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Ear Party
Tomato: Turkey red crepe paper or cotton skull cap with pointed green paper calyx and green upstanding stem of wire covered over with paper or cloth.
Carrot: Orange crepe paper or cloth conical cap. This may be made on heavy paper or cardboard foundation. Characteristic lines may be marked on the carrot.
Corn: Green paper or cloth toboggan cap falling gracefully to one side with a long green or gold-colored silk tassel.
Apple: Little round bowl-like cap of glossy red paper with a brown stem of paper-covered wire.
Wheat: A wreath of natural or artificial wheat ears.
Squash: Cardboard or stiff paper cut to make a "crook neck" effect, covered with yellow paper. [42] Grapes: A graceful floppy green hat of straw or paper with a crown entirely made of artificial or real grape bunches-blue or purple as desired. - A filet of green ribbon with a real or artificial bunch of grapes depending on each side to hang over the ears.
Popcorn: A close-fitting little toque covered with tiny pieces of cotton batting to resemble popped corn. Watermelon: A crescent-shaped hat to be worn broadside suggesting a slice of watermelon from green paper border (fitting on hair) to pink center dotted with tiny bits of black court plaster to suggest seeds.
Blackberry: Close-fitting little black quilted or puffed bonnet to tie under chin. [43]
Nothing on this page is food. It is a list of head-dresses to be made at home, one for each fruit or vegetable, and the explanation of the game they belong to is not on this part of the page.
- Court plasterThe watermelon seeds are tiny bits of black court plaster, a sticking plaster of silk coated with a glue that was wetted to make it stick. It was a medicine-cabinet staple pressed into service as a craft material. Black felt or paper is what a maker would reach for now.
- Toboggan cap and toqueA toboggan cap is the long knitted stocking cap with a point and often a tassel; a toque is a close brimless hat. Both are shapes the book expects a reader to know by name, and both are being used here as the frame for something else.
- Crepe paper was the materialTurkey red crepe paper, orange crepe paper: Turkey red is a dye name for a strong blue-toned red. The crinkled paper sold by the roll in strong colours is the basic substance of this entire book, and because it stretches it will take a curve over a cardboard foundation without a single stitch.
- A filet is a headbandThe second grape option is a filet of green ribbon with a bunch hanging over each ear. Filet here means a narrow band worn round the head, not a cut of meat and not net lace. The word covers all three and only the context decides.
- Paper-covered wireThe tomato stem and the apple stem are both wire wrapped in paper or cloth. Florist’s stem wire and paper tape do exactly this today, and it is the one technique on the page that has not changed in any particular.
- Copy the real thingThe squash is cut to a crook neck and the carrot has its characteristic lines marked on it. The instruction is always to look at the actual vegetable and reproduce its particulars, and the list offers no templates because it assumes the thing itself is on the table in front of you.
These are party costumes for adults, made in an evening out of paper, cardboard, cotton wool and ribbon, and worn at a social where everybody had to be identifiable as something. The produce chosen is a harvest list — tomato, corn, squash, wheat, grapes, watermelon, blackberry — which places the whole thing at the autumn end of a social calendar built around what was coming in. Nobody is asked to buy anything. The economy of this book is paper and cleverness, and its working assumption is that any reader can produce a close-fitting quilted bonnet, or a conical cap on a cardboard foundation, or a graceful floppy straw hat crowned entirely with grapes, without being shown how. That assumption is the thing that has genuinely been lost here. The party could be held tomorrow; the hands that made the hats in an evening are what is gone.