Books:

Discovered! 505
Odd Enterprises

Hidden Dollars

How to Make
Money at Home

Small Business
of Your Own

You Can Own
a Business

A little over a year ago Mrs. Simpson idly examined a decanter at a friend's house. It was a plainly shaped bottle with a nondescript head fashioned on the stopper, but it started ideas flying around in her mind.

"I'm no artist, but I can make a better looking decanter than that!" Mrs. Simpson told herself.

She went home and began experimenting, mostly with odds-and-ends easy to come by in and about the house. With an empty wine bottle, some modeling clay, paints, two simple tools made by herself by splitting a clothespin, a small spoon-type modeling tool, and bits of this and that, Mrs. Simpson made a statuette caricature that could be used as a decanter.

It made such a hit with her family and friends, and she liked her new creation so much that she began using more and more of her spare time in making other decanters. Those first ones were made for gifts, and she began amusing herself by making the statuettes into caricatures of the friends that were to receive them.

In making such gifts Mrs. Simpson, played up some particular trait, feature, interest or talent possessed by the friend. Sometimes the statuette was purely caricaturistic; that is, it might absurdly emphasize a naturally generous mouth, an elongated cast of features, an always cheerful grin, indicate a solemn nature, a studious trait, or represent an enthusiastic horseback rider, a lover of detective stories or a follower of some hobby. Other statuettes were made as caricatures that actually looked like the person represented.

Both types were very popular as gifts. They were good conversation pieces, brought laughs, and were interesting and unusual. And it wasn't long until friends and acquaintances—and their friends and acquaintance—were requesting Mrs. Simpson to make caricature decanters for them. These requests were backed up with cash, and Mrs. Simpson discovered her customers were willing to pay well to get decanters that aptly portrayed or pointed up certain attributes.

THE FACT that she operates a beauty shop in her own home has decided advantages for Mrs. Simpson in carrying on her caricature business. First, it makes it easy for her to pick up this hobby during lull hours. Second, her beauty clients delight in seeing each new decanter she creates and eagerly spread-the-word to others about her unusual hobby.

A great many orders come to her through these contacts. Since taking her first pay order she has been busy during most of her leisure hours trying to catch up on continuing demands for her caricatures.

"I've never really tried to sell a decanter," explains Mrs. Simpson when questioned about sales promoting. "People just take them away from me!"

Leading an active business and social life gives Mrs. Simpson many contacts that lead to outlets for her bottle caricatures. Various stories about her hobby, in local newspapers, have also given her much publicity. Such stories always brings in a flood of new customers. Persons who read of her hobby telephone to ask further details, then call on her to give their orders. Or, as often happens, a prospective customer writes Mrs. Simpson, learns details of how she works, how an order can be placed, priced, etc., and then either gives an order for a decanter, right then, or calls on Mrs. Simpson, or—even—sends a photograph from which Mrs. Simpson must work.

MRS. SIMPSON finds that working from a photograph of a person never met is the hardest way to make a statuette. Because she has nothing but a "cold" picture to work from, such an order calls for more thought and ingenuity.

As an example, she was sent a photo of a very handsome man, with an order to make a bottle caricature, to be given to the man as a gift. Mrs. Simpson had nothing to go on but what the photo told her and the few things she had been told about the man.

Now, the average person has something to caricature. But, Mrs. Simpson says, it is very hard to fashion a caricature statuette of a handsome man unless she is able to catch some mannerism, which, obviously, isn't to be done from a photo.

Mrs. Simpson noted the man was an immaculate dresser. His hands were very attractive and upon one finger he wore a handsome cameo ring. She knew he was a prominent labor leader who gave many speeches and talks at dinner meetings, banquets, and so forth.

This knowledge gave her the "feel" for the statuette. She created a very spic-and-span figure in fashionable, but regular business-dress clothing. The hands were emphasized, in front of the figure, as though holding notes, and on the proper finger was a huge cameo ring. The whole figure appeared as though about to give a speech.

As in this instance, some of Mrs. Simpson's creations are more realistic in caricature, while others are purely exaggerations. She receives from $7.50 to $22.50 apiece for the decanters, and it is the elaboration of design in both features and dress that governs the prices. It takes more effort to model a face to look like a person; therefore, such a decanter comes higher.

"However, the highest price I've received for my hobby creations," states Mrs. Simpson, "came in the form of a prize won through a tip read in Profitable Hobbies magazine."

It was while leafing through Profitable Hobbies that she read a notice announcing the national glass hobby contest sponsored by the Glass Blowers' Association of the United States and Canada, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor. Deadline for entering the contest was very close. Mrs. Simpson hurriedly gathered up four statuettes already finished and entered them in the contest, which ended October 15, 1951.

Those four statuette caricatures, decanters made from empty wine bottles, won for their creator the first prize, a $500 bond. Judged for first place, Mrs. Simpson's entry competed with 550 others from the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America.

