(Click to embiggen)
Journaling:Apparently we have neither (saints nor sinners) in our family at the moment because these are the mementos that nobody wanted. How my very Methodist grandmother ended up with two very Catholic Virgin Mary statues I'll never know.
Labels, starting at the top, then left to right: Jesus on a cedar slab, Virgin Mary with rose, Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus (I guess this should really be Madonna with Child), Craggy praying hands, Roving Eye Shotglasses.
Kind of a weird dichotomy of stuff here, swinging from one extreme to the other.
The Jesus-On-A-Slab and the Virgin Marys came from my grandmother's house. Jesus hung on her kitchen wall over the big Dearborn heater since the beginning of time, along with some trivets, plates, and a small painting by a cousin. The varnish on it is very yellowed from the heat and fumes.
I can remember sitting at her kitchen table eating purple hull peas and skillet cornbread, staring at it, wondering why she kept it. The other things around it would change every so often getting replaced or updated, but Jesus was always there. He stuck out like a sore thumb looking like a roadside tourist trap souvenir among the nicer things.
The Virgin Marys were probably gifts. The one with the baby Jesus has maker's marks all on the bottom and is stamped "Germany". (sigh) I've been watching too much Antiques Roadshow and wonder now if I should get rid of it or not.
The craggy praying hands and the shotglasses were Mom and Dad's. I find it ironic that they had these things. Not a lot of praying going on at our house except for the rare dinnertime blessing when company came. And there was absolutely no drinking going on. Alcohol was strictly verboten.
The Roving Eye shotglasses are 1950s era I think. They have the face painted on the outside of the glass and the black and white eye painted on the inside of the glass. When the glass is moved, the eye seems to rove around up and down or side to side depending on which way the glass is moved.
The red one has "Down Da Hatch!" on the back. The other one, which is yellow, has "S-SDelightful!" on the reverse. There were four in the set originally. Don't know what happened to the other two. They lived in the high kitchen cabinet with the fine china and crystal. I wasn't supposed to play with them because they were glass but I think I did anyway. Humm....the other two might have fallen victim to my little hands.
These things are now going to Goodwill since nobody in the family wanted them. Maybe some shopper there will be able to find or lose their religion.
Yay! Lots more stuff out of my house!
(Virgin Mary with Rose detail)
2 comments:
Great sketches of them! I'd be tempted to keep the hands. Paint them white and you could practice cast drawing. You probably didn't want to hear a reason to keep anything, did you!
Raena, that's a fabulous idea! I thought about your great bust find and considered keeping the Mary with a rose to practice faces, but then decided it was too little and too stylized. But the hands...woot! They would be excellent! Thanks for the idea!
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