Feathers that Alice Ann Made into Flowers in 1894

The following account is from “The History of Alice Ann Carter,” compiled by her daughter, my Aunt Faye Lundquist (one of “the twins, Faye and Fern”).  In it, Alice Ann recalls how, at the age of 17, she learned to paint with oils and to make flowers out of feathers while living in rural Juab County, Utah, in the 1890s.  The narrative, written around 1956, is also included in my brother Hal’s book, OUR PIONEER HERITAGE AND FAMILY HISTORY (2004).  One of Alice Ann’s two floral shadowboxes remains with the family of my cousin Ann Bjorklund, Aunt Faye’s eldest daughter, who kindly sent me the photo above.

There was a Catholic nun who had left the Convent in the East and come west, teaching art along the way. She traveled alone in a surrey. My father had heard about this traveling artist, and he engaged her to tutor me in art.  She also taught others in our town and stayed at our home for seven weeks. My father fed and cared for her horse. It was gentle and kind, and its name was “Pet.” Father paid $1 for each lesson that I had. After my seventh lesson, she continued on her way.

I was seventeen, and I worked hard and took my training very seriously. The teacher had patterns we could buy, and I later sent to New York and to Canada for others. The initial pattern was ordered from The Modern Priscilla Publishing Company of Boston, Massachusetts. I also sent to the Family Herald and Weekly Star, Montreal, Canada, for a pattern for ten cents. These patterns were soon unavailable, and I’ve had to be most careful with the original ones.

Using the patterns to paint was complicated. A thin coat of white lead was spread over one side of the perforated parchment paper pattern. This pattern was then laid face down on a fine quality velvet fabric. I would then clamp the handle on to the flat iron that had been heated to the desired warm temperature on top of the stove with the wood I had gathered and chopped. I gently pressed over the perforated pattern with the iron, and it transferred a fine white dotted line through onto the velvet. While this was drying I quickly cleaned the paper pattern with turpentine so it could be used again.

Using many fine strokes with the pen point, I could build up the oil to paint and shade the flowers and leaves as I desired. These paintings have won first and second prizes at the Juab County Fair.

I saw some feather flowers, and I wanted to learn to make them. Mrs. Bigler told me she was going to teach a class which would be held in the Excelsior Building. This building was a store with a gallery. People could buy merchandise off the shelf or sit around on chairs. Brother James Paxman managed the store and told Mrs. Bigler she could rent the space above for so many weeks.

The flowers took a long time to make. We stripped the down off the feather, cut and trimmed the feather the way we wanted for the petals for the flower we wished to make.  We cut little petals for daisies and sweet peas. We used little scissors to cut the feather petals, and we had to be very careful that we didn’t split the feathers. Then we would come up the quill of the feather and dent it and cut it in the shape we wanted, and make it hollow if we wanted a hollow [pillow] and make it turn out. We had to design our petals and leaves like that before we could make a flower.

Then we needed something to put our petals together. Mr. Wrigley hadn’t made his chewing gum at the time, so we made our chewing gum out of lump resin, which we bought at the drug store. It didn’t cost us very much if we bought it by the lump. We then put water in a pan on the stove and mashed and dissolved the resin. After it came to a boil, we added butter and boiled it until it was stringy like candy. We tested it until it was a soft ball in a cup of water. We would stretch it until it was ready to chew. After chewing, we would make the center of the flower and add the feathers as we wound, adding more stringy resin around each center. Finally the flower was finished, using the resin chewing gum. Keep in mind we had to chew the resin all the time we were making the flower.

Sister Bigler couldn’t help the problem of the down flying around and going down on the dress goods below. When people were buying yardage below, the down would fly around and fall on their material. The clerk had to brush the down off, which was very embarrassing, so Brother Paxman became angry and told her she was doing damage to his business and would have to move somewhere else.

She said, “If you can let me stay here until the week is out, I think I can wind it up.” He said, “I think I can do that.”

She said, “Tomorrow we will have to borrow some ducks because we can’t get any geese in here because they are too big. [They stood as tall as I was, 5′ 1/2″.] Who has some ducks we can borrow, so I can show you where to get the feathers?”

