Olive Commons

If you've been following my blog or my jewelry-making over the last few years,

you'll know that I have a deep affection for china-painted

brooches:

I remove the old (normally about a century old!) porcelain brooch from the brass c-clamp, clean it gently (the old-timey numbers on the back are such a great part that I don't get a chance to show - they're from the maker of the porcelain blank, and the script is so loop-de-loop and special)

and set it in sterling and fine silver.

When I first began this process, I would get rather weepy over these pieces:

I wondered over the maker, thought about how they would feel knowing that their work would

sing again,

a more modern song, surely....

I wonder what they looked like, what they talked about as they painted with friends

or if they were alone with the phonograph

like I am in my studio with my country radio...

Mostly, the painters are completely anonymous, and their work is not original, per se, but created from the fashionable templates of the day:

water lilies

roses

gold at the edges

arts and crafts designs

silhouettes

There is a woman whose work stands out to me with such clarity it's nearly astounding:

Olive Commons.

She began painting her little cameonas (as she called them) when she and her husband moved to Florida.

They depicted scenes of a rural south, swamps and oceans and

sunsets...

Pretty soon, she was running quite an operation as the popularity of these little things grew:

the one in my palm above is 5/8 of an inch wide by 3/4 of an inch tall. Details

beyond compare.

Olive Commons was a small-business owner and a trailblazer:

before I was lucky enough to find her work on eBay, I bought a decal-imitation brooch that was made around the time of her heyday -

a company developed a line that was meant to look like her pieces, just like they do today when a small artist gets popular now!

I have been taking china-painting classes on Tuesday mornings:

me and a quartet of women over 55 and a man who loves to give me a hard time, to whose bait I rise and give him a good "what for!" as the ladies say.

It's quite a delightful scene, with chocolate chip cookies and coffee,

me and the conservative republican china painters of San Jose.

I love every minute (though I resist the urge the defend my beloved POTUS because seriously, what good would it do? I am not going to change well-entrenched opinions!)

Now that I am learning the art, I hope someday to introduce my own pieces into my work

but

for now, I troll the internets,

searching for the good old stuff that abounds in the right places.

I've still never found anything quite like the tiny art of Olive Commons, and I doubt I ever will:

she was a wonderful artist and an inspiration to me.

xo,

Allison