Sophia Serve

A Concern in Trade

No doubt fortified by memories of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, I decided to post another 20 or so recycled wool hats under Kelsey Mountain Hats yesterday.  I am nearly as obsessed as he, but without the frizzy pinky-orange hair.

I’ve been hand-sewing hats for about a year, now. Since I don’t use toxins (as the earlier hatters did) I doubt that I’ll go mad but I sometimes catch my husband looking at the mound of sweaters I’ve amassed and I know he wonders.

At first they were all “my babies” and I hated to see them go away. Then they began to pile up and after making about 200 of them, including the 16 that recently were sold in a fund-raising project as “Hats for Haiti,” they begin to look a bit alike even though each is still quite unique. Just like children in large families, I suppose.

For Christmas, son Nate gave me A Concern in Trade: Hatting and the Bracebridges of Atherstone, 1612-1872. Just the title tells you a bit about him! He must have cruised the web for some time to find that book. Judy Vero wrote it and it was published by a small (quite small I’d guess) publisher in Warwick.  The only remaining hatting company that still survives happens to be Vero & Everett Ltd. 

Her family book tells all you ever need to know about the history of feltmaking (or planking which I tried by whacking wet wool with a rubber mallet to no avail…this made me decide if the wool wants to felt up in a hot washer and dryer it can; otherwise, I use it as is.)

Wool felting came to England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. I also learned that in 1732 Walpole, under George II, banned the import of beaver hats from America. Instead, we had to send over just the pelts so hats could be made in Britain. Another US industry down!

Because I know you’re dying to know, I’ll tell you that Samuel Butler in 1655 established his feltmaking shop and Samuel Bracebridge was working as a haberdasher of hats. This all took place during Cromwell’s commonwealth period. Feltmaking soon became a way for local wool to be put to good “common-wealth” activities. Especially for the Bracebridge family. Vero painstakingly lists all the people who first made hats, including appropriately enough, Joseph Hatton! But it was the Bracebridges of Atherstone who truly did it! Bracebridge owned property in Athens and participated in their revolt against the Turks. Then war broke out in the Crimea. Wars need hats so Bracebridge's coffers grew even larger. The Bracebridges, as it turns out, were friends of Florence Nightingale. (That was just a sidebar)

I gather Atherstone is no longer a great hatting center, but they do still make wool felt hoods, apparently.  I’m not sure who wears wool felt hoods after Robin Hood's gang. But after a few craft shows and farmers markets, I do know who buys my hats. And who doesn’t. The “Who Doesn’t” category includes women who take one look and say, “I like these, but I can’t wear hats.”  And the ones who say, “I love them, but I’m allergic to wool.” And most men. Although I’ve had several male customers fall in love with some and foist them on their female companions.

The  “Who Does” category includes my family and friends, of course. But they supported me during my “Let’s make waste paper baskets our of big ice cream containers,” phase, too, so I probably shouldn’t count them. Others include pre-teen girls who love to see themselves in the mirror which I always provide. Teens who gravitate to the hats with attitude.  Twenty-somethings who are making enough money to buy a hat for “fashion” reasons. Thirties through Fifties who say: “Wow. Are these all recycled?” And grandmothers who are looking for cute kids’ hats, forgetting that a toddler loses hats about as fast as Johnny Depp lost his train of thought in  “Alice in Wonderland.” Or the one grandmother who bought one recently. When I saw  her at our March Townmeeting and asked her how she was enjoying it, she said, “I don’t know. My granddaughter put it on and she won’t take it off!”

Hatting in Atherstone is a lost art. Hatting in my house is a found one—and I’m loving every minute.

Rice Paddy Art

 I’ll never boil rice again without thinking  I’m destroying a work of art!

A friend recently sent me these pictures and I subsequently scoped out other “paddy art” and thought perhaps you’d enjoy them as well.

Imagine planting teeny rice seeds (with the help of a computer in many cases) and then waiting a whole growing season for a mural to appear.

Volunteers and villagers from the small village called Inakadate, 600 miles north of Tokyo, started planting four different varieties of rice in late May to form this  Sengoku warrior on horseback.

Villagers have been creating this form of crop art, including this portrait of Napoleon which can be seen from space, since 1993.

They started out as small village projects, but in 2005 agreements between landowners and artists launched art across 15,000 square miles of paddy fields.

Like Crop Circles and ancient earth effigy mounds, these massive intricate works of art can only seen from above…a wonderful metaphor for taking the long view. The high view. The cooperative view.

And Speaking of Love-mongering

Take Body Art to a whole new (old) level by giving yourself a creative treat. Or just search on You Tube for The Omo People. They're perhaps from the Mursi or Suri tribes, who live near the Omo River in Ethiopia's Great Rift Valley. I can't share any of these pictures with you. As my harpist friend Margaret told me yesterday, "I can't tell you about this. You HAVE to experience it."

She is absolutely right.Thank you, Margaret.

The photographer is Hans Sylvester who spent six years photographing these beautiful, beautiful people. Their bodies are their canvases. Their media, earth pigments, fruit, flowers. The "pea pod" hat especially intrigues this "Mad Hatter!"

The Omo People never forgot what children once knew. They know bricolage...how to play with what's at hand. And they show us how to be true. As Ursula LeGuin said, " Truth in art is not imitation, but reincarnation."

Mad as a Hatter

I’ve become a hatter in my spare time. A Green Hatter. A Sophia-Hatter. Not really a Mad Hatter since I don’t use mercury in any of my hats as they did in 19th century hat making. People who wear my hats don’t suffer from mercury poisoning and wide mood swings as they did back then. At least, not that I know of. 

    

Like quilters who make quilts from bits  and pieces, I’m a hatter who does the same thing. All of my hand-stitched hats are made from recycled wool (which I wash in really really hot water hoping to “felt” it up.)  Most are “blinged up” with beads or buttons for women, some for children and a few for men. I love hearing friends say, "Oh, that's my sweater!"

"T" People and Bird Houses

While most families get together on holidays to grill, drink beer, watch ballgames, snipe at each other and dredge up past grievances, our niece and her family sat down in the back yard to play with scraps of wood and bits of found treasures. The French word for this is bricolage--play with what's at hand.

Sophia, so aptly named for this blog, the youngest member of the family, lounged with the dog while all the adults made birdhouses.  Some more fanciful than others.

I wanted to share this birdhouse with you because I believe it’s a metaphor for what ...here he comes again...Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls the transcendent self.  The “T” people. Imagine a family so creative, so loving, so thoughtful as to surround little Sophie with these concrete examples of complexity. Yes, complexity.