Valaida Snow, Jazz Trumpeter (1920's-1950's)

Good morning!!

Man alive, it has been way too long, kiddos! How in the heck are you? I'm still slinging books with greater accuracy and speed than ever--I'll tell you, this new job breaks down into 100% less transient men catcalling me at a public desk, but also 100% less free time than I had at my old government employ. So don't think I've forgotten you! I'm still to be seen each and every Saturday morning out at the better Davidson County estate sale offerings (meaning, the ones with the dustiest atics and highest density of fur coats per square foot) and I'm still hounding down "things you'd think Lisa would be interested in" both in print and the wide world of the web.... I EVEN still find time in my idle moments to dig up the best in vintage dirt for you. Being as this is one of those moments, I thought I'd dial you up and give you the run-down on this doll-eyed vintage vixen. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Valaida Snow:

Doesn't she remind you of Clara Bow? I wish someone would say that JUST ONCE about me!

A couple weeks ago I broke down and got the paid membership version of Spotify, mainly because my father-in-law and his wife were coming over for dinner and since my aged, much abused iPod finally bit the dust, I didn't want my early jazz playlist constantly interrupted by messages about Square Space and Audible.com. Don't think it didn't pain my penurious little heart, but I realized that for $7.99/month, I WOULD GLADLY pay to listen to an uninterrupted feed of my francophone swing music and obscure David Bowie recordings (I would like to report that Baal is on Spotify in its entirety, and isn't the world a better place for it). So far it's served me very well! (End unsponsored rant). The wonder of what all is out there in the world these days for you to just pull up with the click of a button. Speaking of....

I recreated a playlist of a Smithsonian Folkways jazz series compilation from the early fifties' (the music on it was vintage THEN, as it came from the twenties' and thirties'), and while I was listening, came across a song I really liked on a Doxy records compilation of work by a pretty girl singer named Valaida Snow. "What a cute little voice, she reminds me of Ethel Waters a little bit..." ((tapping toes)) "CHECK OUT THAT TRUMPET THOUGH. Wow! I wonder if it's King Oliver or Louis Armstrong or some other linear-descendant of that too-hot-to-touch trumpet tradition?"  

                            

Oh...so it turns out, the singer, the gal on the cover, and the trumpet player, are all one gorgeous multi-talented package: Valaida Snow. 

Give me just one occasion in my life in which I get to wear a tulle ruff like this...if I'm very, very good?

Valaida Snow was born around the turn of the century in Chattanooga, Tennessee, though the exact date seems to jump around a little from source to source. A multi-instrumentalist, singer, and dancer, Valaida began her professional career at fifteen, touring in America and abroad throughout the twenties' and thirties' in a number of all-black musical revues, culminating professionally in 1931's Rhapsody in Black. The star and top billed attraction of Rhapsody was none other than the aforementioned soundalike Ethel Waters, against whom a cash strapped Lew Leslie, as producer, pitted Valaida in a professional and personal rivalry that he hoped would cause the better known (and more expensively salaried) Waters to quit. Neither quit, but neither was it the congenial, all us gals together backstage atmosphere of other productions they'd appeared in together. According this book excerpt, Waters and Snow's rivalry extended to the point that New Yorkers eager to fete the women and the rest of the cast in an after party would have to throw two separate soirees, one to which Valaida was invited and Ethel wasn't; and one to which Ethel was invited and Valaida wasn't. I care less about the diva arms race and more about this passage:

At the time of Rhapsody in Black

In 1934, a thirtysomething year old Snow married one half of the Berry Brothers, a dance act. Ananais Berry was handsome, talented, and young. Emphasis on the young, as the fifteen plus year age gap between nineteen year old Berry and his bride was a serious sticking point in the media and caused controversy even within the entertainment community. I was able to find a couple articles from the time in the Afro-American newspaper, adding to the mix charges of bigamy (she may or may not have been legally separated from a teenage marriage to her first husband) along with everything else:

                      

