Hanging Vintage Hankies

Many years ago I started collecting vintage hankies. It started when I found a poinsettia Christmas hankie in my mother’s things after she died. I remembered her carrying it. Soon after I was wandering around an antique mall and found another one, and why have one when you can have two…or three or… They were easy to store, inexpensive, and fun to look for when out and about because you didn’t find them that often. Then Ebay came along and they were too easy to find and there were too many collectors driving up the prices so I stopped collecting. But meanwhile I have a very large collection of hankies. Some are so pretty that I decided to frame them, some permanently, and some that are changed out from time to time. I bought a few large and small frames that I use over and over and the background is heavy white paper. This one is a larger Valentine hankie and it is on the wall in the guest room year round but I have some that I swap out for different holidays and seasons. I really love the graphics on this one and the red and blue color combination. I also use hankies as table top decorations sometimes.

I used to hang this one during the Fall season sometimes. I also have a large collection of hankies that are shaped like different leaves in different colors and sometimes I put one of those up as well. Some of these hankies are a bit crooked but I didn’t take the time to straighten them. Some are an odd shape anyway and can’t be straightened!

For a while years ago I hung my hankies as a valance over my kitchen window changing them depending on the season or holiday. I put these up every fall for a few years until we remodeled the kitchen.

Not a great photo but the only one I could find of these hankies. I have about 100 different poinsettia hankies. My mother loved poinsettias and these remind me of her whenever I see them.

This is a large frame with just a heavy white paper background and I swap out hankies depending on the season or holiday. I put this one up at Christmas time. It is one of my favorites.

This is a smaller hankie that was sold by McCalls magazine apparently. It hangs in my guest room at Christmas time because the tree in there always has a gingerbread and candy theme. I used a red frame for this one.

This one is another Christmas favorite that hangs in the hall during the holidays.

I have several California Souvenir hankies and I have framed a couple for our bedroom. I love the colorful graphics.

You can still find vintage hankies on Ebay and in antique malls although some of the best designs have been snatched up by collectors over the years. When I was buying them they were each a dollar or two but now some of the most prized and unusual ones can cost $20 to $30 and up because there are so few of them left.

I started a Facebook Group, Vintage Hankies, Handkerchiefs, https://www.facebook.com/groups/897980928627111 to share photos of my hankies. I am hoping that others will join and share their hankies too!

A California See Shells Tablescape

I live about a mile and a half from the Pacific Ocean so I often create tablescapes with an ocean theme. I love to walk along the sand collecting shells and sea glass although there is no sea glass here really. If you compare my recent tablescapes, you can see that this one recycles elements from my Bird tablescape and my Crab tablescape. It shows how you can create a variety of tablescapes using some of the same elements. If you want to be more creative when setting a table you could determine what colors you might use over and over depending on your decor and dishes and start gathering a few elements that you can mix and match. When I started tablescaping, I bought basic colors for chargers and dinner plates and the salad plates became the element that dictated the theme of the tables.

We are lucky to live so close to the sand and waves.

I have slowly purchased these shell plates on Ebay over the past few years. I still don’t have a complete set of dinner plates but I continue to watch for them. The tablecloth came from Amazon.

The salad and dinner plate are both Bordallo Pinheiro, and made in Portugal. There are many different shell plates available from many different makers.

It is easier to find a shell plate that is salad size, it is more difficult to find one that is dinner plate size. I actually have four of these plates that are charger size but I needed six for this table so I didn’t use them.

The chargers are the same ones that I used for the Crab tablescape. The blue one is Mikasa’s Color Spectrum in Royal Blue that I bought on Ebay, a few at a time. The second charger is my Antique Beaded charger that I bought from Williams-Sonoma a few years ago.

This stainless flatware is another one of my favorites. It is made by Reed & Barton and is called Colonial Williamsburg Gloucester Shell. Each piece has a different shell on the bottom.

I bought the napkin rings on Ebay, They have different shell designs. They are labeled Knobler Taiwan. The napkins and table runner came from Etsy. A seller on there has made napkins for me several times. I tell her what I am looking for and she finds the material and makes them for me. This wasn’t exactly what I was looking for but it is really better than my original idea.

These are the same glasses that I used for my Crab table and my Bird table. I seem to be stuck on blue at the moment! I bought the blue goblets on Ebay, you can still find them for sale there. They were made by Libbey in the 1970’s and the pattern is Tulip in Dusky Blue. This clear goblet is actually the pattern my mother chose for her wedding crystal in 1938. She couldn’t remember the name of the pattern or who made it and I searched for decades trying to identify it with no luck. Finally one day I was reading through old San Bernardino newspapers online doing some genealogical research looking for information about my grandparents and I stumbled on an article about a wedding shower for my mother that mentioned her gifts and the name of her crystal! This Rock Sharpe crystal goblet was made by Libbey and the pattern was Ridgeway. I was able to complete the set buying them a few at a time on Ebay.

The shell place card holders are Andrea by Sadek, can’t remember where I bought them.

I bought this large shell several years ago and it usually sits on a shelf in the family room. It needed something after I put it on the table so I bought flat blue marbles and filled it and then put a few shells in it.

This table makes me want to walk along the beach and look for shells today!

To see 190+ tablescapes that I have created please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

A Crabby Crab Tablescape

This crab table design started out as one design and then through serendipity and circumstance, it ended up as something different. Several years ago I bought three small crab bowls at a garage sale. I used them in a ocean tablescape a few years ago with other ocean elements. In Virginia this Christmas we were at an antique mall and I found six more of an almost similar design and one larger one on sale. I had been gathering red crab items for a future table for a while. The plan was a navy tablecloth with red crab bowls and red and white accents. But when I finally got out the crab bowls again and looked closely, they were not red, they were orange-red and nothing matched. I really wanted to use the bowls so we shifted gears and Hubby spray painted the things that were red, orange-red.