"The publicity received for that honor didn't harm my hobby, especially from a commercial angle," Mrs. Simpson smilingly acknowledges. "More and more orders are coming in, just because of that win, and several well-known stores have contacted me suggesting we make some mutually satisfactory arrangement whereby my caricature decanters could be supplied to them for resale to their customers."

At this time Mrs. Simpson is working out a schedule with the aid of a friend, whereby the creative work on caricature decanters will be done by herself, and the run-of-the-mill labor supplied by the friend, so that she can undertake to keep supplied an art and a department store, each of which has declared it can sell all she can channel to it, provided each statuette decanter is handmade.

ONE OF the best things about her hobby, says Mrs. Simpson, is that anyone with a little deftness, imagination and ingenuity can indulge in it. No expensive tools or materials are necessary; no special artistic talents; no special place to work.

Mrs. Simpson carries on her hobby in her downstairs rumpus-room. Her home beauty shop is the next room to it. This fact makes it especially handy for her to pick up and put down her decanter work whenever she has a few minutes spare time. But this hobby can be worked upon wherever one has a corner where a card table can be set up, where the light is good. Then, a few simple tools and supplies, a little knowledge, and the rest is up to the worker.

Besides the ones specially ordered, Mrs. Simpson has created forty bottle caricatures of friends, local business people, politicians and public figures. While she is working on an order, Mrs. Simpson may also have a creation of her own in the making. Her order may be a caricature of a famous musician. While she is doing that she may get an idea for a certain "something" that would particularly suit a friend as a gift. Or some public figure outstanding in the news just demands to be fashioned.

As the ideas come to her she goes ahead with them. Almost always someone sees such decanters almost before they are finished and she gets an offer. The spare ones she sells. Sometimes the gift designated ones are hard to hold onto. Recently she began an Indian woman decanter for a friend, as a gift. Before it was half finished she had refused $25 for it. She did, however, accept an order to make another on somewhat the same lines.

In quoting prices, Mrs. Simpson gives the $7.50 to $10 range for the simpler designed decanters with the bottle painted and only the head molded in clay. The more expensive ones are built out with clay to be fashioned and costumed into more elaborate figures.

ANY TYPE of bottle can be used to fashion a caricature decanter, but Mrs. Simpson finds wine bottles particularly suited for her needs. They are the right proportions to make the modeling work easy. The heads and faces can be fitted nicely to the bottle necks, the corks needed are large enough to work with while fastening them to the hats or hair tops, and the bases are large enough not to let the figures over-balance.

When beginning a statuette, the wine bottle is cleaned, and the label removed before the clay and paint are applied. When putting on the clay, Mrs. Simpson works differently from most modelers. She does not put on the clay and then dig into it, to shape. Instead, she puts on the clay and then builds up the shape with her fingers, using a tool only for the very fine work.

Noses, eyebrows, beards, mustaches, locks of hair, etc., are small pieces of clay rolled between the fingers and then stuck on the clay already in place on the bottle necks. After being pressed and shaped with the fingers, they are shaped and smoothed a bit finer with the spoon-type modeling tool. Fine strands of hair, wrinkles to denote age, and other fine work are done with a pencil point, and deep undercuts are made with the small, pointed clothespin tool. Eyelids, dimples, mouths, muscles, etc., are shaped in the clay. The eyes themselves are made from bits of broken jewelry, stones out of earrings, pearls or buttons. They are pressed into place in the soft clay and the lids and sockets worked around them.

The shoulders for the body of the figure are built out on the swell of the bottle. Drapes in the cloth, sleeves and hands, shirts, skirts and trousers, in the more elaborate figures, are all worked in the clay and emphasized or outlined with various colors of paint.

If Mrs. Simpson decides to add a flower, a basket of fruit in the hands, an ornament, another frill or drape to the dress or robe, a necklace or scarf, anything, in fact, as an after-thought, it can be done although the clay has set. Clay sticks to clay when moistened with water.

IN COSTUMING Mrs. Simpson utilizes the odds-and-ends to be found in any home: Felt and feathers, string and raffia, wet and dry macaroni and spaghetti, pearls clustered up for grapes, beans and rice, and many other things used with imagination and camouflaged with paint.

Mrs. Simpson uses a plastic clay that hardens very quickly. It does not have to be fired. This factor is a big one in its favor because it does away with the need of a kiln and the time necessary for firing. Drawback to the clay is that it produces cracks, here and there, as it dries.

To remedy this, Mrs. Simpson lets the figure dry overnight, then fills in the cracks and lets dry again. As the whole fashioning of the figure isn't lengthy, the added work isn't much of a problem.

Shaping is important in making the caricatures, of course. It is very important when molding the face to a likeness and then caricaturing some particular point. Yet it is the bold and delicate strokes and hues of paint that bring the statuettes to life.

Either oil paints or lacquers can be used on the clay. Oil paints can be blended but lacquers cannot. Big drawback to oils is that they take a long drying period (several days). Lacquers do not. They dry very quickly, "right, now," and that is the reason Mrs. Simpson prefers to use them on her figures although it makes the mixing of the desired skin tone harder to do. For the actual painting she uses small sable brushes.

