Birthday Gifts

My birthday comes first and my daughter’s family gave me this Papel Picado guitar and sun by Chicago based artist Jason Guzman of Guzman Studio. My daughter bought it at her favorite new neighborhood store “Hey I Thought of You” and it’s as if that space in our living room was waiting for it. I backed it with yellow cardstock to coordinate with the background of the guitar painting we got in Texas around the corner and to accentuate the yellow in some of the other prints.

I also like the way the yellow highlights the squares in the background and relates to the checkerboards and other yellow areas in the blues portraits by Denise Beaudet across the way.

My husband’s birthday was next and I couldn’t resist getting him the alligator letter opener I’d seen a couple of times at the Intuit Art Museum gift shop.

I loved the way he emerged from the wood and the way the scales were carved and burned or stained. I noticed the glittery eye or something on the top of his head and I could see carved writing on the front and the back of the letter opener but hadn’t been able to decipher it.

It turns out it comes from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee and the little “eye” is a Stanhope Micro Lens, a tiny optical viewer, that depicts a feature of Lookout Mountain. Ours isn’t that easy to see but you can see there is a picture in there. I did find a close up of the Lookout Mountain incline railway that is in another one that was for sale on the Ruby Lane website.

The souvenir letter openers were carved out of hickory or a similar wood by local craftspeople starting after the Civil War and into the 1920’s. Most aren’t signed but ours is signed and dated (June 26 – 25).

I think this alligator turned out to be even cooler than I originally thought he was!