Is It Wrong to Want a Leprechaun?

First of all, I'm not completely sure about the ethical parameters of loving St. Patrick's Day (and St. Valentine's Day) as much as I do given that I don't celebrate or really like Christmas. However, these other holidays have become a big deal in order to compensate for the lack of Christmas at our house, though one could argue that celebrating saints days is ultimately about the same as celebrating Christ's birth. In a "you-know-you-are-a-bad-Jew-when" California moment, my son once stated that the High Holidays involved wearing green.

I love that Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day has become so quintessentially AMERICAN, rife with silly hats, special drinking glasses, and ridiculous ceramic objects which, when assembled together with quintessential American overkill, are great fun and somehow pleasing, remaining just this side of looney. Each holiday brings with it an occasion to anticipate coupled with underlying nostalgia for the 1970s celebratory kitsch of my childhood, which no doubt looms larger and more attractive in my mind than it originally was. I also love the pagan undertones of these holidays, in this case the wearing of the green more a rite of early spring than a declaration of Irishness. From what Irish people I know have told me, St. Patrick's Day here, replete with green beer and carnations, is unrecognizeable from its original old country version, which is a somber religious day off with militaristic undertones.

As with so many contemporary objects, decorative objects turn over faster than flies, an object's lifespan sometimes not longer than a few months. It drives me crazy that the object seen today may never been seen again if not consumed, making objects from a few years ago by default vintage, rare, collectible, and, by default, valuable.

Last February, while in Monterey, I paid a visit to an English tea shop that had various Judy Chicago-like tea settings on view. The one that captured my imagination the most was a white china tea pot with that pleasing deep St. Patrick's Day green shamrocks on it, placed on a dainty white linen cloth with matching napkins with exactly the same pattern. It was so simple and lovely, yet made its point.

My present St. Patrick's day decorations, some of which are now "old" enough to be holiday ephemera, include lovely handmade bowls in Portugal, good for year-round use, with meadow-green insides and a clover pattern on the outside, a leprechaun hat napkin holder with gold coin-like objects painted onto it, 2 restored small goblets with the shamrock pattern (much cruder than the delightful teapot, though the right colors) and various shamrock trinket boxes much beloved and played with by children. I had not been able to make the leap to actual leprechaun figurine, though I had several good opportunities. At 2 different Ross stores, I found wooden leprechaun likenesses, complete with tree stumps and pots of gold. I had trouble making the final leap, though both were less than $10. While in New Mexico, I found similar likenesses at the Dollar Tree, even better priced at $1 each. These were appropriately kitschy, much like the polymer statues with various encouraging slogans from the 70s. I was not sure, though, that I was ready to cross the line and become a person who, whether ironically or not, placed a statue-like, fake-gold-bearing leprechaun in her home. Was this not 1 step away from a Hummel figurines and appliqued sweatshirts? Might leprechauns be vaguely racist and somehow insulting to Irish people? My ears still ring with my mother's good taste and lessons in such, during which she deplored and denounced American excess and love of ugly, cheapishe trinkets, from Hummels to #1 DAD! to anything ceramic or made of polymer, and especially anything collectable. (And yet, ironically, now that these things are emblematic relics of the lost world of 30 years ago, are they not now somehow more appealing and even valuable?) She would say: How UGLY! What BAD TASTE! There are times I hear her thinking, How did I raise a child who likes THIS?

And yet, I began to look around for a more acceptable leprechaun, just to see if such a thing exists. Just to find that no leprechauns at all exist in this area. Another interesting trend in retail: by the time the actual time of year approaches, everything related to it is sold out. In this case, while there are a smattering of green boas and shot glasses, but nothing resembling a leprechaun.

Which left only Ebay. And I was able to resist most for all of the above-mentioned reasons. Most were too ugly and unoriginal for kitsch, even the older pieces. Until, I found the acceptable leprechaun. Leprechauns. A collection of 8 to be precise, $14.99, which is less than $2 a leprechaun. Handmade in Ireland doing traditional Irish activities, which lends them a certain panache, if not acceptability. They're old, and as far as I can tell, the only ones to be had. Each is individually dressed, and they are small, and so able to hide beneath and around existing bits of St. Patrick's Day ephemera, or be assembled in a jaunty St. Patrick's Day tableau.

