Happy Mothers Day! A little bit about my ma...

Today is Mothers Day - a day when we take some time to show our love and appreciation for our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and all the other strong, amazing women in our lives.

And this seems as good an occasion as any to give my own ma a bit of praise...

My beautiful mother Amanda picking flowers in the late 1970s

Here she is holding me in 1984. The tweed jacket I'm wearing is her handiwork!

My parents were idealists, passionate about the very specific decisions they had made about the childhood they wanted my younger brother and I to have. We were both birthed at home (in Annandale and Marrickville respectively), raised on a vegetarian diet and surrounded with music, books and sunshine. The television was almost never on and when it was always proved a rather strange experience: you see we had two; one that had a colour picture with no sound and beneath it, covered in a cloth, was a black and white television that provided the slightly out of sync audio.
Almost all our food was made from scratch by my ma - there was even a brief period when my parents grew wheat to grind into flour to make bread believe it or not - and it was all delicious, wholesome, unprocessed fare.

My brother and I hanging out in the garden in Marrickville

By today's standards some of these choices still seem extreme, so you can imagine how bizarre they would have been in the early 1980s. We lived a very simple life, both by choice and by necessity - my father was a musician who drove taxis, whilst my mum, then a primary school teacher, looked after us at home until we started school. And my childhood could not have been a happier one. My brother and I had several cubby houses we had created, dotted around the generous quarter acre block of a backyard and loved playing in the garden, learning about the different herbs and vegetables. We would go outside in the early hours and only come back in at night-fall. We were healthy, robust, adventurous children who had an appreciation for the small things in life instilled in us from an early age.

Reading to us with her 'reading glasses' which we found out only recently were completely for show. She was always quite the joker!

Messing around in front of the humongous rosemary bush in the back garden, behind the old stone shed.

Our birthday cakes were never new-fangled, tiered contraptions covered in a slick of coloured icing; we had wholemeal spiced pear upside-down cake. Rewards were fancy fruits - creamy custard apples and juicy mangoes. Summer treats were frozen bananas dipped in lemon to retain their creamy colour.

My brother patiently waiting for the cake-eating to begin at one of his birthdays - I love the decorations of colourful wooden beads and streamers. Not to mention that shirt!

Most of our clothes were made by our ma on a very old and very heavy sewing machine. Her handiwork was spectacular with hand smocking and embroidery on a number of beautiful pieces. Sometimes it's hard to believe when looking through old photos that we were even part of the 1980s because my mum dressed us so well. I can thank her for teaching me how to sew and to knit and to use my hands skilfully. I can safely say that my own talents will always seem rudimentary compared to hers.

Some examples of her work - a simple play dress on the left and some hand-smocking on the right.

As a kid I do remember going through periods of longing for different, 'normal' things - I held white bread exulted above all others and would do just about anything to get my hands on a pot of chocolate yogo. I absolutely LOVED the chain store clothing my well meaning grandmother would buy me for Christmas (that would all mysteriously disappear around February), wanted a Barbie doll pretty badly and would read banned trashy books like The Baby Sitters Club secretly at night with a torch.

Now, as an adult older than my own mother when I was born, I can only thank her for her steadfast patience, perseverance and practical skills. My brother and I both know how to create tasty, nutritious food in a flash; how to sew on a button and fix a hem; how to plant something and keep it living.
And most importantly we understand that hard work pays the greater dividends, to never give up no matter how ridiculous the whirlwind, to believe in our own abilities and to remember that happiness is more important than monetary gain. Given our chosen professions of designer and luthier (my very talented brother makes handmade guitars under the moniker Lockwood Guitars) are so very niche and specific, this last point is particularly important. We know that no matter what seemingly ludicrous decisions we make in life, our ma will always encourage us to do what feels best and true for us at any given time. And that is a luxury so many do not have.

Riverside hugs with ma

So here's to my mum Amanda - Happy Mothers Day!

rabia
xo

Pinterest Picks #11

Long days and short, hot nights are coming...

 

{ All images sourced from our Pinterest Boards where they link back to their original source }

Stepping back with Past/Lives

It will be of no surprise to anyone who has ever looked at anything we have ever done, that we are past fetishists.

Bonnet dramas, edwardian fashion, mid-century knick-knacks and Dickens Dickens Dickens!

We recently discovered a local blog from Sydney-sider Michael Wayne 'Past/Lives' and were absolutely enthralled.

Now // East Village Hotel, Darlinghurst

Then // The Tradesman's Arms Hotel

The premise is simple - seeing the past glimpsed through it's bastardised present: "...uncover the secrets, reveal the hidden parts and tell the forgotten stories of Sydney using the clues that have been left behind through the years."

