Fake 96

A post prompted by plastic flowers and net curtains.

Fake snowdrops

Woodcut one

Woodcut two

Herald Copse in 2018

As a child, I lived on a mid-20th century housing estate in the no-man's land between Cambridge to the south and Girton to the north. My mother, who had spent most of her formative years in big towns, tended to be rather sniffy about a lot of her female neighbours, a lot of whom were housewives rather than working women, women whom she thought too keen on coffee mornings, too keen on appearances and quite possibly not very well educated. She was also sniffy about net curtains and plastic flowers.

I think net curtains drew her fire because of all the novels of that time which featured nosey old ladies peeping out, more or less unseen, from behind their net curtains. Such people certainly existed and they gave net curtains a bad name. I think Simenon has some of them in his Maigret stories. However, net curtains are also a convenient way to let light in while retaining a fair amount of privacy - this last not being a problem for my mother as her house had a large, well stocked front garden, and people could not do much looking-in from either the side walk or the houses opposite. In any case, at night when the lights were one, we had regular curtains. And the side windows had been glazed with bumpy glass, which provided mutual protection for us and our next door neighbours. While our present house here in Epsom boasts both net curtains and bumpy glass - and also thin plastic sheets which make some of our side windows look as it they had been made of ground glass - the sort of thing that is probably used in some of the interior glass in the Falcon of reference 2. Clever stuff which was dear, cut out and stuck to the glass which was already there with soapy water - and which has stayed put for years and years.

I remember once being told in the course of a trip to the Netherlands, that people there do not do curtains at all, at least not in their downstairs sitting rooms, and are quite happy to have people looking in on them from the street. Perhaps one gets used to it. Perhaps people don't actually do much looking.

Not altogether sure what the problem with plastic flowers was. Perhaps as a keen gardener with real flowers of her own, she could afford to be sniffy about people who settled for plastic. Perhaps the plastic flowers of that time were not very attractive - whereas now, it often takes a few minutes to short out the sheep from the goats (as it were) in the grand flower arrangements one often finds in churches, often a mixture of real and plastic. And she certainly allowed pictures of flowers on the wall, in the form of woodcuts by our artist uncle. Quite possibly woodcuts of the snowdrops of present interest, although I have not been able to turn one up today and the snaps above are by Clare Leighton and Robert Gibbons respectively. With my last having coming across this last during my Gill phase (see, for example, reference 3), in which the Gibbons's featured as house guests at the small but risqué parties that Gill was fond of.

With neither woodcut, to my mind, capturing the essence of snowdrops terribly well. Perhaps wood cutting is too fierce and bold a medium for their delicacy. And it certainly does nothing for the delicate green of the leaves, contrasting with the creamy white of the flowers. Notwithstanding, clearly a popular subject for artists and illustrators, with Bing turning up lots of them. Not to mention reference 4.

'Herald of Spring' overflowing into the library at Bourne Hall

In our own house, these two woodcuts are kept shut up in books, but we have do a small pot of plastic snowdrops which comes out from time to time, snapped at the top of this post. An ornament which serves to remind one of spring, welcome to those of us who suffer in our long, damp and dark winters. From where I associate to Herald Copse, in Nonsuch Park, where we usually manage to visit the snowdrops around the end of January. Possibly named for snowdrops being indeed a herald of spring. See, for example, reference 1. There is also a 'Herald of Spring' show put on each year in Bourne Hall, which I am sniffy about. To book a stall, see reference 5.

But if people are cheered up by a pot of plastic flowers, why not? What is there to be sniffy about in such an innocent pleasure?

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/snowdrops.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/back-to-falcon.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/gill.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/newgill.html. More snowdrops.

Reference 5: https://epsom.woimtg.com/2019/12/01/herald-of-spring-2020/.