catching up

 

We entertained some of my dear school friends and their partners over Easter weekend at our house. We'd only had the windows completed three days before the first guests arrived, so there was some frantic tidying and dusting beforehand. Somehow we managed to get it all ready and had a lovely, relaxed few days with lots of good food and some windy walks. We climbed the hill opposite our house to pick wild garlic for a risotto I had planned to cook. The view from there was pretty amazing, especially in the changeable weather that was sweeping overhead that day. The fact that our own house made up part of the view is kind of beside the point, but it was good to see how it sits in the landscape, with the hills of the Clwydian Range marching off into the murky distance.

On Easter Sunday, despite some pretty unpromising weather forecasts, we decided to be brave and took an indulgent picnic for eight people to one of my favourite places  - Llanddwyn Island, which I've written about before. The weather turned out to be just fine, if a little windy, and the four miles of beach and shoreline walking was perfect. There is something very British, but very magical, about picnicking on a beach with clouds scudding overhead and the threat of rain in the air. I loved every minute of that weekend and feel so lucky to have such wonderful friends who were willing to travel so far to come and see us.

The following weekend, we went to see an acquaintance of mine who sells industrial vintage stuff in Manchester. He's just set up shop in a new warehouse and wanted to show me some of his latest goods. I'll write about this in a separate post, as he very generously donated some bits to me to have a play with in the house. I've been too busy with work and stuff lately to have done anything yet, but I'm really excited about dreaming up some ways of displaying and using his vintage finds.

Last week we attended our first antiques auction in over a year. This one is in Froncysyllte, near Llangollen, and was pretty quiet so there were bargains to be had. We got a 1920s oak desk for the husband's office for the princely sum of £35.40 which, once it's been tidied up, will look just spiffing. There were lots of items that we had no interest in at all: the usual parade of Staffordshire dogs etc., but it was a fun day out. Plus, like our old auction haunt at Willingham, they do a splendid bacon sarnie. What's not to like?

What else, what else? Drawing? Nope. Sorry. Lost my mojo there, I'm afraid. I think there's not enough room in my body for both a baby and a brain. I'll see what I can do to remedy this in the coming weeks. I hope to finish work within the next week and a half, to start properly on nursery and other baby stuff I've been procrastinating about and maybe to do some creative stuff too.

Meanwhile, I hope you are all well. Only seven weeks til I'm meant to pop now, so not too long at all. Eep!

auction action

Well, not so much action as just one little peep of love. I'm always on the lookout for Victorian and Edwardian silver animal pincushions. Call me weird, kitschy or whatever, I think they are really sweet. They are very collectible and therefore can be worth a lot of money (click the link to see some really nice and pricey examples!).

This little piggy-wig turned up in the Willingham catalogue, with a guide price of £60-100. Made in 1902/3 by Levi & Salaman in Birmingham, it's a big one at 11cm long. I get the feeling it won't sell for £60.

Does anyone know of a modern equivalent of these? Something cute and well-made to stick pins into?!

auction action

It's been a while since we've been to an auction. The main reason for this is because we will be moving house this summer, potentially into rented accommodation for a few months, and I am on a house spending hiatus. I tell you, it's killing me. I cannot WAIT to have a new home to play with, but this may be a while away yet.

However, I couldn't help but sneak a peek at the Modern Design auction at TW Gaze's in Diss, Norfolk, that is taking place this Saturday. Here's a selection of items that caught my eye, but there is much more in the catalogue, and lots unphotographed! Sadly we will be up in Yorkshire visiting the husband's family so I can't even go there to stroke these things :-( Of course you can bid remotely but as I said, I'm not buying!


Clockwise from top left: Holger Georg Jensen for Kubus teak table, £50-70; 1930s slatted chairs, £40-60; rosewood sideboard, £200-300; AEG desk top fan, type NTVU - 2 designed by Peter Behrens, £30-40.