As their marriage fell apart, Valaida decamped back to Europe, where she toured successfully and enjoyed the freedom of a beautiful, brilliant, expatriate black woman abroad. She appeared in a French film, worked with Maurice Chevalier on stage, and performed for heads of state in places as far flung as Shanghai and Luxemborg, before Nazi occupation of the hexagon seemed imminent. Old friend and Broadway costar Josephine Baker encouraged her to leave France for the states-- Valaida got as far as Denmark. As this clip points out, that would be THE FIRST of three countries to fall into German occupation. Valaida spent a harrowing 18 months in a German occupation camp, which she described in the following clippings from a 1943 issue of Afro-American (right click "open image in new window" or save the photo for a full sized version):

Could you even believe that twist? Released in a prisoner exchange, a sixty-some odd pound Valaida, down from her usual petite 100, returned to America sans the gold trumpet the queen of the Netherlands had given her or any of her glamorous possessions, but nevertheless began to rebuild her career with characteristic grit and determination. Here she is in 1946 singing and playing trumpet in a brief musical clip, looking as gorgeous and sounding as fabulous as ever:

         

Valaida's star waned into the fifties' as she accepted Catskills dates and continued working and playing concerts throughout the northeast, before passing away of a brain hemorrage in 1956. Nevertheless! THIS gal at least, in 2015, is more than impressed with the talent and fantastic backstory behind a haphazard Spotify click. Wouldn't it make a riveting movie? I'm looking forward to tracking down a copy of her biography, but 'til then, you can check out her music on Spotify or Youtube. You won't be disappointed.

So! What have you been listening to lately? Found anything completely by accident that you've fallen head over heels in love with? What little known musical gem would you recommend digging up in this marvelous age of technology we live in? I'd love to hear from you, it's been ages!

Back with more vintage tangents and tchotckes soon-- I'll try not to go so long between posting! Have a fabulous Tuesday and we'll talk soon. Til next time!

Rerun: Photo Friday: Flappers in the Sun Edition (1920's)

This blog originally appeared on She Was a Bird April 27, 2012.

I found this non-descript portfolio, about the size reproduced above, in a box of photos at an estate sale in Inglewood a few years ago. Nashville-ites who know the area, it was one of those big Tudor houses near the library on Gallatin Road, the HUGE 1920's and 30's houses built on the main drag, many of which have been converted into law offices, dental offices, or in one memorable case, a palmistry shoppe. The layout of the house featured a rabbit's warren of twisty, narrow little rooms on the first floor, and a slope-ceilinged second floor area up a central set of stairs, and just lo-o-o-ots of stuff. As it was a Sunday, everything was deeply discounted and I bought the whole box of pictures for less than five bucks, thinking I would go through it later to enjoy the treasures. I'd forgotten all about them (remember how I said I was a kind of, sort of a hoarder?) until I was scanning some from the box in, and met the cutest little couple in doing so!

People, meet Gentleman Jim and Flapper Fran. The snapshots didn't come with any kind of descriptive captions or names other than the St. Louis based developing company on the back, but we'll go with those descriptive monikers for the moment.

     

As much as I like any kind of vernacular photography, the kind I like best, being a little dress-a-holic, is seeing the detail of old clothes in old photos. I thought this was Flapper Fran, but in looking at the other photos, and by way of the clothes, turns out this is her cousin Flapper Frieda! The second flapper is wearing a daisy of an outfit in sharp heeled satin pumps with little bows on them, a straight-up-and-down flapper dress with tiers of ruffles at the bottom, a drop-bead neclace, corsage, and the de riguer cloche hat of the day (the coat from the first picture seems to have taken a powder). Frieda, Fran and Jim are posing on and in front of some kind of public building, but I can't tell from the photos what building. Is this a shot on the courthouse steps just after they've been married ? Or is it just a good looking building on an afternoon stroll downtown?

Gentleman Jim's friend, Gentleman Hal, makes an appearance in the next shot:

Something about the posing in this one reminds me of a ventriloquist and his dummy. Am I right? Dig Hal's tie.

Whoah! Double vision! Flapper Fran and Flapper Frieda together. See how similar their faces are? I assume they're related, but again, by the lack of markings, I really have no way to tell.

