Tina Leser, an American designer influenced by the worlds cultures

Tina Leser designs are featured in this edition of Life magazine, dated September 3, 1945. All the dresses, swimwear and sportswear are Tina Leser fashions, worn at a party at her Long Island country property, and features her refurbished barn! so hipster!

 the caption reads: Miss Leser (left) and Barbara Maison model cottons in the barn's chintzy study.

Dancing on the ping pong table....
When these photos were shot, WWII was in its waning days. May 8, 1945 marked the German surrender, and in early August, 1945, the Japanese surrendered.

Who is Tina Leser?
Born in 1910 to wealthy parents, Miss Christina Wetherill Shillard-Smith, grew up in Philadelphia and the family enjoyed international travel. The Shillard-Smith's visited all the exotic locales....India, Africa, Asia and of course, Europe. When Tina grew up, she decided on a career in art and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Tina also attended the fabled Sorbonne in Paris which expanded the cultural outlook of Tina.
After Tina married Curtin Leser, in 1931 they moved to Honolulu, Hawaii and she opened a shop a few years later to sell her clothing designs using  Hawaiian, and importing,  Asian fabrics.   She  experimented with hand-blocked designs and handpainting fabric, often working with commonly available fabrics like sailcloth. 

Fashion magazine, Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow loved Tina's designs and in 1940, she sold a huge order to Saks.

Meeting with great success in the Big Apple, Tina closed her store on the little island after the Pearl Harbor bombing. Once back in New York, Tina took a job with Foreman Sportswear Company. 

Tina originated sarong-type play clothes, and the one-strap bathing suit....so says this Life article.

Throughout Tina's long long design career she was always influenced by cultures and countries around the world. I'm particularly interested in her use of  textiles from Mexico and Guatemala and feel quite confident she helped set off a mid-50s trend of "exotic" Central American fabrics used for North American sportswear.
I think about that when I find a 50s skirt from Guatemala, or a 50s Mexican textile worked up in a bolero style jacket that looks great with a full skirted dress, a style that was so popular in the post-war 50s.
Tina Leser died in 1986 and she holds a place in modern American  fashion design because she helped create the casual American sportswear style once Paris fell from a position of dominance during WWII.

Here is a Tina Leser tie in my funkomavintage Etsy shop.....

Vintage Tina Leser Tie,  40s green Silk Brighton Pier Boardwalk Royal Pavillion Gay 90s  theme.....1890s that is!
Rare Tina Leser design has her signature in the print, rather than a later design with a tag.


Read more about Tina Leser in her NYTimes obit, and  here  and here , and with more detail and lots of pretty pics, here at  Lizzie's blog about Tina

Beach in a bottle

the deep blue sky the sand the driftwood and the fresh salt air.......
a West coast girl I am, and a West coast girl I will always be......

The sea is almost as old as the earth....oh, about 2 billion years old. The sea hasn't stayed in the same places we see it today........it has moved over and covered all the continents at one time or another.......and again and again and again......
This is why there is limestone, and fossil fish and shells, far inland in our era, the Pleistocene. The sea is salty because of dissolved minerals from the rock on the continents,igneous rocks and the crumbling of mountains, the ocean's own floor, and all the gas and the volcanic smoke and vents all over the earth.

I gather shells, and pebbles and sand.....as I'm at the edge of the continent and the sea on the Left Coast.
sea tumbled beach glass, bit of broken pottery and dishes, busted bottles.....technically human-tossed garbage.....but hey! Let's reuse it ....because it is all so pretty.....
here's my latest collection of beach jewelry.......Beach in a bottle (c).....

some have.....Beach glass.... Anchor charms..... Fish bones.... green glass..... sea blue shells... blue glass....tumbled pebbles......gritty sand......little shells......Chinese hat shells....mussel shells.....clam shells.....some are contained in little glass bottles .... little  ocean charms like anchors, starfish, and big fish and little fish.......
All of them are in my that yountville girl shop on etsy....


tiny bottle necklaces......the beach in a bottle!! 