Not that anyone needed a leprechaun. I still have mixed feelings about them. However, in 4 years or so, when all like objects have been obliterated, I'm sure I'll look on them foldly.

Pottery and Baskets

One of the reasons I felt so much at home in New Mexico is the incorporation and appreciation of decorative arts in daily life. Every home had Indian pottery, woven rugs, baskets. Everyone had knowledge and understanding of these objects and their artistry. It was so unlike the urban area where I live, in which price so often determines value and beauty, whether it is manufactured by machine or a reflection of human endeavor. I was taught to value flaws as a reflection of originality, but so often this point of view now seems anachronistic.

So many people in New Mexico, whether they worked as full-time artists or not, created art. Many of the Native American artists either had other, more worldly jobs, or only started making art after a life lived more ordinarily.However, economic concerns aside, so many Native American decorative arts are family endeavors, with husbands and wives working on the same projects, and parents teaching their children their mastery of the craft.

As much as I love baskets, the original Native-made baskets, especially the older ones, were prohibitively priced. There were many baskets that looked like the older ones, but were made in Pakistan or Mexico, which muddied the waters too much for me. Was the beauty of the basket really diminished by it being made elsewhere? The baskets looked enough alike that I was unwilling to pay for the authentic ones when it could just as well have been made elsewhere. However, I didn't want an "elsewhere" basket, and when it comes right down to it, you have to have an uncluttered house and life for the baskets to be displayed properly. I have several hand-made and authentic Polynesian baskets and an authentic California pine needle basket that already do that job; any others would get lost in the shuffle. Blackstone General Store in Albuquerque is the only place I encountered that had authentic baskets (Hopi) at a reasonable price; the owner nicely clued me in that authentic baskets always have an open space somewhere on the basket. Again, the thought of where I would put the authentic basket and what I would use it for prevented me from purchasing it.

Pottery of course is ubiquitous. Though I found some wonderful stores in Albuquerque for it (the jewelry outlet off of Gibson near Kirtland Air Force Base was my best find), there are subtleties you can only learn by experience and talking to experienced artists and collectors. The handmade pots are slightly irregular and to be cherished; while the pots that come from molds are attractive, they are not authentically or as well made. In Sky City, I learned about the difference between ceramic clay and traditional clay and pots (one is manufactured, the other is froom the area and involves traditional and ancient pot building methods). Pricewise and artistically, the traditional, handmade pot rules. However, sometimes there is no way to determine the true quality of a pot unless the pot is dismantled. I went through Sky City, a settlement (still occupied by local families despite a lack of electricity and running water) dating back from the 12th century (some original buildings still intact), with an extremely knowledgeable trade guide, my son, and a jeweler and his wife, who were passionate, if not obsessed, with pottery. The jeweler was down to his last hundred dollars after touring pueblo after pueblo in search of authentic pottery. Local artists have their studios on the mesa and sell from their studios and homes. It was the experience of a lifetime to be in this place and spend time with these artists.

Despite claims that Native Americans never developed a written language, storytelling pottery tells a story through lines and shapes. It is a language that tells a story. Jagged lines indicate thunder; a circular pattern the stars, and so on. There are symbols for sky, sun, rain. Creation stories are told, and religious tales preserved. The Acoma artists in Sky City were very generous with their time explaining the story on each pot. Acoma pottery is known for the roughness on the inside of the pot, the black and white outside decorations, and the traditional pink clay. Their pots are created from coil, and so a traditional pot sits heavily, as opposed to a non-traditional pot. The jeweler was very anxious to discover if all of the pots he'd purchased during his trip were traditional, as advertised.

The Navaho pots were plentiful. The colored pots are intricately decorated and etched, then painted with many colors. Navaho horeshair pottery is especially pleasing; it looks like marble, but this is the result of actual horsehairs being stuck in the glaze before firing.

Santa Clara pots were the most coveted, with even the smallest pots costing upwards of $50. Santa Clara trademark pots are black, which is the result of dung being mixed with the clay.

