Tuesday, September 21, 2010

1930's







Vintage 1930's

Vintage 1930's



After cleaning my barn today on this last day of summer I began to think... Of days gone by when the harvest meant something. When apples were sweet and ripe for pie. When canning was a bonding experience. When corn was picked by hand. When family worked together to survive and the Privy was the last place you wanted to go on a brisk fall night.


I know I am not the only girl around who feels she was born in the wrong era and it's comforting to know so. Aprons and chickens and all things erstwhile call my name. I am in love with the photographs from the Farm Security Administration. They are romantic and haunting. Beautiful and terrifying. Glorious and disheartening. If I had a super power it would most definitely be time travel.


Music is a huge part of my obsession with the past. You must surround yourself... Clothes, music, food, books. Setting the vibe is all the fun. So whilst I eat some cherry pie while wearing one of my 100's of vintage aprons I might be listening too...

Most fair beauty bright- Jean Ritchie
Shady Grove- Doc Watson
The Cuckoo- Clarence "Tom" Ashley
The Butchers Boy- Buella Kazee
John Harsy- The Carter Family
Swanno Man- Roscoe Holcomb


Great 1930's books to catch up on...

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (1931)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)
The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings ( 1938



Adorable 1940's style retro aprons for kids & moms. Hand made. Stitchthrutime.com. $43.95


‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘Tis the gift to be free, ‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, It will be in the valley of love and delight. -Simple Gifts was written by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr. in 1848



The photographs of the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy E. Stryker, formerly an economics instructor at Columbia University, and employed such photographers as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Jack Delano, Marion Post Wolcott, Gordon Parks, John Vachon, and Carl Mydans. The project initially documented cash loans made to individual farmers by the Resettlement Administration and the construction of planned suburban communities. The second stage focused on the lives of sharecroppers in the South and migratory agricultural workers in the midwestern and western states. As the scope of the project expanded, the photographers turned to recording both rural and urban conditions throughout the United States as well as mobilization efforts for World War II.






Allie Mae Burroughs


An early government photo project was the first to take advantage of Kodak’s revolutionary color film, which has ceased production recently.

According to The Kodachrome Project:

From 1939-1945, photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) photographed our America in one of her darkest yet remarkable periods. They spent countless hours photographing scenes and portraits that visually embraced the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations, the nation’s subsequent economic recovery and industrial growth, and the country’s great mobilization for World War II. Some of these images, some 160,000 black and white and 1,600 in color can be seen on the website of the Library of Congress. Many went on to appear in a book released in 2004 called “Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-43” and are part of a permanent online exhibit.



eyes-of-the-great-depression-026-1.jpg

1939 Oct.

Photographer: Dorothea Lange

Part of: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA


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