Brown & Tan Clouds

Here's another recent eBay acquisition. It's a nice example of forties color, style and design. It's not quite in the first rank so far as opulence goes, without any background brocade pattern woven into the fabric, but the fabric itself is shiny and glossy, as typical of so many forties ties.

The tie seems to depict a brown sky full of stylized brown and tan clouds. The entire tie has an orangy cast to it, one of the favorite color schemes of that era. Back in January I posted links to several ties utilizing this general range of color. Not to mention the "Orange and Brown Rosettes" from a couple of postings ago.

This specimen has two labels extant:

Resilient Construction
Towncraft Deluxe Cravats
Fabric loomed in U.S.A.

reads the first one. The second simply says

Fidelity Cravats.

Both labels are shown in the scan. Well, that's it for this week. Chores are calling (like gathering up and taking out the trash) and we still have to go on our walk.

A Green Dream

Isn't this a a gorgeous beaut of a tie! I call it "A Green Dream." It's maybe a bit TOO flamboyant, but I like it a lot. I have to tell you its story (the limited part I know):

I found this tie languishing in a junk store--oops, make that a second-hand store, located right next to the discount mall in Seaside, Oregon. It's a favorite place for us to stop and poke around whenever we're passing through Seaside, which is not too often these days.

I say "languishing," because the tie was almost completely disassembled when we found it. It was completely unsewn in back, all the stitching that holds it together had come undone. Consequently, we didn't have to pay much for it, 99 cents, or less, as I recall.

When we got back home, we took it to the dry cleaner, where a seamstress also plies her trade, but she refused to have anything to do with sewing it back up. Too tricky for her, I guess, although she didn't give a reason, just said no.

So Arline (that's my wife for anyone who doesn't already know), sewed it up herself, carefully stitching it up by hand, a process that took her a couple hours of painstaking work all total. In addition to the stitching, she had to carefully iron it, removing the wrinkles that were imbedded, from its having not been in the correct shape, or form for quite some time before we acquired it. That was truly a labor of love on her part! Thanks, my dear!

The tie itself is quite spectacularly over the top. It's a deep glossy green, with three downward pointing triangle shapes near the bottom, with a large pointed spear of fluorescent yellow-green stabbing down toward the center of the tie. I now realize I'm going to have to scan and post another shot of the tie further up from the bottom, to show what happens there. My scanner just isn't big enough to do it justice all in one scan. I really do need a larger scanner bed.

As you can see in the second scan, the three triangle shapes are repeated further up the tie. I'm also posting the label, which is embedded directly into the fabric and design of the tie itself. It reads as follows (although I'm sure most of you can read it for yourself):

Cutter Cravat
Artist Original ©

In addition to its striking design and colors, the tie has a large scale brocade woven into the fabric, giving it yet another aspect of opulence. The brocade consists viny curlicue patterned shapes, somewhat reminiscent of the classic paisley design.

Well, that's more than enough said about this tie. Hope you enjoy it!

Orange and Brown Rosettes

Here is another very nice forties vintage tie, which came from another eBay purchase. In this case, two ties were bought in a batch. I don't recall the price, and am too busy (or lazy) to look it up just now, but I am fairly sure it was more than I paid for the last four.

The basic pattern revolves around some vaguely floral patterns that I'm calling rosettes for lack of a better term. It's interesting that the brown dots make up the filler for the rosette shapes, but similar sets of orange/tan dots are just splotched onto the tie as kind of shadows to the darker ones, outside the rosette shapes, slightly above and to the left of each one.

The rest of the tie's design consists of concentric lines drawn around the floral rosette shapes, in ever widening circles, like the ripples around a stone thrown into a pool of water. It reminds me of one of my favorite doodles when I was younger. I'd start by drawing a few randomly placed circles, squares, triangles, etc. on the page, and then begin drawing concentric lines around each one, until eventually they began to merge with one another, and the whole page would be filled with concentric designs, much like this tie.

The tie also has a brocade in the fabric, probably not very visible in the scan, except as a kind of shadowing here and there. The brocade pattern consists of paired straight ribbon like lines, about a quarter of an inch apart, moving toward and away from each other in a sort of diamond shaped pattern. Actually, you can see them on the orange part of the tie. This tie, like quite a few from the period, switches to a solid color (orange in this case) partway up the tie, so that the knot would be entirely in that complementary color.

There are no labels on the tie, so that's about it for now. See ya next week!

Grapes and Flowers

I guess those are grapes. Not sure what else they could be. However, the flowers are more grape colored than the grapes themselves, which are more of a silver gray color than seems natural. Oh well, at least the leaves are green. And the flowers ARE a fairly spectacular shade of blue. Blue IS my favorite color, after all.

This is the last of the four ties I got on eBay a few weeks back, for $2.00 plus $4.00 shipping. Quite a bargain, I think. Since then, I've bought several more batches of ties the same way, albeit for a bit more money, most of which will undoubtedly end up here on this blog eventually.

This beauty is fully 4 1/2 inches across at its widest point. No extant labels to transcribe, unfortunately. I love that word, "extant," don't you? Here's one definition I found:

Still in existence; Currently existing; not having disappeared.

Did you know that one of the easiest ways to get a quick word definition is via Google? Just put "define:word" (without the quotes, natch) into a Google search box (note: no space between the colon and the word to be defined). And Google will display any definitions it has found on the web. Very handy, and if not ALWAYS 100% accurate, it's pretty close.

Well, I see I've wandered well off topic, which means it's probably time to close this blog entry. I mean, what can one really say about a tie like this that the image of the tie itself hasn't already said better? This is one of those cases where a picture is definitely better than words. Of course that never stopped me from blathering on. It's one of my specialties. Until next time, then . . .