I like thumbing through old advertising cookbooks and was eyeing one by the Gold Medal Flour Co. at auction recently. It was part of a lot, and when it came up for bid, the auctioneer…
Body Magic: The new old corset
Posted in Clothing
Month: November 2009
Thanksgiving then (and now)
Posted in Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Home
This week, I decided to check a few of the old magazines I had picked up at auction to see if any were published around the Thanksgiving holidays. I wanted to see what articles, photos…
Need a used car?
Posted in Vehicles
One of the things I like about my auction houses is that they sell a little bit of everything. At one of my favorites two weeks ago, they were selling costume jewelry. In early December,…
Cakewalk postcards at auction
Posted in Postcards
My auction buddy Janet collects vintage African American postcards. Like me, she can’t stand the ugly ones that stereotype us as black people. At auction recently, she picked up a batch of cards, including three…
On Sunday, one of my favorite auction houses sold all kinds of ephemera or paper items: vintage advertising trade cards, Christmas cards, greeting cards, album cards, postcards, books, female pin-up prints, recipe booklets and calendars.…
Vintage bottle stoppers
Posted in Glassware
During the years I’ve been going to auctions, I have picked up a group of small glass items for their aesthetic rather than useful value. They are bottle stoppers. I have three beautiful cobalt-blue stoppers…
A woman’s work …
Posted in Home
As a child, I remember my grandmother boiling her clothes clean in a large black round pot, with a blazing fire of wood underneath. I’m not sure what sudsy soap she used, but her whites would sparkle…
I was at a flea market recently and watched as a woman with her daughter, who looked to be about 12, walked up to a table. The woman spotted an item that she recognized, and…
Vintage seed packets as art
Posted in Art
I’m a gardener at heart. You should see my fuchsia and white peonies in the spring, and my phlox varieties in the summer. I don’t plant with seeds. It’s just something I never got into,…
Every now and then, I find packed among a $2 lot of glassware some interesting souvenir or collector’s plates. The ones inscribed with lovely scenes that are meant for display, not for food. I’ve picked up plates of…