Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Pillow for a Chair


The black and white striped armchair in my sewing room needs a pillow, but I'm afraid the story needs a little more back information than that.

We purchased a model home. We were newly wedded, freshly pregnant and suddenly we needed more space than our current two bedroom home afforded. We searched, we sampled, we argued, we agreed and we moved in to what is now our current home. The best part: it's a former model home. The even better part: we bought it furnished. For a meager amount over the price of the house they threw in the furniture with it and in we moved to play house. It was so surreal the first few days. I felt as though I was living in a hotel but a very odd hotel at that. There were place settings on the table with dishes and a folded napkin which looked quite lovely and inviting. But upon closer inspection it became apparent that the plate was glued to the place mat along with the silverware. In to the trash it went. There were decorative piles of books all hardbound and lovely in appearance but they were bonded by sealant to one another. In to the trash they went. There was a 25 pound 3 foot tall rooster on the kitchen table, in to the.....no I think we still have him somewhere. There were beautiful silk drapes in many of the rooms but the rings by which they should have moved were glued to the curtain rod and so they served no real purpose. In fact, they were stapled to the walls in some areas. Down they came. (Does anyone want large yardage of ivory silk dupioni?)The refrigerator was real. Thank goodness. The plastic computer and television were not. Thankfully we didn't expect them to be real. The towels hanging on racks throughout the bathrooms were clamped with an industrial steel that has proved so difficult to remove they still remain on the racks in the bathrooms. Don't use them if you come over. The house was a jungle; we later gathered every artificial fern, tree, palm and bush that had been placed throughout the house and with no exaggeration the total was 65. The decorative jars were lovely but the tops were....take a guess: sealed to their bottom base. I get the reasoning. I can only imagine what people would find funny when touring a model home. I can only imagine what happened in our house before it became ours. It makes me laugh to think I'd walked through that house years before it became ours. I distinctly remember turning to my mother in the master bedroom and saying "Yep, I could definitely live in this room." And now I litter it with my belongings every single day. So the pillow that currently parks its arse in my black and white armchair (which is so much my favorite chair that some might be lead to believe I purchased the house just for the chair) is just a pillow. The silk is faded, the tassels are breaking apart and leaving their hairs throughout my house, which is strange because the pillow does not get moved. This chair demands A PILLOW. And I've been scouring Etsy for the perfect vintage embroidered pillow and after weeks this is what I want:


Are you still with me? I cannot explain it. I have made the conscious decision to decorate my home with things that make me smile and this pillow is that. While I really do love the colors and the flowers, I really laugh hard at the unicorn in its mystical pen. While 99% of me is sold the 1% of me has its reservations and they are as follows:
  1. What is the lettering above the unicorns head? Is it witchcraftery? Dungeons and dragons? Games of Thrones?
  2. Is this a recognizable image that medieval fanatics will know and as a result deduce that I know? I assure you I do not know.
  3. Is my taste, which is dominated by things that make me smile, really just bad taste?
  4. Is a smile really worth the $47 it would cost? Especially in light of the fact that the other pillows I am considering are much less expensive?
Writing this out is really therapeutic for me and has brought me to the great realization that bullet point #3 is the truth. And I must be crazy because even this realization is making me smile.

3 comments:

  1. Isn't it an embrodiery of a famous piece of artwork? Oddly enough my in-laws have it up in their "eclectic" living room and it's called "____ amongst the cloisters" I can't remember the first word, but I know the last part is "cloisters"... and when I say they have a famous painting framed in their living room I really mean a poster of one... hence the title being right on the bottom for all to see. I can imagine having a charming little pillow of this, but having it prominently displayed in your home, framed in poster form is just baffling to me. They got it when they lived in NYC for a year or two when Thomas was a baby. Maybe it's just nostalgic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stephanie! Bless you and your insight! I should have known that one of my two readers would know what it was. Hahah. I can't believe your in-laws have it in their living room. That makes me love it even more. To know that we might be looking at the same image at the same time floods me with joy. Stephanie Joy Robertson Joy. Next time you think of it, can you double check the name? I tried googling it and nothing came up. I really want to know the meaning of it before I bring it in to my home. Ahhhh HAPPY BIRTHDAY and HAPPY TOMORROW BAKERSFIELD DAY!!!!!!! CANNOT WAIT!

    ReplyDelete
  3. From the Metropolitan of Art website:

    "The Unicorn in Captivity" may have been created as a single image rather than part of a series. In this instance, the unicorn probably represents the beloved tamed. He is tethered to a tree and constrained by a fence, but the chain is not secure and the fence is low enough to leap over: The unicorn could escape if he wished. Clearly, however, his confinement is a happy one, to which the ripe, seed-laden pomegranates in the tree—a medieval symbol of fertility and marriage—testify. The red stains on his flank do not appear to be blood, as there are no visible wounds like those in the hunting series; rather, they represent juice dripping from bursting pomegranates above. Many of the other plants represented here, such as wild orchid, bistort, and thistle, echo this theme of marriage and procreation: they were acclaimed in the Middle Ages as fertility aids for both men and women. Even the little frog, nestled among the violets at the lower right, was cited by medieval writers for its noisy mating

    Um...I love it even more now.

    ReplyDelete