Your Moment of Bohemia

As part of my new gig with Bohemia--the literary journal I am fortunate enough to staff on--I will be writing a weekly blog assignment here catered to our fans/friends/bohemian followers. The rest of the staff are poised to write, as well, so feel free to visit http://bohojo.wordpress.com/ to check out my fellow staffers in all their glory!

For me: sometimes I will write on certain topics and other times, I'll post some fiction I've been working on so keep checking back weekly for that! :)

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As per my above tease, I was originally planning to follow through with a snippet of my Noir workings this week. But, instead, awesome reader, you get a most fantastic tell-all of my latest awesome present.

*Yay*, right?!

For a while now I've had a huge love of owls. If I had to choose an origin, I'd say it started with an envy of Harry Potter. (Were I at Hogwarts, I would've had a snow owl like Hedwig.) A couple of years ago, owls became increasingly popular on jewelry, purses, etc. (I still kick myself for passing on a pair of rainboots!)

That being said, most who know me have knowledge of my inner craziness for them. And, I won't lie: I have an inner jealousy for those who have cool owl stuff (like a tattoo, Jessica!) that I don't have. Yet. (insert evil grin)

A couple of weeks ago, one of my coworkers mentioned a box of thimbles she found while going through her parents' house. (They recently passed. :(  ) I really wasn't harboring any great feelings that they were thimbles, just the idea that they were OWLS. For two, excruciating weeks I waited to get them and finally procured them yesterday when I stopped into the Optical for a few hours of work. Having no expectations other than AWESOME, I opened the box with my name on it to reveal:

As you can see, they are beyond awesome. :) And--having never seen anything like them--I was immediately intrigued as to what they are.

Researching them specifically was not so much fun, as all I came away with were sites that wanted to sell them. No history. :(

But, I did figure out that they are Chinese cloisonne pieces (from cloisons which is french for "partitions"). Though these are most likely not as antique, the actual cloisonne art dates back to the 1420's with stylistic references dated shortly before, starting in the early part of the Ming dynasty in 1403.

The process uses thin strips of metal matched along the curved and bent surfaces of the mold of the artist's desired project. Each strip is soldered to the next with powdered enamel fused in between. The enamel is colored or painted and then the piece is set into a kiln. As enamels tend to shrink after firing, the process is generally repeated. Once cooled, it is polished.

A lot of vases from this period are made that way. I make the assumption that people just branched out from there. It's funny because I still don't think of them as "thimbles"; Hollow, they remind me more of finger puppets. Just a fancy kind. :)

But, no arguing semantics.

I read that the cloisonne pieces were mainly used as decorations in temples because they were thought to be too ornate for the every day household. Such a law--as my house is definitely an every day household--was doomed to be broken.

Lucky for me! :)


*Kayla*