From Ephemera, Susan Schneider Crafts Her Own Sister Project

By Margaret Roach

Matchboxes and tissue-box covers decoupaged with sistery ephemera.

THE SISTER PROJECT ON THIS PAGE STARTED WITH A LAMPSHADE. True. I brought a lamp in need of a new shade in to a local shop called Shandell’s, where owner Susan Schneider makes custom shades and other things out of vintage and vintage-inspired papers and fabrics. In the process of picking material to recover my shade, I caught a glimpse of Susan’s treasure trove of ephemera—things collected over 20 years by this self-professed “packrat”—and thought wow, what a sister story some of the bits could probably tell. I guess I said it out loud, and my offhand remark got Susan thinking.

Schneider's studio is stuffed with her vintage bits and bobs.

“My hunt for sisters in my drawers at the studio and at home started right then,” Susan recalls. “I came across a large box of scrapbooks that I have carried around for nearly 20 years, ones I bought on the field of Todd Farm, a flea market in Massachusetts. There are volumes of books with snippets of paper articles, illustrations, just about everything you could imagine, dating from the early 1900′s thru the 1950′s.”

Part of a page from the treasured old scrapbooks she bought.

New York City-born, Jersey-raised Susan isn’t close to her two genetic siblings—a younger brother and sister—but says she has been lucky to find “non-blood sisters, girlfriends that I can call at anytime that make me laugh even when I am sad.” So once she found the box of treasures, Susan says, she searched through it for pictures of women smiling together.

Susan Schneider in her workshop.

“I do not know if they are sisters by blood, but they must be sisters of some kind,” she says of the chosen images. Before long, the hunt widened. At the town dump (Susan is a regular at the “swap shop” there) another element of the eventual project—various covered boxes, for tissues and matches and such, merged with “my own version of decoupage,” she says—revealed itself:

“I walked in and there was a huge stack of antique dictionaries, some so old I do not know what they are. I remember my Grandma reading dictionaries like books; she always had one on her nightstand. The dictionaries were the perfect thing to use in my sister project; the graphics and fonts are wonderful.” Some copied pieces of pages are used in the boxes below, for sale at her shop and at Shandell’s on Etsy.

Then at a fall antique show, another big score: Susan walked the show all day, on a hunt for vintage sister pictures for her project. “It was hit and miss, until the next-to last aisle: pay dirt—a booth with an amazing collection of vintage photos.”

Old photos, dictionary pages and scrapbook bits merged.

While looking through hundreds of pictures, she says, “I stopped and wondered about these people, about the next generation that will not have this to look at, as we have become a digital society. Part of me cried.

“I thought about the sister closeness I do not have, all of the sisters I have found, and was honored to buy these pictures to share. As I looked through them, the women whose booth I was in said: ‘I am thrilled to see you smile; that has made my day.’ ”

Susan’s parents came from two different worlds, she says: “my father from Polish immigrants and my mom came from England; my mom Protestant and my dad Jewish.”

Her father died when she was 13 and it wasn’t long before the nearby horse barn became her emotional home, she says—“The other girls and the horses, we all had the same four-legged love that has not left me.”

Susan's beloved Jacks.

Susan left home at 17 to go ride and work on a farm. “My favorite subjects in school were art and home ec, and I applied myself to those. The rest, not so much.  School was not for me—horses and dogs was everything; I could not get enough.”

She always loved old things, too, and wondering how things were made and by whom. “I started sewing at an early age, partly inspired by my grandfather, my father’s father, who was a tailor who would make our winter coats. My name—Schneider—means tailor in German.

“We had this wonderful live-in housekeeper when I grew up, Merci, who made our clothes. Her room was right next to mine. I would watch her cut and sew from no pattern, like second nature. She made a pair of dresses for me and my sister in yellow Swiss dot. I can still seem them: I had a square yolk and my sister’s was round, both with all these pleats and ruffles. I cannot remember where we wore this dresses for, but such a clear memory otherwise.”

THE TSP INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN SCHNEIDER

A matchbox covered in an image of sisterly reflection.

Q. Fill in the blank: You know you’re a sister when…?

A. “With my sister-friends, it’s this: Just seeing them makes you smile, nothing they do seems to ever piss you off.  It is just them, and it is okay. They are there any time of the day or night. Women have this amazing connection, so different from what men have, I really think the men are jealous. There is something about the relationship between two women that cannot be explained; maybe it is our common hormones that makes us understand each other.”

Meanings of 'sister' from old dictionary pages.

Q. What does the word “sister” mean to you?

A. “It’s okay to be you. Your guard is never up, you do not have to walk on eggshells around them. They make life worthwhile; without them, it would be empty. Even if I have not spoken to a sister-friend for a while, when we speak it is like yesterday.”

Susan's favorite: pictures of sisters washing their hair.

Q. Are there any pop culture or cultural references that make you think of your sister or sister-friend?

A. “The Brady Bunch came into my head first. After my father died, my Mom married a man with three kids. The total was six of us: three girls and three boys. We were nothing alike; we were wild compared to them.”

Q. Are there any worst-of/best-of sister tales you want to share?

A. “The best sister memory I have was a day at the beach with my mom, sister, stepsister and me.  We went to Point Pleasant, New Jersey, and sat on the beach, walked and bought bracelets—ones that I still have. We had a chick day; it was great.”

Q. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned from your “sister” experience?

A. “My sister-friends are my family. The internet has opened a whole new world of them, and I have found sisters from all over who love unconditionally, that simply amazes me. I thank them all.”

THE TSP GALLERY OF SUSAN’S SISTER PROJECT

From the bits from her own collection, the dump and antique shows, Susan made the boxes, all the while wondering who those now-familiar yet unknown faces are.

“I wonder how they may have helped shape our lives. It was important to me to find photos with smiling sisters—though I do not even know if they are real sisters, but that does not matter as I have found out. This has been a good journey for me.”

Click on the first thumbnail to start the show, then toggle from slide to slide using the arrows by the caption. Enjoy Susan’s own sister project!

FIND SUSAN SCHNEIDER:

• At her website: Shandell’s dot com

• In her online store: Shandell’s on Etsy

• In her studio and retail store: Shandell’s is housed in a century-old building at Route 22 and Route 44, at 5916 North Elm Avenue, Millerton, New York, 12546. (518) 789-6603. Custom orders using your own ephemera are welcome, including, of course, lampshades.

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