AROUND HOME : Tole Painting

ALTHOUGH TOLE is the French word for “tinware,” tole painting is no longer restricted to pictures painted on metal, as it once was. Today, it is defined by the method used and the kinds of brush strokes used on any material--metal, wood and fabric.

Depending on the teacher or the book, there are three or six kinds of brush strokes in tole painting: The squiggle, crescent, double-pointed, S , broad and knife shapes detailed by one source are reduced to the comma, C and S shapes by another. And although there is no limit to what can be painted, the majority of tole designs started out as--and continue to be--folk patterns. Fruits, flowers, birds, cherubs, hex signs, all applied freehand (this is not stenciling) and carefully shaded.

Tole painting is part of the larger European folk art tradition of home decoration. While the serious artists built cathedrals, wove tapestries and painted Sistine Chapels for exalted (and rich) clients, common people (men, usually) used simpler artistic techniques to make their homes, furniture and everyday utensils more beautiful. Today, tole painting is enjoying enormous popularity among craft persons and hobbyists, mostly women. “It’s a big business now,” says Anne St. Clair, owner of Lady Anne’s Garden in Torrance. “We use totally new materials: water-based, nontoxic materials. It’s a step-by-step method, so people don’t have to have any artistic background.” Beginner’s tole-painting kits cost from about $90 to $135; classes run $35 for four sessions.

Several Southern California stores offer tole supplies and classes, listed under the Craft Supplies - Retail heading in the Yellow Pages. Among them: Lady Anne’s Garden in Torrance; Hand Made’n in Montrose; Arts & Crafts Studio in Anaheim; Tole Patch in Thousand Oaks and Judy’s Carousel Crafts in Burbank. The Society of Decorative Painters, P.O. Box 808, Newton, Kan. 67114, offers to members only a six-issue-per-year publication, The Decorative Painter. Membership costs $25 per year.