If you are looking for creative inspiration, there is so
much in your own community. This past
weekend for me was chock full of local history.
I attended an estate sale and an estate auction and came away with more
knowledge of the area I now call home and some great future art project
ideas.
The first sale yielded a small collection of gravestone
rubbing how-to books and supplies, among other items. Old cemeteries are a great source for local
history and genealogy, and potential places to observe folk art stone carving. I have already been well acquainted with incorporating
gravestone carving into my own art, first in ceramics, and now making crayon
rubbings on fabric. This is a printed
vintage tablecloth, pulled out of the weekly junk auction, covered in a collage
of gravestone rubbings:
Image copyright RPS, please do not pin or re-post
The auction was the estate of a couple who had printed the
town newspaper for decades. There were a
few rare local history books; I was soundly outbid on one lot of the books, but
I bought the second lot, and I am dutifully studying them. Half of the auction was the contents of the
house, the other half was the bulk of the printing items. The newspaper was apparently printed in a
shed at the back of the property. A
calendar from 1974 in the shed had a note on December 26 that read, “Last day
of Home Towner.” After the printing of
that last newspaper, the owner must have locked the shed and left it. I bought a boxful of copies of two local
history booklets that had been printed there and were authored by the couple. There were lots and lots of old metal
printing blocks for advertising, all of them went out of my price range. I would have liked to get a few for display
and to have something from this piece of area history. I didn’t want to bid too much on them, as the
metal plates were too shallow to use for rubbings, and I don’t want to get into
messy printing inks. I’m more interested
in things that I can use rather than just look at these days.
There were several boxes of 9 X 12” sheets of embossed
advertising graphics. They were embossed
in a positive orientation, which made them good for rubbings, if the fine
detail could be captured.
Image copyright RPS, please do not pin or re-post
I decided to take a
chance on them. Luckily, no one else
wanted them, I and have two large boxes full of the sheets and a boxful of the
monthly catalogs for the ad sheets from the manufacturer. The ad sheets I now have are from the mid to
late 1960s.
I have not been able to find much about these ad
sheets. All I have found so far is from
an Ebay listing from seller BenningtonBargains: “In the days
of hot type, advertisers would send these mats to newspapers who would pour
lead into them and then use the lead plate on presses to print the ads in
newspapers. These were generally discarded after the lead pouring. So
this mat is extremely rare.” It looks
like they are made of fine grained paper (heavier than cardstock) with some
sort of coating.
I am happy to report that they make great rubbings on fabric:
Image copyright RPS, please do not pin or re-post
They work decently with paper, although the sections with
finer detail do not turn out as well.
These open up so many creative possibilities in my collage
explorations. I will have some of the ad
sheets for sale at upcoming quilt shows, and I will list a few on my Etsy store
in the next week.
