Autumn Leaves Number Five

Well, I missed getting a tie uploaded last week. On Sunday, the day I normally post to the blog, I was en route to a week-long leadership seminar, and I had no opportunity to scan, photograph or post a tie. I had hoped I might get it done a day early on Saturday, but there were just too many other things I had to attend to that day, so it didn't happen.

I considered loading two ties today, and backdating one to last Sunday, but eventually decided against it. So I missed a week. Big deal! I'm sure the world will survive. There aren't more than a handful of people checking this blog on a regular basis, and I don't flatter myself to think that any of them will suffer too much from enduring a week without a new tie here.

So, this week's tie might well be described as the ultimate in depiction of autumn leaves. An endless procession of leaves, small in the distance, and growing steadily larger as they progress toward the bottom of the tie, brightly colored in orange and yellow--what more could one ask for in depicting the vibrant colors of the fall season?

Certainly this tie could easily symbolize the current state of affairs in our yard! I raked the leaves in our small back yard this afternoon, and they made quite an enormous pile. We've had some good stiff wind the past few days, and the several large maple trees in the vicinity are shedding at a furious rate, albeit with many more leaves yet to come down.

This tie is a relatively recent acquisition. It is one that my wife found somewhere, if I recall correctly. It has no extant labels to transcribe. There is also no brocade pattern woven into the fabric. What you see is what you get.

The second picture shows the entire length of the tie, which gives a better perspective of the diminishing size of the leaves as you travel up the tie. The scanned image, shown first, provides a better appreciation of the tie at its widest point, nearer the end.

As a postscript, I received notice this week that my blog has been linked by the Collectible Detective.com in the area of Men's Vintage Clothing & Accessories. Certainly I appreciate the link!

Autumn Leaves Number Four

Here's another example of autumn leaves in autumn colors, more or less. The background is a deep dark brown, while the leaves themselves are in shades of gold and silver. Kind of like that verse from Proverbs I cited on a previous entry.

I'm going to have to upload at least 2, maybe three images of this tie in order to do it justice. That's because when I shot it with my digital camera, the glare was so awful that the color varied drastically from side to side, and many of the leaves and portions of the background appeared drastically washed out.

So I reverted to my scanner. But this tie had two elements, both of which need to be shown, and only one of which at a time fit on the scanner bed. So the first image shows the primary lower portion of the tie; the second image shows the higher up portion as it approaches the place where the knot would be, and the third image, from the digital camera, puts it all together so you can see how the tie looks when tied. But trust the two scanned images for the color and detail.

Not (or should that be "knot") to mention that this tie also has a lovely brocade pattern woven into the background of the tie. You may actually find the brocade pattern easier to view on the digital camera image, where the flash and glare do contribute to making the pattern more visible.

How to describe it? You could almost say that it is made up of a series of necktie shapes, laid out next to each other in a curving row, with little triangles between. Or you might say (given the time of year) that they resemble a jack'0'lantern's toothy smile. They are intriguing and give the tie an additional flare, whatever you might think they look like.

This tie has a manufacturer or designer's label, which has the words

ARTcraft Creations

placed inside an artist's pallette, and the words

Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.

below. You can see the label on the second scanned image. All in all, a very nice tie, albeit just a bit worn, and losing some of its original resiliency.

Silvery Gray Leaves on Burgundy

Not all ties sporting autumn leaves have to necessarily show traditional autumn colors. Several of my vintage ties featuring leaves are in other kinds of color combinations, such as this one, with gray leaves on a deep red background.

This is my first experiment using my new inexpensive digital camera to capture a tie image, rather than my scanner. The scanner produces higher resolution images, I think, based on the size of the image in KB, anyhow. And this picture shows some glare from the camera flash. It's like only the second or third picture I've taken with the camera, so obviously I haven't a clue as to what I'm doing as yet.

But the reason I used this shot instead of the scan I made prior to trying the camera was that I couldn't get an accurate on-screen color using the scanned image. If I got the red to display the proper shade of deep burgandy, then the leaves were far too purple. If I got the leaves to the correct pale shade of silvery gray, then the red was much to light a shade, not at all like the tie itself. It was frustrating, to say the least.

I may try shooting the tie with the camera again, later, when I learn more about what I'm doing, and see if I can come up with a better image. In the meantime, at least, these colors appear more or less accurate to my eye.

This tie has no extant labels to transcribe. Hopefully the gorgeous slightly stylized leaf pattern imbedded into the fabric itself is visible. This is a beautiful tie, even if this low-quality image may not entirely do it justice.

Autumn Leaves Number Two

Here's another of the more spectacular specimens from my collection of vintage ties featuring autumn leaves. This is a fairly recent addition to my collection, which means, as it generally does, that I've added it within the last 2 or 3 years. Unfortunately, neither my wife nor I can remember just where we picked it up, or where it came from.

The tie does have one label which reads:

Haband
Peterson, N.J.

Typing the words "autumn leaves" naturally made me think of the song by that same name, and most especially, when I think of that song, I think of the version by Roger Williams, which apparently spent a month at #1 on the pop charts back in 1955, when I was a mere toddler.

Much later, my freshman year in high school in fact, I sang in the men's chorus. The men's club always put on the fall talent show, and the men's chorus always sang "Autumn Leaves" as the "title song" so to speak.

Later on, probably my junior or senior year, we had this remarkable pianist on campus named Bob Silverman (so far as I know, no relation to the well-known classical Canadian pianist of the same name) who could play virtually anything in any style, and who could imitate the Roger Williams version of the song to perfection. Later he went on to play for the Heritage Singers, an Adventist gospel singing group. I haven't seen or heard of him in years.

Anyway, that song still evokes bittersweet romantic emotions whenever I hear it. To me it's the perfect evocation of the autumnal season. What's that got to do with this tie? Not much, except that this tie, too, provides a welcome reminder of autumn.