Keeper of the textiles- doily edition

Today I was ironing. in addition to the tablecloths shirts and dresses that are part of my weekly ironing, this week I had a batch of doily's to iron. The sainted woman who cleans my house artistically covers various tables and dressers with some of the many bits of old linens in my collection. She changes them as they get dusty. I dutifully wash and iron them so she can put out a new fresh batch.

Most of these come from from my friend Vivian. All of these pieces are small. None is bigger than about 8 inches across. The round eyelet doily probably came from Mary, Uncle Irving's long time girlfriend. She and the rest of her family were heavy smokers. Nearly every piece I inherited from her has at least one cigarette burn

The eyelet design on the doily below isn't all that interesting but the quality of the work is pretty spectacular. I don't know if you can see the teeny French knots at the center of each quadrant. I think this is a bread tray liner.

Amazon.com Widgets

This doily has been worked in fine linen thread that is about as thick as sewing thread. It's about 6 inches at it's widest.

I am really fond of this piece. It was either made by a child or someone who just had a little bit of trouble doing handwork. Everything about this piece, the design, the embroidery and even the shape is just a bit wonky. If you look at it too closely and for too long you will probably get seasick.

Some of this batch of doily's don't seem all that special until you realize how fine the work is. These pieces are small, no bigger than a bread plate.

This pattern appeared in several different ladies' magazines in the early part of the 20th century. I have dresser scarves done in the same pattern, but with a much heavier crochet thread. This piece is worked in thread just a shade heavier than sewing thread.

This little cupid is not holding a tennis racket but a mirror. I believe this sort of work is called Italian lace. The linen in the center is extraordinarily fine.

This little doily was made out of what was probably the scrap of a summer dress and someone sewed a length of crochet lace to trim it.

I never would have expected to have a life filled with doily's. They are a little bit silly. On the other hand they are also the testament of the work of the hands of many many women over many generations. So I do line my cake platters with some of these pieces when I serve dessert. Of course it's silly, but these beautiful bits of work might as well see the light of day and be used.

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee. If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it. My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid. I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed. A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

The light themed tallit has been shipped!!!

I had begun speaking to Sarah about making her a tallit in the middle of August. It took a few weeks to nail down the design. For Sarah it would have been ideal if the tallit were completed in time for her to wear it on Rosh HaShanah., the beginning of her year as senior rabbi of her congregation. For me, in an ideal world, given the realities of preparing for the High Holidays I would have finished this tallit in the weeks after Sukkot. So we compromised and I shipped off the tallit last night. I would have prefered to have more time but I got the job done in time. This tallit was made to mark Sarah's rise to the position of senior rabbi but it was also a reaction to this year of darkness. She chose a selection of verses about light to be part of her tallit. 1) אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה God of awesome deeds ( from a yom kippur Liturgical poem) 2) אוֹר חָדָשׁ עַל־צִיּוֹן תָּאִיר May You shine a new light on Zion ( from the liturgy) 3) יָאֵר יְהֹ...

A Passover loss

My parents bought this tablecloth during their 1955 visit to Israel. It is made out of linen from the first post 1948 flax harvest. The linen is heavy and almost crude. The embroidery is very fine. We used this cloth every Passover until the center wore thin. You can see the cloth on the table in the background of this photo of my parents and nephew My Aunt Sheva bought my mother a replacement cloth. The replacement cloth is made out of a cotton poly blend. The embroidery is crude and the colors not nearly as nice. The old cloth hung in our basement. We used the new cloth and remembered the much nicer original cloth. I loved that my aunt wanted to replace the cloth, I just hated the replacement because it was so much less than while evoking the beauty of the original. After my father died my mother sat me down and with great ceremony gave me all of her best tablecloths. She also gave me the worn Passover cloth and suggested that I could mend it. I did. Year after year ...

sarah in nyc

Search This Blog