Clockwise from top left: cocoon pendant light fitting, £30-40; aluminium tulip base dining table with circular rosewood finish top, £250-350; Eames Chair, £600-900; Poul Henningson designed DH5 lamp for Louis Poulsen, £60-90; Gunnar Nylund for Nymolle of Denmark, a blue glazed bottle vase, £45-65.

auction action

Two of my local(ish) auction houses have new catalogues up this week for sales tomorrow and the following Saturday. First up is the 'Rural and Domestic Bygones' sale at TW Gaze in Diss tomorrow. I would probably be going, only we have a wedding to attend in the north. I love this particular sale at Gaze's - I wrote about it back in November here and here. The auction takes up most of the day, and the most wonderful things can be found there, things that make my heart swell with joy, like Victorian footwear, a hat-stretcher, a fishing creel, butter churns, telephones, tins and ephemera. Oh and something, unphotographed, called a 'sweat scrape' for £30-45. Above and below I have collected a few items of interest - who wants a mangle, another milk churn (there are several for sale), or perhaps a hot water jug?


Next Saturday we have the auction-worth-going-to-for-the-bacon-butties - Willingham. Again, we are busy that day and won't be able to attend, but here are a few interesting items:


A group of five vintage cameras including a working Weltaflex 2 1/4" square twin lens reflex and five vintage tripods, £60-100.


Or you can have a bit of medical history: a World War I Avery Ltd oak and ash portable hospital weight machine with weighing seat, £700-1200. Brilliant - what a tremendous thing to have in your hallway, although for that price tag I think you would have to be quite insane.


Or for a bit of Parisian bistro chic, how about a set of six Thonet bentwood chairs for £100-200. They aren't as nice as the ones I loved from before, and not quite to my taste, but are much more affordable and rather good nonetheless - the detailing on the seats is just lovely.

Happy Friday everyone! I am away this weekend so will probably be unable to post up my One Hundred drawings until Monday. Have a good one!

auction action

There's not much going at Willingham Auctions this weekend, but I did spot a couple of nice things that I can't afford:


Field microscope with a collection of interesting slides including "an ovary of an American cockroach" for £60-120.


Two very large (19" tall) glass domes with wooden stands for £100-160.

listless

I'm at a loose end this week, fraying at the edges... I have no structure to my days and nothing much to do (at least nothing I want to do). I'm waiting for a job to come in and crossing my fingers, I'm finishing things like those sewing projects I gave you a peek of the other week...


What was remarkable about the auction we went to on Saturday was the range of prices paid for things. There were whole crates of old bottles going for £12, but other things, like those boots I loved (£70!) sold for a lot of money. I adored this children's penny farthing from the 1950s, really wanted it for no reason (mostly because of the colour, I think), but it went for £100. Those beautiful baker's trolleys went for a whopping £220 each (their estimate was £60-90), the Colman's box for £230, and this Sunlight finger plate (you know, something you'd fix onto your door where you push it) went for an incredible £2000. The auction room went quiet as a mouse during the bidding for that - I don't think anyone could quite believe what they were hearing. I don't even think it's that attractive, but serious collectors are odd beasts, I guess.


There were two sales: one taken walking past the lots in the meadow outside, which I attended in the freezing cold, whilst the husband installed himself on the chairs indoors for the other sale. It was marvellous fun - and there were some great-looking Norfolk characters hanging around to stare at too.

Oh yeah, and today's your last chance to enter the giveaway at Pikaland!

geek love

I got an early birthday present from my husband at the auction on Saturday (yes, I was well enough to go!) - this incredible old Roneotype printing machine. We didn't have a clue what it was or whether it worked, but with two huge and beautiful boxes of metal type, a little printer's stand and a 1930s style chest of drawers full of random printing goodies in it, it was too good to miss. Turns out there is scant information anywhere about such machines, so I will just have to muddle along with it using my prior knowledge of other printing presses as well as a whole pile of assumptions.

It's now in the greenhouse (of all places!) where yesterday I spent a good couple of hours behaving like the geek tomboy that I am and taking the thing apart. Filthy business it was - there was a disintegrating sponge somewhere in there and about fifty years of brown oily gunge to clear. I'm still working out the mechanism for inking up and printing, but I think I understand all the bits now. It was joyful pottering, gratifying geekery to be out there with the wind battering the panels of the greenhouse and getting covered in oil. Only problem is, one of the cogs has worn right away and needs replacing or it won't work at all! Luckily the husband has lots of friendly technicians at work who might be able to help me out.

