{"id":9481,"date":"2021-05-07T08:13:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-07T12:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theleemsmachine.com\/bean\/?p=9481"},"modified":"2021-04-30T13:21:40","modified_gmt":"2021-04-30T17:21:40","slug":"mid-century-oddities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theleemsmachine.com\/bean\/blog\/2021\/05\/07\/mid-century-oddities\/","title":{"rendered":"Mid century oddities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I inherited a weird little curio from my Grandmother. I don’t remember ever seeing it in her house, though it could’ve been hidden amongst her enormous collection of salt and pepper shakers. Any time I look at it, even now that it has lived in my house for so long, I am overwhelmed with questions. My grandmother’s house had porcelain figures of children being held up by the giant hand of Jesus, it had kitchen prayers and little plaques with owls made from shells that said ‘world’s best grandmother.’ This figure of a small person with bee wings and a halo, playing flute seems weirdly incongruous. Is it meant to be an angel? And why does the cow have a halo too? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, I thought, it was just a product of its time that made sense to whomever brought it to my grandmother’s house. But then, I wanted to find similarly odd figurines of the mid century. I often surf around eBay looking at anything tagged as ‘mid century,’ so this time, I dedicated my search to finding these figurines. Far from the popular brutalist style of the time and equally far from the ‘modern’ ideal that most comes to mind, these figures are weird, fantastical, and kitschy. This is what I found:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n