Styling The Seasons - June

The urge to preserve our memories is a basic human phenomena, which has endured over time, and the methods we use to record the events of our lives are steeped in traditions such as writing and photography. These days, we might even prefer writing on paper or perhaps taking photos with our film cameras, to the more modern electronic devices available to record our thoughts, hopes, dreams or remembrances. 

But even in this modern age we may still want to find more traditional ways to express the significance of some of life's more memorable moments. And in our homes and other personal spaces, we might gather together objects and memorabilia, and display them in a way that, hopefully, communicates the special meaning of those special times.

Thus, my Styling The Seasons post for the month of June represents two significant and memorable events that happened within the last month - my first foray into sponsored posts on Instagram, with Numi Organic Tea, who sponsored my #collectandstyle hashtag on Instagram for the month of May, and the purchase of a circa 1950 James Mont Chinoiserie Limed Oak Hutch.

Several of the tea related objects on the shelves of this newly acquired hutch are the result of my collection habit going into full gear, for the sake of tea. If you've been on Instagram lately you may be aware of a recent styling trend using flowers and tea or coffee as design elements. I was drawn towards this, both because I loved the idea of a good scrummage through a charity shop searching out vintage tea cups and saucers, and I also enjoy the challenge of having new subjects to style and photograph. As well, the tea and coffee trend fits nicely with my #collectandstyle hashtag.

I thrifted all of the teacups and saucers, as well as the neutral colored hand painted Japanese teapot on the middle shelf (right side) and the creamer next to it. The white Chinese teapot, also hand painted, (top shelf right), has been in James' family for a very long time, since the early 1950s. The dinner plate on the top shelf, also thrifted, was made by the Homer Laughlin China Company in 1940. 

The bamboo box on the bottom shelf is very special to me because it was a gift from Numi Organic Tea. The grand prize during their May sponsorship was their "Flowering Tea Set in Bamboo" gift box. They sent me one of the gift sets for styling and sampling, and I plan on reusing the beautiful hand crafted bamboo box for memorabilia. 

All four of the ceramic birds are some of my most precious keepsakes - they are all from my childhood. I really have no idea how it is that I still have them! While growing up in the city of Chicago, there were many Saturdays when I would walk to the neighborhood shopping district with my weekly allowance. One of my favorite stores there was Woolworth's, and that is where I bought all of these colorful, made in Japan birds, one at a time.

No Styling The Seasons post would be complete without flowers, and I am happy to share a bouquet I made with wild perennial sweet peas. For years I've been seeing the many lovely wild pea vines growing next to the bike path along the Willamette River, and recently thought it would be fun to grab my clippers, gather some up, and bring them home.

Such a bright color! But what do you think, is this magenta or fuchsia? What I really love about this color is the subtle underlying blue or blue/violet tone, and as they fade, these wild pea flowers gradually become that darker bluish shade.

I began this wild floral arrangement by placing a frog on the bottom of a vintage ceramic container. Luckily, I happened to have the right size and shape frog in my collection of flower arranging tools:

I gathered the flowers in pairs back to back, and placed the pairs first in each corner of the vessel, then began filling in the front, sides and back in the same manner, poking the stems securely down onto the prongs of the frog. I repeated with double stems along the front, then directly behind this row of flower pairs, I placed single stems, all facing front using longer stems, in order to build some height in the middle of the arrangement.

This vintage container, with its Asian influenced design on the front and repeated on the back, has a base style that echoes the 'feet' on the James Mont Chinoiserie hutch. Have a look:

It's interesting how the design of the cabinet base, with its cut-away groove between the cabinet and the pedestal, creates the illusion of the base floating on its pedestal legs. 

As long as we are focusing on the bottom portion of this hutch, check out the lovely three dimensional appliques on the doors!

This pair of elements is what places this piece of furniture squarely into the 'Chinoiserie' genre; with its evocation of a Chinese garden scene, it is very reminiscent of the famed 'Blue Willow' dishware pattern. As well, the uncomplicated design of the piece as a whole also lends itself to an Asian influenced style.

Owning a hutch has been on my wish list for years - I always wanted a special place to gather and show my favorite vintage pieces. And it may surprise you to know that I didn't want just any hutch, but this exact one! Some years ago, I had seen a limed oak James Mont hutch in a furniture magazine from the early 1950s, and always dreamed of owning one exactly like it.

