Weekend Finds: 1950's Australian Aborigine Tea Towel by John Rodriquez (Say THAT Five Times Fast)

Good morning!

Whew, boy, hasn't it been a rainy but productive week over here. I went to the flea market last weekend and while it threatened rain a good part of the time I was there, I did manage to make out like a bandit. My loot? Full length raccoon fur coat , a tv lamp shaped suspiciously like a Billy Haines design from the forties' (this one is its twin, except mine is a pale grey blue instead of yellow), a ceramic desk clock shaped like a rotary phone (!!), and this, my favorite of all of them, a framed tea towel featuring Australian aborigines in full, abstract attire. If you follow me on Instagram, you saw this same-day, but I've been too lazy to take more pictures, so here it is again in its full, slightly blurry glory:

I had spent a perfectly uneventful hour walking the fairgrounds being disappointed by either the dearth of things I wanted to buy or the prohibitively expensive cost of things I DID want to buy. See: a Victorian mourning/memento mori hair wreath [similar to this one] that was in a reasonable $10-$50 price range type booth under one of the sheds...when I asked the price, the guy quoted me $350 without batting an eye...which...it is definitely worth in a retail setting...but everything else in his booth COMBINED wasn't $350, probably (I walked off carrying my crushed hopes alond with me). In a Charlie Brown kicking-the-dirt type mood, I was passing by a large spread near one of the building that every month features a boatload of bargain-basement-priced vintage and antique furniture, when I saw this leaning up against the trailer. I stopped talking to my mom midsentence ("Hang on a second...") and wandered over to hover behind a couple that was trying to decide whether or not a large antique window was suitable for converting into a picture frame (I guess it wasn't, Pinterest be damned, as they walked off without it). The colors, patterns, and weird subject matter pulled me inexorably toward my inevitable purchase-- I just had to hope it was somewhere vaguely in my price range.

I mean...seriously....the one second from the right is my favorite.

When I walked up to a lady in a folding chair asking about the price, she just pointed mutely behind me. There was a gaggle of people standing near the concrete retaining wall and I looked back like, "Which one of these people are affiliated with you, please?" She pointed again, I looked again, and looked back again. Finally, she called out the guy's name and a single figure in a white t shirt and ball cap walked towards me, holding the picture against my chest like a sandwich board. 

"How much are you asking on this one?"

"Gotta have $15 on that."

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

While this even-less-than-the-$20-I-wanted-to-spend-on-it price should have been good enough, I couldn't resist trying to bargain down to $10...you never know when someone will knock another dollar or two off to meet you in the middle! He demurred, and after a proper period of hem and hawwing to intimate that I wasn't completely willing to pay the $15 out of the gate and am just a cheapskate (which was true, but you have to keep your pride intact), I set the picture against my knees to fish three fives out of my satchel. Success!! The man said as I was handing him his money that the picture had come out of a career Navy officer's estate and that there were more Asian drawings in a pile on one of the tables, but as the plywood-and-glass frame was a little ungainly to carry around the narrow rows, I threw a cursory glance over the table and rejoined my parents.

Dad: What is it? [looking picture over doubtfully]
Me : [cheerfully] I don't know, but I hope it's haunted!
Dad: Nice frame....
Me: I know I need another picture like I need an actual hole in my head, but look at it! [shrugging] I don't care, I wanted it.
Mom: Knowing you, you'll find the perfect place to put it and it'll look fabulous. Or you'll sell it on Craigslist and make some money. So don't worry about it! [possibly the nicest thing my mom has ever said to me, so I had to memorialize this conversation in blog form]

When I got home, I (naturally) googled my find in a fit of curiosity as to what exactly I had on my hands (and, obvs, to make sure I hadn't paid too much at $15). The cursive script at the bottom of the textile reads "Australian Aboriginal Boomerang Corraborra" and what I thought was the surname "Rodriguez". Turns out, it's RodriQuez, as in John Rodriquez, who ran an eponymous business down under, specializing in abstract, Australian-themed designs. I was able to find a number of examples of his work on the Museum Victoria website. The MV owns a large collection of locally produced historic textiles among its holdings, and maybe a hundred digital images there are of items by Rodriquez. 

