Blue Muse

Blue Is Ocean Necklace

This holiday season, I’m channeling the color blue in different shapes and shades, and searching for meaning. Some get the holidays blues for sure, but blue also has incredibly positive color energy. For your home, blue is a soothing sea breeze or breath of fresh air. For wearing, it’s a calming and confident color. For giving, it’s universal. Blue is simply heaven sent.

Blue Is Versatile Wrap Bracelet/Necklace

Inspired by the sky, oceans, and the earth as seen from space, my Blue Is Holiday collection of sterling silver and semi-precious stone jewels, is a meditation on the powerful evocations and emotions of this globally favored color, which in many different cultures represents strength, trust, and serenity. My blue musings this holiday season were also inspired by the tiny illustrated book by Peter Max with the words of Swami Sivananda, simply called “Peace”, published in 1970. Substituting the word “blue” for “peace”, I created a series of designs that represent the many meanings of the color blue.

Blue Is Peace Pendant

Cynthia Rybakoff sterling silver and semi-precious stone Blue Is Holiday collection, $58 to $225 at Supermarket and Shopflick.

Save Face

Cynthia Rybakoff Facebook fans save 15% this holiday season in my Supermarket shop on any item, including unique holiday jewels, great gifts under $50 and my handmade holiday cards. First, if you aren't already, become a fan. Then message me when you place your Supermarket order: "Hi Cynthia, I’m a Facebook fan!". Be sure to include your full name and email address in the message, exactly as it appears on your PayPal payment and I’ll immediately refund you 15% of the purchase price, including the shipping, when I receive your order. It’s that simple! This special offer is good through December 15th.

Happy Holidaze,

P.S Shipping is free thru December 6th on holiday cards!

http://cynthiarybakoff.supermarkethq.com

Blue Is Universal

Matt and I just launched our new mini-collection of Handmade On Peconic Bay Holiday art print cards, which was challenging because we don’t love the crass commercialization of the holiday season. Today is Black Friday, the late Autumn festival of competitive discount shopping, in case you missed the Christmas-crazed housewife in the Target television ads during your Thanksgiving reruns. And yet the Winter Solstice is inevitable in the northern hemisphere, so we participate in our own possibly pagan way.

For instance, when designing our holiday greeting cards, lengths were taken to avoid referencing candy canes and Christmas trees, and certain colors were immediately eliminated, including stocking red and forest green. Instead, we created a palette of subtle organic colors with names like Ocean, Earth, Marine, Grass, and Soil. In order to avoid images that seemed too kitsch, we axed the Christmas wreaths, angels, reindeer and Santa Claus caps in favor of botanicals, bird’s nests and dancing snowflakes (well, the snowflakes are kind of kitsch, but in a cool way). Then, in a perhaps misguided attempt to fit in and not completely alienate the folks who prefer that nostalgic holiday feeling, some traditional festive slogans were added in a vintage font.

One thing I think we can all agree on is that blue is perhaps a more universal color to represent the myriad of multicultural Winter festivals that take place this time of year. We happen to celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas, so a few years ago Matt brought home a snow white fiber optic techno-tree with filament branches that twinkle with the cool blue glow of pre-programmed energy saving LED's. We’ll decorate it with a variety of white abstract ornaments and have ourselves a merry little Festivus.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Holiday Cards, $18.00 for a set of 8 cards with coordinating envelopes, are available online at Supermarket and Etsy, and Mascot Studio in NYC.

Harvest Home

My husband, Matt Shapoff loves to cook. He picked up the habit, a few years into our marriage, when I suggested he expand his cooking repertoire from deep fried potatoes into other food groups. I’m somewhat of an amateur chef myself, having sweated away a few thousand hours in professional kitchens as a low level chef de partie, including a mediocre Hamptons fish palace and a charmingly upscale Swedish bistro. I even spent a Summer season being abused by a grumpy chef at the old Amagansett Farmer’s Market, who disliked my dicing skills intensely but taught me how to make a wonderful cold ziti pasta salad marinated in roasted garlic oil and flecked with fresh dill.

Most nights Matt and I prefer to stay home and throw together tasty meals made with local seasonal ingredients readily available at NYC’s many farmers markets and specialty food shops. In late summer, and throughout the fall, we enjoy the bounty of the harvest, marveling at the sweetness of the corn and the abundance of good tomatoes after months of sensory deprivation. We also keep a good supply of fresh herbs on hand from Matt’s Southampton chef’s garden, which grows a little bigger each year. Herbs do better than vegetables in the sandy bay soil and salty air and we end up with copious amounts of parsley, basil, rosemary, sage, lavender and chives, most of which gets pressed and dried for Matt’s Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown botanical prints.

