Auction #23: A Hat For The Moon

November 23rd, 2009

Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse (Dances with Anita #3)Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse (Dances with Anita #3)
by Kate Schaefer

Cocktail hat made of dupioni silk, polyester, cotton, rayon, nylon, and metallic fabrics on buckram and wire frame, embellished with semi-precious stones, stone beads, refrigerator magnets, star-shaped sequins, and an origami frog.

Based On:
“Berry Moon” by Camilla Bruce

This auction has ended. Thanks to everyone who bid. Please check the front page for more auctions, going on through the first week of December, 2009.

This cocktail hat is based on Camilla Bruce’s short story, “Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse.” In some ways, it’s a straightforward illustration of the story, which is about the interplay between inspiration and fiction, or more precisely an illustration of the words of the story, which are dense with image and texture and color. The hat is divided, with a clutter of objects – a rose, an origami frog (a crumpled candy wrapper in the story), pebbles – beneath a bent dark red moon caught in a net along with words, mostly pronouns, words devoid of specificity but full of implication in their relation to each other.

All the materials used in making the hat were either recycled or repurposed, just as the muse’s inspiration is repurposed in making fiction. Much of the fabric is recycled from Anita Rowland’s wedding dress, with the rest recycled from a shirt I made a few years ago. The fabric beads wrapped in gold thread and the semi-precious stone beads are from Anna Vargo’s stash; the small semi-precious stones used as cabochons were Elise Matthesen’s (”Here, do something with this,” she said). The origami frog is made from holographic wrapping paper.

The extremely soft-sided fabric box holding the hat is an improvised liner for the utilitarian box, intended to make shipping the hat easier. Sometimes improvisations spin out of control, and that one certainly did. It will serve to protect the hat, as long as the buyer keeps the acid-free paper as padding.

The hat has two toupee clips to hold it on the wearer’s head. They snap open like little snap barrettes, and as long as they are able to grab a few hairs in the combs, they’ll hold the hat on most securely.

Kate Schaefer

Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse (Dances with Anita #3) Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse (Dances with Anita #3) Berry Moon: Laments of a Muse (Dances with Anita #3)

Story, Artist, Author: , ,
Filed under Auctions, Clothing, Interfictions 2, Mixed Media, Object Art | Comments (4)

4 Responses to “Auction #23: A Hat For The Moon”

  1. Ellen Kushner on November 24, 2009 9:47 am

    This hat KILLS in o so many ways!!! Seeing it lying flat doesn’t really do it justice – it’s a little chip hat, worn tilted at an angle. Too fetching for words. And yet . . . it’s made of words.

  2. ellen Kushner, Vice-President, IAF on November 24, 2009 10:35 pm

    Bill Willingham on Twitter:
    That’s a hat? It looks like a pita bread sammich sewn from 1920’s New Orleans brothel wallpaper. Then again I’m no fashionista

  3. Ellen Kushner on November 25, 2009 11:16 pm

    omg, Freddie B, you’d look great in that hat!!

  4. Kate Schaefer on November 30, 2009 12:11 pm

    It’s true, the hat does look like a pita bread sammich sewn from 1920’s New Orleans brothel wallpaper. I’ve always had a low liking for the look of threadbare flocked roses on mildewed brocade with a hint of sinister faces peeking out from just behind the pattern.

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A Taste Of Interfictions 2
“My brother Pedro was born on the floor of our apartment. That was when we lived above the Good Foot. It was three-thirty on a Saturday morning when my mother pushed him out. Downstairs in the club, my father used to say, there was a band playing with twenty drummers, two basses, two guitars. Big horn section, lots of singers. It was some party down there. My mother said that my brother didn't cry once. He just hit the floor, put his ear against it, and started taking it all in right then. The band, the cheers from the crowd, the stomping feet against the club's floor. He never cried. But never slept either. Just listened and listened.”
From: Interviews After the Revolution by Brian Francis Slattery

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