I was fishing through a box lot of small items from auction when I saw six strange-looking cards whose fronts were make-believe wooden planks. The images looked like caricatures and the wording was oversized. The cards were…
Category: Uncategorized
I had seen the big box of dolls several times at the auction house and had rifled through it a few times. I was looking but not seeing. No one else seemed to be interested…
A creepy bunny rabbit just in time for Halloween
Posted in Halloween, Toys, and Uncategorized
The bunny’s body was furry white – clean, in fact, for a child’s toy – but there was something oddly disconcerting about that face. It lacked whiskers, a knobby nose and puffy cheeks. Its face…
Mystery of a Virginia poem
Posted in Uncategorized
At auction this week, I got a box lot with two postcards. One was a linen postcard, unused, celebrating the state of Virginia. The images included a train traveling through a countryside and two covered…
Don’t tear apart old books for the bird prints
Posted in Books, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Uncategorized
For me, books are sacred. You don’t tear out the pages or write on them or mar them in any way. That’s a no-no. Imagine my horror when I came across sets of pages torn from…
I cannot recall my grandmother ever going to church with a bare head. She always wore a nice simple hat. I can still see her getting ready for Sunday services at our family church and…
Baseball has traditionally been seen as the national pastime, but for women that may be sewing. At least that’s what it feels like to me, based on the amount and types of vintage sewing items…
I love vintage cameras, and whenever I see them at auction, I bid on them. Most of the time, I’m lucky and walk away with a couple. But I can’t seem to get my hands…
Black faces on Old Maid cards
Posted in Uncategorized
At an auction recently, I came across a deck of Old Maid cards, 45 in a box. This was the second time in the last six months or so that I’d found a deck of the…
Where were black women?
Posted in Uncategorized
I was separating out some knitting, crocheting and embroidery items I picked up at a local auction a couple weeks ago. For a minute, I couldn’t distinguish between the three. Knitting uses heavy yarn. Crocheting…