LODGEPODGE // In the 1950s and ‘60s, wooden plaques displaying silk-screened images of birds and wildlife were a popular Canadian décor choice, often gracing the walls of hunting and fishing lodges, tourist cabins and other such rustic locales.

The product of painstaking craftsmanship and labour-intensive silk-screening processes, the images that adorn these objects appear remarkably fresh, detailed and life-like, even to the digitally attuned eye. To apply these wonderful images to the plaques, each would first be illustrated by hand, then transferred via a photographic negative/positive method to a number of silk screens. Often, up to six screens would be used, each with its own special ink colour. These would then be assembled by skilled craftsmen, laying down all six colours in perfect register, to create the almost hyper-realistic images that make these plaques so unique today.

Recently, Fugitive Glue discovered a source for these prized images, in the form of original, unassembled, 1960s-vintage silk-screen press sheets, die-cut and still stored in their original shipping boxes.Purchased from a collector in the small Ontario village of Havelock, these rare items are being given new life by our designers, who have encased the images in shadow boxes, adding up-cycled and out-of-print bits of wallpaper hearkening back to very different way of life – and a very different way of creating art.