And now that this wonderful vintage hutch is here in the dining area of my kitchen, I'm looking forward to the promise of future styling opportunities, displaying all of the fun collectables and family mementos that it will hold on its shelves, and in my heart, for years to come. 

If you would like to read the story about my purchase of this hutch, you can find it here: Vintage Finds: c. 1950 James Mont Chinoiserie Limed Oak Hutch. Also, if you would like to know more about my Instagram hashtag #collectandstyle and find out how you can participate, you may like to read #collectandstyle - A New Instagram Hashtag. 

And finally, Styling The Seasons is the brainchild of Katy Orme at Apartment Apothecary and Charlotte at Lots and Lotts. You can participate by styling a surface in your home that reflects what the month means to you and sharing it on your blog and/or on social media using the hashtage #stylingtheseasons.

Thank you for reading!

Vintage Finds: c.1950 James Mont Chinoiserie Limed Oak Hutch

Hello vintage lovers and collectors! Have you ever dreamt of owning a certain piece of furniture, in a distinct style from a particular era, and wondered if you would ever find it? That's been me, for the past twenty years. When I first started getting serious about collecting vintage, I saw an ad in a 1950s magazine that featured a blonde finish dining room suite, and all of the matching pieces had beautiful Asian decorative elements. I was immediately drawn in and knew that this was my dream furniture.

Last week as I was poking around in one of the charity shops downtown, I saw a gem of a hutch tucked sideways in amongst several pieces of run of the mill, nondescript furniture. I walked over to it to get a closer look, and for a moment I stood there awestruck, not believing what I was seeing! I ran my hands over the wood, felt the finish, looked closely at the construction, all in an effort to determine the quality and condition of this unique piece of furniture. My conclusion was that it was well constructed and just needed a bit of elbow grease. What sweetened the deal for me was that it was on a half price sale! 

I was tempted to buy the hutch on the spot. Instead, I brought the story of my discovery home to James and the next day we went to take a good hard look at it and make the decision together. We weighed the pros and cons of this purchase:

PROS:

• It has 'good bones'
• There is no major damage to the wood
• The decorative appliques on the bottom doors are perfectly intact
• The doors function perfectly

CONS:

• The sliding glass doors on the upper shelf section are missing
• There are no labels, tags or identifying marks of any kind
• The top of the enclosed cabinet section has glue residue and several mystery screw holes and it is not clear what these were for 
• It was pretty darn grungy!

James agreed with my initial impression that this hutch was indeed a well-crafted piece of furniture that just needed some loving care. I gladly paid $87.50 and made the arrangements to come back the next day to pick it up, which was the Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend. 

I happily spent the next couple of days gently wiping away over six decades of accumulated dirt with a sponge dipped in a mild wood cleaning soap solution, followed by furniture polish applied with a soft cloth. By Monday afternoon, the cleaning process was done and I took the above photo, and since then I've been working on styling the shelves, so stayed tuned for the month of June's Styling The Seasons! 

It took several Google searches before I finally found a very similar, almost exact duplicate piece in their image database. According to the internet, this is a Limed Oak Chinoiserie Hutch by James Mont - a notoriously infamous East Coast furniture designer, decorator, and underworld figure who was active from the 1930s to the 1960s. Not only did I find an image of this same piece, but I also discovered that the hutch came in two sizes, of which mine is the smaller one, and were part of a collection that also included a credenza and matching table and chairs. The more I looked at the images I found on the internet, the more I think that this was the same dining set that I saw in that 1950s magazine oh so long ago! After studying the photo of the original, it became obvious that there was a short base piece between the upper shelf and lower cabinet portions of the hutch, missing from my new old find - hence, the glue residue and screw holes in the top of the lower piece. 

Overall, I'm very happy with this hutch - it's not perfect, but I love it! Now, how about some new wallpaper on the wall behind it?

   

#collectandstyle - May Monthly Favorite

  Hello #collectandsyle community! Welcome to Under The Plum Blossom Tree blog. I'm so excited you're here! Today is the second monthly feature from my new Instagram #collectandstyle hashtag. Meet rogersmade, where Tiffany Rogers chronicles her work as a "maker/photographer of inspired home goods, jewelry, edibles, and imagery", featuring her and her husband Matt's RogersMade.com products. Throughout Tiffany's Instagram feed, you will find artful displays of their merchandise, such as Tomato Leaf Farmstand Soy Candle, and Peach Preserves Farmstand Room Perfume, all perfectly styled with flowers, ephemera, and all manner of interesting collectables.

