Flickr Favourites: August 10, 2013

{Summer 1909 - Frank W Benson ~ MyLiliesMyLo}

{Blue and white china ~ The Old Blue Shed}

{Montgomery Ward Summer 1942 ~ vintagestitches}

{Summer skies ~ wolvessss}

{Ready For The Regatta (1937) ~ paul.malon}

{Bellas Hess & Co. Spring and Summer 1919 Catalogue No.87 ~ vintagestitches}

{Basinful of Fun No. 20 ~ Print and Pulp}

{Liam ~ ~Romantic~Vintage Home~}

{Wakes Spring-Summer 1948-49 ~ nettness}

{Lace on shelf ~ Romantic Home}

{All images above are from Flickr. To learn more about a specific image, please click on its title to be taken to its respective Flickr page.}

♥ ♥ ♥

There is something about these lava hot days of August that seem to perpetually put me in the mood for either wildly vibrant, deeply saturated colours of the sort one might extract from a tropical flower garden or, alternatively, for a palette that is gentle, elegant and nearly devoid of hue, save for a few splashes of relaxing blue.

The Edwardians were experts on the later, in my opinion. Most ladies of the day (especially during the 1910s) had at least one solid white cotton and/or lace ensemble to sport while the mercury shot its way through the stratosphere. Women, men and children alike were experts on pale summer wardrobes - a look which was no doubt influenced at least in part by the Victorian and Edwardian tradition of taking a summer holiday (or spending the whole season there, if one had the means) at the beach, far away from the maddening heat and crowds of life in the city.

Penticton is a town built in no small part on, and around, the tourism industry, and each year from early June to Labour Day, the local population temporarily swells to well over double it's usual number (of around 32,000), so the locals aren’t treated to that same kind of “escapism” luxury, but we do still get to live in a town that boasts not one, but two, gorgeous lakes and some of the finest summer weather Canada has to offer.

Most tourists these days don bikinis and board shorts, and I can't recall ever seeing anyone at the beach in a snow white tea gown, but I love the very notion of this kind of romantic, turn of the century summer style and the colour scheme that it entails.

Presently I'm in the mood for the softer shades of August - the hues that are akin to an icy blast from a powerful electric fan, and which sing of serenity and taking things nice and slow. Be they Edwardian or from later in the century (right up to the present day), I love whitewashed, mellow, gentle summer shades of dusty cream, aged ivory, vanilla ice cream white, and blues spanning from whisper soft to rich, inky navy.

This palette can go in a nautical direction (befitting Penticton's lakes) or call to mind anything from a day spent on the ski hill to the weathered, flaking paint on the wrap-around deck of an early twentieth century country farm house. It's sweet, innocent, comforting and more than a little ideal for days so very warm, you almost forget a season known as winter even exists at all.

It does though, but it's still a long, long ways off for most, and that means we need to avail of every possible source of refreshing coolness we can get our paws on, starting with the ten timelessly lovely images included in today's edition of Flickr Favourites.

They might not make you feel quite as chilly as rolling around in a snow bank would, but I hope they'll bring a little bit of much needed relief from August's sizzling sun your way on this fine Thursday morning.