Getting ready for a Craft Show

Jeweled Horizons will have a booth at the Maine Boat, Home and Harbor Show this weekend in Rockland, Maine.  This is a huge show, with several tents, and exhibits  going on.  Thousands of visitors are expected.  In order to be ready I have to plan carefully what I will take, and what the booth will look like.  This time I am going to try something new .  Usually I set the necklaces out on the table, grouped by color; sometimes by price.  This time I am going to have several "necks" out, and will stack several  pieces on each one.  Then the extras will be piled up in trays.  Potential customers will have to lift them up to separate them and decide what they like.  The display will be (hopefully) eye catching, and (certainly) a bit chaotic.  The idea will be to create a booth that is clearly foreign and exotic because the jewelry I design is like that.  It appeals to those who have traveled, or who have a taste for ethnic and collectible pieces.  I anticipate that people will either pass it quickly, or come and spend some time.  I will take some furniture, maybe a carpet , certainly a background screen, to add some atmosphere.  I have several baskets and a check list so that I don't forget something important. Inevitably I will forget something; hopefully it will be minor.
Oh! Which reminds me:: The car is packed, but I almost forgot to include the mirror, which , for a jewelry booth, is not minor.   

Hot and Cold; Hot or Cold

The other day I popped into a family grocery store.  It was middle June, and we were having an unusually chilly day—temperature in the fifties.   Unlike the winter, when I resemble a walking rummage sale (albeit a color coordinated one), I was wearing summer clothes.  Feeling cold,  I blurted to the checker, “BRRRR.  What’s with this weather?”

The young man looked at me, and said, “I love it!”  Speechless, I stared at him. “I love it”, he repeated.  “My favorite temperature is between 30 and 40.  But not snow.  I don’t like snow.” 

Knowing Mainers as I do, he is probably naming the 30’s and 40s as his T-shirt weather.  “Yea,” he continued, “I can’t take it when it gets to 60.”

As I had been silent he looked at me and said,” You probably like it hot.”

How to make a long story short!  My mind flashed back to another experience I had had in Maine, about sixteen years ago.  I had just come back for the summer from Sri Lanka, and was on the tennis court. My friend on the other side of the net, suddenly exclaimed, “OH I just can’t take this weather!”  It startled me; my mind reeled.  I came up to the net and said, in all sincerity, “Keith, tell me.  What is it for you?  Is it hot? Is it cold? Is it dry, or is it humid?”  I honestly had no idea.  For me, coming from Sri Lanka, it was chilly, and dry.  But sure enough, he was wilting under the heat and humidity.  After that experience I shook my head when I learned that Mainers were being sent to the Persian Gulf.  In full military regalia they would be more trouble than help.

So weather is relative.  As are so many other things.  Adaptability flexibility, “thinking outside the box”, etc. etc.--are important qualities to cultivate.   In my travels I have been on a personal quest for universals.  In 1991 I got a masters degree in Teaching English as a Second Language.  In the linguistics section, we learned about Transformational Grammar, which was Noam Chomsky’s attempt to find a universal grammar to relate the world languages.   It is an underlying grammar, a concept of subject and action, more than the “surface grammar” of a particular language.  That is how I approach relativism.  Though my experience tells me that manners and art and customs, and religions vary on the surface, there is an underlying universal.  For weather, and my Mainer friend, too hot is 60 degrees.  But still there is a concept of hot and a concept of cold.  It reminded me of something I had read many years ago: “Relativism has at its core one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”  

All this in an instant.  I told the young man that while I didn’t love hot weather, I could take it.  I had lived in a country which regularly registered 110F and 90 percent humidity (Oman).  For him that was hell itself. And I walked out of the store with his words ringing in my head; “I love it between 30 and 40”.

Can a string of pearls have quartz and brass and Tibetan pearls and still be a string of pearls?

Hard to find a necklace for this blog.  How’s this one?  Pearls with a twist.

Jane Eyre at the Strand

  Saturday night I went to see Jane Eyre at our wonderful Strand theater in Rockland, Maine.    Like so many others, I have seen several Jane Eyres, and, like so many others, the novel is imprinted on my soul. We probably all wonder why we go, since we know the story by heart.  I guess it's a pilgrimage of sorts; we must go.  And I guess the movie producers know that we will.

When I first read the book, I was a young adolescent.  Though I loved it I couldn't wrap my head around some of the features.  Why was Helen Burns in  a Gothic romance? How could Jane love a man who was bad tempered and hard to figure out? He suddenly appeared, then he disappeared. Why did he flirt with a frivolous society belle when he professed to really love Jane?   What about that telepathy?

This movie  got Mr. Rochester right.  Needless to say many of his idiosyncracies were Charlotte Bronte's rather clumsy way of moving her story forward (and it feels like blasphemy to write that).  But in this rendering he looked, sounded and acted in a way that was true to the book, and believable .  Mrs. Reed, Helen, Mrs. Fairfax, Mason, Bertha--the casting was right on.