Along with an extremely smart business sense, Tiffany is an "avid seeker of rusty and well-worn treasures", which really appeals to my collector's heart! Tiffany's love of collecting and styling her treasures shines through, with her Americana-inspired themes using vintage books, book pages, and beautiful old typewriters, to name just a few of the items I've gushed over. You'll find a few of her humorous typewritten "fortunes" in frequent postings to the Instagram

hashtag fridaysfortune.

Tiffany recently found several pieces of vintage milkglass, a few of which are shown in the above image. I think Tiffany is on the cutting edge of a trend with her recent acquisition of milk glass, and my guess is that we're going to be seeing a lot of it showing up in the charity shops, if we haven't already!

Congratulations Tiffany, you have won a Flowering Tea Set in Bamboo from #collectandstyle's generous sponsor for the month of May, Numitea.com! And a huge shout out to Michelle Bushneff at Numi Organic Tea for all her hard work and dedication to the #collectandstyle community, and to the creative folks on Instagram. Please consider following numiorganictea on Instagram - not only have they been very supportive of all our creative efforts, but they also care about our planet and the people around the world who work so hard to provide us with our daily ritual of tea.

Styling The Seasons - May

Rhododendrons, or 'rhodies' are a very common ornamental plant here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The first flower buds begin to appear in late April and throughout the month of May this diverse species of shrubs, bushes and trees is bursting with colorful floral displays in what seems like every nook and cranny of town. It seems appropriate then, to bring some of this glorious color indoors. 

I enjoy a brisk walk around the neighborhood, and if it involves looking for wild and stray flowers, then I'm out the door in a flash, seeing what I can find. The town I live in, due to its temperate climate, yields an abundance of seasonally cultivated trees and flowers year round, and you can pretty much rely on something always being in blossom here.

During a recent outing, I was able to gather an interesting selection of colorful blooms, shown above displayed in the dining area of our kitchen. While I'm no expert on the kinds and types of rhododendrons, I do enjoy putting a display such as this together, and the fun part is looking through my collection of vintage and new vases and planters and choosing just the right containers for the flowers.

I placed a single stem of bright pink bell-shaped rhodies into a Pearl Gray Fiestaware bud vase, above. And below is a vintage rectangular planter that was well suited for several short stemmed rhododendrons.

Vintage ceramic birds made in Japan usually always accompany my seasonal flower displays. Displaying decorative birds indoors reminds me how much we enjoy welcoming real birds into our backyard, and providing food, shelter and water for them.

The tall stylized bird statuette on the left is a Norcrest brand, crafted in Japan. It's painted a pearlescent antique white, which provides a lustrous shine, and the overall patinated surface lends a bit of a shabby chic sensibility. The delicate ceramic cherry blossom flowers at the base of the bird are still perfectly intact. I've never seen an all yellow crested bird in real life, such as the ceramic on the right, but perhaps there is one living somewhere in the world. I don't know much about this bird; its only marking is the word 'Japan' impressed into the backside of the base. It's interesting how the paint has worn over time, and I'm very fond of its current 'Wabi-Sabi' appearance.

A couple more seasonal blooms, this time in a Stahl California planter which features an unusual looking scratched surface. I had to use a 'frog' on the bottom of this planter to secure the pink stems. A frog is a piece of metal with sharp spikes, onto which flower stems are forced, to hold them securely in place. It is a common tool used in flower arranging, perhaps most popularly used in Ikebana, or Japanese flower arranging.

I created the paper map banner last summer from a piece of 12x12 Webster's Pages scrapbook paper. It's part of the Nest collection designed by Brandi O'Neill. I've used it in a few of my Styling The Seasons posts and still enjoying using it.

With the arrival of the month of May came longer, sunny, and blustery days, along with allergies, Mother's Day and a reminder that the school year is nearly over. What better way then, to celebrate life's moments both big and small, than with colorful blooms, characteristic of the spring season?

Styling The Seasons is a monthly online styling challenge: Katy Orme at Apartment Apothecary and Charlotte at Lotts and lots co-host a gathering place for anyone who wishes to style a surface in their home, and share it on their blog and/or social media. Just use the hashtag #stylingtheseasons on Instagram and tag Katy and Charlotte.

Thanks for reading!

Vintage Finds: Gimme Those Blues!

Hi friends! Thanks for stopping by for another edition of Vintage Finds. Today we're looking at two 'Folkstone' stoneware plates (left), featuring the Lilac pattern made by the Noritake Company from 1972-78. And to the right, is a pair of Indiana Glass Company water goblets in their Colony Park Lane pattern, manufactured from 1957 until the mid 1970s.

