Autumn Leaves Number Eight

This beauty really IS hand painted. You can actually see AND feel the texture of the paint on the fabric, or you could, if you were me, and you were holding the tie in your hand.

The tie's label confirms it, although you can't prove it by the scan, because the label has, over time, folded itself upside down, and I didn't notice when I scanned it. I would have turned it over otherwise, but now that the scan is completed, and the image adjusted and resized for the web and all, I'm not going to redo the scan just because of that. So you'll have to take my word for it.

The tie's one and only extant label reads, and I quote:

André
of California
Hand Painted

The term "hand painted" is used more loosely these days. I recently bought a modern tie featuring the Seattle Space Needle on eBay. You may be able to see it still, searching by its item no: 130044997222. This tie's label says that it's "hand painted" but it very clearly is NOT. The label apparently means that the design itself was painted by an artist by hand (how else would someone normally paint a picture, than by hand?). But the design is clearly printed on the tie for mass production.

I'm not complaining mind you; it's a beautiful tie, and I'm delighted to have it, since one of my other collections is Seattle Space Needle kitsch, and this tie fits both categories: ties and Space Needle. But it's NOT hand painted, not in the traditional sense of someone sitting down with this very tie in hand, and painting directly onto its surface, the way today's autumn leaves tie is.

This tie that I've posted today is very reminiscent of one that my father had, but which did not survive the fire that burnt the old farmhouse I grew up in. That was in the spring of 1971. Dad's tie was purple, like this, with hand painted leaves, like this one, but it's been so many years since it was destroyed that I honestly don't recall how close in resemblance the leaves actually were. Still, I was delighted to find this tie, since it is reminiscent of the one that was lost.

I apologize for cutting off the pointed end of the tie in my scan. The image loses some of its grace, and "tie-ness," by not having the traditional pointed end completely present, but I just HAD to get all of the painted leaves on, and given the size of my scanner bed, that meant I had to move the tie down a bit, so that some of the end was off the scanner bed, in order to insure that all of the hand painted art was included in the scan.