Designing the Journey

by Doveen Schecter

Saving every scrap for the great imaginary collage of my life and travels.

An array of vibrantly colored plaid cloth in India.

Even as a child I held onto memories. Carved wooden boxes from Russia, cardboard boxes from Paris, lacquer boxes from Burma, straw boxes from Thailand, boxes and boxes filled with little memories: that's what I carried around with me from home to dorm to apartment in every city over the years. My friends and family all had a psychological explanation. Maybe I said goodbye so many times as a child, I always had a sense that time was fleeting. Maybe I was a clutterer, they said, which could be treated. My mother suggested gently that maybe I didn't find a husband until I was 35 because I had too much stuff. Whatever the reason, I knew I was just collecting bits of my portable nest and getting ready to make the great collage of my life that I just didn't have time to get started!

 

Distilling Cultural Design

A Chinese box inlaid with mother-of-pearl inspired this Circle Pearl Window paper from Dove of the East's China Journey collection.

At last, in 2005, I started that collage. It turned out to be Dove of the East™ and the China, Russia, India and Japan Journey collections of boxes, 12" by 12" papers, amulets, charms, embellishments, ribbons and rub-ons. Finally, I put all those tiny design elements to work. I started to unearth the layers of memories like an archeological dig and put them into the design of my first product, the China Journey treasure chest. Just like my boxes, each drawer is filled with amulets and charms including, hand-carved jade, coins, tiny keys and shell tags. The dragons chasing the pearl of wisdom at the top, the bird on one side and the brushstroked bamboo on the other are all ancient symbols of China, but also personal to me. Born in Hong Kong, my earliest visual memories were of a doorway with a dragon and phoenix, and those images stayed with me as a leitmotif in the clothing, embroidery, paper and boxes that I wore and collected through the years. The China Journey papers soon followed along with additional amulets and rub-ons. When I rented my first apartment in Brooklyn years ago, my mother gave me a Chinese box she had saved for many years. It was intricately inlaid with mother of pearl. I tried to recreate the magic of that inlay on the Circle Pearl Window paper and the China Journey box as well.

 

In an Indian marketplace, a whole stall of sparkling bangles.

In early 1999, my then fiancée and I traveled through China along the Yangzte River from Chengdu to Shanghai, stopping in towns that would someday soon be flooded by the building of the Three Gorges Dam. I took photos of doorways, temples, and towns and saved bits of paper and packaging as traces of the cities that would soon be gone. Little did I know that I would refer to these images when I designed the 12" by 12" scrapbook papers more than five years later.

The Russia Journey box from Dove of the East; photo by Grischa Rueschendorf (www.rupho.com).

When I started to make the Russia Journey collection, I unearthed my "memory box," an old cigar box of my father's that I'd started filling when I was eight years old in Moscow. Crammed with my first ski pass, old trolley tickets, my first and only birthday telegram, jam labels, matchbox cover labels and other bits of paper, I had to pry it open where the wood had warped over time. I laid out all the papers on a table and let my mind wander back to why those events and images had been important. Then I looked through my wooden and lacquer spoons, hand-painted brooches and boxes, playing cards, fairytale books that my first grade teacher had given me and heavy boxes of postcards from Russian museums and field trips. Even though I had gone to school in Russia in the late 1960s, the images that were magic for me were all pre-Soviet, fairytale figures and tsarist elegance from the palaces of St. Petersburg. Some of the images on the Russia Journey treasure box come from old boxes and spoons I bought with my allowance at government subsidized handicraft stores when I was eight and nine years old!

Several of the papers in the India Journey collection.

The Dove of the East collection of Japan Journey papers, ribbons, embellishments and rub-ons invite each crafter to enter a zen garden, tea house or fantasy of old Japan. For me they are a journey in time. The geishas come from old woodblock prints that my father bought from a man in a train station in Tokyo. He kept them in a box for years and gave me two when I got married. The woven reed background of Morning Blossom paper was scanned from an actual tatami floor mat. The flowered patterns are from my mother's and grandmother's dresses that they had made out of obi fabrics, the sashes of antique kimonos. The edges of the Shamisen paper are made from scanning an antique bamboo leaf covered blotter. My family and our memories are woven into the design of the papers.

A colorful Indian fruit stand.

The India Journey papers, embellishments, ribbons and rub-ons were born of my travels to India. When my son was three, my husband had a photography job there and I convinced him that we should all three go together. With my son in a stroller, I wandered into a market that was an all-India craft fair. It was just my luck that I only had an hour, but I could see so many different designs from provinces all over the country in one place! Everywhere we went I collected Mehndi stencils, fabrics, post cards, packages of face powders and took lots of pictures in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Later my husband went back for another photo shoot and I gave him a list of images I wanted to use, including, princes and princesses, painted elephants, boxes, old paper, printed paper, doorways, palaces, sparkling bangles, spices and saris. He came back with amazing photos and some old hand-painted papers and even a wooden box.

 

 

Collecting Memories

Charms and ribbon from Dove of the East's Russia Journey collection, inspired by Doveen's childhood travels.

I love to roam markets and beaches. As a result, I've managed to collect lots of shells, bowls, plates, tiny spoons, and small packages that have colorful designs. My home and office are filled with vessels, which hold these memories and design inspirations. Each container is a keeper of a place, evoking the time, the smell, the people I met, with a scent of lacquer from a Burmese bowl or a whiff of cut pine from a hand-carved Russian box.

A card created with charms, papers and ribbon from the Russia Journey collection.

One of my favorites is a huge glass jar filled with shards. These are broken porcelain pieces that have been smoothed by the sea, and each one captures a tiny hand-painted brushstroke or gesture of creativity that was lost in time. When we left Japan I was seven, and my mother had a huge bowl of shards that she'd collected from the beach. I had played with them, but always carefully, as they were my mother's special collection. Somehow, with five kids in tow and household of stuff, my father convinced her to leave them behind. Years later in a pensive moment, she said that was her only regret. Wow, I thought, that is a great accomplishment; to live one's life and only have a bowl of broken pottery as a regret. To live her life seeing beauty in the small things, that were discarded by others and for her a treasure. Now I see my collection of these shards as a symbol that we should live without regret, to seize every moment. I haven't used them yet in a Dove of the East collection, and yet I use them everyday. Somehow we keep our own memories and the creative brushstrokes of others, those precious moments of the past, and translate them into enjoying the present.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Doveen Schecter is owner and creator of Dove of the East. Contact her by fax at 888/219-0382 or by e-mail at info@doveoftheeast.com.

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