From Hope

I never married her son, though we created a grandson for her together, and she always treated me with love, respect, and support. She died this winter at 94, and in fact this week would have been her 95th birthday.

Hope Burlingame Martin was a wonderful painter and decorator, specializing in tromp l'oeil painting, which is using perspective to paint ultra-realistic scenes and objects on flat surfaces. She decorated lots of furniture and one of her last projects was to paint some tiny chests, like the one shown here. It is about 8 inches high, twelve wide. I swear she painted a little me on there.

Anyway, this week I met with her son, who gifted me some of her collection of fabric scraps, laces, and fine textiles. She had boxes and boxes of silk, linen, and other decorator fabrics used to make drapes and upholstery, a business she started with her late husband. She collected dishes, too, and gave me her set of some Stangl Terra Rose, because she knew how much I love my little Fiestaware collection.

In the mix were a few vintage beaded dresses and two kimonos, heavily embroidered but not in museum-quality shape. One dress is perfect, and fits me right down to the tiny, buttoned sleeves that fit my thin wrists. I think if she wore these dresses, she was probably in her late forties or fifties, and they are so elegant and beautifully made. I doubt I'll find a place to wear them, though you never know. Maybe I'll win a Pulitzer or something.

The hours I have spent admiring, sorting, and taking care of these lovely fabrics make me wish I were doing it with her. I tried at one point to go through her sewing room with her but she was never warm to the idea of getting rid of anything, and I felt grasping and inappropriate trying to force her to. She loved all of those items, the way I do, not necessarily to use them for anything, but just to preserve them and keep them alive for a few more decades. Lace collars, the embroidered borders from the bottom hems of quite a few slips or nightgowns from the Victorian era, and Chinese silk panels that are faded and falling apart, are now my treasures. I'll have to designate someone to receive them, as she did, writing my name on the box of newspaper-wrapped plates and cups.

It's so poignant to own things when you know some of their history, or can sense the presence of others who owned them. I know some of the seldom-used linens, napkins and monogrammed items belonged to her own mother-in-law, and to her mother. I've mixed them now with things I received from my own mother, who recently celebrated her 85th birthday. I have quilts, table covers, and embroideries, and a few things from my own grandmother, braided rugs and afghans.

Hope used a few of her valuable things for everyday, which is my tendency even though it ruins their lives as collectibles. I hung a few things in my bedroom just for awhile before I pack them away. There's nothing I would sell, though the brothers will be selling some of her sets of silverware and the dishes that are really valuable. I told Mike to steal me a setting of silverware, but I doubt he will. Inheritances are often sold, and their identities lost, or they are collected and loved by people like me. Collections are fascinating. Hope had exquisite taste, as well as a sensual appetite for bright colors and any kind of fine work. I remember how carefully she had one of her houses painted, an exact shade of blue she loved. She was very particular about exact colors, but not at all intimidating in her perfectionism. As far as I know she never criticized the art of any of her "daughters", and in fact I found a perfectly ugly silk scarf I had painted and given to her, which she had never worn, but still stored away in her drawer with care.

There are curtains with her needle still run precisely at temporary rest in an unfinished hem. This particular piece may or may not have been hers. At one point the green vines change color slightly, which I imagine to be the work of a child or teen who thought it wouldn't matter, but then lost momentum when faced with the prospect of removing the precise embroidery to replace it with the matching green. I can still see the faint blue pattern of the scallops and floral cartouches, and although I do know how to make French knots and tiny flowers in colored silks, I doubt I will finish it. I'll just love it in its imperfection.

She lost a lot of her abilities over the last decades, gradually and heartbreakingly. There are many little painted chests that were started, have the background coat of paint, sitting on shelves in her home. I may paint some of those, though I will never be able to approach her expertise. I'll try little flowers and vines, and see how far I can get. Her plan was always to sell them down at the Market. The one I have has a set of cardboard pieces in each drawer, cut as patterns for the fabric linings. I remember her showing me the fabrics she picked out for the linings, but I don't have them in my piles, so I'll have to go back and search through the tubs and boxes again.

Though she had to stop making things, she never stopped the beginnings of the creative process, the levels of desire and imagination that drive us to begin the projects. She was always buying brushes, books, supplies and findings and hinges and simpler versions of the projects she wanted to do. One of her last paintings was in a Salon de Refuse show, sometime around 2005 or so, when we entered the Mayor's Art show together. We were both thrilled to be hanging our art in a real gallery, for different reasons. She was, of course, quite used to feeling professional by then, but like most artists, was never finished learning and improving her skills. She loved to mentor others and the artists in her family, of which there are many, all treasure her memory.

Thank you so much, Hope. You gave so much more than you knew to all of us, for so long. I hope heaven is what you expected, a place where you can paint all day and never get tired, and never have to give up a thing you love.