More Ephemera

The debris of everyday life is a fascinating insight into lives past lived, well I think it is.  When the old back came off the house last month, I was out there sifting through the sand and leaves and came across lots of bits of cardboard and paper; packaging and ephemera that has been preserved under our floorboards for decades.  The house was built in 1917 and there's stuff here from the thirties onwards. 

I've already done this with all the old china and glass, which I posted about here.  The flower concept, which I shamelessly copied from someone else turned out rather well, so thinking I was on to something, decided to do same with the bits of grubby paper.  I sat with a paintbrush carefully removing all the dust, trying not to rip the delicate fibres.  I felt like a archeologist and and loved every moment of it.  

It's not a perfect symmetrical flower cause I didn't have the same sized pieces, but hey, it's art, who cares.  The centre piece is, we reckon, an old car tail-light.

Sorry, I forgot to take photos before I put it in the frame, so there is some glass reflection here.

Fags, sweets, tea, shoe cleaner, lottery tickets, soap, starch, sewing thread, cigarette swap cards, cough syrup, stock cubes... to name a few.  These were the things of daily life.

I love looking at the old fonts and packaging design. 

I wonder what will be preserved from our lives today.  Will the fact that we have digital records of absolutely everything mean that nothing is forgotten, special or cherished and kept?

Giving Birth

I'm about to push out my third child.... which is actually in the form of a 124pp book.  Foolishly, around this time last year, I put up my hand to write a book to commemorate our primary school's centenary.  What was I thinking?  Of course it has been a task of gargantuan proportions, but I have to say, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyable. 

North Cottesloe Primary School in Perth was established in 1913.  What to say?  Without boring the pants of everyone with the year by year history of the P&C's achievements ("$145.56 was raised at the 1982 voting day cake stall" zzz), I decided to morph it into a social history of childhood in the area, told through the stories of all the ex students I interviewed, who were kids in the 1930s to 1950s.  Each interviewee would start with "I've not got anything interesting to tell you" but without fail they all did, some snippet of life in their mid-century childhoods that is a fascinating (to me anyway) insight into how different life was then.

Thanks to some hard cash from Lotterywest and the Council, we were able to commission a brilliant design agency who have taken my text and pics and turned them into something really stunning. 

Here is a sneak preview of the cover.

 

I'm looking forward to it being finished and getting my life back.  I'm also nervous about how it will go down, no doubt there will be something in there somewhere that someone does not like (I'm not very good at taking criticism).   It's also given me a real appreciation of social history, and I just love all those stories of everyday domestic life, the bread and butter of all our pasts.   Hmm,  maybe there might be another book brewing in there somewhere...

The world does not need more bad pots

For the past two years I've been dabbling in a bit of pottery, I may have mentioned it.  Starting out with a beginners class at Perth Studio Potters, I've now nearly finished a semester of Cermaics at TAFE.   It is quite different at TAFE, all about the skill and art in pottery, rather than the craft.  Oh yes, there is a difference.

I've made lots of really bad pots.  But this is not one of them.  This one was charmed from the moment it centred on the wheel like a breeze, to when it came out of the kiln from it's glaze firing.

I won't bother putting up any pictures of the dud pots.   As the wonderful Bela tells us constantly at TAFE, the world does not need more bad pots.

This week I had to buy a wedding present for some girls who are tieing the knot.  Perth Potters have a great gallery open on Saturday mornings where you can buy amazing pieces for snip made by people with far more experience, skill and creativity than I will ever have.

They gave me a copy of this when I was there and I've been enjoying living the history of ceramics in our little town.  For over 50 years a group of passionate and dedicated ladies (mostly ladies) have kept the craft alive in Perth.

It is full of lots of shots like this, god bless.   Another collared shirt on fetching jumper, you might remember the look, from the eighties.  I know I do, I had plenty of both.

Going back a bit further to the sixties, look at the ladies down on their hands and knees laying crazy paving out the back of the studio, no old jeans for these dames!

By loveliest of all are the stories of passion and pleasure gained from the process of mastering a craft, and constantly adding to the skills and ideas that take a lifetime to gather to be a truly great potter.   I hope I'm still throwing pots when I'm in my eighties.  Now that's something to aspire to.

The delicate topic of toilets

The builder has insisted that this week, before the slab is laid for the extension I must go immediately to the plumbing merchant and select all sanitary ware and bathroom fittings.  Whooaa there, but I want to dither endlessly over such things, why so soon?   Apparently plumber needs to know such things yesterday, search me.

So we go for a romantic outing to the plumbing merchant in an outer suburban semi-industrial part of town (builder's guys, major discount, which we like) to choose taps, showers and .... lavatories.  When I suggested to the sales guy that we look at lavatories, he said 'you mean toilets?' which immediately got my English snob husband on edge.

Having a brief discussion before we leave home it is agreed that the loo we've put in the studio has a major design fault.  Whilst it may be groovy and sleek, the inside of it has a large flat area with the water sitting in a small recess at the back.  How to put this issue delicately?  Well, not how my husband explained it, that using it was like having a shit on a dinner plate that you had to scrape into the hole.  I don't know who was more embarrassed: me or the Ygen salesman, but he kind of got it right.  