Here she is, in pieces:




It came with three barrel-shaped drums on which you set your type, and a handful of composition forks upon which you create each line of text before sliding it onto the barrel. Some of the type and blocks that came with the machine were for an old shoemaking company in Norwich, so I have inherited the little shoes, boots and logos which would probably have been on their letterheads and correspondence.



What else did we get? a few beautifully etched soda syphons not unlike these in clear glass (only we're struggling to open them!), some random old tins, some even more random bottles of horse medicine (!), a flour sack full of weird rabbit traps and a crate full of lovely vintage terracotta pots for me.

And to top it all off, my football club won 9-1 yesterday. Whoop!

yay yay yay!

We will be going to the auction on Saturday where I'm going to buy me a Victorian haywain for £250-350:


Nah, just kidding, but these three wirework baskets are pretty good for £12-18:


I'm obscenely excited.

Diss auction rooms

Just been looking through the current catalogue for the Rural and Bygones sale coming up at Diss Auction Rooms, Norfolk this Saturday. There is a lot to see! Plenty of beautiful old enamel signs, farm and domestic equipment, wooden crates, random stuff like top hats, a 'shepherd's turnip cutter', a cheese paddle... the mind boggles. I would love to go and drool over old junk, only it's an hour and a half drive and we are likely to be entertaining my parents this weekend.






Isn't this trade bicycle the cutest thing? All you would need next would be a cute little dog tucked up in a plaid blanket in the basket. And those boots?! I wish I were a size 10... well, maybe not. And how about this baker's trolley below for some gorgeous shop display? Now all I need is a shop.

this and that...

Hello. The weekend was, uh, expensive. Well, not too much, but let's say we got the chair, and the little wooden policeman and some other junky stuff from the auction. I couldn't resist the policeman after all - he was beautiful. Funnily enough, I just came across another very similar walking toy (above) at the splendid Three Potato Four. Cute, no? Expensive, yah?


And today the husband and I went on a rummage at Sunbury Antiques Market in West London. Got up way before the crack of dawn at 4.45am and drove there in the foggy darkness. Froze our asses off in the cold and bought nothing even though everything there was beautiful and I wanted it all, especially the stuff from the French dealers.

Hey, at least at both the auction and the market I got to work my new Norwegian-cardigan-and-wax-jacket look. Received a suitable and gratifying number of odd looks from people. Miraculously for someone as lizard-cold as I am, this combo kept me warm even outside. Shame about my frozen feet, but hey, you can't have everything. I think I'll wear my sheepskin boots to Newark in December.

auction action

Silhouette and portrait, £30-50.

As well as the painting by Arthur Rackham that I wrote about last Friday, there are a few juicy things to see at Willingham Auctions this coming Saturday. I kind of wished I owned my own vintage/antiques shop so I could buy up some of the stuff to sell, especially the pharmaceutical ware. I always have an eye out for interesting storage and that enormous bank of drawers, whilst pretty much useless, is magnificent - I wonder if it will sell for more than its estimate? I've certainly seen things a bit like this selling for a couple of grand in some antiques shops. We'll see.

The husband has been on the hunt for an antique wooden swivel chair for some time now without success, and as happenstance would have it, one turns up at the auction so we might just buy it if it looks any good. The last attractive one we saw was in a flea market in Paris where it was selling for about €750! Decent-looking ones are pretty hard to come by unless you want some upholstered leather monster with padded arms, and they are always, always too expensive. There was one in an apartment that we rented in Annecy in France a couple of years ago. We should have stolen it - it was perfect.

And what about that sweet little policeman below? I want! But probably not for that money :-)


Wooden swivel chair, £60-90.


Large bank of index drawers, £400-600.


Wooden policeman with articulating legs, £30-50.


Vintage chemists bottles and glassware, £100-150.


Vintage glass shop bottles, £50-100.


A Victorian mahogany chemist's stand with vintage bottles, test tubes and vials of compounds, £80-140.

happy Friday!