Frieda and Hal together. It looks Frieda and Hal are a couple, and then Fran and Jim are a couple. Don't you love making conjectures about old pictures with no hope of ever finding out if you had the context correct? It's kind of fun and it's kind of sad, thinking there were at least four people at one time who knew exactly what was going on in each of these photos.

  

THIS IS PROBABLY MY FAVORITE. Moving out of town to the country side for a picnic, the foursome pose in various rocky/scenic places around an old wooden bridge. I love the stiff body language and scowling faces of people in the pre-digital-camera, how-did-I-look-no-erase-that-one era. Those planar, Cherokee cheekbones remind me of Loretta Lynn and my own great-grandmother on my dad's side. Look at that dress!

                                   

This one turned out very fuzzy, but look at Jim's hat. Nice hat, Jim.

Rethinking straw for the summer 1929 season, Jim removes the hat for a solo portrait. See the sharp crease in his pants and the short-at-sides-longer-at-top-F-Scott-Fitz haircut. Handsome, huh?

Last but not least, Fran looking as rawbone and skinny and scowly as her cousin:

I still love it.

Do you have any vacation/day trip photos in your collection that tell a narrative like Fran + Jim + Frieda + Hal? Which flapper styles do you wish would make a comeback so you could copy Fran and Frieda's look without looking like you're doing a stage production? Have any good estate sales coming up this weekend? Let us know!

Have a great Friday, and we'll see you on the other side of the weekend!

Tramp Art (1900's-1940's Americana Knickknacks)

Good morning!

How's your Monday? The day's moving by like molasses over here at the library, but the better to tell you about vintage stuff with, my dears. :) This weekend, I was looking at a local vintage shop's instagram when the following picture made my heart skip a little beat. Have you ever! Seen so beautiful! A lamp in your whole life! You may have, but I know I have not:

Savant Vintage...I'm coming for you. And this lamp. I hope it's not $1,000,000

UHHHM! What a sight for sore eyes! The color and the texture and the ordinary-turned-extraordinary of this marbles-and-Popsicle-sticks craft confection is making me want to throw caution to the wind and install it in my office, toute de suite. What are we looking at though, folks? I know from my obsessive thumbing through titles like Outsider Art and The Complete Book of Retro Crafts that this lamp has its roots in a collectibles genre called "tramp art". I immediately call to mind David Carradine in either Bound for Glory or Boxcar Bertha, a poetic rambler riding the rails, living outside of society, and taking time to whittle a cigar box here and there. In case I was wrong, I decided to look through the internet for more concrete examples and explanations of the the delightful art pieces.

From a website appropriately named Trampart.com:

What is Tramp Art?

Tramp art is an art movement found throughout the world where small pieces of wood, primarily from discarded cigar boxes and shipping crates, are whittled into layers of geometric patterns having the outside edges of each layer notch carved. The artists used simple tools such as a pocketknife to carve the recycled wood. It was popular in the years between the 1870s to the 1940s after which the art form started to decline. It was made in prodigious numbers. The most common forms were the box and the frame. Although there were no rules or patterns to lend commonality in the artists’ work there were objects made in every conceivable shape and size including full sized furniture and objects of whimsy.

So you don't actually have to be Oklahoma Red/Wallace Beery in Beggars of Life to make tramp art, but because of the easily obtained, discarded materials, it would be feasible that you could make this kind of stuff whatever your station in life. One of my chief gripes about modern day crafting is how much money you often have to lay out to get started in jewelry/felting/needlepoint/whatever. This stuff, if you have a pocket knife, a piece of an orange crate, and some artistic vision, you can make some pretty amazing stuff.

Check out what I was able to find online (ebay, Etsy wise, anyway). You'd better believe I'll be looking for similar pieces out in the wild:

Folk Tramp Art Cigar Band Glass Bowl

I love how packaging in the first half of the 20th century was just better. These are made from cigar bands, and you'd only have to smoke about 66 stogies to get a high quality piece of collage art like the piece above (for Al Swearingen, that's like half a day's worth of puffing). Another piece of tobaccoania this non-smoker is into are those tobacco silk quilts and filmland tobacco cards-- again, you're lucky if you can get a coupon towards future merchandise, much less beautiful, printed pieces of silk or cards of your favorite movie stars along with purchased item these days. Still, for pure, horror vacui loveliness, I am really into this bowl.