The Noritake Company has a long history in the United States, from their humble beginnings in New York City as the Morimura Brothers import goods store in 1876, to the world famous tableware brand it is today. What strikes me about this pattern, with its big, bold, colorful design, is the abstract, painterly quality of the flowers. The brushstrokes look hand painted and remind me of traditional Asian brush painting. Note the beautiful distinctive blue band around the perimeter of the plates, encompassing the energetic and free form dancing lilacs.

The Colony goblets are one of six shapes produced by Indiana Glass. They also made a wine goblet which was a bit smaller than these water goblets, as well as juice glasses, champagne or sherbet glasses, and cocktail and cordial glasses. All were made in several colors - gold amber, olive green, clear crystal, blue, and 'gold carnival glass', which is apparently hard to find. Matching glass luncheon plates in the same colors were also available. Appealing in both color and shape, the goblets have a striking pattern of elongated triangular and oval shapes cast directly into the outside of the glass, which your fingertips fall right into when you pick it up. Even a nervous butter fingers could be confident holding onto one of these goblets at a cocktail party! Since this line of glassware was manufactured beginning in 1957, I'd say they were way ahead of their time, because in my mind, they scream classic 1970s!

The stoneware and the glassware were each found in different charity shops at different times. Since purchasing these pieces, I've been imagining an expressive table scape blending both of these two blue elements together: a combination of the energy and vitality found in the plates, along with the cool and calm stability of the goblets. A white tablecloth and some pink peonies like the one pictured above, with its fascinating blue tinge, would complete the look I have pictured in my mind. Luncheon anyone?

Introducing: Under The Plum Blossom Tree and Numi Organic Tea - A #collectandstyle Collaboration

Hi friends! There's exciting news 'brewing' over on my new Instagram hashtag #collectandstyle. Numi Organic Tea is sponsoring #collectandstyle for the month of May, and they have graciously offered a stupendous prize package giveaway! Here's a bit of background on how I'm running the hashtag, in case you want to get involved: each Saturday four favorite images will be selected and posted to the #collectandstyle tag, and at the end of each month, one favorite image will be selected to be featured here on the Plum Blossom blog. 

Numi Organic Tea will be giving away a total of 17 prizes during the month of May! Each of the weekly four winners (16 total) will receive a box of Numi's Collection tea assortment, as seen in the photo above. Then there will be one grand prize of a Flowering Tea Set in Bamboo for the monthly winner featured here. 

If you would like to enter, head over to Instagram and follow Numi Organic Tea and Under The Plum Blossom Tree. Then share your collecting passion by posting your colorfully styled vintage, antique, or new collections to the #collectandstyle hashtag. See you there!

Mind Your Mind Project

Lane County, Oregon, where I reside, has declared the month of May as "Mind Your Mind Month." The Mind Your Mind Project aims to raise awareness about the connection between mental health and the quality of life, and suggests a number of ways in which we can participate during the month, including spreading their message on social media. The activity that got my attention was a call to artists for the Mind Your Mind Art Contest and Exhibit to be held at The New Zone Artist's Collective. In addition to submitting a piece of art that expresses "What Mental Wellness Means To Me", artists were also asked to write a short statement, which will be displayed with the exhibited works.

Here's what I wrote for my submission:

"For me, the act of creating art lies somewhere in the gap between an ideal of perfection I think I should achieve and the imperfection of taking action and getting the work out into the world. Expressing ideas in visual form, even when imperfectly perfect, relieves me of the mental anguish I may have about my own abilities, and in fact helps me to see the depths of my capacities."

The framed photograph is an iPhone image I took for my Instagram feed, where I enjoy creating and sharing floral flat lay compositions. I've titled it Rite Of Spring, With Tea. In this particular arrangement, I attempt to symbolize the transient nature of life, or sakura as it is referred to in Japan: an homage to one's state of mind when struggling with coming to terms with our collective impermanence.     

Shortly after the submission deadline, I received an email letting me know that my photograph was selected for the show. This is the first juried show that I've submitted artwork to, and considering the level of artistic talent in my town, I feel honored to have been chosen.

The Mind Your Mind art exhibit will open this Friday, May 6th at 5:30 p.m. at The New Zone Artist's Collective, and is part of the city of Eugene's First Friday Art Walk. Besides viewing the works on display in the gallery, there will be music and refreshments to enjoy.