Saturday, February 12, 2011

Gladys Fidelia Davenport

I wanted to share another project from Nancy Maxwell James' online class "Smitten". This is a hanging canvas built around a cabinet card. I found my cabinet card in a local antique shop this past summer in a basket with a whole bunch of other paper ephemera. I picked it up because I loved how the baby was smiling and on the back, written with a lovely script, were all the details about Gladys Fidelia Davenport born March 22, 1897. It listed her age, height and weight at the time the picture was taken and her parents' names. From the same basket I also purchased a handful of letters tied together with a ribbon because I liked the envelopes and postmarks and the script and thought I could use them in collages. Once I got them home, I realized that all the letters were written to the grown up version of the little Gladys of the photo! There were letters from friends and even some romantic letters from her husband-to-be. Needless to say, with that much known history I have not used the original cabinet card (or letters) - I scanned it and mounted it to bookboard after printing making a pretty reasonable facsimile of my cabinet card if I say so myself!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ohhh this is adorable
hope you are having a great weekend my friend
hugs June

Lori said...

ooo, that cabinet card was a great find, it's gorgeous. The finished piece is as well, just the right amount of embellishments!

Lynne Moncrieff said...

Gladys is such a cutie. This is so adorable Penny. Isn't Smitten so wonderful that Nancy gives a tutorial but we all create our "own" works. This cabinet card was waiting for this moment, wasn't it. Too precious.
I used a photo of my Paternal Grandparents (my Grandmother's wedding dress is in the Flapper style). Will probably post on Blog tomorrow.
Looking forward to your Mail box art.
Lynne x

Louise (KardKrazy) said...

This is so, so pretty, Penny. I just love the name here, can see why you were drawn to it!

Miss Iowa said...

Oh, how adorable! And how serendipitous to find the baby photo and the letters still together, as obviously they were meant to be. My grandma's name was Gladys (she was born in 1917) and she told me once that she never liked her name!

Debbie K. said...

This is beautiful, Penny and a real tribute to the sweet baby girl! What a great find and a true treasure to keep forever. Happy V-Day!
- DebbieK

Trishia said...

Penny, isn't it bittersweet that something like that left the family circle? I guess some folks just don't appreciate ephemera like we do. But love letters....ahhh:)! Lucky find for you!