When molding the head on the neck of the bottle, Mrs. Simpson is careful to shape and smooth the clay so the cork will fit perfectly, and so the liquid will pour out easily and smoothly when the statuette is utilized as a decanter. She makes a tiny groove in the back of the head so any drop of the decanter's contents will run there. The groove, of course, is cleverly worked into the design so that it is an unnoticed part of it. In this way, in case some of the contents manage to cut the paint, the hair in that area can be easily repainted.

Lately, to guard against such accidental injury, Mrs. Simpson has been giving the figures a coat of clear plastic. At first such coats were put on by brush. Now Mrs. Simpson is experimenting with an easier and quicker method, using plastic bombs to do the spraying.

The plastic coat takes several hours to dry. It is put on after the decorative paint on the figure is completely dry.

ONE VERY important step in making this type of decanter is to see that the stoppers fit well and are nicely disguised. Persons who order the decanters seem especially to enjoy the surprised looks on their friends' faces when they pour refreshments out of a statuette caricature, lifting the top that seems such a permanently fixed part of the figure.

To fit the hats and stoppers carefully isn't a difficult job, even though important. A new, correct-sized cork is used. A sturdy pin or tiny nail is pushed through it and up into the clay that has been shaped into the hat or top of the head. Sometimes the hat or top can be shaped right onto the cork. Almost all of Mrs. Simpson's figures have hats, but hair can be also worked into a good-looking stopper.

The cork, or the pin or nail end of it, is pressed into the clay hat or top before it hardens. When that is done, also before the clay gets too hard, the stopper is put on the bottle and the edges of the clay top smoothed and fitted to join smoothly and conceal the opening of the bottle.

When elaborate work is to be done on the hats or tops, and it is desired that the opening be carefully refitted after all other work on that portion is finished, the upper part of the top can be allowed to set while keeping the bottom section pliable. Simply use a damp towel as a prop for the lower section while the rest is left out to dry.

Tops fashioned from clay are really the most practical and satisfactory, but Mrs. Simpson has made many pleasing hats out of felt. Some, on really "dandified" figures, are true-to-life replicas of fine fedoras. These tiny model hats, complete with hatbands and stylishly creased, are fixed to the stopper-corks with papier-mache.

Even that work isn't difficult, explains Mrs. Simpson. Little cuts in felt here with large scissors, little ones there with embroidery scissors, a bit of fashioning, a drop of glue now and then, and—it's done.

This hobbyist repeatedly emphasizes that it is mainly each individual's imagination and resourcefulness that help along this type of hobby and make it fascinating as well as governing the artistry of the figures created. Mrs. Simpson, herself, uses whatever she has at hand. Her papier-mache is usually bits of crepe paper mixed with a good vegetable glue. If she hasn't crepe paper she uses whatever type of tissue or paper she can find.

"I've had pupils in my classes," she says, "who haven't drawn a line as far as pictures go, who claim they haven't a particle of artistic talent, who turn out some remarkably clever caricature decanters after only a few instructions. In fact, anyone can do this!"

WHEN Mrs. Simpson has time she teaches others her technique in fashioning caricature decanters. She charges $10 for three lessons, with each lesson taking about an hour. Her learning groups usually run three to four persons at a time. Lessons include the completion of one statuette.

Pupils come to her through business and social contacts, through friends, through newspaper publicity concerning her hobby. Just as in her sales of her decanters, requests for lessons came rapidly when friends and others learned Mrs. Simpson was willing to share her pleasure in her hobby and show others how to make their own bottle decanters.

Actual working time—for Mrs. Simpson, except on exacting figures—for a decanter is around two hours. Her statuettes usually take much less time than their looks indicate. This stated time does not include the drying period for clay, paint, and plastic coat.

"There are so many nice, handy things about this creative hobby," explains Mrs. Simpson, "besides the very pleasant fact of having it turn out profitable. Good, empty bottles are easily come by. The statuettes demand no costly dress. I can pick up and lay down the work as my time demands. And it has brought me many new friends and acquaintances."

Besides caricatures she has made of actual persons, Mrs. Simpson has made statuettes of Sadie Hawkins, Orientals, waiters, "sports," hillbillies, Indians, etc.

Usually, on men figures, the trousers are designed with paint. On her hillbilly figures Mrs. Simpson has put long, red underwear. For this she uses flock, easily obtained at art supply stores. Glue comes with the flock. For the red underwear the glue was spread on the bottle and the flock sprinkled on it. The finished "long, red underwear" looked just that—most realistic.

"Speaking of realism," confesses Mrs. Simpson, "once or twice I've been gently accused of playing up too well some person's characteristics or weak points when I fashioned his bottle caricature. Usually, however, I'm sure that the point I caricature will not hurt the feelings or vanity of the person portrayed."