Bestowers of Beauty and Charm

Above: hem of tiny, embroidered, dancing stars

Grace (n):  from Latin gratia "favor, esteem, regard; pleasing quality, good will, gratitude"

1. In the Classical sense, one of the three sister goddesses, bestowers of beauty and charm

2. Sense of "beauty of form or movement, pleasing quality" is mid-14c.

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Four vintage (1930s?) christening gowns were donated to the thrift store this week. They're very long, white gowns for baby baptisms.
I pulled them from the baling bin--going to textile-recycling, the fate of most of the vintage linens that come to the store.

My coworkers say, "No one will buy those," because they themselves wouldn't. They see old linens as . . . I'm not even sure what they'd say. Useless, old, etc. And certainly too much bother for them to price futzy little hankies, etc.

However, if I price old linens and put them out, they do sell, of course. To people who do textile art, handwork, embroidery, mending, or just to people who love fabrics.
Some people tell me they even use them. 

I have a couple big linen napkins I use--I love them and don't worry about staining them. Better to use them up than throw them away or store them forever.

I looked the gowns up online, and ones like these sell for 20 US dollars and up, so I priced them 5 each.

I took them to the store parking lot and photographed them in the cold spring wind. (The bricks look extra dark because they were wet from snow flurries!)

 

They are so so gorgeous, some trimmed with lace and decorated with tucks and whitework embroidery. I don't know if they're cotton or fine linen--I can't tell. (I'd guess cotton?)

 Rusted lace trim on sleeve:

They give me a longing for... not for ownership of these object, but for... beauty and grace, and the human appreciation of those qualities.

Also, there's a sort of painful beauty in good design--the clever way the ties of this dress--you can' really see it here, but one slots through an opening in the side...

 

 

That (beauty, grace, and appreciation) are not located IN these objects,
they're in people, right?
(Also, Victorian aesthetics carry some distinctly unlovely socio-economics; Penny Cooper says ORPHANS with their tiny fingers had to stitch these dresses!)
They're qualities to be cultivated in humus––
to grow in my (our) own worm-chewed dirt, and to bestow.
That's how I see it.