Red Paisley

No tie last week. I was out of town, not that far, but there was no time or energy for blogging, not to mention that I didn't have access to my scanner or tie collection in my hotel! I was attending the American Library Association's Annual Midwinter Meeting, which was conveniently held in Seattle this year.

Not only did I have umpteen meetings to attend, in some of which I had a significant leadership role, my body chose this moment to rebel on me, and I came down with my second dose this season of the "stomach flu," more accurately known as gastroenteritis. Not fun, I assure you! But I couldn't go home and collapse, since I was staying in a hotel, and had all those meetings to attend! Sometimes you just gotta do what ya gotta do.

Well, here is my third 1930's era tie for your appreciation (or not, as the case may be). It is really difficult to capture the real look of these opulent ties. On the surface, they can appear fairly boring. Just another red tie with paisley designs evenly spaced across the surface, you might well be thinking.

But if you could see this tie in person, in real life, you'd be impressed by the richness of the fabric, and the designs which have an almost embroidered look to them. Machine embroidery, to be sure, but the effect is rich, sumptuous, gilded and luxurious!

It is also difficult to capture the true colors accurately. To my eye, this tie is really a slightly brighter shade of red than it appears here, but the green is less so. It should have more of a grayish towards turquoise color, and less green to it. I play with my photo editing software, adjusting the color balance, hue and saturation, brightness and contrast, but to little or no avail.

This tie has no labels to record.

Red Spiderweb

Here's the second in my series of thirties era ties. I had real trouble with the color in scanning this tie. To my eye, under an incandescent bulb, admittedly, it appears to be a more maroon shade of red than it shows up here. It's not maroon, just a maroonish shade of red.

What this tie has in common with last week's is the jewel-like quality of the fabric and design. Each spiderweb pattern has a little blue fabric jewel set right smack dab in the middle of it. They are only barely visible in the scan, I'm afraid. Click on the image to load a slightly larger view.

The spiderweb patterns themselves are made from a shiny silver colored thread, and the base fabric also has a lustrous shine to it. Opulent is a good word to describe the overall effect.

This tie is a fairly recent acquisition to my collection. In order to scan it, I took it off the dry cleaner's tie card it had been hanging on for the past several months. Which means I probably haven't ever worn it. My wife found it at one of her junk store haunts. Like pretty much every vintage tie we find, we sent it off to the cleaners first thing.

This tie has one label, shown in the scan, although I'm not sure how readable it is there. Even when I scan the labels, and provide a closeup view, as I've done for several ties in the past, I still transcribe the label text in the blog itself.

Why? For the benefit of the search engines, if nothing else. Google can't index the text in a picture, not yet, anyhow. Well, I probably shouldn't go so far as to say they CAN'T, but as a rule, so far as I know, they DON'T. By including the text of the label in the text of the blog entry, I insure that someone who might be looking for that brand, or label, will find my blog entry.

Anyhow, this tie's label reads as follows:

Reg. Trade Mark
Gold Bond Cravats
Resilient Construction

Purple and Rose Thirties Era

It's been one full year since I began my vintage tie blog! Hard to believe. One tie a week for a year, except for one week when I didn't have time to post. I haven't actually counted, but I assume that means 51 ties.

I just went and checked the calendar. It appears that there were 53 Sundays in 2006, which should mean that I posted 52 ties last year. I'm not going to take the trouble to go through my entire blog and count up. I guess I could just go to my blog stats in my account and look there! But not while I'm writing a post.

Last year, New Year's Day fell on a Sunday, so I began this blog appropriately on January 1. So last Sunday was actually closer to being the anniversary date, being it was December 31. But it was also still in 2006. This is the first 2007 vintage tie posting.

Well enough with the self-congratulatory prose, and on with the ties! I've decided that for a while, at least, in 2007 I'm going to jump back a decade, and feature some of my 1930's era ties, of which this is the first.

How do I know whether a tie is from the thirties, as opposed to the forties? I don't, really, other than kind of by instinct and hints from what I've seen here and there. Going by what I've seen, ties in the thirties were a little more conservative in appearance, typically a little narrower (this tie is about 3 1/2 inches at its widest point, for example), and less obviously flashy in design. Yet no less elaborate. When you look at this tie closely, you find an ornate almost quilted design with beautifully colored fabrics with an almost gem-like quality to them.

The real colors on this particular tie were difficult to scan accurately. The large stylized leaf shaped objects are really a deep, beautiful plum-purple color which doesn't come through well in the scan. The background is a lovely rosy shade of pink which is fairly accurate on screen. And embedded in it are the small jewel-like shapes of pale blue, silver and plum. The overall effect is incredibly ornate and almost three-dimensional in effect. But you have to get up close to the tie to perceive all of the detail. From a distance, it doesn't splash and grab your attention the way a typical forties tie does (like last week's floral starburst just below).