Christmas Gifts and Emotions

Christmas is a time that brings about conflicting emotions. It is a reminder of a lost childhood and separation from loved ones. This separation from my wider family (Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles and cousins) started with our move to Australia. Over the years we compensated by spending Christmas with friends who were in the same position.

In more recent years separation from family has taken a different form. My childhood was spent within walking distance of most family members. Back then all generations lived in the same or neighbouring villages. Today, even my immediate family are widespread. My daughter has lived on the Australian west coast for five years. My parents and sister live on the east coast.

Gloria and I live four hours inland from my parents and Gloria’s parents are a further four hours inland from us. I try not to think of the distance to my daughter.

The days of family gatherings are over and choices have to be made when times like Christmas come around. This year we have decided to spend Christmas at home after alternating between our parents for the last few years.

While I’m looking forward to a quieter and less hectic Christmas, both of us will miss spending that time with our families.

The part of Christmas I’ve never enjoyed is gift shopping.
I was always a last minute shopper and most years I’d be rushing around on Christmas Eve trying to find the perfect presents I should have thought about weeks before. This last minute shopping rush was not only stressful, it defeated the point of giving a gift. Rather than finding something I knew would be appreciated, the gift became something obligatory, but unwanted gifts are more likely to inspire disappointment, even embarrassment, rather than gratitude.

Fortunately I’ve avoided that Christmas Eve panic for many years now. I’ve been much more organised and often start buying gifts early in the year, putting them aside for when they are needed. Gifts for parents tend to be books (for mum who reads a lot) and wine (for dad but not because he drinks a lot). I also add items of local produce in a hamper – things I know they will use. It is pointless to buy impractical things to fill up their shelves and cupboards. Like many elderly people they are thinking more about downsizing and reducing their possessions rather than adding to them.

My daughter is the easy one. While I would love to be more imaginative and be able to help her to establish her own home, distance and delivery costs makes the sending of material gifts impractical. I now send her money.

The only person whose gifts need considerable thought is Gloria. It is logistically difficult to shop for her. Unless I can find something suitable in our small town, I have to find something during a shopping trip to Canberra, and since we go together surprising her is difficult. (She of course has the same problem shopping for me).

This year I have discovered internet shopping. While this makes it easier to find a variety of things she’ll like – their delivery at home, while I’m not there, can spoil the surprise a little. This year I bought her some art glass. While she knows she is getting glass she doesn’t know what it will be like. For me, the excitement of Christmas this year will come when she receives it.

I’ve seen it.
It’s stunning.
She’s going to love it.

Australian Art Glass Collection

A few days ago a visitor to one of my earlier posts expressed interest in Gloria's art glass collection. I found the following photos which may be of interest. I'll look at adding to these later (after I've taken more).


An overview of most of Gloria's collection of Art Glass. Mostly Australian but with a few pieces from the M'Dina and Isle of Wight Studios, established by Michael Harris.



Colin Heaney, Cape Byron Hot Glass.

This is the first piece of Australian art glass in Gloria's collection. It was bought from an Antique centre at Camperdown several years ago. Gloria was hoping to find a piece of John Ditchfield glass (British)after seeing a few pieces on the TV show Bargain Hunt. Instead she was shown this and loved it.









Two pieces by Sean O'Donohue purchased from Bellingen.









Another Colin Heaney. This oil burner was found at the Wagga Wagga Antique fair in 2009. We also saw an exceptional large Heaney vase, but the $2,000 price was way beyond our means - not to mention our willingness - to pay. We have since seen a Heaney vase selling for $7,000.

Lopping, Shopping, Birthdays and Bargains.

Our local council announced it would be conducting a pickup of green waste over the next week. It is the perfect opportunity to deal with some of those bigger pruning jobs and dispose of the waste unsuitable for the compost bin.
The announcement seems to have mobilised most of the town into gardening mode. I’ve never seen so many people in their gardens with secateurs, loppers and pruning saws, and roadsides are piled with prunings. In our street it looks like someone has been planting mature kerbside shrubs and gives an idea of what it could be like if the grass nature strips were replaced with verge-side plantings like those created by Josh Byrne on Gardening Australia.

To take advantage of the council pick up we decided to deal with a few things we’ve been putting off for a while. Between our place and next door we’ve had some kind of native tree with a collection of long skinny trunks topped with fine foliage and occasional creamy coloured brush-like flowers. There were two significant problems with the tree. Firstly it was planted on top of the water and gas pipes supplying the house. Secondly, parts of it were leaning over the neighbour’s place. The latter problem has been the reason it was left alone for so long. I didn’t want to hack away at it and have it fall through their roof.

