More fun with jello molds: a 50s twofer
In my continuing quest to bring you the best of the jello molds, here’s a 50s twofer to help you while away those leisure hours spent without the cocktail parties and get-togethers of yesteryear:
It combines two crazes whose decline we mourn: the jello mold and the paint-by-numbers kit.
Although paint-by-numbers had a hoary and distinguished ancestry (including use of the technique by none other than Leonardo da Vinci, to help his assistants fill in some of the backgrounds to his works), the technique came on the scene in a huge way in the early- to mid-1950s. The kits were criticized for lack of creativity, emphasis on rote learning, and sheer ugliness, but today they are collectibles and the Smithsonian mounted an exhibition about them a only a few years ago.
I attempted to complete a paint-by-numbers kit as a very young child—the head of a German shepherd, if memory serves. Neither my patience nor my manual dexterity at that point were up to the task, and I abandoned it half finished. But I still remember the excitement of opening the thing—the heady smell of the paints and the wonder of watching it shape up (or half shape up).
This jello mold paint-by-numbers kit now being marketed is not a true artifact of the 50s. It’s an ironic commentary on that era, which was marked by a singular lack of irony.
You can’t go home again, it seems. But you can reflect on vanished innocence from the distance of the cynical decades that have followed.
Has this blog gone to JELL(O)?
Or is it that things have finally JELLED around here?
Now this is really useful information.
I’m launching an ebay hunt for these precious artifacts.
I’ll bet you cannot go a day without mentioning the O word though.
Gringo: Good question. Could it be we’re enabling some darker force here than we understand? Where does nostalgia leave off and fixation begin? Should that green-something-aspic butchershop-style-chicken set off alarm bells? I’ve never felt nostalgia for something like that, have you? If we get a slimey green aspic of Lon Chaney, Jr.’s Wolf Man, I’m outta here.
DuMaurier-Smith : ROTFL We need to apply Critical Theory to Jello!
Gringo: I fear it may take more than that. If I have the dates about half-way Wright, Obama would have probably been riding on the back of critical theory in law school. And that didn’t keep him from falling under the dark spell of Wright. And Scorpio is in the cusp of Cancer. I tell you, there are dark forces at work we don’t understand. All diverted, converted, reverted, and deserted stand alerted. The slimey aspic is comin’ down.
Hey I did a paint-by-numbers as a grade-schooler, mid 1970s. It was a pirate’s portrait. I thought it looked freaking fantastic to tell the truth. Wish I had kept that.
how long before she discovers jello shots?
[this is when they make gello with everclear]
liberals cant make jello… because their need of change and constant tweaking would never let it set and be strong… they would constnatly try to improve it by constantly coming and stirring it or throwing something into it.
It appears that reader consensus has JELLED into support for Jello postings.
The smell of the paint! Yes! I loved that… And having no artistic talent at all, it was absolutely frickin’ amAZing to be able to create (perhaps I should say “create”) something that looked like a painting, with actual paint and everything. Loved that. And it was way faster than cross-stitch, too.
OLD & WISE philosophy on change:
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.” Francis Bacon.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mohandas Gandhi.
“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.” Confucius.
_ From the minds of liberals; awesome inovaters of change
neoconshavesacherineflavoredjelloforbrains