Wedding pots are the pots with 2 spouts. The apocryphal story is that when married, the new couple drink together to symbolize their recent union.

Authentic pots are always signed; the danger for the purchaser is to ensure that the pots are hand made as well as hand painted; many tourist spots create mass produced pots and have a local artist paint then and sign for the painting only. The signature should include the artist's pueblo or tribe. However, I was also warned that sometimes artists who married into a certain pueblo or clan will then sign pottery with the pueblo's name, though they have little to no claim to it.

Turquoise and Spiny Oyster

I fell in love with turquoise in New Mexico. The landscape there is so muted, the bright blue stones are so cheerful and bright in that setting, as bright and amazing as diamonds in more colorful and varied environments. It is one of those stones that, like amber, is more valuable for its inclusions, which are caused by iron in the stone. Good turquoise is extremely beautiful, naturally cerulian, Carribean blue, sea green, aqua. It's considered a lucky stone and worn for protection by the native peoples in the area. I've heard derogatory comments about Chinese turquoise, which is often a composite, but according to a jewelry store owner I talked to, Chinese turquoise proper is often used in New Mexican jewelry; it's the composite, which is turquoise dust and leftovers mixed with resin that jewlery afficianados despise.

In Albuquerque I bought a necklace from an Indian woman with small silver bead separators, turquoise rocks ranging in color from blue to aqua, strung on traditional carpet string. In Santa Fe I found a vendor by the Governor's Palace I first met back in 2000...she shapes turquoise by hand into almost perfect round beads. Back in 2000 the $40 she wanted for a pair of studs seemed unreasonable; this time as a gift I was given a pair, which cost $37 this much later. Wearing them is like having a piece of sky on your ears. I treaure them. She had a gorgeous long necklace made of her beads with silver cone headers, but I was too afraid to ask the price, given the price for 2 of the beads. The necklace was magnificent, a museum piece. Yesterday while walking back home a turquoise necklace in a store window caught my eye; I stopped in and tried on the necklace, which was large flat disks of bright turqoise so polished it looked like lucite--to my amazement it was a mere $27. It was so close in style to the necklace I bought from the native woman (and had no spacer beads and a cheap clasp, which made the design a bit rough for my taste) that I passed. However, I did cave in and buy a necklace with smaller, coin-like disk of cerulian turquoise strung between gold chain and with 3 citrine-colored crystal beads--$34. After turquoise being thrown together with silver, turquoise and gold seems so surprising, and in my opinion elevates the stone to its true selmiprecious nature.

Also while in New Mexico I discovered spiny oyster. My colleague and I were shopping on a freezing, snowy January day when I picked up a silver bracelet with a large bright orange-yellow stone like a piece of sunshine. I was told the stone was called spiny oyster, and the jewlery maker showed me the original shell, which comes in varying shades of orange, red, and purple. But I fell in love with the sunshine orange color. In Santa Fe I found a pendant with silver crimped only along the outside, a bright burst of sunshine to perch on a chain around the throat. I don't recall the exact circumstances that caused me to pass it by, but part of it was being unwilling to pay the $20, for which I have been kicking myself ever since. The pendant I remembered showed off the stone and minimized the silver, and this combination turned out to be almost inpossible to find. A return trip to Santa Fe was unsuccessful; the young Native girl was not there on that snowy weekday. However, a visit to Skip Meisel in Albuquerque did yield a nice chunk of spiny oyster, bright and rough (the polishing takes away the sunshine effect, in my opinion, as do even slightly dark shades of orange), the right size and shade of orange, for half price as expected, $9.50. However, as usual the object not purchased loomed idealistically in my mind; I keep telling myself that if it was as wonderful as I remember, I would have purchased it without hesitation. The Skip Meisel pendant is, by description, exactly what I was looking for (which still does not prevent me for looking for other Platonically ideal spiny oyster jewlery). The second trip to Santa Fe also yielded earrings, unseen elsewhere, that exactly matched the pendant. They are appropriately cheerful and startlingly bright, and go well with gray dresses, a bright orange pashmina, and the turquoise hand-cut studs from the other Santa Fe artist.