Local Shop For Local People

Today you have a picture of my local Spanish shop window display, although I say display in the loosest sense of the word. This shop in fact sells everything from cheese to hair dye, from shoes to hams, and formaldehyde to rat poison. And their two shop front windows, the fist one shown here, are always worth a picture.

Whoever does this display obviously feels they have some authority on window dressing, as illustrated by the utter exuberance of the collection on show. The carefully crafted paper-quill bees I think are probably what this window is about, however to say that they are the lynchpin of this assorted display is probably going too far.

The multi paper card leaning up at the back crops up in almost every window display they do, all I can say is there must be a real demand for rah-rah gingham edging and silk bullion cord in this village. NB The three strips of curling patterned paper are purely there for window dressing purposes.

The theme I think is that of the needle and thread. The clever zip display, the balls of knitting wool and the embroidery haberdashery all sit well with the lace and the needles in packets. But what are those two scraps in the front, they literally look like a couple of leftovers off the gold and silver lame braid roll. It is obviously so expensive they could only snip off a couple of centimeters, it?s not like it fades (mores the pity)!

The same restraint is not in evidence with the hosiery addition to the window, we clearly have opened packets on show here; and this is where the window begins to fall apart. In fact all these windows (and I have been snapping them for a while) have some random element to them. In this case it is definitely the half insoles that are the odd ones out here. I wonder if maybe the button cupboard was off limits to the dresser, but then she would have never been able to follow those strict rules of structure and flow with buttons and the manikin's leg does lend a sense of reality and authority to the window.

Tomorrow I will show you the other window and if you think this one is odd, well just you wait!