These small crab bowls really have a presence, I love the claws, and the tiny face. They are labeled Made in PV Czechoslovakia.

Going to serve some kind of crab dish, that’s for sure!

I looked all over for salad plates with an all over pattern of red crabs but every one had one crab or the crabs were silly looking. I was googling crab plates and these popped up from Pfaltzgraff. They were on major sale and are microwave and dishwasher safe. The orange-red border matches perfectly. So the red crabs suddenly became blue crabs and the overall design was tweaked a bit. This happens sometimes with my tables, I can’t find what I need so I substitute something else and change the design.

The next plate down is melamine and I bought them at Crate and Barrel a few years ago.

For design purposes I am actually using two chargers on this table. This one is Mikasa’s Color Spectrum in Royal Blue. I have a few different colors and I bought them on Ebay a few years ago. I used a Hunter Green one on my St. Pat’s table this year.

The second charger is my Antique Beaded one from Williams-Sonoma a few years ago. I used it on one of my Easter tables this year.

The navy place mats came from Pier 1 on sale a few years ago.

I bought the frosted white flatware on sale online at Wayfair a few years ago, it is made by Cambridge. It is 18/0 so the fork tines are a bit sharper than I would like but I really liked the frosted color. Wayfair has really good sales on flatware sometimes. I used this flatware in blue on one of my Easter tables this year.

I recycled these goblets from my Bird tablescape, the blue was just what I was looking for and I hadn’t packed them away yet. I bought the blue goblets on Ebay, you can still find them for sale there. They were made by Libbey in the 1970’s and the pattern is Tulip in Dusky Blue. They actually are a bit lighter blue gray than this photo shows. This clear goblet is actually the pattern my mother chose for her wedding crystal in 1938. She couldn’t remember the name of the pattern or who made it and I searched for decades trying to identify it with no luck. Finally one day I was reading through old San Bernardino newspapers online doing some genealogical research looking for information about my grandparents and I stumbled on an article about a wedding shower for my mother that mentioned her gifts and the name of her crystal! This Rock Sharpe crystal goblet was made by Libbey and the pattern was Ridgeway. I was able to complete the set buying them a few at a time on Ebay.

I looked all over for orange-red crab napkin rings with no luck. Found lots of metal and blue ones but nothing the right color. I had bought these small crabs on Amazon to use as table scatter but they were shiny red when they arrived. Hubby was going to spray paint them orange-red and my daughter was over and I was telling her about my bad luck finding napkin rings and she suggested that I turn these into napkin rings, genius! So Hubby bought plain wood rings and spray painted them all and glued the crab to the ring and viola, cheap napkin rings! Navy napkins came from HomeGoods I think, I used them in the bird tablescape too. I think I found the orange-red ones there too a few years ago, sheer luck that they match.

I love these crab place card holders, I found them at Pottery Barn this year and yes, they were red but Hubby spray painted them for me.

I was in the middle of transforming the table elements from navy and red to navy and orange-red and I went on Amazon looking for a plain tablecloth for another table I am planning and suddenly stumbled on this tablecloth. I couldn’t believe it, it was the perfect color combination. Sometimes my table designs are like that, I find something late in the game that pulls it all together.

I was planning to just use the large bowl as a centerpiece but I was looking online at Pier 1 and here was a large wire crab! Another bit of serendipity that changed the design. It was red but Hubby did his magic and it now matches everything else. I set the larger crab bowl on top of it and done!

My rule usually is plain tablecloth with busy dishes or busy tablecloth with plain dishes but this tablecloth creates such a different mood than a plain navy tablecloth would have and the scale works so I couldn’t resist the combination here.

Clearly someone needs to bring crab home for dinner!

To see 190+ tablescapes that I have created please click here. If you are on Facebook, join my Tablescape Ideas group! Just click on the Facebook Search box at the top of the page and type in Tablescape Ideas. Don’t miss my Tablescaping How-To section at the top of this blog post for more tablescaping tips and tricks.

I put a new tablescape on my blog every week so please check back!

The Humble Cocktail Napkin

Many years ago I created a collection of unusual vintage cloth cocktail napkins which is ironic because I am not really a drinker. I was attracted to their colors, their humorous and witty sayings, and their small size. I read that the first cocktail napkins were created in ancient China for tea cups. Their use in the United States developed and increased with the rise of cocktail drinking during Prohibition and in the 1940’s and 1950’s. With the increased use of paper napkins, cloth cocktail napkins fell out of favor, housewives didn’t want to wash and iron them constantly. The one above is part of a series illustrated by Carl Tait. He was an illustrator who decorated vintage linens and his creations are now very popular and in high demand.

These can still be used not only for cocktails but other drinks as well and they are quite a conversation piece when they appear. I also think any of them would be really cute if they were framed alone or as a group.

These might have been used for serving cocktails while playing bridge or other card games. I don’t think they are vintage but I have seen vintage ones like these before.

I love the expressions on the ladies’ faces and all the different hats!

The images were just drawn on the fabric. That bird is a wonder!

She is well put together, the flowers on her dress, the earrings, the hat!

Love the hanging cherries!

These cocktail napkins have designs that appear to be appliques that were attached by hand. I love the story the set tells and the added anatomical embellishments!

The handwork is amazing, such tiny stitches!

I have a whole series of sayings like this one but some are not appropriate to share!

Another series with appliques, I love all the different fabric that was used. These however have an added surprise as the next photos show.

I have another somewhat similar series but they are a bit risque so I won’t share them.

Because I am a second generation Californian, (both my parents were born here too), I was really happy to find these. There are several in the series.

I suggest watching for cocktail napkins and using them, for whatever drink you serve!

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