Posts Tagged ‘glass floats’
decorating for Christmas #4
Decorating in our house involves some cleaning and maintenance since I do not keep up with housework through the year. One of the things I do for Christmas is shine our basket of glass floats.
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Glass floats were once used to keep the edges of fishing nets buoyant and you can buy new floats as well as antiques. They are beautiful and come in many festive colours. I consider them a Christmas decoration because of their beauty, because they remind me of stained glass and because my Mom and Dad gave me at least one of the green glass floats in my collection. I used to keep them on top of the piano, but I have copied my niece who keeps hers in a basket by her wood stove. When I visited my niece a few years ago, I drew her collection of floats and wrote a poem about them.
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glass floats
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the fog’s still glow
penetrates glass
and air incorporated
an age ago
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weightless, flamboyant
on salt water
swell
~
glass inflation
tethered by hemp
on an ocean
whipped to froth
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
eight days – glass floats
In days before plastic and styrofoam, fishermen used glass and wood to make floats to keep their nets buoyant.
These floats are colorful symbols of the people who make their livelihood from the sea. In fishing communities in the Maritimes, we often see fences and walls festooned with painted wooden floats and buoys.
Glass floats are rarer because they are so breakable. At home, my Dad’s collection of sea shells was always accompanied by a couple of glass floats he found at auctions. On my piano, I have a small collection of glass floats in my favorite color, green.
The tradition lives into the next generation… when I visited my family in Ontario for eight days, earlier this month, I was delighted to see a basket of variously-colored glass floats on the hearth of the wood stove.
~
~
glass floats
~
the fog’s still glow
penetrates glass
and air incorporated
an age ago
~
weightless, flamboyant
on salt water
swell
~
glass inflation
tethered by hemp
on an ocean
whipped to froth
~
~
© Jane Tims 2012
