Sunday, January 31, 2010

Baroque Beauty

Well, it's certainly about time that I got started posting ties again. One of the problems I've had is that my regular computer crashed a few months ago, and I still haven't gotten everything rebuilt back to the way it was. For example, my all-in-one printer, scanner, copier had never been installed. I couldn't find the CD-ROM, so I had to go to the Brother printer support web site, and download the driver from there, and reinstall it.

So now I can at least scan the ties. I had been scanning them on my older computer, and then moving them across. A pain. Now that I've got the scanner installed, I hope to be able to post ties on a more regular basis. We'll see if I manage to actually do so.

So what about this tie? It's one that I acquired sometime this past year in an eBay purchase. It's quite dramatic in its own way. I don't know the era for sure, but based on its style, it looks to me like a transitional tie, somewhere between the thirties and the forties. The pattern appears woven directly into the fabric, and the construction is way off centered (you can't see this in the scan; I'd have to scan the reverse side of the tie for that), both of which are typical thirties characteristics. However, the tie is lined, which is more characteristic of the forties.

So why did I call it "Baroque Beauty"? I don't know. That's just what came to mind when I tried to think of a title. I'm using "baroque" here in the generic sense of "ornate, intricate, decorated, laden with detail," (definition from Wiktionary) which particularly describes the rosy maroon and silver stripes across the tie. The tie has no labels to record.