After work on Friday I made a token attempt to cut some of it back, tackling some of the lower, untidy branches leaning over my neighbour’s property. On Saturday we went out for the day and on our return found that our neighbour had continued what I had started and had removed those parts hanging precariously over his house, leaving the remaining tree looking very untidy. Sunday therefore turned into a day of tree lopping and armed with a handsaw I spent a couple of hours cutting the tree back until I was left with five, two and a half metre high stumps. It took me 45 minutes to cut the first one down as low as I could and every muscle and joint was aching. I wasn’t looking forward to the other four stumps.
At that point the neighbour across the road started up a chain saw to attack his own garden and offered to come over and finish my job. Two minutes later and it was all done and all that remained was a stump barely 30 centimetres high.

All of this was much more work than we had intended to do, but at least a major job has been completed with a lot less effort than I’d expected.

Our day out on Saturday that allowed next door to make an assault on our tree was a trip to Canberra. We did a circuit of antiques shops and galleries hoping to find a bargain or two, and since it was Gloria’s birthday we had lunch in a café at Beaver Galleries opposite the Australian Mint. We’ve been to the gallery before to look at the art glass on display but we’d never been to the café.
We both ordered Vegetable Lasagne and were amazed at how good it was. At first the serving seemed a bit stingy, with a solitary rectangle of lasagne in the middle of the plate, but the value was in the tasting and the serving size was more than adequate to satisfy our appetite (which unfortunately led us to miss following up with a serving of one of the tempting cakes on offer).
Each layer of the lasagne contained a different type of veggie; with eggplant, yellow and red capsicum and zucchini being accompanied by a subtle but tasty tomato sauce. Additional flavour was provided by a spoon of green pesto on top. It was the kind of meal that makes you want to take your time and enjoy the different flavours in every mouthful.

Our shopping trip wasn’t quite as successful as the lunch, but for the second time we unexpectedly stumbled across a piece of Helmut Hiebl glass. Until recently Hiebl was a renowned and respected glassmaker with some of his work being held in Royal Collections. I have heard that poor health has caused him to stop practising his craft. The two pieces of his work we have found recently would probably be classed as paperweights. The first shaped like an apple was purchased without realising it was his work. It was signed but we didn’t recognise the signature until we got home and compared it to a piece we already owned. On Saturday we found another signed paperweight in the form of a mushroom, however this time I recognised the signature as soon as I saw it.
In the last couple of months we’ve had quite a bit of luck with finds of art glass. Gloria found a signed piece by Peter Crisp for a few dollars in a local antique shop; we found the two signed Helmut Heibl paperweights and also, the find that most excited me was an early signed piece by Setsuko Ogishi, made in 1984 while working at the Jam Factory Craft Centre in Adelaide prior to the 1987 opening of her own Hunter valley studio and gallery.
Awareness of an artist’s work and recognition of their signatures has allowed us to find pieces priced well below their real value, although (while appreciating the lower price) the real joy is in finding and recognising the piece in the first place.

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photos:
1) roadside prunings
2) the remains of our heavily pruned tree.
3) the Palette Cafe
4) Maureen Williams glass from her exhibition at Beaver Galleries.

My Extravagant Imagination

It would be wonderful to have a lifestyle in which I no longer need to work full time in a job I don’t enjoy. Part of the (romanticised) appeal of self-sufficiency and frugality is to have more freedom to explore the things that interest me, providing an avenue to do something creative. But straight away I hit a problem – my imagination and its creative urges are not exactly frugal in nature.

What do I mean? Well let me point out some of the creative (and other) pursuits in which I’d love to indulge.

Music. For years I’ve wanted to play the fiddle. I have a large collection of recorded fiddle/violin music, mainly folk and traditional but including a little classical. I love the sound of the instrument and the variety of sounds and styles that it can create. A cheap “students” fiddle seems to cost a couple of hundred dollars but on top of that I would need lessons; but would it be worth it when I wouldn’t have anywhere to use those newly learned skills on a regular basis? I’m also not so sure I’d be satisfied with a student’s instrument. I’d want something a little classier that could double as a decorative item at home when not at use.

Astronomy. I’d love to have a decent telescope and a very dark place to use it. Unfortunately my house is exposed to a lot of artificial lighting from a nearby hospital car park so finding a good clear unpolluted spot isn’t easy. Also those decent telescopes can be very expensive. I still kick myself for not taking advantage of a very good discount being offered by Australian Geographic several years ago when I could have got a very good telescope for around half price. It even had an inbuilt computer to make the finding of stars and planets much easier. It was still expensive, but far more affordable than at full price.

Glass. Gloria has been collecting pieces of art glass for a while now and I’ve been trying to find out more about Australian Glass artists. We’ve visited the studios of some local glass artists and the creative process is fascinating and varied. From slumped glass, utilising a kiln and moulds to hot glass in which molten glass is blown or rolled into required shapes the results can be stunning.
It’s the kind of artwork I’d love to try for myself, but I’m sure the costs of setting up would be enormous. Not the kind of thing you could start on a whim.
Some glass artists offer short classes and the Glass Works in Canberra gives the beginner the opportunity to make their own paperweight or glass beads.
But returning to my extravagant imagination, I would not be satisfied with the short term solution of using someone else’s equipment. My dream would be to have my own studio and creating masterpieces that can be sold for a fortune. Definitely not practical – but that’s why I’ve been writing about an extravagant imagination instead of an extravagant reality.

