Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Hardware Jar


When I was a kid, my grandfather had an empty peanut butter jar out in the shed that he filled full of metal and odd things.

There were old keys, and parts to lawnmowers. Pencils that were too short to use but still had too much use left to throw away. Maybe that's part of the inspiration for the short colored pencil charms, who knows?


I loved to go through that old jar and play with the things in it. Nuts and bolts, old galvanized nails. Things you might need someday, you just never know.

I wonder if that has somehow influenced my enjoyment of mixed media and old paper goods.


So this pile of goodies has gone separate ways now, to the new owners. Maybe they'll turn into jewelry or maybe a collage or mixed media piece.

It reminds me of dumping out my granddad's glass jar of wonders.

5 comments:

SummersStudio said...

My dad had the same, only his was a Folger's coffee can, large size. It's still out in the garage even though he's been gone for years. There is something quite magical about it, like digging for treasure. I haven't thought about it in years. Thanks for prodding the memeory out of me!

Pretty Things said...

I would have had a hard time parting with all that!

My dad was a hoarder of bits and bobs, too.

mairedodd said...

it is so funny when things come back to you... you may not have realized how influential some forgotten thing was at first... then to have it come together is so wondrous! those are a whole lotta fabulous pieces!

Andrew Thornton said...

I think everyone of a certain era did that and for those of us who remember them and their ways, we still do too. I've got a box that's filled with all manner of rusty beautiful things.

When I lived in New York, I used to carry around a flip-out screw driver just in case I saw something thrown out on the street that I needed to save, like door knobs off discarded cabinets and dresser pulls off of broken furniture.

Thank you for sharing this... it made me think of my own grandfather and father.

Riki Schumacher said...

Hi Lynn, I love keys for sure! Remember using the skeleton keys in my grandmother's house in Kansas! I love Andrew's story of carrying a screw driver around to whip it out when needed. How smart is that? Is it warming up yet Lynn? Hope you aren't still freezing trying to get work done. Take care, hugs, Riki