1930's Tramp Art Hand Mirror, Nice wood tramp art mirror.

Doesn't this hand mirror look like something they'd have at World Market right now? The woodburning process is also termed in some of these listings as "pyrography", which may sound like a mid 90's alternative cd, but is actually just any kind of wood decoration through controlled burning. 

Antique tramp art crucifix with hanging metal Christ suspended on carved wooden cross with emblems

I'm not much for collecting religious iconography, but this crucifix is beautiful.

1930s Vintage Tramp Art Pyrography Dresser Top Lamp, Primitive Folk Art Red Fringe Wood Lamp

Now we're talking! I just love looking at each of these and thinking of someone's grandfather being like, "You want a what! I can make you one of those! Gimme some time, I'll make you one up in the garage", and setting to the task of diligently creating whatever kind of decorative art the fairer sex saw as necessary for setting up housekeeping. "You wanted a lamp, here's you a lamp!" See how it comes complete with little drawers for keeping knickknacks in and built in picture frames?

Bottle Cap Lady Tramp Art Carmen Miranda Style

Now, this bottle cap lady I actually remember from the Retro Crafts book. However, if you can get a couple hundred thousand more bottle caps, you can dream big and think outside the house in terms of what to do with these discarded pop tops, à la this Russian woman and her bottle cap house. You heard me. HOUSE. It's amazing, too. How about this snaky basket made out of bottle caps? Start drinking now!

American TRAMP Folk ART Hand Made Bottle CAP Basket 

Vintage Folk Art Cigarette Wrapper Purse 

Remember when making purses out of Capri Sun pouches and Levi jeans and every other kind of thing was the latest fashion trend, circa 1998? Here's its non-PC precursor,  the cigarette wrapper purse. I've also seen wallets like this made out of Juicy Fruit and other gum wrappers. I should learn something like this to pass slow moving lunch hours at my desk (as if my desk needed to look more like a kitsch trash heap than it already does...).

More cigar band decoupaging. I'm telling you, I need one of these things in my life:

Decoupage CIGAR BAND LABEL Tray Tobacco Tramp Folk Art

I was particularly attracted to this heart shaped wooden shield with the name "Carmela" carved into it. I see so many things like this where someone's tried to make something look old and hand hewn like this, and it's a night and day difference between the imitated and the imitator.

TRAMP ART WOODEN BOX HEART SHAPED NAME CARMELA

AAAH! ANOTHER MARBLE LAMP! Maybe there's hope for me yet!!

Vintage Folk Tramp Art Popsicle Sticks Marbles Table Lamp

There were lots, and lots, and LOTS of boxes, as you could imagine, but this one was the prettiest to me (and has one of the most intense price tags..YEEKS, people). I love how the texture of the wood plays of the shape of the box and the little velvet and brass inlays.

Exquisite Tramp Art Ornately Decorated Box

This is probably something more like I could actually make, minus the lettering. Doesn't it make you want to scrabble through your junk drawer at home and just paint everything gilt? I know I have geometrical whatnots every which way but loose in my house...now, to formulate them into a plan...

San Francisco Exposition 1915-Folk Art -Tramp Art

This one looks more like a birdhouse to me, if said bird lived in an Indonesian temple:

Antique American TRAMP Art Wood BOX

And last but not least, this just may be some folk art, but I loved the display of it on black velvet, with a red velvet matte, with the gold frame. So turn of the century and so ornate and so something I need to have in my house. Now, the same thing, but with the rosettes in the shape of a bird or a tiger or a human face. Let's get on this!

Victorian Antique Paper Tramp Art Cross Folk Art Naïve Flower Frame

You can see more examples of tramp art here, and here, but the one I really want to see is that marble lamp in next to my computer at home. The lovely glow it would give off! How happy I would be!