Like this one!

Brothers to my group above...a little more subtle, but still great.

From the website's catalog entries:

John Rodriquez studied art and design at RMIT in the late 1940s and became well known for his screen-printed textile designs in the early 1950s. From 1950 to 1980 he was one of a handful of Australian textile designers who developed a new contemporary style with innovative use of colour. His designs in the early 1950s were mostly of Aboriginal or geometric style. Later he turned to more abstract designs in the Scandinavian style. Later still he made bold use of colour. Rodriquez introduced unique Australian styles which have been imitated often since. He always stressed the importance of innovation. Many homes in Australia and overseas still have his art works in the linen cupboard. 

John Rodriquez retired in 1988, handing the Rodriquez company to his son Rimian, who has computerised the screen printing and mostly employs other designers for the products, but still uses a few of his father's most popular designs. Rodriquez passed away in 2000.

And from tea towels to fabric calendars to upholstery fabric to greeting cards, the collection really runs the gamut of items you could buy from the textile house. I bet the Navy man mentioned by the flea market dealer bought this as a souvenir of his travels in Australia and brought it home framed to commemorate his trip. I LOVE. ALL THE WEIRD THINGS. YOU WILL FIND. WHILE ESTATE SALE/THRIFT STORE/ FLEA MARKETING. Sometimes I wonder how people shop for non-essentials at retail department stores when there are all these weird and wacky second hand goods to be had (and usually for a pittance). But, as you can imagine, I'm biased.

More designs from Rodriquez, including some fashion sketches for a triad of mid century marvelous circle skirts (I'll take one of each, please):

Place Mat - Human Figures With Headdresses & Spears, Blue on Cream, 1960

Greeting Card - Man With Tools, Blue & Red, No. A0076, circa 1954

Place Mat - Human Figures With Headdresses & Spears, Maroon & Red, circa 1950s

Greeting Card - Shields, Bark Painting & Men Dancing, Blue & Red, circa 1949-1955

Artwork - Fabric Design, John Rodriquez, 1950s

Aforementioned skirts...are they not perfect?

Greeting card

A commemorative fabric from the 1956 Summer Olympics, held in Melbourne 

Greeting Card - Human Figures & Shields, Green & Brown, circa 1949-1955

What I look like in my mind's eye (another greeting card)

Business card, circa 1970

I pause now to tell you that I've spent the past twenty minutes trying to find more information about Aboriginal dress, hats and ornamentation, as seen in the tea towel's illustration. In spite of my finely honed Googling skills, from years at the library's reference desk, I have not been able to find information on said topic. But I WILL share with your what I have found:

• A Youtube video called "Aborigine hunt huge bats with boomerangs", which, in spite of my loyalty and love of bats, is possibly one of the most metal/amazingly weird things I have seen on the internet, and that is saying something.
• A wikipedia article about Kotekas, which I will leave you to discover on your own if you dare click the link (but if you do, please let's discuss).
• This 1939 Life article about Boomerangs becoming a novelty in the US, which contains the following (instructive) statement: "Catching an Australian boomerang is dangerous, may result in a broken head". 

Needless to say, I was not a very good factfinder with regards to this particular query, but I thought you might be interested in that information in spite of its lack of relevance to my original research goals. Another job for another day!

How about you? Found anything great out at the sales or the flea market lately? What kind of things trigger your impulse-buy impulse? Do you have any crazy textiles proudly framed and hung in your house? Where do some of the weirder/far flung items in your house come from? Let's talk!

That's all for today...have a great Wednesday and I'll talk you soon! :D

Weekend Finds: Amateur Art History Detective Edition (Paul Brach painting, 1959)

Good morning!

As promised, I'm back on this bleary, dreary Friday morning to share with you a whale of a find from my anniversary travels in Louisville. Weekend before last, we ran up to the northern most part of Kentucky to get out of town for the day and look around at what the bluegrass state had to offer in the way of second hand goods. What else do you think I would do on my vacation but exactly what I do when not on vacation? We visited a really cool bar that had a number of vintage pinball and arcade machines, but mostly, we ran around buying things because 1) it's what I like to do best and 2) my husband is very, very nice.