It's nearly the weekend again! I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to it or not - it all depends on whether someone gives me work to do or not... I'm not anticipating a completely carefree two days :-( Hopefully I will be able to get my shop up and running, fire some of the ceramic pieces I've been decorating, go shopping with the husband in London. He is in need of sartorial upgrading - he's one of those sporadic shoppers who won't buy anything for a year and then goes out one day and spends two hundred pounds in one pop. If I do that I come out in hives and need to lie down for a bit - a little at a time is my method. That way you realise much more slowly how much of your income you spend on clothes and junk and it hurts a little less (but is probably more insidiously damaging).


I've spotted a few things I'd like to see at next week's auction at Willingham. I shall write about it next week. One of the pieces is a landscape watercolour by one of my illustration idols, Arthur Rackham. OK, it looks like something he smeared onto paper whilst at the beach on holiday, but it's still by him! Here's one of his images (from Wikipedia):


He was one of the most famous and best-loved of the illustrators that were a part of the late 19th/early 20th century golden era of illustrated children's books. His strength was certainly his line work - he was essentially a drawer rather than a painter. His illustrations were well coloured-in (I'm not being derogatory, though!), masterful drawings. He was not that bothered about colour, but the drabness of his work is part of its appeal to me. It creates a real moodiness and gloomy atmosphere that perfectly suited a lot of the material he illustrated.

On the other hand Edmund Dulac was an absolute master of colour and pattern. He balanced the drab with the most exquisite, jewel-like colour washes, and was wonderfully skilled as a painter. His sense of lighting and composition was gorgeous. We were privileged enough a few years ago to see some of his work in the flesh alongside some Rackham, Kay Nielsen and other contemporaries at Dulwich Picture Gallery. These images don't do the originals justice. For more images, look here.

charms

The scanner arrived but I have nothing to scan... So I thought I'd take a few pictures of some of the vintage silver charms I picked up at Willingham Auctions a few months ago. Amongst quite a big selection there was a charming birdcage with a gold-coloured birdy inside, a tiny lion and a teapot. I've just got to hang them on some silver chain with a few other odd beads or something and I'll have some serviceable Christmas presents... well, maybe I'll keep the birdcage for myself :-)

auction action

It's that time of month again... auction time, that is! We're not even going, but I like to cast my eye over the catalogue anyway. So what is there to see? Not a whole lot this month. There is this lot of jewellery including a funny picture of a man to wear around your neck, and three sweet little perfume bottles that you wear like brooches.


Or how about this stereoscopic viewer with lovely old cards?


For £50-£100 you can get this case of very well kept dead butterflies. Hm.


If you don't want any of those, you can always depend on there being a quantity of terrifying dolls :-)

oh deary me

I know, I know, I said I'd not write about clocks again but this time I had to. So, what do you think of this one? Well, I don't really care too much what you think, because yesterday my hand, uh, slipped on eBay and I ended up as the winning bidder. Oop! It's from the US so it needs re-wiring to work here but I don't care! It's a good 14.5 inches across, but not too big for our little house. I think I'll leave the enormous 60cm ones for when we get a mansion with high ceilings.

Ever since the clock debacle, I've kept half an eye out looking for a nice vintage wall clock that wasn't too small, nor £200. I already own a cute 1970s Metamec clock from H is for Home, but it's only 20cm across - perfect for my studio, but not nearly beastly big enough to satisfy my current urge.

So I have been watching vintage Smiths Sectric clocks come and go on eBay, some much nicer than others and for decent prices. But this one turned up and it's just that little bit different from owning a Smiths - I don't like to run with the crowd after all. The first one below was 11.5 inches, in good working order and very clean - sold for £82. The second was the same size, not working - sold for £42. I wasn't taken with either enough to buy them.



So what's the big deal about my clock? Pretty red second hand and little red button; curved glass face, perfect patina on the dial (some Smiths clocks are just too clean); sweet little dots to mark the minutes: what's not to love? Fully three inches wider too, and size is everything in this case. And the price? Well, that would be telling, but it was good for me :-)

Whilst I'm indulging myself, I have also coveted one of these telephones for years. It was the exact same model that used to sit in my parents' takeaway when I was little. How sad that we don't have such wonderful dialling mechanisms nowadays? It all has to be touch-tone to enable our interaction with soulless machines on the other end. Someone buy me this to take up too much space on my desk, pretty please? It's a snip at £35!