How about you? Have you had your interest piqued by any collectibles lately? Which of these tramp art pieces are your favorite? Have any hand-hewn heirlooms in your family or in your personal collection? Tell me all about it!

That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with more vintage tips and quips. Have a great Monday! See you then!

Photo Friday: ThePrimitiveFold on Ebay Edition (1870's-1920's)

Good morning!

It's Friiiiiiiiiiiiiday, we MADE it! How's the weekend looking to you? I have to run out the door to some estate sales and then my sister's birthday lunch (happy two-five, Sus!), but I wanted to leave you with a couple photos from my online meanderings before I hang up my blogging spurs until Monday.

Last week, I told you, I was having a great deal of trouble finding the kinds of photos I wanted on Flickriver when it was my good fortune to stumble across this ebay seller's online vintage and antique photography shop. The Primitive Fold specializes in wonderful condition daguerrotypes, tin types, cabinet cards-- all manner of 19th century photography, and on into the 20th. The unifying factor here for the inventory? Obviously, that they're photoraphs, but also, that the collection boasts a carefully curated selection of some of the most interesting portrait subjects I think I've ever seen! This was the online equivalent of coming across a cigar box or wooden crate at an estate sale or antique mall and NOT ONLY are all the photos in great condition for their age, but there are no clunkers, just solid, amazing pictures, one after the next.

Like I said, I have to get out the door, but if you like what you see, pop over to The Primitive Fold's ebay shop. I only warn you that you may spend the rest of your day looking through the entries and peering into someone's own life in say the year 1880. It's addictive! 

Have a great Friday, find great stuff at the sales, and I will see you on Monday! Take care! Til then.

-Lisa

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY BLONDE BLUE EYES RED BLUE TINT PATRIOTIC TINTYPE PHOTO

ANTIQUE VICTORIAN AMERICAN BEAUTY AMBROTYPE BLUE EYES GOLD EARRINGS BLING PHOTO

VINTAGE ANTIQUE AMERICAN INDIAN HEADRESS COSTUME DECO RING BEAUTY LAND PHOTO

Edwardian huge hat corset topeka trenton nj rppc photo

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY STRIKING GAZE LONG EYE LASHES HAT EARLY TINTYPE PHOTO

ANTIQUE AFRICAN AMERICAN BEAUTY BEAUTIFUL YOUNG TEEN GIRL FLOWER LIPSTICK PHOTO

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY GIRL ARTISTIC FINE ART CHRISTIAN CROSS TINTYPE PHOTO

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY ARTISTIC TEEN GIRL ELF LIKE RIBBON CURLS TINTYPE PHOTO

ANTIQUE FINE DAGUERREOTYPE AMERICAN BEAUTY CROSS PENDANT JEWELRY VICTORIAN GIRL

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY YOUNG BROWN HAIR TEEN GIRL ARTISTIC DAGUERREOTYPE PHOTO

ANTIQUE VICTORIAN WARE MA GLEASON BLONDE BLUE EYES PEARLS CABINET CARD ART PHOTO

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY YOUNG GIRLS FLOWERS ARTISTIC DAGUERREOTYPE TINTED PHOTO

ANTIQUE AMERICAN BEAUTY VICTORIAN COUTURE LONG NECK JEWELRY ARTISTIC LADY PHOTO

Birmingham Bound: Road to Roadshow Part Three (THE GOODS)

Hello there!

Sorry for the delay in today's post, I've been feeling super run down all morning and debated whether or not to leave my usual "Closed For Business" type illness post. However, as you can see, lunchtime has rallied my spirits a little bit, and I know you want to know what I took with me to the Antiques Roadshow taping! Competition among my items was stiff, but I finally settled on four. Let's take a look at what they were!

