"Imaginative work...is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.... But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering, human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in."
-Virginia Woolf, 'A Room of One's Own'

"A word of warning is, however, necessary to the public, if ever they should take to employing artists in this way. It is no use to hope that artists will do just what they are told. A general idea of colour, of whether the room is to look light or dark, grave or gay, and so forth, may be imposed, but in the actual details the artist must be free to use his own invention. He can only do what he sees, not what someone else has seen. It is a grave defect in the artist, distinguishing him from the more serviceable and subservient machine- but I fear it is ineradicable."
-Roger Fry, "The Artist as Decorator," Colour, 1937

The Mission of the Graphic Artists Guild
The Graphic Artists Guild promotes and protects the economic interests of its members. It is committed to improving conditions for all creators of graphic art and raising standards for the entire industry.
The Guild is a union that embraces creators of graphic art, at all levels of skill and expertise, who create works of graphic art intended for presentation as originals or reproductions.

" ...Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew, especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied."
-Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Marble Faun"

"I don't much like my daughter sewing. She is silent and she- why not write down the word that frightens me- she is thinking."
-Colette

"One should have nothing in one's home that one does not believe to be beautiful or know to be useful"
-William Morris

"Pax intrantibus, Salus exeuntibus, Benedicto habitantibus"
"Peace to all who enter, Health to all who leave, and Blessings on all who abide"
I found these words in a Quaker meeting house in Rye, England, that had been converted into a lovely B&B. I wrote them on the lintels of the doors into Thrums End, now they are on a plaque I can take with me.

For those who are looking for a translation of what was the T.E.A.S. motto:Insolitores Res Contiguerunt!- Stranger Things Have Happened!
(Four years of High School Latin finally paid off!) But I am now searching for better things, not stranger, so for today, Buttons Rule.

"Thank God for tea!
What would the world do without tea?
How did it exist?
I'm glad I was not born before tea!"
--Alexander Pope

"Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea."
- -Henry Fielding

My favorite cuppa:1/2 Decaf Earl Grey & 1/2 Decaf Darjeeling

The Classic Conundrum: Cup or Mug?
Mug

"Two centuries ago, our forebears would have known the precise history and source of almost every one of the limited number of things they ate and owned. They would have been familiar with the pig, the carpenter, the weaver, the loom and the dairymaid. The range of items available for purchase may have grown exponentially since then, but our understanding of their genesis has grown ever more obscure. We are now as imaginatively disconnected from the production and distribution of our goods as we are practically in reach of them, a process of alienation which has stripped us of opportunities for wonder, gratitude and guilt."
Alain De Botton, from "The Enlightening Bridge Between Art and Work"

"The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad."
-James Madison, 4th US president (1751-1836)

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brillant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-Marianne Williamson (often attributed to Nelson Mandela)

"Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear that masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemming as reckless, insignificant or futile, the small, daily, acts of courage which help to preserve self-respect and inherent human dignity."
-Aung San Su Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate

"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."
-"Auntie Mame"

"Throw your heart into a picture and jump in after it."
-Howard Pyle

"You can either talk or do."
-Miss Jean Webb

Vocatus atque non vocatus Deus aderit. (Bidden or not bidden God is here) -Goethe

(Yes, this used to be the Thrums End Art Studio, but the art- beautiful bricolage- and the sensibility remain the same.)

Buttons Rule

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