This past summer, in between cooking experiments with Native American ingredients and the re-working of an old recipe for squash, corn and beans we named Pilgrim Stew in honor of the first Thanksgiving, Matt created a new Cyanotype series using only pressed herbs and edible flowers from his chef’s garden. We mounted the prints in one of a kind upcycled frames assembled from reclaimed wood paneling complete with original beadboard details and peeling paint. Choosing modern vintage frames made from weathered wood seemed a perfect compliment to the pale cyan botanicals, which give the appearance of being faded from the sun with age. A selection from Matt’s Chef’s Garden Series is now available at Mascot Studio in New York’s East Village.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Cyanotype Chef’s Garden Series by Matt Shapoff, on cream colored Rives paper in Antique White frames, $175-$250 at Mascot Studio.

Super Cute

Into The Woods charm bangles $38 each

I just can’t help myself. I love super cute furry or feathered creatures the way some might love a fat baby. I’m currently obsessed with the Sweet Million ad campaign, with it’s sleeping piglets quivering on miniature bunk beds and piles of snoozing kittens dressed in onesies for a long winter’s nap. I grew up in the mythical 70’s pop culture, when graphic representations of wise owls and spotted toadstools were plastered on much of the decorative ware found in my friend’s homes. I carefully stitched embroidered butterfly appliqués to every piece of denim my closet and painted tiny canvases of lush fields sprouting a first grader’s interpretation of those ubiquitous mushrooms and butterflies with my beginner’s set of acrylic paints. As an adult, I have scoured thrift shops, flea markets and even my mother’s cupboard for reminders of that idyllic time, scoring kitschy vintage Arabia Finland pieces, for my collection of pure unadulterated nostalgia.

Into The Woods charm pendant $68

I’m a fairly serious jewelry designer, not generally given to fits of whimsy or pretentious post-modern irony, but I do have a soft spot in my heart for 70’s retro cute. Come autumn in New York City, my creativity is jet fueled by woodland fantasies conducted in brisk weather, as the thermometer tops 70 degrees. Inspired by the changing autumn leaf outside my window and the comforting knowledge that screech owls do indeed nest in the Forest of Central Park, I am overcome by my outdoorsy leanings, shuttering myself from the warm Indian Summer sun in my apartment studio niche, dreaming up cute designs for my little cast of woodland characters.

Woodsy Owl charm earrings $38

Cynthia Rybakoff oxidized sterling silver Into The Woods charm collection $28 to $68, on Supermarket.

Art Of Nature

“Numbskull” Cyanotype and Van Dyke prints by Matt Shapoff

Our home is a museum of not necessarily rare and precious objects. Just stuff we’ve stumbled upon and really liked for one reason or another. We’re not talking exotic wood carvings or colorful woven baskets from far away places, although I once dragged home from Stockholm a suitcase full of mid century modern Swedish ceramics and glassware. We collect things: a pair of vintage Boy Scout bookends, an incomplete set of worn wood type, a polychrome bird’s nest made of tangled sewing thread, a vintage microphone and whatnot.

Cyanotype fragment from Kunstformen der Natur, by Matt Shapoff

Natural wonders play an important role in our curatorial efforts and in Matt’s art. Each oddly shaped piece of driftwood, slice of agate or spiral seashell is examined for it’s unique potential to join our little cabinet of curiosities or perhaps become the subject of a new Handmade On Peconic Bay print series. Found feathers are of particular interest, as are dead bumblebees, lovely banded snail shells and tiny intact crabs in a ready stance, frozen in time on our shelf.

Van Dyke Brown fragment from Kunstformen der Natur, by Matt Shapoff

Call us new antiquarians living in a sepia toned world. We are modern collectors with Renaissance style. The 16th century Wunderkammer movement, defined as an explosion of interest in snapping up natural curiosities throughout Europe and Asia, then hoarding them in dedicated rooms and obsessively recording them in lavish botanical encyclopedias, was the original cult of collecting. Back then it was strictly wealthy patrons who traveled far and wide in search of animal and mineral specimens for their extensive curio cabinets. But the specimens were also of great interest to Northern European artists who started the trend for realistic still life paintings of newly discovered insects, vegetables and flowers. It’s an entirely human fascination with the art of nature that has not diminished in the last 500 years.

Handmade On Peconic Bay Wunderkammer collection of modern vintage Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown prints by Matt Shapoff, $12.50 to $48.00 on Supermarket and Etsy.

Icon

Isaac Mizrahi clothing with Cynthia Rybakoff Papier Mache Jewelry
by Irving Penn for Vogue, early 90's

Throughout his multifaceted career as an artist, graphic designer and photographer, Irving Penn challenged traditional ideas of beauty, treating fashion models, consumer products and urban detritus with equal dignity, perfect lighting and sumptuous color. There was also a remarkable consistency to his expression, whether he was shooting an allegorical still life, fashion spread or anthropological study. The quiet stasis of his compositions were as classic as a Greek frieze, yet delivered a modernist punch.

After Dinner Games, by Irving Penn, 1947

On two memorable occasions, Irving Penn photographed my jewelry for Vogue magazine, the fabulous Isaac Mizrahi clothing being the actual editorial subject matter. Later on, I briefly met Mr. Penn in his studio, when a good friend of mine landed a plum job as his personal assistant. Star struck by his noble presence, I was far too polite to do anything but whisper a very nice to meet you, and fade into the seamless backdrop.