This wonderful bandana with a Hopewell Valley map is by Ann Gross, and dated 1974.
The map features our major places, roads, and rivers, and is decorated with fun illustrations of life in the valley, ranging across farms and barns, cows and birds, kids fishing and biking, skiers and golfers and painters, and even two kinds of airplanes.
It also shows some local places that are no longer with us, including Western Electric, Hopewell Valley Golf Club, Twin Pine Airport, and the Belle Mountain Ski Area in Lambertville.
== View Ann Gross artwork in the Image Gallery ==
Ann Gross
Ann Gross lived in Pennington and created local prints from around the 1960s through the 1990s. She was born in Schenectady New York, was a graduate of Smith College and Pratt institute, studied graphics at the New School in New York City, and was a commercial artist in New York for 10 years.
The Friends of the Pennington Library used her print of old North Main Street for a fundraiser:
“Artist Ann Gross was a beloved and involved Pennington resident for many years. She supported the community wholeheartedly with her time and talents! Ann was a master printmaker; the original artwork used for this Pennington Public Library edition was a handpulled silkscreen print that required two separate screens. The first edition consisted of only fifty handmade prints and sold out almost immediately.”
Other Art
When she lived in Pennington, Gross created many popular small editions of etchings, lithographs and serigraphs of local scenes.
Three of these are shared on the History Project, thanks to local contributors:
- “Main Street, Pennington” – 2016 edition for the Pennington Public Library
- “Pennington” – Montage – with map, Main Street, and iconic buildings, laid out in fields and clouds.
- “Pennington RR Station” (1980s) – View from the tracks, with details of the decorative features on the building, signal pole, and shepherd-crook lights.
You Say Bandanna
And, by the way – what do we call this piece of cloth?
It’s 19 inches square, so it’s really a bit too small to be a full-size scarf.
And it’s too big to be a handkerchief for blowing your nose, or to be a pocket square folded in a suit pocket.
So maybe it’s best described as a kerchief or bandana (or bandanna, if you prefer)?
Thanks to Cheryl Jackson for sharing this fun map. We would love to hear more about it – how and why it was created.
