A lot is going on at the International Gift Fair in NYC! I had a chance to spend the day walking up and down aisles of booths looking for inspiration, ideas and checking out the general state of merchandising. It was a long day but well worth the effort.

There were some new and interesting products and LOTs of crap. One begins to think that people will buy anything. Some of the booths were well designed and a few really needed to go back to the drawing board. The fair encompassed the entire Javits Convention Center and we spent the majority of the time at the "Handmade" and "Personal Accessories" divisions. We learned that "Handmade" means "the look of hand-made" in most scenarios. We heard over and over again, "hand made in Nepal", "hand made in Vietnam" and "hand made in Guatemala". Many vendors purportedly give 10% of their profits to collectives in these countries that manufacture their goods. This is great if they actually do this, of course we as consumers have no way of knowing whether this is true or not. Obviously this is a very powerful marketing tool for many of these vendors, almost a standard line in their sales pitch. Let's hope they really do.

We were looking for items that were different, that caught our eye. We were looking for good quality and things that were not gimmicky. Some items that stood out amoungst the rest were: Lamps and mechanical works by Dietlind Preiss, wool felting by Masha Ginsburg, both located in the German pavillion; stunning porcelain and hand made bird calls represented by Sweet Bella; hand crocheted mobiles by Petunia Petunia; really chunky and colorful ceramics by the Art Department from Boston; fun bags made of unusual materials like tyvek by Satik; and funky,really cool and stylish bags by Insiders NY.

Events like this are always worth a look, you never know what will turn up. I found a feather distributor for my dolls by Mother Plucker, and Deb found some suppliers for her vintage brooches. We also learned a lot about "simplicity and the vendor booth" and we spoke to all sorts of people. Get out and check it out! Let me know what you saw!

www.artisanstudiounderground.com

Masha Ginsburg was born in the Soviet Union. Her childhood typified the life of a family of the Moscow Intelligentsia in the 1960s: her artistic and creative parents had a modest, welcoming apartment in the city center on Suvorovsky Boulevard that was always full of friends. Masha’s father, the famous opera director Georgy Miller, was just starting his career staging operas at the Bolshoi Theater with the likes of the glorious Galina Vishnevskaya and under the direction of the famous Boris Pokrovsky. Her mother—Albina Miller—was an opera singer and later a voice instructor at the well-known Theater School of the Moscow Art Theater. Although Masha was raised in the theater, neither music, nor acting were destined to become her profession.

While Masha’s parents were busy with rehearsals and performances, she was placed under the watchful eyes of theater wardrobe masters, costumers, and set designers. Precisely this milieu became her world. Here Masha discovered the secret and magical realm “behind” the stage, a world full of wondrous materials and fabrics, fantastic colors and forms…It is especially from this period of her life that Masha so carefully guards her memories, for it became the most important source of her inspiration.

Time passed and Masha started to study painting. What was stirring in the mind of this young girl who was walking along the snow-covered, dark streets of the Soviet capital on her way to the art studio after school? About what was she dreaming? About the colors of exotic orchids that were nowhere to be found at that time in the USSR? About fabrics that were so light and transparent that they would be impossible to hold? Happily for us, the contemporary fans of Masha Ginsburg’s art, this artistic sensibility has never left her. Today she fearlessly, relentlessly dreams and works ever so intensively.

Since 1990 Masha Ginsburg has lived and worked in Berlin, Germany. Here in the West her work has not only been noticed—it has created a sensation at exhibitions in the best art galleries of Berlin and New York and on the pages of the most renowned fashion magazines. In 2004 Masha was accepted into the German Union of Artists. Today she frequently travels in order to continue to nourish her unique talent with fresh impressions and experiences, and she continues to dream.

Sometimes in the US people use the term “eye candy” when they want to describe something that is pleasing on the eyes. Yet in my opinion, this expression does not completely capture Masha’s art, for words alone cannot describe the silky airiness of her creations; you catch yourself almost being afraid to touch her scarves and shawls for fear that they will vanish right before your eyes. Perhaps these are not really flowers at all, but rather live, tropical butterflies ready to take flight into a sky that is as azure as the weightless silk on which the flowers appear. Are we sleeping? Is this a dream?