Picture This by GPP

The festive season is upon us. I visited a Christmas crafts fair and discovered that at this time of the year, excruciating bad taste overcomes artsy/crafty folk all over the world. Some people call these objects “collectibles.” I prefer the term bric-a-crap.

Take your pick.

From Bridget Reilly wannabes, to a potter whose bowl any surgeon with a hemorrhaging patient would appreciate.

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I found semi life-sized, semi-dressed figures of Pierrot or maybe Pierrette, pirate, skeleton and a green topless female.

Some animals were bigger than toddlers.

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Follow the jump for more images.

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There were underpants (for men? for women?) with explicit messages.

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I beheld a (flower) pot holder that surely belongs in a laboratory for exotic diseases.

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A mink Christmas tree.

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For $15 I could have bought, but didn’t, a pillow case dress. Whether it was a dress made out of a pillow case or a pillow case made out of a dress remains a mystery.

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For good measure a tie-dyed romper suit that someone born in the Seventies would wear if he never grew up.

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I have no idea what the cuckoo-clocky wall things are.

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Knitters were rife. There was a bag so ugly, it needed another bag to put it in, and some truly scary bearded scarves.

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The historian James Laver observed that when women put down their knitting needles they opened the gates of neurotics. He was wrong.

Give me some healthy neurosis with good taste.

Written by: Gladys Perint Palmer

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