Knitting Tea
I was about 6 and staying with grandmother in town while my mom went to yet another doctor appointment for her rapidly deteriorating vision that remained at the time. A friend of my grandmother’s from her church was having a garage sale. I was enthralled with the six tea cups and saucers and their matching 8 or 9 squared plates. I just loved the sketch-like quality of the floral design and how it looked as though each cup had been hand watercolored in certain spots, but the sketch allowed to remain pure in areas.
As I grew older and became a rabid fan of Anne of Green Gables I was quite enamored with “fine china” and “raspberry cordial” and afternoon teas complete with white gloves and cakes and finger sandwiches. However, my mom was more of a mug sort of person. Even her wedding china was sturdy and classic, but not elegant or feminine. Fluted edges and floral patterns were just not her style. So, I secretly lusted after such things.
Imagine my surprise when twenty years after admiring that incomplete, yet respectable in number, set of china to be opening a box that my grandparents hand delivered to Colorado from Minnesota as part of our wedding gift! It was a lovely surprise and a forgotten memory so was really two surprises in one.
I love that set and DH loves having formal teas, though he much prefers his plain white dinnerware or his manly Denby cups when we take tea. The floral pattern is a bit too much for him. So, these long loved china cups and saucers and little plates sit in my hutch gathering dust. Well, I decided it was time to blow off that dust and use them. Well, actually I’ll hand wash them lovingly before using them.
So, enter the idea of an old fashioned afternoon tea with dainty little cookies, scones (perhaps crumpets if I’m feeling lucky) with homemade rose hip jelly and lemon curd, watercress sandwiches, chicken salad sandwiches, and a selection of fine teas to choose from. All the while, surrounded by the trimmings of the holiday season! Thus the idea of what I hope will become an annual gathering of the SnB gals enjoying food, fellowship, and fibery fun during the rush of the holiday season.
Once I had the idea I had to come up with invitations that fit with the festivities. I wanted to get the invites out early before people’s holiday calendars got too full. Since they were going out early I didn’t want to overwhelm anyone with the nearness of the holiday season by making the invites too holiday-like. Then, the idea came to me. I could make them an invitation and a gift in one! I could them all fine art prints with the theme of tea and knitting!
I went with the cliche of knitting tea and etched a drypoint plate of my favorite girly china tea cup and saucer with a small hank of hand spun yarn and single knitting needle. I wanted to capture the true look of the floral pattern and wanted some color on the invites so I opted to make prints that must pass through the press twice. So, first the papers were passed through the press with a monotype plate. This is a flat plate to which color has been laid down like a painting, but in mirror. It’s a planographic printing process. Each printing you must repaint the plate. This results in only one print, hence the “mono” in the name. You can make similar prints, but they are each unique. So the color was laid down using them monotype process. Next was to add the details. This was done with a drypoint plate in which the design was manually scratched, then the plate is inked fully and the ink removed from the surface so it is only in the scratched lines. Then the monotype printed paper and the inked drypoint plate took a second pass through the press. The drypoint printing is an intaglio process.
Due to the strenuous inking process and the material required to be able to hand scratch the plate, drypoint plates usually can only produce about 20 prints. The plate degrades with each pass so beyond 20 the prints just are of satisfactory quality. If less then 20 prints are pulled from a plate, the plate is destroyed by marking a line through the design so that no further prints can be made.
So, the invites were delivered last Monday evening and everyone received theirs. I figure now I can show you all.
I was able to pull 8 prints from these plates. I needed 6 for the invites and have two remaining. That is only 2 prints from a small run of prints that are available to the general public. The 6th print of the run is currently available on Ebay, along with another limted edition print that celebrates autumn.
