The auction house could easily have been converted into a country store. All that was missing were the shelves and tables to hold items that could countrify your home – and a welcoming owner standing behind a cash register.
In the scene in front of me, the contents of what obviously had been someone’s life work had been dumped into boxes and spread out over the floor and on tables in one area of the auction house. If you’ve ever been inside a modern version of an old country store, you would recognize the items that harkened back to an earlier time.
But the true eye knows that the fabric on the dolls has been treated with tea to give it a brownish tint and that the wooden red, white and blue US flags were made by modern hands.
This was the place to be if you were into country-store or farmhouse chic. The boxes contained a little bit of everything: kitchenware, including cast iron corn-muffin pans and rolling pins, including a Springerle that still had flour in its ridges; cloth dolls, small Vaseline jars with tops, bushel baskets and picnic baskets, suitcases, lampshades, handmade soap, quilts, books and real southern cotton on stems.
Some of it was the kind of stuff that Cracker Barrel uses to decorate its restaurants.
I actually like some of the country-store items, and my house is dotted with a few of them. Mine are both authentics and reproductions.
I have a blue speckle enamelware water dipper in my stone jar of utensils, a small group of stoneware jugs, an old tin water pitcher, a tin teapot with white spots that I picked up at the world’s longest yard sale, an English ceramic washbasin in my basement and an antique green goose-neck lamp on my porch. I have framed seed packets on my kitchen wall, and atop my cabinets, license plates from all the states I’ve live in. I also have a few African American cloth and carved wooden dolls.
When I visited Martha’s Vineyard a few years ago with friends, we came across a country store where I picked up some emery boards whose packaging was in the shape of a matchbook. On the cover was the image of an African American woman from around the 1950s. The packs had a humorous message: “are you certain you want to interrupt my coffee break?” They were made by Anne Taintor, and I bought two of them.
Whether you have vintage items or reproductions, furniture or decorative items, all are lovely in adding that extra charm to your home.
Here are some of the items from the auction:
