I grew up Catholic. Didn't convert to the morg until I was an adult. My mom and her suburban friends had a bowl of fake plastic fruit in the middle of the dining table. No biggie. Just part of the atmosphere.

But I heard that, back-in-the-day, Mormon Mommies had a set of those plastic/resin/glass grapes??? And weren't those fabulous works of art created at some equally-fabulous RS Homemaking night?

So did your mom have the grapes showcased on her table? Spill it.

;o)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 07:25PM by shannon.

But the RS president did! (My mom was her 2nd counselor for nearly a decade.) They were on her dining room table, not the kitchen table table her family actually ate at.

One of my wife's great-uncles learned to make them in the 1960's. He continued making them until almost he died in the mid 1990's. If I understand correctly he made a set as a wedding gift for every cousin, niece, nephew, great-niece, or great nephew who got married.

Those grapes, or so I've been told, were a very popular Relief Society project back in the day, but non-Mormons in some places made them as well. my mother-in-law told me they were a fad in her part of Florida in the late 1960's when she was a very young child, but that their popularity faded. the waning popularity didn't stop my wife's great uncle, though. He kept cranking the things out until about 1995.

And, I think later we got a second set at the Deseret Industries. :)

Ours were blue.

In the 60's in Oregon you would see these in almost every Mormon home.

Yep! Mom made hers in RS along with everyone else. I remember how they stunk and I believe that resin was pretty toxic back in the day.

Also, I've mentioned this before, but very near the Eugene Or Mahlon Sweet Airport there is a house that is completely covered in them as decoration! I giggle every time I see it!

No, but one year everyone got a pink poodle made out of wire hangars and dry cleaning plastic bags died pink!

Orange and gold. Sat on top of the piano for years. Might still be there for all I know. (and I lived in Oregon :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 07:52PM by madalice.

My mom and many of the TBM female relatives made the things. We had a bunch on the dining room table for many years. Hmm--wonder what ever happened to them.

Were-they-contributed-to-Deseret-Industries-ly yrs,

S

schweizerkind Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My mom and many of the TBM female relatives made
> the things. We had a bunch on the dining room
> table for many years. Hmm--wonder what ever
> happened to them.
>
> Were-they-contributed-to-Deseret-Industries-ly
> yrs,
>
> S


Hey SWK always good-ly to see yas.

At least they went to worthily cause. :o)

Ours were amber. My grandmother had green and red, my aunt had purple. Now that I think about it, every one had some!

For some reason I remember red glass strawberries.

Not my mom... but just about everybody else - extended family and friends.

A bunch of a single color clustered together like grapes, set on a mirror, with a C-7 bulb (aka the old christmas tree light) underneath them.

The ultimate boulders... in marbles-speak.

I grew up in a 70s/80s era TBM household. We had old resin fruit which my mom had made in Homemaking before she had too many kids to be able to go...

Resin fruit made a reappearance a few years ago as an ironic hipster craft in The Meeting Formerly Known as Homemaking, but it never became a full-fledged Molly Mormon craze again as far as I know.

as decoration in her house.

And she was an attentive hostess.

Ah! I was thinking about that book/movie yesterday. This has been a long, cold winter.

We had some faux grapes on the dining room table when I was a child in the 1970's. But...

1) We weren't mormon
2) The grapes were soft and squishy with some sort of powdery texture on them. As a little girl I remember having a fascination with squishing them.

Oh I remember those too! They would make a whooshing noise when you squished them.

Yes! :-)

Oh, yes, my mother had some on the dining room table for years. I had a co-worker who knew I was mormon (she was not) and she asked me once if those bunches of grapes had some doctrinal significance in the mormon church. When I looked puzzled by her question, she mentioned that she saw them in nearly every mormon home she had ever been in. hahahaha

We lived in the wilds of northern California and my mom had them. They were solid as rocks and were a deep blue. I thought that they were cool.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1152&bih=769&q=glass+grapes&oq=glass+grapes&gs_l=img.3..0l4j0i5l6.699.3952.0.4194.14.13.1.0.0.0.102.1039.12j1.13.0....0...1ac.1.37.img..2.12.857.r8dcbgimjrY

My wife's mom has a dark purple set. The great-uncle gave each bride-to-be a choice between purple and green. This was in south Florida. The great-uncle was a Cuban immigrant.

My mom avoided all grape themed decorations. She considered them too close to wine. Sour grapes I guess. :)

Both of my southern grandmothers had the decorative grapes, if I recall correctly. One TBM, one nevermo. I assumed it was generational.

The grapes were perfect, flawless spheres, and I think it was the flawlessness that appealed to Mormons.

You made them by pouring resin into smallish glass Christmas ornament balls that had had the hooks removed. After the resin hardened, you cracked the glass and peeled the ornament off the resin.

I was wondering how they made them.

Get a good look at these beauties! http://www.ebay.com/bhp/vintage-resin-grapes

Yeah, eventually those grapes got given out to us kids to play marbles with. We used to call them "clackers." :)

Clackers, yes! We had something we called clackers, but they were two of those large resin balls, each at the the end if a long string that you held at the top and clacked together. The sound of everyone clacking at recess was deafening.

I think those grapes must have been universally popular back then; many of my nevermo friends' moms had them gathering dust in their dining rooms.

My mom made the Amber colored grapes; they co-ordinated beautifully with our lovely 70's home decor. The grapes now reside in my family room; it's a sentimental thing.

OMG, yes! I'm not sure what happened to my mother's but I do remember them from when I was a kid. But my (ex)mother-in-law had hers on the corner table for as long as I can remember. At least until we divorced. I thought it was just something our ward did.

Who among us knoweth where the grapes of craft are stored?

Everyone on our street had those, TBMs and non-TBMs. I think it was just a sickening style like shag carpeting.

They would probably go quite well with a Tuscan style decor, or perhaps right next to the wine cellar.

Back in the day one of my mother's non-LDS acquaintances asked her if plastic grapes had some sort of Mormon religious significance. I kid you not.