(The builder explained to us later that due to toilets now using less water, the design of them has had to change so that the water area must be smaller to allow for the reduced amount of water to have enough whoosh to adequately deal with the, ehem, contents.)

My bug bear with modern toilets is that they are not very comfortable to sit on.  True I have got a bony arse, but I find toilets today feel like they have no seat at all and you are actually sitting on the rim, as opposed to the nice old big flat bakerlite seats that you could settle down on for a nice long magazine article, or two.   When I explored this topic with the Ygen and suggested he might like to sit on the toilet and see what I mean, he got very embarrassed, but did it anyway. 

Sorry, but if you are in the game of selling dunnies, you've surely got to be get over being embarrassed about what they are actually for, non?

Anyway, we finally found a lavvie that had a more central larger water hole, but I compromised on the uncomfortable seat. 

Since when have I had time to read a magazine on the kazi in the last ten years anyway?

Sign of the times

Having lost my bloggin mojo, it seems to have found me again.  Not that life is any less stressful or demanding or crazy, but suddenly I feel the urge to purge.

 

Picking up on the last post, whilst pulling out the timber frame of the old addition, little wads of newspaper rained out, which dates the addition: 1957.  The people that lived in our house were devout Catholics, so I'm guessing the pages from the tabloid and decidedly saucy Perth Weekend Mail were courtesy the building chaps.

 

This first piece is a classic.  Meet Patsy (another Patsy!), who interestingly comes from the area where we live. 

 

 
She's pretty gorgeous.  Cant quite make out what it she is holding, could be anything.  A radio? Pool ball?

But wait, let's read all about her ....  come hither...... what!  She's only 15!!



I was thinking this would make a fun item to frame and put in the loo, but I have to say, I'm wavering.  Yes it is an interesting piece of mass media that illustrates how times have changed, but do I really want my 11 year old daughter thinking this  is where she might see herself in four years time?  Prudish, I've never been, but I've got mixed feelings here.

Let's see, what else.  Oh my!  Nudist sunbathing in Geraldton!  I also find this pretty out there, for 1957.  Who would have thought that the local tabloid rag in this little town would have been so risque?

 

And now, moving away from salacious gossip, some useful advertising... for asbestos.  We've just spend three grand having all the asbestos in our old addition removed by men in white suits with rolls of black plastic.  There was a shitload of it.  Cheap, readily available and totally indestructable, it formed the fabric of so many Australian suburbs over the second half of the twentieth century.

Now James Hardie Industries face the wrath numerous courtcases and responsibility for many deaths in Australia, from the illnesses associated with asbestos mining and use. 

 

I was glad to see the back of it, as the ute travelled off down the lane, to deposit it in landfill somewhere.  Oh dear.

Ground Zero

Demolition is now complete. The guy is in with his bobcat today to clear away the final debris of our house's rear.   The lavvy was the only thing left by the time he arrived this morning.  As you can imagine, there has been lots of great photo opportunities with the below, which I won't share.

I've been sifting through the soil which was underneath the stumps, the builder thinks I'm mad.  There are lots of little fragments of packaging and other ephemera which are like clues and DNA to the past life of this house and its inhabitants. 

 

I've also been taking photos from this vantage point below nearly every day.  My plan is to do a time lapse series of the old coming down and the new going up.  Given the drip-drip approach to our building budget, that is going to be one hell of a file, if I take one every day.

You can see the old kitchen wall, which would have been original to the house, whereas the section to the right which housed a dining area and bathroom were added in the 50s.  When we were pulling it apart we found a load of newspaper rolled up to fill gaps from 1957.  More on that later.

Timber!

I've been stupid busy the past few months, blogging is a distant and luxurious memory.   My book is soon to be printed (another post, note to self: write) and the house reno has now well and truly kicked off.

We've now moved into the recently completed garage/studio and set up residence for the foreseeable future, while the house is partially demolished and extended.  Some say we are mad, some say genius.  Time will tell.  If we are all still speaking to each other in a year's time it will be cause for celebration in itself.

Task one: turn garage into livable dwelling.  Upstairs we have loo, shower, kitchen, so downstairs is sleeping zone.  Our lovely builder put up this partition made from a bunch of Victorian pine doors we'd had getting in the way for the last ten years.

That's one less pile of crap under a tarp to shimmy around. 

So work begineth.  The old side sleepout was first to go.  One push, give or take, and it's gone.

Then work moves to the rear - old kitchen, diner and bathroom.  It's clinging on a bit harder, but another day or two and it will also be toast.

The plan is to reserve all the old jarrah timbers and reuse them in the build, somewhere, somehow.  Cue: five more piles of crap under tarpaulin.

When the inside wall skin was removed from the kitchen, this was revealed.  It's the old original weatherboard wall, with flaking paints and lovely patina. 

We might try and fiddle less rather than more with that and enjoy its distressed tones.  Not that there will be much distressing to do, that's for sure.