Soy Sauce and Burns

Soy sauce is a wonderful medicine for burns, but the trick is to get the soy sauce onto the burn immediately. Yesterday I burned my left thumb severely when I foolishly picked up the sealing wax stick that I had just used. It was melting and hot and painful.  I ran downstairs to the fridge and immediately doused the owy with soy sauce. It was in pain nonetheless, and after soaking it in ice water and then bandaging it, I noticed later in the day that it was ALL better. My husband, Greg, learned this somewhere. It works every time.

Early American Tinware (Tole)

I love early American tinware. I even took many classes in tole painting back in the '70's and '80's. Of course, early tinware is not easy to find, and has always been rather expensive. Now that we are in the 21st century,well, face it, whoever stumbles across a reasonably priced piece of early American tinware is ever so fortunate. Perhaps this is why it's not such a bad thing that it is no longer a real popular look.

I have a very small collection of it. The first five photos here are my limited collection. My husband, Greg, wrote a wonderful article about tinware. Click here to read it.

The following pictures of early American tinware, I gleaned from the Internet:

Fraktur

The word Fraktur is both singular and plural. One does not have a dozen frakturs, one has a dozen fraktur.

Fraktur is a beautiful art form to me.

My dear and very talented husband, Gregory LeFever wrote a wonderful story about Fraktur for Early American Life magazine. Visit the article to learn all about Fraktur.

The top fraktur is from Winterthur Museum Delaware. Mind you, the pronunciation is Winter ter, don't sound out the th. I know that many of you already know this, but there are some young ones out there who've not been much exposed to this sort of thing.

The second one is a portrait of George Washington by an anonymous painter. Art historians refer to him as the "Washington-Sussel Artist" because his work was first studied by a collector of that name. It is in the Independence National Historical Park.

The third Fraktur is from artist Lana Manis of Honeysuckle Lane. Hi, Lana!

The last one is my little bird fraktur that is a copy of a c. 1790 eastern Pennsylvania, book mark in ink and watercolor. I have framed it in glass and silver solder that I aged to a dark patina.