Do me a favor and pretend this wasn't taken at 6:40 this morning just before I had to rush out the door, haha. A blogger's work is never done!

The biggest attraction for me in Kentucky is that the place is LOUSY with places to shop for junk. As you know if you've read this blog more than twice, I'm the Tina-Turner-intro-to-"Proud Mary" of antiques acquisition-- "you see we never ever do nothing...nice, easy...we always do it nice and rough." This girl likes to be plunged into a situation where a critical eye is the only thing between you and untold bargains/treasures/etc. I often get disappointed in curated collections or resale stores because it's just not fun when everything is both retail priced and laid out for you, I like to get knee deep in a cardboard box of clothes someone pulled out of a disused barn, or dig around in an old supermarket turned thrift store full of 80% garbage, and 20% pure gold. So you can imagine how stoked I was to discover a few years ago, grace à a hot tip from Jamie of Owl Really, that the greater Louisville area has a bunch of stores called "Peddler's Marts" that are like indoor flea markets on steroids. Everything from canned food to ATVs to real antiques are under one roof, and ripe for picking! Seriously, if they had them in Tennessee, I might have a worse problem than I currently have in terms of collection management.

So. I was minding my own business, visiting the second of four peddler's mart locations we visited on Saturday, when I came across the above painting, and stopped in my tracks.

It looks more vibrant in person, I love the colors and the brushstrokes.

I have a documented weakness for wall art (to the point that I'm trying to unload a lot of surplus framed things on Craiglist right now...know anybody who needs great additions to a gallery wall?), and was drawn immediately to this oil painting leaned up against a stack of folding chairs in one of the booths. I crouched down and saw that the picture was one, really very good and two, had been treated V-E-R-Y poorly by whomever had it last and wherever it was before it hit the peddler's mart. My best guess is that the piece was either in an attic or a barn, maybe even under someone's house/in an unfinished basement, as it was covered in cobwebs, dirt, and those little cotton ball spider egg things... in three words: sick, sick, and sick. Somehow, this didn't deter me (though I did think at the time, who puts something up for sale like that without even dusting it off after they dig it out of a horrible place?), because again, ain't nobody afraid of rolling up their sleeves (and putting aside their natural aversion to grossitude) for a good deal.

As I hemmed and hawed, and looked the piece over, I noticed there was both substantial peeling/cracking/paint loss at the very bottom of the painting, and a signature:

Hm, well, that's kind of cool. Flipping the frame over, I saw something that REALLY struck me:

While it had been oil pencil'd through, and it was in as bad a condition as the rest of the picture, I could make out through the strikethrough that this is a gallery tag from "Leo Castelli". Wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't know a ton about modern art except what interests me, and Andy Warhol being one of those things, I knew that Leo Castelli was a gallery in New York that was the first to show a lot of the exciting things that came out of the art scene in the late fifties' and early sixties'. And this is labelled 1959? Interesting.

Further tags documented this painting's journey west to The Art Center in La Jolla:

And the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles:

The deciding factor though, among these tags, was this one:

I think if it had been even $10 more I would have had to pass. As it was, I struggled with "ugh, is it worth $20 if it's all nasty? How do you even clean something like this? But what if it's some really important painter? I'm sure Leo Castelli didn't show just anyone...What if I just get it because I like it? But is it dumb to like it if it's in such poor condition? What if I don't like it when I get home because it's in poor condition and I paid $20 for it?" I'm telling you, people, as often as I fall in love at first sight with some items, just as many items send me into this tailspin of self doubt. My state of consternation is pretty much a given, here. However! My better judgment prevailed and I left the store with this and a large 1940's folding game table printed with a lithograph of flowers under either arm.

When I got home, I cleaned off the cobwebs as best I could (using no water and gently brushing dirt/dust off as far away from the damaged areas as possible) and started doing some digging on the internet to see what I could find about Paul Brach. 

The man himself.