Voilà, my quartet of goodies. I think it's hilarious they look like something out of a staged magazine shoot in terms of how the faded teens' and twenties' coloring is so similar. What we've got, from left to right:

1. 1917-1918 Girl's Commencement book scrapbook, featuring photographs, ephemera, inscriptions from a girl's WWI-era senior year of high school
2. WWI Sweetheart Souvenir Handkerchief
3. Christian Dior by Kramer pavé rhinestone penguin brooch, circa 1950
4. A flapper doll from the Virgin Islands, circa 1920's

So, in reverse order, here's what they told me about my stuff:

1) Flapper Doll

This was the first thing we had appraised, and I was confused as heck at this point as to how the whole appraisal process went down. The bow-tied man behind the folding table welcomed me and asked me what I could tell him about the item (which seems to be a standard opening for every appraisal, as I was asked the same another three times). I told him that I'd bought the doll at an estate sale where the woman had a large collection of vintage and antique dolls from her travels, and this one had caught my eye because of its size (it's a good twelve inches tall, compared to the other, smaller dolls at the sale) and its flapper style. I pointed out the different materials and the fact that the owner had pinned a piece of paper with "Virgin Islands" written on it to the gal's dress, and the appraiser said, "Yes, I thought when you brought it in it was typical of the Virgin Islands. What's interesting about this doll is that most of the souvenir dolls coming out of the Virgin Islands in the 1920's were made to depict native people-- which is to say that they were black. It's a little rarer to find one that's white." He turned it over in his hands and examined it with birdlike quizzical intensity, before asking how much I paid for it. "I think it was $15?" I stammered. "Well done, I would say this doll is worth every bit of twenty or twenty five dollars." I was let down, but not for the reason I think he thought I was-- I really just wanted to know anything else he could tell me about the item besides what I already knew! Ah, well. We went back to the outer circle and chose another line to wait in. 

Isn't she pretty, though? I love the little handkerchief stitched into her hand and her rouged cheeks.

2) Christian Dior by Kramer pin

A friend of mine gave me a bunch of costume jewelry that had belonged to her fiancé's grandmother a year or two ago, and I about fell out of my chair getting a load of this crazy thing. While there were some fun earrings and a necklace or two I liked in the ziplock baggie, this pin stuck out as something special to me at once. When I got it home, trying to figure out how I could solder a new pin back on the brooch myself, I noticed a circular jeweler's mark on the back that read "CHRISTIAN DIOR BY KRAMER" and was thrilled all over again-- this was a piece made by the high quality costume jewelry firm Kramer to accessorize the "New Look" early fifties' items coming out of the Parisian atelier. While not as fine as the jewelry from Dior itself, I mean...look at this design. It's crazy in exactly the right way. I don't think I've ever been given something just out of the blue that I like as much as I like this pin! I ended up getting the pin back professionally replaced and I wear it with pride whenever I want a little extra "wow" to my outfit.

At the appraisal, the guy at the booth told me pretty much what I told you, which I did already know, but he seemed particularly charmed by the design. He said there were some stones missing from the tail, which probably would have also been red. The real wild card from this appraisal--one of the appraisers behind the booth actually interrupted this interaction to say, "I just LOVE, I LOVE your outfit. You have such a fun sense of style! Do you mind if I take your picture?" Ok, I was already like "WHERE AM I, WHAT AM I DOING?" and now someone wants to photograph me in this bewildered state. I acquiesced, and her colleague was like "Do you want me to move?" She: "No, no, you can go on with the appraisal, I'll just snap a couple pictures." I was flattered but it was also confusing for this bashful belle. So somewhere, a friendly lady jewelry appraiser has a photo on her iPhone of me in my little Boy George hat and winged eyeliner looking dazed. That was what I took away from that table's appraisal, haha.

And back out we went again to wait in another line!

3) Souvenir de France sweetheart handkerchief, WWI:

