Baby's Easter Basket from 1894

I found this tiny article for the making of an Easter basket for an infant in a newspaper from 1894. The idea is sweet, however, some of you may wish to update it a bit. Apparently, you can still purchase violet powder from The Williamsburg Marketplace.

A Charming Little Gift Which Unites Utility and Beauty.

      This is a delightful gift to the little one, combining as it does utility and beauty. Take a small basket and gild it. Make small rosettes of pink or blue baby ribbon and sew them around the edge and over the handle as shows. 

      Fill the basket with white swan's-down cotton and place the prepared eggs, one on either side.

      To prepare the eggs make small holes in the ends and expel the contents by blowing. When empty and dry fill with violet powder. Cover the ends with perforated white court-plaster. pasted on neatly, making the perforations with a shoe-punch.

      A powder puff tied to the handle adds to the effectiveness. The powder can be dusted on the tender flesh from the egg and "smoothed down" by means of the puff.

Raven Gates Gottschalk shares ideas for 

a baby's first Easter basket and gifts.

A-Tisket, A Tasket, A Green and Yellow Basket

      This green and yellow Easter basket was made with inexpensive white paper plates, tissue paper, ruffled cup cake liners and a bit of lacy, green ribbon. I've included below the sequence for folding and stapling the basket together. Prior to this step, I glued fancy tissue paper onto my paper plates. You can use white school glue or Mod Podge for this step. I also hot glued yellow, ruffled, paper liners to the edges of the paper plates before stapling these together. The handle was stapled on at the very end of the process. This is very simple and inexpensive way to craft large quantities of Easter baskets. The project would also be an excellent one for those of you who celebrate May Day.

      Click on the photo to see it larger. The basket may be stapled together with only three staples. These paper plate baskets can be mass produced by art teachers, classroom teachers or Sunday school teachers for little ones to decorate however they wish. These are very affordable alternatives to what you might end up purchasing elsewhere. These paper basket versions are also quite durable!

Spring by Jane Smith, (11 years old)
Spring is the merriest time of year,
When children usually are full of cheer,
And flowers bloom and birds all sing-
That is the way it is in the spring.

Miniature Lily Bouquets

These tiny Easter lilies are made from clay.

These tiny lilies are made from foam.

I made these miniature lily bouquets to tie to my Easter tree. After purchasing a few wired lilies from the wedding craft departments in a local hobby shop, I wrapped their stems together with buff pink, organza ribbon.

Hang holy cards or prayer cards from your Easter tree

      In the Catholic tradition, holy cards or prayer cards are small, devotional pictures mass-produced for the use of the faithful. They typically depict a religious scene or a saint in an image about the size of a playing card. The reverse typically contains a prayer, some of which promise an indulgence for its recitation. The circulation of these cards is an important part of the visual folk culture of Roman Catholics. 

      Old master prints, nearly all on religious subjects, served many of the same functions as holy cards, especially the cheaper woodcuts; the earliest dated surviving example is from 1423, probably from southern Germany, and depicts Saint Christopher, with handcoloring, it is found as part of the binding of a manuscript of the Laus Virginis (1417) which belongs to the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Later engraving or etching were more commonly used. Some had elaborate borders of paper lace surrounding the images; these were called dévotes dentelles in France. 

I hang prayer cards amongst many other lightweight items
from my Easter trees. Poke a tiny holewith a needle at the top
of the card and then string a fine gold thread through it for hanging.
Prayer cards come in infinite variety and either have classic
prayer, poems or scripture printed on the reverse side.
I am relatively selective about the types of messages
printed on the reverse sides of prayer cards because I
am a Protestant. Most of the prayers are common to
Christians of many different denominations and church
histories. I think I purchased these for approx. 50 cents each.

      The invention of color lithography made it possible to reproduce colored images cheaply, leading to a much broader circulation of the cards. An early center of their manufacture was in the environs of the Church of St Sulpice in Paris; the lithographed images made there were done in delicate pastel colors, and proved extremely influential on later designs. Belgium and Germany also became centers of the manufacture of holy cards, as did Italy in the twentieth century. Catholic printing houses (such as Maison de la Bonne Presse in France and Ars Sacra in Germany) produced large numbers of cards, and often a single design was printed by different companies in different countries. 

      Special holy cards are printed for Roman Catholics to be distributed at funerals; these are "In memoriam cards", with details and often a photograph of the person whom they commemorate as well as prayers printed on the back. Other specialized holy cards record baptisms, confirmations, and other religious anniversaries. Others are not customized, and are circulated to promote the veneration of the saints and images they bear. 

A Protestant tract full of beautifully,
elaborate images, not lacking in professional
execution in the least. Visitors here are
more than welcome to print and use this tract, I
have cleaned it for this very purpose.

      At the end of the nineteenth century, some Protestants attempted to answer these Roman Catholic images with similar images of their own. They produced Bible cards or Sunday school cards, with lithographed illustrations depicting Bible stories and parables, more modern scenes of religious life or prayer, or sometimes just a Biblical text illuminated by calligraphy; these were linked to Biblical passages that related to the image. The reverse typically held a sermonette instead of a prayer. Imagery here was always the servant of text, and as such these Protestant cards tended to be replaced by tracts that emphasized message instead of imagery, and were illustrated with cartoon-like images if they were illustrated at all. (This author is a little misinformed about Protestant graphic history. I've include here a entire Protestant religious tract produced during the end of the nineteenth century. The artist was very skilled and the message quite appropriately delivered. cough.)

The Butterfly

The Butterfly

I saw a little four-year-old

Out in the grass at play:

He watched a little patch of sun

That came and danced away.

And suddenly his eyes lit up,

He gave a little cry

And clapped his hands in wild de-

light--

He saw a butterfly.

He followed it and tried to catch 

The wonder in his hands;

It flitted on ahead of him

Across the clover-lands.

Again and yet again he tried,

It always flew away,

And let him lonely when the sun

Had vanished from the day.

And through the night the little

lad

Would clutch his hands and cry

Out from his dreams, "Oh, come

to me,

Bright little butterfly."

And this is life with you and me,

Children we are who run

To chase some wonder-spangled

thing

That glistens in the sun.

And when night comes out empty

hands

Clutch at glad dreams that

creep

Up through the silence and the

dark

to shine across our sleep.

* * * *

A baby wishes to kiss this monarch butterfly; she is so sweet.