vintage red-eared bears. They fit in perfectly with my fairly vast collection of small vintage items such as can be seen here. The base itself was built for me eight years ago, to my design, by a father of a friend of mine at the publishers. He's a master carpenter, and created this six foot wide by 5 foot high 'book' case for me out of poplar. I have bookshelves, so I designed this with narrower shelves, just for some of my collectibles. I have part of my grandmother's salt and pepper shakers displayed in it, as well as hundreds of other vintage figurines, dishes, model cars, etc. I've painted the unit, distressed it, used pieces of old wallpaper and linoleum, as well as a few printouts of photographs, all under several coats of polyurethane, much like my art that hangs on walls. You can see some of the flowered detail work on the edge of the shelf, covered with glazes and sanded off a bit to make it more aged looking.
What a collection ! I have the Hummel with the rooster myself. Really like what you did to the shelving.
ReplyDeleteThe painting on the shelves is so cool...reminiscent of the technique on the rocking chair (which btw is still a favorite!) What a great touch to your display area...really says "you" I bet!!
ReplyDeletemare
BEFORE I SAW WHAT MARE WROTE I WAS GOING TO WRITE THE SAME THING. THE FIRST THING I SAW IN THE PICTURE WAS THE SHELF. NEAT IDEA.
ReplyDeleteTHE MAN THAT LIVED NEXT DOOR TO OUR HOUSE WHEN I WAS A KID, PAINTED EVERY DOOR IN HIS HOUSE WITH HIS SPECIAL GERMAN ARTWORK. THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL. HE HANDPAINTED A MARBLE LOOK ON HIS FIREPLACE AND ALSO ON THE TABLE TOPS. HE PAINTED HOUSES FOR A LIVING AND SPENT HOURS IN HIS STUDIO AT NIGHT.I CAN REMEMBER LOOKING OVER AT HIS HOUSE TO SEE IF HIS LIGHT WAS ON, JUST KNOWING HE WAS PAINTING ANOTHER THING OF BEAUTY.I WONDER WHAT YOUR GOING TO PAINT TODAY? [WAITING.]
GRANNY
Casey,
ReplyDeleteI found some of you bears' relatives on the internets.
http://www.imagebam.com/image/28205a93700276
Marius: Very Cool! The ones you found are salt and pepper shakers. I would love to have those too. I have about 150 pairs of vintage salt and pepper shakers that my grandmother collected. I'm guessing the black bears are from the '30s, the Betty Boop period. but I might be wrong. My gram's collection dates from the '30s through the '50s.
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