Wood screen doors have been a constant throughout my life. As soon as I could walk, I was banging my Great Uncle Howard’s screen door. Like a cat, I was always on the wrong side and spent a lot of time rectifying the problem. His door was old and sun baked, with more bare areas than painted, the wood silvered with age and more cracks than a plumber convention. Sadly the house is now gone, torn down and carried away, the door a distance memory.
Back then the screen material was metal mesh and always had little rusted holes for mosquitoes and moths to gain entrance to dance around the ceiling light fixture or seek bare flesh to bite. My uncle’s screen looked pregnant, with a stretched out bulge from years of hand pushing it to open the door. I would play with that bump, flipping the bulge from one side to the next, in, out, in, out until an adult, crusher of children’s fun, hollered stop.
The door was an antique even when I was young, possibly the same one hung when the house was built in the late 1700’s. This door had a huge past, allowing several generations of family and visitors across the threshold of the one and a half story cape. The stories it could tell! As a boy, my father would have banged that door plenty and later would have courted my mother, she would have been taken home to meet the family and escorted through that very doorway, maybe she ran her hand over the tired screen like I would later. A door is special, a gateway to a home where love abides, quite romantic I'd say.
That door would have opened for my grandmother with her four children in tow, taken in by my great uncle after my grandfather, his brother, was killed in the war. And not all history is joyous. Doors are also witness to darker times. My great uncle’s father took his last walk out that very door and jumped in the well, despondent over his wife’s death. During a cold and bitter winter, my great uncle had a heart attack in the outhouse and tried to crawl to the door for help but came up short by a dozen or so feet and lay frozen in the snow until found. Doors are silent witnesses of our lives, seeing the comings and goings and all else in between.
For me, the best thing about a screen door is the sound it makes when banged shut. The spring that forces the union of door to frame is the most delightful clamour. EEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOWWWW and then the “snap” as the catch secures it shut. Every exit/entry door of my house has a screen door on it and when they bang I’m transported back to those summer days on the old homestead, surrounded by the scent of a wood burning cook stove and tired, dust worn furnishings. I’m reminded of the lilac trees that surrounded the house dripping heavy laden with fragrant blooms and the smell of fresh cut grass from an old reel mover. I see Bessie, the neighbour’s cow chewing her cud while hanging her head over the fence for a scratch.
When a customer asked me to design a spring pattern I didn’t have to ponder long. The thought popped into my head as if I put in a coin, pulled the handle and hit the jackpot. To me a screen door is all about spring. Around my house, the screen doors stay on all year and when the temperatures warm we trade out the Plexiglas panels installed to break the winter wind for the vinyl screens that allows the wonderful, fresh spring air into the house.
For some reason screen doors irritate parents and older folk. They don’t like the loud report of wood slammed against wood. That will never happen with me. When I’m 90, you can come over to my house and bang the crap out my door and as long as it doesn’t fall off the hinges, I won’t raise a wiry eyebrow. To me the sound is a memory, music to my ears, thoughts of my wonderful great uncle, it symbolizes the some of the happiest moments of my childhood, a simpler life, before I had to join the grownup rat race.
So I started with the screen door border and worked inward. The view from my own back door encompasses a birdbath so that was a no brainer. For me, three elements symbolize spring, at least in my neck of the woods. Robins, daffodils and tulips. They epitomize the intent of this pattern immediately. Spring has sprung just like the catch on my screen door!
First Signs 38" x 28" - $80.93 Linen
Back then the screen material was metal mesh and always had little rusted holes for mosquitoes and moths to gain entrance to dance around the ceiling light fixture or seek bare flesh to bite. My uncle’s screen looked pregnant, with a stretched out bulge from years of hand pushing it to open the door. I would play with that bump, flipping the bulge from one side to the next, in, out, in, out until an adult, crusher of children’s fun, hollered stop.
The door was an antique even when I was young, possibly the same one hung when the house was built in the late 1700’s. This door had a huge past, allowing several generations of family and visitors across the threshold of the one and a half story cape. The stories it could tell! As a boy, my father would have banged that door plenty and later would have courted my mother, she would have been taken home to meet the family and escorted through that very doorway, maybe she ran her hand over the tired screen like I would later. A door is special, a gateway to a home where love abides, quite romantic I'd say.
That door would have opened for my grandmother with her four children in tow, taken in by my great uncle after my grandfather, his brother, was killed in the war. And not all history is joyous. Doors are also witness to darker times. My great uncle’s father took his last walk out that very door and jumped in the well, despondent over his wife’s death. During a cold and bitter winter, my great uncle had a heart attack in the outhouse and tried to crawl to the door for help but came up short by a dozen or so feet and lay frozen in the snow until found. Doors are silent witnesses of our lives, seeing the comings and goings and all else in between.
For me, the best thing about a screen door is the sound it makes when banged shut. The spring that forces the union of door to frame is the most delightful clamour. EEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOWWWW and then the “snap” as the catch secures it shut. Every exit/entry door of my house has a screen door on it and when they bang I’m transported back to those summer days on the old homestead, surrounded by the scent of a wood burning cook stove and tired, dust worn furnishings. I’m reminded of the lilac trees that surrounded the house dripping heavy laden with fragrant blooms and the smell of fresh cut grass from an old reel mover. I see Bessie, the neighbour’s cow chewing her cud while hanging her head over the fence for a scratch.
When a customer asked me to design a spring pattern I didn’t have to ponder long. The thought popped into my head as if I put in a coin, pulled the handle and hit the jackpot. To me a screen door is all about spring. Around my house, the screen doors stay on all year and when the temperatures warm we trade out the Plexiglas panels installed to break the winter wind for the vinyl screens that allows the wonderful, fresh spring air into the house.
For some reason screen doors irritate parents and older folk. They don’t like the loud report of wood slammed against wood. That will never happen with me. When I’m 90, you can come over to my house and bang the crap out my door and as long as it doesn’t fall off the hinges, I won’t raise a wiry eyebrow. To me the sound is a memory, music to my ears, thoughts of my wonderful great uncle, it symbolizes the some of the happiest moments of my childhood, a simpler life, before I had to join the grownup rat race.
So I started with the screen door border and worked inward. The view from my own back door encompasses a birdbath so that was a no brainer. For me, three elements symbolize spring, at least in my neck of the woods. Robins, daffodils and tulips. They epitomize the intent of this pattern immediately. Spring has sprung just like the catch on my screen door!
First Signs 38" x 28" - $80.93 Linen
RSS Feed