Some felt it was a little much, heavy in melodrama and sepia, candle lit scenes.  But it was true to the essence of the book.  I just had a jolt when suddenly I saw Billy Elliot pretending to be the zealot St. John.

Jane Eyre might have worn black jet, like the black beads in this necklace. Only, of course, hers wouldn't have lovely glass flower beads.

Poya Days and Snow Days

People are often surprised to learn that I, a California girl, love winter.  The way I see it, it cuts two ways:  Either the California folks love it, or they won’t go near it.  There are plenty of Sun Belt natives who are fascinated by a phenomenon they only get to read about in books, or see in movies.  A snowy winter is practically magical to us, who only know a life where you get up and go out 365/12.  Sure—others can’t bear to be cold, or to ponder the added chore of shoveling. But I would gently submit to them that, in snow-covered climes, one doesn’t mow a lawn for half a year.

In Sri Lanka, there is something called a Poya Day.  This is a wonderful national holiday where the people celebrate the full moon.  That means that every month there is a day off from work and school, and shops are closed.  It is a religious holiday and practicing Buddhists visit the temple.  Alcohol and meat may not be sold. Sri Lankans consider the full moon an auspicious event.

Here in Maine, a snow day is our secular “Poya Day”.  On a snow day, the blizzard is so commanding that school and work and traffic stop.  We all stay home, cook soup, watch movies, and play games.  Our lives stop, as they do in Sri Lanka on Poya Days, and we are forced to reflect on our interconnectedness with the natural forces of our planet.

Snow days in winter are wonderful opportunities for me to create new necklaces in my studio.  Here is one from our January blizzard.

My horizon

This is my horizon.  Today is grey and breezy out my window.  The island is shrouded, holding back its form.  But it’s just a game of peek-a-boo, because in a few hours it will appear in sharp focus. Actually we Mainers welcome these  times of fog and mood.  The clear sunny days present a triumphant concert in stero high volume and there is little that we can do but listen in rapt attention.  We need the chance to get work done, go about our business, with the single tune of an Irish  flute which is a cloudy day. 

Today I will make a necklace of Tibetan pearls, brass and quartz.

Let's talk about amber

Basket of Treasures

I am surrounded by beautiful stones and beads that I have collected while I lived overseas.  As winter in Maine approaches, I feel so lucky to be able to come in the bead room and design some necklace with African yellow hearts from the early 1800's, or Peruvian opals that Julio in Lima sold me as he exclaimed, "Mejor, mejor que antes!" (better than the last ones).  I have a wide assortment of brass and silver,  stone beads and African beads. Actually, while I have collected beads from around the globe, it was amber that I sought.  Below is something I wrote about it:

The Lure of Amber

I first encountered amber in the Middle East.  We were in Jordan in the early eighties, and I was looking at old Bedouin silver jewelry.  The vendor--expats called him Shifty—easily found the houses of expatriates, and rang their doorbells on lazy long afternoons.  Hauling a large bag  brimming of silver jewelry,  copper trays, and Bedouin coffee pots, he trundled into their living rooms, and began unpacking it like an exotic, kaffiua clad Santa Claus..  For us it was free entertainment in our own house.    Shifty picked up a coffee pot—“not one mittel hada (like this) in Jordan” he would chortle proudly.  Well, that was a lie.  There were thousands of those.  Bedouin necklaces were plentiful too; some even had real coral, or amazonite stones.  But once, he held up a necklace with yellow- orange barrels.  “AMBAR: he said in a hushed voice.  “rare rare. Not one mittel hada in Jordan”.   I held it. Amber.  I’d heard of it.  But the price was prohibitive and I had to pass.  However, his voice, the price, and the rarity, gave birth to a new passion  for me.

That was 1980.  Now it is almost 30 years later, and I have collected a lot of amber.  I also know the differences of “amber” and amber, and African amber and Tibetan amber , Baltic amber and Victorian.  Those barrel shaped beads on Shifty’s necklace were not the 50 million year old resin material.  They were Bakelite, though original Bakelite sold in the African trade as amber over a hundred years ago.  African amber it’s called, and it is, in its own right, very valuable and expensive.  Baltic amber is translucent, the real deal, and comes from the Baltic Sea.  Butterscotch amber refers to the color—an opaque rather than clear material.

Amber has become very sought after and thus very expensive.  It isn’t uncommon to find strands of African amber, or genuine amber on auction sites for thousands of dollars.  Single beads go for $20 to $50. There is something addicting and alluring about the beads; is it the color? The texture? The lore? The price? The mystique?

Before we left Jordan in 1985 I had purchased one amber necklace from Shifty; it was long, with silver beads with six large “amber” balls.  I later broke it up, remade it into another necklace.  I have several amber necklaces, mostly on display.  Though my lust is appeased, amber still has a mysterious  power . 

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