For all it's pretti-nesses, we've always loved Sydney for the combination it has of extremes of both the beautiful and the ugly. Looking at the timelines from then to now is both sad and somehow illuminating. As if you've just glimpsed a secret that no one else saw or knows about...

KC Beauty Centre // Cut and Comb hairdressing Hurstville NSW

Sharpies Golf House / Harmex / Derelict, Sydney NSW

Rockdale Furnishers / Cash Converters, Rockdale, NSW

Mrs N. Prior Clothing / A1 Cut Price Flowers / Nothing, Kogarah NSW

Michael adds his own memories (real or imagined) and ramblings to each post in an utterly hilarious and frank way, making each post a delightful read. And the detail! Our hats are tipped to his commitment to seeking the true histories of such minutiae.

It reminded us a little of 'Abandoned' one of our favourite catagories from the amazing Retronaut Blog where rotting theme parks and office buildings are photographed in all their current decay, so far removed from the glories of the past.

Abandoned // Buffalo Central Station

We highly recommend making a cup of tea and taking a trip through the back streets of Sydney's commercial past with Past/Lives

xo
g&j

For the love of...Martin Boyd Pottery

Some time ago when we were enjoying our first throes of 'pottery! How awesome is pottery!' we discovered the work of Australian ceramicist Martin Boyd. He is part of the Australian artistic dynasty of Boyd's including his father Merric Boyd, and brothers Arthur and David and so on. Talented family that one!

Guy Martin Boyd set up the 'Martin Boyd Pottery Studio' with his friend Norma Flegg (yes, how amazing is that name) in Sydney's leafy Cremorne in 1946. An lowly art student at the time, the business grew and grew and the range of pottery and ceramic grew to a staggering 177 catalogue items by the mid-1950s.

Classic Martin Boyd rammekins. Image: A Small Ferret vintage shop

The range was wide and varied - anything from figurines to table-wear - but my favourites have always and will always be the 'Harlequin' or two-tone glazed bits and pieces for the table circa 1950s...

Image: Australian Pottery at Bemboka

To be more specific, we were in love with his soft-pastel coloured, one-armed, shallow ramekins:

Once you start looking for these you'll see them everywhere...we started buying these many years ago from the Chapel Street Bazaar in Praharan on our first trip to Melbourne and have slowly grown the collection over the years. Recently we even added this tiny neat sugar bowl to the set!

It's a little chipped, but we still love it!

Boyd retired his ceramic career in the mid 1960s and focused instead on his career as a sculptor - his work can be found in galleries around Australia.


But we will never tire of his candy coloured confections.

xo
g&j

Pinterest Picks #6

Daylight savings has ended, twilight creeps up quickly now and we have already unfurled the doona over the bed...winter is coming!

{ All images from Ginny & Jude's Pinterest board, where all images link back to their original source }

For the love of...Vivian Maier

I recently discovered the beautiful work of 1950s American photographer Vivian Maier. Her story is a wonderful one as it is curious and mysterious.
In her time, Maier was never published- she photographed for the sake of the photograph and her work was for her to appreciate only.

 

Self Portrait, 1959

"The personal accounts from people who knew Vivian are all very similar. She was eccentric, strong, heavily opinionated, highly intellectual, and intensely private. She wore a floppy hat, a long dress, wool coat, and men’s shoes and walked with a powerful stride. With a camera around her neck whenever she left the house, she would obsessively take pictures, but never showed her photos to anyone. An unabashed and unapologetic original."
- from www.vivianmaier.com

 January, 1953, New York, NY

Undated, New York, NY

She worked as a nanny for much of her life, with the children she had helped raise helping her keep an apartment when, in her later life, she became destitute. In 2007, unbeknownst to them, several of her storage lockers containing all her negatives and prints were sold off due to delinquent payments.

Miraculously, these were discovered years later at a thrift store in Chicago by - amongst others - John Maloof. This amateur historian was so taken by her work he sought out any other people who had also found her work over the years and eventually amassed a collection of negatives, prints and home movies which is today estimated to be about 90% of her entire works.

Untitled, Undated 

Undated, New York, NY

In 2008, Vivin Maier slipped over on some ice and hit her head on the ground. She never fully recovered and died in 2009. Due to the efforts of Maloof, her work has since been exhibited throughout America and worldwide. She is now - although posthumously - regarded as one of the most important documentary photographers of her era in America.

End of April, 1953, New York, NY

 1954, New York, NY

I love the style and light in her photographs - how she has managed to capture people as they are in some truly spectacular tableaux. There's a sweetness and an equality in her work which is wonderfully moving and gives you such a fantastic idea of space.
I would highly recommend browsing through the Maloof Collection online and getting lost in her world for a while.

 January 9, 1957, Florida 

All images:

© 2012 Maloof Collection, Ltd. — All Rights Reserved