I said, “I’ll get some.”  I told my mother about this and wondered if the Prices across the creek would let us have some. Mother said, “I think they will let you borrow some, but how will you get them down there?  You’ll need help; maybe Lucy will go with you.”

I said that would be fine, so Lucy and I each took a basket and went to Prices to borrow some ducks. The Prices caught some pretty, white, clean ones, and we put them in the baskets and took them to the store.

Now I had learned to make the feather flowers, I needed more feathers to work with.  Mrs. Bigler said there were some geese at Goshen, Utah, near the pond over by Mona Lake.  My father said, “If you want to go out to Wanship, you will find some up the river.”  I said I’d like to go there.

I took the feather flowers with me to show my cousins.  They liked them very much.  My cousin George Moore said, “I’ll go up the river tomorrow and find some geese.  How many do you need?”

I said, “Two.”  He replied, “They are not molting at this time of year, and if you will wait until spring you can have all you want.”  I knew it would be a nice summer there.

The next day he went up the Weber River and brought back two beautiful geese as tall as I was. They were friendly geese, and he placed them in the barn away from the house down the road.

One day my friend Mae Judd (Bates), who was working for Uncle George Carter and Uncle George Moore because their mother, Aunt Polly, wasn’t very well, said, “Let’s go out and see the geese.”

So we went out the front door and down through the gate and across the road. The geese heard us coming and were friendly toward us. They made us laugh as they crawled under the fence and came down the road to meet us side by side, talking and chattering to each other like two old ladies. They would look at us and then at each other. When we met face to face we stopped, and I said, “Good morning,” and then they chatted to each other some more.

We laughed and walked back down the road with the geese on each side of us.  We came on down the road to Aunt Polly and Uncle Will’s, where we were staying.  (George Carter and Will built that home.)

We went in the house, and the geese went around to the back of the house. Mae wanted to go outside to see what the geese were doing. There was a tap with a fabric hose attached to it that lay in a wooden tub that overflowed and watered the strawberries, radishes, and lettuce.  One of the geese got into the tub and went round and round with its feet and head out of the water, flapping its wings about in the tub. Then the goose in the tub got out, and the other one jumped in and did the same thing. Now the other one picked up the hose and sprayed the goose in the tub. They looked so pretty and white.

During the summer, Cousin George fed the geese and said he would get them fat for Thanksgiving.  We had a good time with our pets.

Finally the time came to molt.  Aunt Polly (Mary, as we called her) said, “How are you going to get the feathers off.  I’m afraid the teeth are going to bite you.”

I was afraid, too, because the teeth on the lower jaw were like a little saw, white and sharp like needles.  She said, “I know what I’ll do.” She wore a long front apron that tied around her waist with a bow in the back.  “I’ll hold my apron over its head so it won’t bite you.”

I picked the feathers from the back between the wings, on its back, and a few near the tail and on the breast. The silk feathers came from the wing. The ones on the breast were wide. The ones further down were all down, and I couldn’t use them.  Most of the feathers were easy to pull.  The difficult ones had blood on, and the geese made a yell that frightened me.  Finally we got the feathers picked, and they were enough for two frames or more.

I made it home with the feathers and made one picture for my mother, and I used the silk feather lilies for my wedding cake. The other frame I made for myself. I finished it the winter before I married in 1901.  I didn’t make any after that because I didn’t have any tools—the house caught on fire and burned my scissors and tools.

When I married Sam, my flowers in my hair and corsage were feather flowers I had made—they were white silk lilies. I edged them with fine scissors. Today we would call it “pinking.” They did not have pinking shears in my day, so it was done with small scissors.

Feather flowers for Alice Ann’s wedding to Samuel Broadhead

My wedding cake was three tiered. The first layer was baked in a large milk pan.  It was iced with white frosting and decorated with white peppermints.  A small vase on the top tier held the white feather flowers.  Today you can see them in the center of a large picture of feather flowers I later framed for our home.

Alice Ann in 1952 with her husband, Sam, and kids Daken and Valate (front row), and (at back, left to right) Sheldon, Fern, Faye, Blanche, and Rulon

The Twins, Faye and Fern

Every goofy little kid has to have a hopeless crush on a cousin.  My fate was easily sealed.

Kind, funny, and beautiful Ann.

 

http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/womens/modernpriscilla/