"Antiques" & Collectables

Our interest in “antiques” and collectables probably started through watching David Dickinson’s “Bargain Hunt” when we subscribed to PayTV several years ago. Contestants were given a sum of money and then let loose in a market where they had to buy items to sell at auction at a later date.
The winner would be the couple who made the most “profit” at auction. I put the “ ” around the word profit, because the result for both competing teams was often a loss and the winner was deemed to be the team that lost the least.

Throughout the many episodes we saw, we started to become familiar with some of the types of items purchased. One favourite was iridescent glass by John Ditchfield. Another was an occasional piece of Charlotte Rhead pottery.
We started to make infrequent visits to antique/collectable shops and looked out for the names that had been made familiar through our viewing of the show, but the few items we came across were well outside of our budget and we could never justify the expense of purchasing them.
That did not prevent us from admiring those items as works of art and we could always enjoy the pleasure of stumbling across a piece that we recognised before we read the label. In fact, during our recent trip to the Wagga Antique Fair (see previous post), I spotted and identified a Charlotte Rhead vase on a distant stall well before we reached it.

Charlotte Rhead’s work is a personal favourite. It is not common so the shops are not overrun with her pottery. This makes it a bit of a challenge to find – which adds to the pleasure of spotting something of hers. Good examples of her work can be between $500-$1000, so I will never add one to my collection of bits and pieces (a recent purchase of two pottery whiskey bottles for $4.00 each is more fitting to my budget).

Gloria is always on the lookout for glass. She regularly watches “Sun Sea and Bargain Spotting” on ABC2. This show is a more extravagant version of the “Bargain Hunt” concept and involves shopping for collectables at European markets and later selling the purchases at a British market.
Gloria is amazed at the very cheap cost of Murano glass at those markets. Some pieces are picked up for a few pounds each – the same pieces here would be sold for well over $100.
Glass is usually very often difficult to identify. A few pieces are signed and some retain the manufacturer’s stickers, but the majority tends to be anonymous. Recently we saw a bud vase selling for around $140 that was advertised as “possible Murano”. Gloria later bought a smaller but identically styled vase for a tiny fraction of the price at another shop. I have since seen a vase exactly the same as Gloria’s on ebay being advertised as retro “Christina” from Sweden. What a difference a bit of ambiguity can make to the pricing of “collectables”.

Killer Frosts and Bargain Hunting

Half way into spring and we’re still getting killer frosts. My butternut pumpkin has shrivelled to nothing after a night with a minimum temperature of -3 Celsius. The frost got to it despite being covered. At least I have an abundant supply of seed to try again,

I have also had slight frost damage on my squash and potatoes which were also covered. My first bean seedlings are also a bit iffy at the moment being the only frost tender things I forgot to protect over that cold night, but they may pull through since they had a little cover from some surrounding plants.

Around here the growing seasons are seriously affected by the two extremes of frost and heat. We seem to get only a month between the late frosts after winter and the early scorching heat leading up to summer. The same kind of effect can be evident in autumn, with early frosts dealing the death blow to the last crop of frost tender veggies.
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A week ago Gloria and I went on an “antiques” quest, starting at the Wagga Wagga antiques fair and then doing a circuit of the antiques shops in nearby towns. Mostly we tend to treat these places as museums admiring the artistry of earlier ages, but when we stumble across a bargain we occasionally make a purchase. Gloria was able to pick up some Art Glass vases for a very good price. Not only do they look good they can be put to practical use to display flowers from the garden.

She also bought a less practical vase, a piece by Colin Heaney from Cape Byron Hot Glass. She has liked his style of work for a number of years after buying a piece in Sydney and she was hoping to find something else by him. However, being very much amateurs we had to rely on the dealer’s labelling to be aware that Heaney was the maker.

The vase was the first thing that Gloria saw when we entered the fair. It was in a cabinet at the entrance. It was identified only as “Art Glass - signed” with no details of who made it. It was a very attractive glass vase covered with various vivid colours (mainly blue) in a metallic like finish. We made a note to check it again when we’d been around the rest of the stalls.

Eventually we went back to the vase and after attempted haggling the vase was purchased. The stall owner suggested that it dated to the 1930s when that particular style of glass was popular (I had my doubts – the “88” etched beside the indecipherable signature gave me a clue). When we got home I had a closer look at the signature and for some reason I compared it to the signature on the Colin Heaney piece Gloria had bought before. It was the same. Without knowing, she had actually bought the piece of Colin Heaney glass that she had hoped to find and the “88” beside the signature DID indicate it was made in 1988 and not in the 1930s. She also bought it for half the price she had paid 10 years ago.

While Gloria got a little carried away with her glass purchases, she was not the only one to make an exciting discovery. I picked up a hard covered, illustrated copy of Richard Adam’s “Watership Down” enclosed in a slip case for the exorbitant price of…

$3.00!!!