I did a whole post on this handkerchief back in May, so I won't talk your ear off about it, but I felt like this appraisal was by far the best as the appraiser really took a moment or two to go over what it was and what he thought about it as an antiques guy. He confirmed what I knew about  it being a WWI souvenir sent home or brought back by a soldier in France for his mother, girlfriend, grandma, somebody-- but also told me that it would have been hand embroidered, not made by machine, and embroidered on silk, which makes it different from machine-made, rayon embroidered trinkets of a similar nature from the Second World War. "Isn't this great," he said, "You've got the Statue of Liberty there off the coast of Manhattan, but what's interesting to me is how contextual it is. If you had that little squiggle just by itself, you wouldn't even be able to make out what it was, but here in its proper context, you can tell it's a major and familiar landmark." I asked him about the shattering in the background, feeling like that was probably something that would affect the value or "goodness" of the piece, but he reassured me that because the item was silk and almost a hundred years old, hardly any of them survived, so to have one at all was really neat. How about this, value wise, too? He asked how much I paid for it and I told him $30; he said that without the frame, just the handkerchief, it was worth about $60, and in the frame, that number could double or triple depending on the collector's interest in it. THIS collector was very pleased not to have been snookered in the thirty dollars I put out for it!

And for the home stretch:

4) 1917-1918 Girl's Commencement book scrapbook

I honestly can't believe I haven't shown you guys this on the blog yet, it's one of the things in my house I would grab if God forbid the building was on fire. I had just graduated from high school in 2003 and my dad (ever the accomplice in my collecting habits) took me to Rare Bird Antique Mall in Goodletsville to spend some of the loot I'd gotten in my graduation cards. I remember feeling quite queenly with a hundred dollars to spend-- I'd put some money from family and friends away, and good Lord, a hunnert bucks was about $92 more than I ever had on me at any point in time. I had, just the week before, flapper bobbed my hair to my jawbone in a fit of love for Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and I was in the midst of a serious, scholarly crush on the life and works of the Jazz Age icons. You can imagine the "whuh....whuh..." sputtering sense of awe I was in when I found this scrapbook from Minneapolis, Minnesota in year of our Lord 1917, in a booth for $40.

The author, sharing a home state with FSF, I might add, was a tall, Germanic looking girl (sound like anyone you know?) named Grace Peterson. This journal so closely resembled  my own scrapbooks and notebooks I had kept meticulously in middle and high school, with cheeky notation and photographs and every little scrap of a 17 year old girl's life carefully pasted in-- I really couldn't believe my luck. As the US entered into First World War, Grace's newspaper clippings and photographs reflected star members of the basketball and track team joining up, War Bonds drives taking place at the school, and visits to dances on a local Army base. IT WAS PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. I was loathe to part with the forty bucks, but to this day, it's one  of the coolest things I've found in my junking days, and you can re and re read the inscriptions, pore back over the photos, for hours.

The Collectibles line was by far the longest we waited in, and while we almost wanted to just go get our Subaru swag and go back to the hotel to eat vegan pizza, instead, we went the distance. The guy in front of me was driving me absolutely insane with his nonstop chatter to his wife about how the dobro he'd brought was from 1935, and worth $6,000, then mentally tallying up and loudly repeating how much whatever else he'd brought was worth, then calling people to tell them about it, then talking to the people ahead of him about how much their barber chair was probably worth ("WITH the headrest of course") because he "knew a bunch of barbers, and a little bit about collectibles" blah blah blah blah. All the while dressed in that hipster uniform of  beard and "What Opie Taylor would wear if he was 5'8'', 32 years old, and slightly overweight" (checked collar shirt, pegged jeans, Chuck Taylors). I know I'm being mean but it was like Chinese Water Torture listening to him talk. FOR AN HOUR. At the end of the line, mercifully, the appraiser was nice enough, but I'm pretty sure he was vigorously flipping through the book hoping my Grace Peterson had gotten Douglas Fairbanks, Sr's autograph, or had her picture taken with Woodrow Wilson. No such luck! He did put an auction value of $150-$200 on it, which sounds a little on the high end, but heck! I'm just glad he didn't say $15-$20!

So! That was it for the Roadshow. I think next time I would try to take something I actually thought was valuable, rather than something I wanted to know more about, to up my chances of beeeein' on the teeee-veee! I am really excited to see what the items in that inner inner circle were like and how close I probably was to some real American treasures.

What do you think of what I ended up choosing? What would you have taken with you if you were on the Roadshow? What's the best or worst info you've ever found out about a piece you bought after the fact? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I hope you have a great evening, and we'll talk more tomorrow! Take care, til then.