This is a salvage assemblage necklace with a pottery shard......

a big piece of frosty sea glass and a jade fish charm

this bottle necklace has a tiny alligator charm...

brass circle and patina rings, all vintage, paired with a real clam shell with a natural hole....

All the shells, the sand, the pebbles and the tumbled beach glass...are hand gathered.

I don't fake-tumble glass or the pottery shards....they are the real deal! The  tiny glass bottles close with a cork, and hang from vintage beading wire, and 2 silverplated rings.
Remove the necklace when swimming or bathing...the cork can be removed.

The starfish, fish, anchor charms and the rings, and the necklaces are all lead free, and some are vintage. Most of the findings are made in the USA, so I'm happy about that. The silverplated or the brass chains close with a lobster style clasp, each is 24" long, and the necklaces hang about 14" -  16". 3 hours of ocean.......

Homegrown Tomatoes are worth waiting for...

I have said it many a time.....but I don't eat fresh fruit out of season......especially tomatoes.
Those mushy wet cold ice cubes restaurants serve and are at grocery stores from October thru April are gak.

I know they can be shipped up from Chile or where ev' but no.
I grew only 2 varieties this year from seed.

Frst up, is an heirloom cherry tomato, called Cherry tomato.
simple.
And I planted Russian Krim, both from seed. 

Typical little round marble shape cherry tomato. This will start to ripen in about 65 days after planting.
Oh, I waited until June 10th to plant them out and I planted them deep, so they would grow roots along the stems. Yup, that's what they do!
Last April, I was out side spreading a lot of compost and manure, then covered that with cardboard, then tossed my grass clippings on that.....
here's the set up....
...be sure to notice how tiny they were!
And the big husky branch  teepees I set up to tie the tomato plants to as they grow....and boy have they grown!

This variety of Cherry tomato is indeterminate.

yeah, the broccolis, and the spinach is doing well too, and we are eating it now.

Look at that fluted tomato baby! That's Russian Krim, from the area of Russia (the former Soviet Union) around the Black Sea.

They've been grown in the area in the Crimea since the 19th century.

 

They grow to a big fist size 4" - 6" flat ball, with those great flutes that look so charming when sliced. The tomato is a dark red, rather black, and the inside is also a deep reddish-black.
It is a fairly short season variety, about 75 days, and it does love long warm days. I hope it does well this summer.....it looks like a hot one, with many many days over 80 degrees! Weeeeee!

It's a beefsteak type, and indeterminate, so I do prune out some of the "suckers" from the main branches and keep strong side branches. I want all the tomato energy to go to tomatoes.....rather than to leaves leaves leaves. Tho....the leaves are quite handsome!  They look like their cousins, the potato. Broad, and deep, they look like a small shrub, and not like some ol' rangy scrubby plant.

I've grown this one time and time again because I love the weirdness of it...and the flavor is so rich, so sweet, with just a bit of sparky tangness. It's deep and rich. If you didn't grow it this year, I hope you can find it at a Farmer's Market near you.
Along with Brandywine, Mr. Stripey, Mortgage Lifter, Lemon, Cherokee Purple (another fave of mine), and several others, Black Krim, were the first heirloom tomatoes I grew at the farm for Gig Harbor's Farmers Market in 1993 and 1994.

Even the tomato blossoms of Krim are large and lush..

Russian Krim....tomato seeds, and Hungarian Wax peppers, which were eaten to nubbins as tiny seedlings by nasty mean slugs.
Beer was poured on them and they died (the slugs).......I am mean!

 

And here, in late July, just six weeks from planting in the ground, are the tomato plants now! Wow!

it always a pleasure to hear Guy Clark.....here's his tribute about the rare special thing........Homegrown Tomatoes.......

summer kitchen

I hope my next house is a barn... just a barn.  I want to park the Winnie next an old wood barn, and set up shop inside. My sewing area, the photo area, the make and paint area....the rustic kitchen, and hang a lot of white lace and burlap.
A few fruit trees outside and a big big garden full of all the heirlooms I've grown since childhood......white tomatoes, white carrots, gold beans,  red potatoes...... all the good stuff.

