Thursday, June 4, 2009

The Grimm brothers are everywhere!

Yesterday we heard about Selkies and now you probably wonder what I want to tell you with my post title.
Did you enjoy yesterday's post? Do you like fairy tales? How did they make you feel as a child? Did they scare you, teach you, make you laugh or frown? We had a book at home with selected stories from the tales the Grimm brothers collected. I loved it dearly until it almost fell apart. Actually I loved it so much I had to buy the exact same edition when I was a grown-up!
Not only the Grimms influenced my life, but also Andersen (whom I adore), Tales of 1001 Nights (that book I also loved to death) and many foreign fairy tales. There was a whole shelf of them at my local library and I read them before going to sleep, I read them aloud to my little brother and there are still sentences we remember.

I don't know if the following artisans have been influenced, too. I know, though, that their beautiful pieces that I selected for this article match some tales and this inspired me to a little glance back into my past.

The star money / Sterntaler

A little girl gives all she has to other people and in the end is rewarded with a rain of falling stars that turn to gold. Jenny Karlsson might not have gold stars on this beautiful bag, but stars nonetheless.



The owl / Die Eule

An owl in a house scares everyone off that goes inside, in the end the people decide to burn the house with the suspected monster (fairy tales are not always nice, oh no!). Nobody would be scared of Buttercup. Eddy's Pressies introduces you to this knitted beauty.



The sun brings it to light / Die klare Sonne bringt's an den Tag

A murder is revealed by the light of the sun. This sun pin by neki desu is designed not to reveal gruesome mysteries, but to delight you with its fresh colors and happy aura.
The three little birds / De drei Vügelkens

Each time the queen has a child her two mean sisters steal it from her and throw it into the river whereupon a singing bird flies up. A fisherman during the years finds all of the three babies and takes them home. Of course the children find their way home when they are old enough. Is the bird on this card made by The Spotted Sparrow one of the singing birds?



The singing bone / Der singende Knochen

There is some more singing now, but not from a bird. Two brothers go out hunting to earn the hand of the king's daughter. One kills the terrible boar, but the other brother in turn kills him for the fame and fortune and buries him underneath a bridge. Years later a shepherd finds a bone and carves a flute from it that starts to sing the truth to him. In the end the man is buried in the graveyard and the murderous brother gets punished. No happy ending for any of them! Babs Beads and Design has made this cute and not at all gory set of skull and bones, if they sing I do not know. Find out yourself!



Hopefully I could take you back to your own childhood a little, a time when we thought singing bones and speaking dragons, dancing shoes and talking bears not impossible. These artisans and all the others of our guild that I could not mention this time have kept their fantasies and turn them into beautiful pieces to share with you.

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5 comments:

neki desu said...

delightful!
thanks for including me

The Sheriff's Daughter said...

Excellent ! More of this, please...and more great items too.

Fru Babsan said...

:) Wonderful! Those particular beads went as a necklace yesterday, but I'll have to make a new set after this.

SE'LAH... said...

very cool...i especially love the orange owl. so happy.

Eddy G. said...

That is such a cool way of doing it bravo!