Of Sirens and Secret Stories
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She was tucked away underneath a trestle table brimming with baskets and china, bittersweet and corn husks spilling from inside decorative bowls. It was the annual Fall Rural Society Antique and Garden Show, which takes place on a farm that had been glammed up to be welcoming to rich ruralites who want a rustic barn venue with glam chandeliers overhead for their children’s weddings. I always anticipated going to the event each autumn; a plethora of vendors had tents and booths filled with curated antiques and autumn gourds and berries, all beautifully displayed to thrill any aesthetically-minded person. Most of the items at the event were priced to suit the deep pocketbooks of the average attendee, but I delighted in trying to find the hidden bargains, the odd pieces with secret stories.
She waited for me under that trestle table in the upstairs of the barn, precarious floors wobbling as shoppers perused the pewter pots and wooden farm crates propped up in artistic vigettes. She leaned against the side of a box, half hidden in shadow. As I bent down to look at her, lifting her up to see better, my heart instantly fluttered. She spoke to me so loudly that I cradled her in my arms. I turned to my husband to show him what I’d found, waiting impatiently for him to finish petting the farm dog. I couldn’t believe what I had found: a true treasure. I had instantly known that I had to take her home with me, no matter the price, but I flipped her ornate gilt frame over and was shocked all over again to read the price: $25.
Meticulously hand-stitched embroidery covered the entirety of the framed fabric, forming the shape of what I instantly suspected was a siren. She appeared to be standing on the edge of a cliff as the ocean foam crashed around her, her arms outstretched. I looked closer and saw what appeared to be a tail at her feet. I wasn’t sure who she was, but I knew she was old, she was magic, and I was instinctively drawn to her in a way I couldn’t explain.
I clutched her to me, trying and failing to repress my euphoric glee, as we meandered through the upstairs to the checkout counter. The girl behind the counter didn’t even look at what I was buying, just dutifully copied down the words from the tag onto a receipt and took my credit card. And then she was mine.
I took photos of her as soon as I came home, and shared them on my Facebook page, and in the “Mythic Café with Charles de Lint” Facebook group. I immediately started to dig away at finding out more about her. Was that a tail at her feet? Was she a siren or a sphinx? A few people suggested she could be Andromeda, with the sea serpent’s tentacle at her feet. After an hour or two, someone proposed that they thought that the “tail” was actually an anchor. When I looked closer, I realized they were absolutely right: it was an anchor draped in a sail. I also noticed she had what were either flowers or sea stars wrapped around her arms.
Several hours after that, I received a message to my Facebook from my friend Katherine Evergreen. She had done some searching through online art resources for keywords, and she had found the painting that inspired my unknown embroiderer to create her artwork. The sales post (long since sold) for what appears to be the actual original painting just described it as “Dramatic Old Oil Painting of a Woman By the Sea, Signed Delong.” I was no closer to finding out who she was supposed to be, but looking at the original made it clear that she was not standing on a cliff, but by a rock, hands outstretched, with an anchor at her feet, and lilies on her arms. My friend Sarah Elizabeth then found a print of the Delong painting on eBay described as “Antique 1920s” (I still argue it looks more like 1900-1910s) “Art Nouveau Pin-Up Print Moonlit Sea Nymph Andromeda Very Fine.” Clearly that seller hadn’t a clue who she was either and was hedging his bets with a cornucopia of descriptive terms.
A couple of other interesting theories emerged. Maybe she was Miranda from The Tempest. My friend Larissa proposed she could be Saint Philomena, who is depicted with lilies and an anchor. Heather Freyja Rose Lofthouse suggested that the goddess Laetitia is often depicted with an anchor and picked flowers as well. Another suggestion was that “Hope” was often personified in paintings as a woman with flowers and an anchor as well. So many ideas. But it ultimately doesn’t matter: she is a siren to me. As soon as I saw her, my first thought was siren, and she called to me from her forgotten spot below a trestle table. Even though it’s very likely that one of the above theories is absolutely true, she will remain a siren in my heart.
Quite honestly, I love my embroidery far more than the original inspiration art. It felt like the embroiderer took this painting of a meek and tranquil maiden, possibly even a saint, and gave her teeth, so to speak. The mottled colors of my embroidered maiden’s hair almost looked leonine, or like the wing I originally thought it was. She was a woman transformed, transforming, caught in a moment of private ecstasy, eyes wild as she gazed out at the stormy sea. And who was this mysterious embroiderer who took a painting of a mild-mannered girl and turned her into magic? What was she thinking as she stitched every small detail? The evening I first brought her home, I took my phone light and looked closely at every inch of the piece. The thread was masterfully thicker in certain areas to create depth, the stitch patterns of similar colored fabrics altered to make it clear what was stone and what was hair, what was skin and what was sky. I cannot even fathom how much time and heart investment this piece represented for my mysterious thread artist.
A couple of years ago, I found a beautiful framed artwork made from pressed flowers and leaves, forming the words “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” by Keats, my favorite poet. The artwork was for sale at the same event, and was sitting in virtually the exact same place where I found my siren. I had also been ecstatic to find it, but as I looked closer I noticed the art had gotten water stained, which was not so big a deal, and had started molding, which was. With massive amounts of reluctance, I left it there. But I have now found my thing of beauty that will be my joy forever. I truly feel that this siren was a gift to me, found in the same place I had lost a previous treasure, here to remind me of my own teeth, my own strength, my own ability to withstand what storms might come.