Rustic is the theme here.... old wood, white paint and stacks of crates....


white kitchen
simple, lots of white paint and industrial light...
 

blue kitchen
with a ceiling that slants down to meet a tile treatment....
 

and a white dining room with old school light fixtures...a built-in banquette with side chairs...

old wood, white paint and quirky lighting.....

rustic whitewashed wood, big green glass bottle and curly branches...  

rustic drawers covered in old wood wine crates....

-----------
 White nectarine Sorbet. Now is the time...summer fruit and it could not be simpler. I made this last summer... and oh my goodnesssss.... Here is a recipe from Sunset Magazine. 

this pic is from....

the ingredient list  is easy and simple.... 

• About 1 1/2 pounds ripe white nectarines, chilled 
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice 
• 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar $
• 1 tablespoon orange-flavor liqueur (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup sour cream or crème fraîche 

--------------------------OOO-----------------------------
Here's a pic from Justina Blakeney....her yellow vintage plant pot with a snake plant........looks like she's been checking out funkomavintage!

and .... Here's my vintage yellow Bauer pot with a .......snake plant ;-)

Summer Afternoon...

Long sunny days ......long warm days....and I get lazier and slower....but a person has to eat! the garden is giving me potatoes, carrots, beans, radishes, beets, turnips, lots of greens...kale, lettuce and all the tops from beets and turnips too.

a fire to cook on outside is always tempting since the kitchen is hot and who wants to turn on the stove... the other day I chopped garden potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, kale, greens, beans and some organic frozen corn and peppers and boiled it for an hour with some vegetable bouillon, cayenne pepper, regular ol' pepper (don't take it for granted...it's a good thing to toss in), and some dried thyme.
After an hour of simmering, I mixed some pancake mix with a bit of milk in a bowl, and dropped tablespoons of dough in the boiling soup, and walaa! Dumplings!
I learned that from mom...drop in lumps of dough and you thicken the soup and add a side dish all at the same time. At the end of simmering your soup, drop in dumpling dough, and cover and simmer for another 15 minutes. With all that yummy goodness from the garden, we topped the late  dinner with ice cream and pie. And Screwdrivers!

Here's what I planted in late spring, so I was thrilled to pull some tasty homegrowns the other day and eat....

I had to pull out the peas, and chop back the swiss chard, the kale and the pak choi....the hot weather is not a friend to them. Everything got watered deep and also got a douse of organic fertilizer.

The tomato plants are growing tall, and so are the sunflowers and the corn. The squash has blossoms....late summer is gonna taste great.

I love being barefoot in the kitchen in summer.....and I set up a cooking area outside. It is so cool,  (weather-wise and mood wise), to set a frying pan on the barbeque to fry some oysters and serve them with a cold green salad plucked from the garden in the morning.

Here's a look at the garden in early June. The lychnis, the shasta daisies, the nasturtiums, and the tomatoes planted on teepees made from branches cut from the winter damaged black locust trees...

Late last winter I set cardboard out on the sunny part of the lawn to kill the grass so I could plant tomato plants. I covered the ground with lots of manure and compost, covered it with cardboard and  then I put lawn clippings on top of that after the first mowings of the spring. Then, I cut a hole in the cardboard, set in my tomato plants, and fashioned teepees with branches wired together at the top.

One leg is held in place with an 18" length of iron rebar to hold them in place. This method is great for lazy er, busy gardeners. The cardboard/mulch arrangement holds in water and prevents weeding!
I water every 2 weeks by putting a trickling hose near the base of each tomato plant for about 10 minutes and also fertilize the ground right at the base of the plant. As the plant grows, I gently tie it to the branch. I have lots of blossoms and sooooon I'll have tiny tomatoes........and then Big Tomatoes.........Homegrown Tomatoes!!!!

Screwdriver: Simple. in a canning jar pint glass of orange juice, organic please ...oh a simple little thing...OJ, then I squish basil or mint leaves in the OJ with my fingers (I'm lazy), then add an ice cube or 2, a splash of lemonade, then pour in a jigger or 2 of vodka....the herb oil/leaves add a bit of extra tastiness to the summer Screwdriverand sip slowly in the shade.....