All about Gilded Lily

"Gilded Lilly" is the rather over-the-top evening bag I just finished.
Here is how she came about....















When I started working on "Gilded Lily " I had two completly different aesthethic
influences at work.

The First one was:
1950-1960's Hollywood, as epitomized by Natalie Wood...
This picture in particular, or rather a variation of it, were what stuck in my head.
In the other version ( unavailable on-line) she is sitting at a dinner table checking her makeup with a knife. You can seel the whole place setting, crockery, etc.
As is this version, she is very pretty in a fresh way, and yet, not. She is self-conscious of her beauty, perhaps anxious about it, and has chosen to check herself out in the reflection of her dinner knife.

This was apparantly a habit with her, and a really odd and psychologically loaded one at that. She looks "good enough to eat", and yet as an actress concerned about maintaining her figure at a dinner party, in all likelyhood, not about to eat much.
She is not so much concerned with eating, she is narcissistically with others looking at her, and the impression she makes.
So, ultimately not-too-flattering, this.
Yet I was inspired by the odd juxtapostion of real natural beauty and youth and the kind of jaded, corrupted world she occupied.
The jewelry, eye-liner and brocade dress all add up to the message in this picture, and I can easily imagine her carrying a clutch bag like "Gilded Lilly" with her- complete with unused compact mirror!

Influence number 2:

Perhaps less odd:


















The gilded and mosiac clad San Marco in Venice!
During my stay in Venice last springI was reading the most excellent "Venetian Colour: Marble, Mosaic, Painting and Glass, 1250-1550"by Paul Hills, a superb analysis of the spectrum used in Venitian art, and the cultural and historic associations of such a palette.

The section on gold was particularly good, and the way the mosiacs shift in the light, becoming firy and vibrant, and then dull and retreating into the gloom, depending on ones angle and movemement.

This yarn i've used for the purse body , Berrocco "Quest", is truly the most metalic yarn I've ever seen, and seems to embody this quality perfectly.
The geometric lozenge shapes are somewhat byzantine, and echo some of the extrordinary floor mosiacs and the jeweled Pala D'Oro screen in the back of San Marco.




















The glass bauble on the bags front, which hold the ribbon and hides the magnetic closure is a hand-blown little something from Murano.

Which leads me back to 60's Hollywood and kitsch.
How can something so magical and intrisically lovely be used for such appalling ends?
Just the name "Murano Glass" conjure up images of swollen coffee table clowns, huge parrots on ungainly glass trees, and jelly-fish chandliers studed with flowers.

hmmm, maybe the two aren't so unrelated after all....



In that same spirit, I purchased these shoes (at a very low price, I may add- thrifty and fashionable, I am....) first ogled by me in a venitian shoe store window, and dismissed as too frivolous.
However,
somehow,
I just had to have them.
and they do go together, right?



For more photos of "Gilded Lily", please see the previous posting below.