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Monday 14 October 2013

Spot the frippet: craze.

Well, this should be easy, because what makes a craze a craze is that it's all over the place.

Over the years I've joined in with the utmost eagerness in crazes for French skipping, French knitting, lemonade crystals (these came in different flavours and were sold by the ounce in a paper bag. The aim was to stain each finger a different colour), The Monkees, the tank top, spaghetti bolognese, the boot-cut trouser, the poodle perm, the bell-bottomed trouser (very dangerous, as anyone who's had a wasp zoom purposefully up a billowing hem can testify) and many, many other odd things including some that I'm still regretting, such as the wok and woodchip wallpaper.

To make things even easier for us there are other sorts of crazes, too. A pattern of fine surface cracks is described as crazing, as here:


A Song dynasty Celadon vase with crazed glaze.

Similar crazing can be found on badly-made concrete; metals; and the faces of people who have smoked for a long time.

If you don't know much about current fashion, look at heels, fonts on advertisements, and sandwich fillings, and you soon will.

But most of all, enjoy your own craze today.

Spot the frippet: craze. This word probably comes from Scandinavia. Sweden, for instance has a word krasa, which means to shatter.

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