Game of Chance

This past fall I came across the result of a simple event - someone had dropped a pack of cards on the sidewalk. The wind had blown them around so they were next to things they were completely unrelated to. Or were they?

More Art Deco in Victoria

In the Royal BC Museum there are 2 Art Deco garments that are well worth the hunt to find.
This silk georgette evening dress, 1926-28, illustrates well the shock of the new. For the first time in European history women went out in public wearing garments that exposed their lower legs and the full length of their arms. These garments reflect the hard won freedoms women enjoyed for the short time between the wars in North America.

The dress is heavily embroidered with beads. Loops of seed beads make the red flowers in the floral bouquet 3 dimensional.
I am always fascinated by the strong bond between women and flowers.

Next to the dress, in the display cabinet, is this interesting hat. It too is an important social commentary on how women, for the first time, voluntarily cut off their 'crowning glory' as though they were removing a burden from the past. Then they covered up their heads in the Asian style, with form-fitting hats. It was such a shocking protest at the time. They seemed to want to remove the inequality of the gender issue so they could be seen as another human being.

The hat is covered with dense long and short stitch and ribbon couched down in a similar technique to quill work.
I don't know what to make of the design. Any suggestions?

Art Deco In Victoria BC Canada

One of the unique aspects of the Art Deco Movement is it 'moved' all around the world. Here in Victoria, where I live, I found some fine examples of well preserved Art Deco architecture.
In 1931 Imperial Oil built a 3 tiered garage on the waterfront inner harbour area of the city and topped it with a tower just like the one that had been built on the Palmolive Building in Chicago in 1929. Both towers had state-of-the-art navigational beacons put on top.

Today, Victoria's tower tops the Visitor Centre, a restaurant and tourist activity offices for harbour tours and whale watching.

The elegant Art Deco elements are still clearly visible.

For the final assignment for the JC School of Textile Art module I have just finished, I wrote an essay about how the step design element was used throughout the Art Deco Movement. I looked at the way these 'modern' skyscraper buildings were inspired by the stepped buildings in Mayan/Aztec and Egyptian civilisations. I found some very interesting links.