October 1, 2009

Industry Standard: Hudson Bay Blankets

Hudson Bay blankets are a bit like The Godfather trilogy or Bob Dylan's oeuvre, if you look hard enough, you can relate them to everything. They're available in lots of colors but the classic is white with a green, red, yellow and indigo stripe on each end and then "points". The points look like tally marks near one corner of the blanket and the greater the number of marks, or points, the larger the blanket. The Hudson Bay Company's website is a wealth of information and even has "Blanket Tales" submitted by Hudson Bay owners over the years. I don't own one but I'm told that they stay forever young, which, judging by the number of vintage ones available isn't hard to believe.

Most of all the blanket is versatile. I can think of few things that would look equally at ease flug over the shoulder of the requisite bear skin coat clad sidekick that "goes to the mattresses" in a movie about the Gold Rush or the early American fur trade; as it would draped over the back of a Rietveld chair in some design junkie's well-curated California Case Study house.

Even Lux Lisbon of The Virgin Suicides uses hers as shelter from the storm (in the book only, not the movie):
"Through the bronchioles of leafless elm branches, from the Pit Zenberger's attic, we finally made out Lux's face as she sat wrapped in a Hudson's Bay blanket, smoking a cigarette..."
- The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides

1 comment:

  1. Hi,

    Thanks for sharing useful information on hudson bay blankets.

    When buying items like fur blankets you should be wary of stores or sellers that are willing to sell such item at a very low price.

    ReplyDelete

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