Almost everything in my house is vintage, except for my linens...and my throw pillows. Maybe I haven't located the right source for vintage pillows, but all the ones I find seem to fall into three categories: 1) Flat and Worn Out, 2) Gaudy and Ugly or 3) Childish and Cheesy.
I grew up surrounded by pillows in categories #2 and #3. My paternal grandmother was very crafty, so she always had a project in the works. For some reason, making gaudy and/or cheesy pillows was a fad in the 1950s and 1960s, even among women who otherwise had good taste, and my dear departed grandmother made one of every kind that came down the pike. Pillows that looked like dolls with starched crocheted skirts. Cat-shaped pillows with embroidered faces. And pillows that were tucked and tufted, like these:
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| ebay.com |
She and everyone she knew must have made a million of these pillows, usually in satin or velveteen. (She made one for my bedroom out of pink velveteen, and I remember a gold one very much like the one on the right placed prominently on her bed, as well as some turquoise ones on my parents' sofa.) Every home had them. People even filled the parcel shelves of their cars with them. They were
everywhere, as common as fuzzy dice and poodle skirts. In fairness to my maternal grandmother, I do remember some really classy, round peacock blue silk pillows on her sofa, but those seemed to be the exception, not the rule. And in fairness to the rest of the world, the really-gaudy-ones-on-the-parcel-shelf phenomenon may only have been a Texas thing.
Or what about the ubiquitous crocheted pillow, whether it be granny squares or something like this? Almost every one of these I see is flat and sad-looking, leaving me with the unfortunate impression that it has seen either too much Vitalis hair tonic or too many dust mites...or both.
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| onestopretroshop.com |
Call me a heretic, but when it comes to pillows, I don't want old. I love my vintage furniture, but I'll make my own pillows or look to stores like Crate and Barrel, CB2 and West Elm for nice, pretty, fluffy ones.
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| inhabitat.com |
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| tonicliving.com |
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| crateandbarrel.com |
Thanks to Jane for her comment about the tasteful modern version of the pin-tucked pillow at Urban Outfitters. They come in some very nice colors, and I may have to buy one. They even have a pastel pink like the one my grandmother made for me!
