SHADES OF MONDAY

This is the first time I've participated in BLUE MONDAY at Smiling Sally, so I hope I'm doing it Okay.



This the watering globe which we all agree should be a SpokesGlobe on a midnight commercial by Ron Popeil---the begonia it supplies has left the pot entirely, growing leggy and tall, climbing the sheers, waving at the mailman, grabbing hold of a hanging lamp and chain, and taking flight clear up into the ceiling. We've never fed it, and wish we remembered the name of that potting soil. We'd make millions.





One of the racks of Caro's collection of hand-painted plates---this one has mostly blue. as it hangs over a small, welcoming blue velvet rocker in the corner.

This plate has more teal than blue, but I love the way it's so meticulously painted. It seems as if it's been done with that color-flow method, like with royal icing, for you can see the little fences around each color, to corral it into the shape, and the paint mounded until almost-overflow stage.

You can see the little individual pools if you click.

It's hard to tell on this one if it were painted and then inscribed, for it almost appears like that "found image" type of painting, with a palette knife or brush handle to incise to the white of the glass. I love the lapis shade, and the gleam of the finish, like the pattern of a basket, or a dragon's scales.

And this one---this one is mysterious and exotic. Perhaps it's a flagon of fabulous perfume, or a censer for secret rites, or even a funeral urn. Could be a two-story genie house---who knows? We occasionally speculate as we sit and chat, and we'd be so disappointed if we found that it was something prosaic, like a ketchup dispenser.

A handy stack of books beneath the bench---the blue sky and water of Scotland are a lovely punctuation to the pile, and remind me of a wonderful visit there.

Steaming red tea in my favorite teacup---it's blue outside, white inside---called Summer Sky by Wedgwood. A lucky find in some thrift shop or other, though I did spend several hours at the factory in England, watching the artists at work, painting the dainty china. I bent for a long time, peering into the long, long waist-high cavernous space of the conveyor belt, watching the gray clay shapes riding into the faraway inferno of the kiln room.

A nice roomful of blues, with big windows for gazing out into the November sky.

Thank you for letting me participate in Blue Monday!