Something About Nothing by Julie Seedorf

Alabastine.  I will say it again, Alabastine. I believe that word would make an awesome name for a character in one of my books, but the word Alabastine is not a person.

I was searching for an old vintage card to post on my website. When I need something vintage or antique I pour through the memorabilia that I have from my mom. I have a feeling she kept every card she ever received, because while emptying out her house, I found them. I had a hard time parting with some of the cards. It was so hard in fact, I kept them.  I kept the 1920s and 1930s cards from Valentine’s Day, Christmas, birthdays, etc. The vintage cards from that era were unique.

As I poured through her card collection I came upon an old brochure. It caught my eye because it was pretty and printed on quality paper. The brochure was from the Alabastine Company. It highlighted the product, Water Color for Walls. Inside the brochure were samples of color. I have never heard of Alabastine, probably because I am not a paint connoisseur.

I curiously wondered about a company that describes their product on their brochure as artistic, sanitary, lasting and economical wall coating. The words artistic and sanitary aren’t usually used together when describing wall color. The brochure promised the consumer that Alabastine can be obtained by anyone on this earth, no matter where they are located. Do you suppose they had a direct line to Antarctica if someone wanted Alabastine in the 1920s? According to the brochure it was sold in nearly every town in the United States. I wondered if Alabastine was sold in Matawan back then. I must admit I would have bought Alabastine strictly because of the cute brochure. It was very artistic.

Antiquehomestyle.com describes Alabastine as a wall coating derived from gypsum that was mined from shale beds around Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Alabastine Company itself was organized in New York in 1879 by Melvin B. Church. The paint was a base of calcined gypsum which took the place of calimine in wall coatings and finish. Church himself was an inventor and formulated the paint. A little note to my readers — you are going to have to do your own research on calcined gypsum and calamine if you don’t know what they are because I want you to have the curiosity of a cat.

I read with interest the directions for mixing Alabastine. For every five-pound package you needed to measure out four pints of cold, hot or warm water, which it explains is a quart. That was good to know for those of you who are like me: math challenged. I guess the water temperature didn’t make a difference; they wanted you to go with whatever you were feeling that day. Some days we do blow hot or cold with our moods.

The directions reminded me of mixing plaster because you were not to mix it too thin so it would be a wash. Antiquehomestyle.com did mention it is somewhat like Venetian plaster. I would have liked Alabastine because I love applying Venetian plaster.

We are lucky today we do not have to heat and boil water when we want to apply our paint. The directions for Alabastine state that the best decorators and painters generally appreciate the saving in time by not having to heat the water to the boiling point and waiting for the materials to cool before applying. It’s too bad they didn’t have microwaves in the 1920s to heat water faster for their paint!

I have to tell you what drew me in on the brochure to get me to take a look at it. On the cover is a bedroom painted in blue, adorned with pink curtains and pink furniture. The pink will get me every time.

I must admit this is all I know about this product. It was a lark to look up, but I can’t tell you heavier details such as whether it was hazardous or not. I didn’t go that far into it. I also do not know if it is available today. Again if you are curious and want to educate us more, it’s up to you to find the little snippets that will satisfy your curiosity.

I hope Alabastine is a new word today for you to research.  It is a little bit of nothing for a subject in the midst of winter. As I write this the sun is under the clouds and Mother Nature is spitting snow. The something in the midst of a subject that no one may care about is this; if you look hard enough in the midst of a winter day when it is hard to keep your spirits up, you can always find the pink and unusual if you look hard enough. It might be in the place you least expect it and right where you are planted in the moment in any given place. Have a fuchsia day.

 

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send email to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net. Her Facebook page is www.facebook.com/sprinklednotes.