If It Feels Like History, It's Harder For Me To Toss

I don't know which relative I inherited this catalog from, but the fact that it feels a little historic has made it more difficult for me to just toss it away.



New Illustrated Catalog of Fine Linen Drawn Work
A.B. Culver Jr.
Aguascalientes, Mexico

So I scanned it and I'm posting it here.  If it has any historical value, it has been memorialized.  I couldn't find a date on it, but other booklets in the box were from the late thirties or early forties.  Not that my relatives sorted things by date. 

I won't blame you if you don't want to look through all of these doilies and handkerchiefs.

I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a doily.  A real doily - paper doilies under brownies or cupcakes don't count.

Ah, look.  They claim to have made the "very first fine linen handkerchief ever made of Drawn Work. . ."  Definitely history!  Well, if you believe it.

Centerpieces, Tea Cloths, Lunch Cloths, and Table Cloths . . . I'm assuming that these are prestige items.

My Grandma D had a few doilies.  She had many more antimacassars.  I think that was because she had more comfy chairs for people to sit in than she had horizontal surfaces with nothing being stored on them.

I think my mother had one or two doilies.  She used them under decorative candy dishes.  Usually the candy dishes were empty.

Although I have vague memories from when I was very young of candy dishes with hard candies that had been sitting in the dish long enough to have sealed together into one, dish-sized hard candy.  That could have been at some half-remembered great aunt's house, though, rather than at home.

Oh, hey!  Collars and cuffs and shirt waists!  I've seen lace lady's collars, but not men's collars.

I don't have any personal experience with lady's lace collars, but I was aware that they existed.  They could be moved from one dress to another.  From the ad copy above: "Wheel Collars are now all the rage and we make the latest and most popular styles." 

Ending with lady's collars and cuffs and a baby cap.  I'm going to assume that you have to send for the price list because the catalog was expected to be used for years. 

And now that the whole catalog has been posted, I can throw the catalog out.  Even if the company were still in business, "North Side of Plaza" probably isn't a good enough address any more.  So I wouldn't be able to send for the price list.  I will have to face my future doily free. 

I Confess - I'm Equivocating

 



OK.  I'm equivocating on this one.  I admit it.  I keep thinking that things like this are historical.  I mean, not only have my kids never

 

seen anything like it, I've never seen anything like it.  This was pre me.

If that isn't historical, I don't know what is.  Apparently, there were studios, or production companies, that would copy old movie shorts onto 8 mm and 16 mm film, suitable for use with a home movie projector.

I remember home movies, of course.  My dad used to take them at the drop of an occasion, committing our lives to record.

He had years worth recorded long before he could afford to buy a projector.  We would take them to other peoples' houses, most often my grandparents' place, to show when they would announce that they were having a movie night.

Then after we could afford the projector, we would still take them to movie night.  Partly because it was more fun with more people and partly because Grandma and Grandpa had a screen and we didn't.

I was in junior high before he bought a screen.  He told us it was a special kind.  It wasn't white with a scattering of glassy sand on it.  It was grey with a special pattern.  It was lenticular.  It was to be handled With Care.  So we were mildly proud of it. 

But even being proud of having a technologically advanced screen, showing movies on it weren't necessarily more fun than showing them on the wall, which was how we had to show any movies we watched at home in our non-lenticular past.  Showing movies on the wall had kind of a home cooked, MacGuyver feel. 

Abbot and Costello:  Knights of the Bath.  News Parade of the Year:  1946 and 1947.  Words to conjure with.
But that's not what I'm equivocating about.  Although that may be why I'm equivocating.  It's this catalog and these three 8mm movies.  I keep thinking that they're semi-historical and it wouldn't hurt to pack them away.

It's silly.  I don't have a projector.  I don't know where those three films came from.  We never watched them when I was a kid.  It's not them, particularly, that I'm being nostalgic about. 

Oh, well. Maybe I can find somewhere to sell them.  Until then, they're not taking up much space.  So what if I have no projector.  Watching them isn't really the point.  I'll sort and toss some other things instead.  I'll let you know if I ever do anything with them.