From his NYTimes obit in 2007, I learned that Paul Brach was

..a painter and teacher who became the first dean of the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts...[who] evolved from Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s to monochromatic Minimalism in the ’60s. [...] Mr. Brach was one of the first artists to exhibit with Leo Castelli, whose gallery he helped plan in the late 1950s.

He was married to artist Miriam Schapiro, and ran with an art world crowd that included Joan Mitchell and Michael Goldberg (see his LA Times obit here). While I'm not familiar with a lot of these names, they come up again and again in Google Books as people who were involved in the arts in California and New York in the 1950's and 1960's. Names I DID recognize included Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Rothko, who were featured in some of the same joint exhibitions as Brach. Guys, those are BIG. NAMES. I continued to comb through the internet for more info.

The Dwan Gallery in 1960.

From the digitzed Archives of American Art entries below, you can see a little more about Brach and his exhibition at the Dwan Gallery held in  April of 1960:

I was initially bummed out at this seemingly false lead, thinking the exhibition didn't include my painting, but wait! The last listing on the typewritten inventory mentions "PAPER 19. though 22. Untitled oils. Each: 250." Using my ever handy inflation calculator, I can tell you that $250 in 1960 has a 2015 value of $2,012.80. Jaw. Dropped. Meaning the most expensive painting on that list was almost $10,000 in today's money! Again, no amateur hour here, but a real working artist's painting. Color me shocked. The Castelli gallery archive materials are listed but not digitized-- I was able to find out from their list of exhibitions that Brach had solo shows there in December of 1959, which would place this picture there.

This interview from 1971 covers Brach's early life, career, and his tenure at Cal Arts as dean of the Art school (edited, shorter version here). I thought this was interesting:

PB: In comparison with some of my very good friends like Lichtenstein and Bob Rauschenberg, etc., my success has not been that much 

BS: But still for an artist growing up in New York, you made it.

PB: Right, I made it. So that leaving New York was not a sour grapes situation. Although, if your friends are selling a quarter of a million dollars a year and buying buildings downtown and taking off to Europe at the drop of a hat to have another show, etc., you begin to feel a little stuck. And you begin to wonder how corrosive a competitive mentality becomes anyway. 

Good for you, Paul Brach, for not letting other's success eat you up-- he was able to be a pivotal figure in his own right as an educator out west, and continued painting right up until he passed eight years ago.

Biggest unanswered question: how did this thing get to a peddler's mart in Kentucky?! And where was it in the gap between being in Los Angeles in 1960 and being in the back of my car returning to Nashville? If this painting could talk.... 

After satisfying my biographical requirements and sleuthing down the provenance of these gallery tags on the back of the painting, I started looking for comparables. I know you guys must do this from time to time to make sure you didn't get gypped on some impulse buy of a 1940's teapot or vintage earrings-- I usually pull up eBay and heave a sigh of relief when I see that the lowest priced item of a similar make and mark is $10-$40 more than however much I paid for it. Ebay, though, came up with goose eggs. I tried just "paul brach untitled painting 1959" and came up with these two paintings, which sold through Rago Auctions (YES, THE SAME GUY FROM ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, I was wow'd) the year Brach died. They're the same medium (oil on paper), same colors/series, same size, with no paint loss but with some buckling where the paper has come away from the board, like mine has:

And how much did they sell for?

ARE YOU FREAKIN' SERIOUS.

So! Now I've reached the "dead end" part of my story-- what in the hello do you do with a potentially important painting like this?

I've tried researching professional cleaning and restoration, but looking over some of the prices, I really don't have the resources to spend $1,000 having a painting worth possibly about $1,000 restored, and many sites warn that a bad restoration is worse than no restoration at all. DIY seems pretty out of the question-- while some people have had success using bread (seriously, like sandwich bread) removing grit and grime from oil, or even human saliva (I'm not sure if the internet is pranking me or what at this point), I would hate to ruin it by trying some dumb internet solution without any kind of background in it. If it was some fun $20 amateur painting from an estate sale of a collie or a woman in a beehive, I think either of those would be fine, but I don't want to risk messing up something significant by my own "good intentions". How am I to stabilize/keep it in ok condition without going super out of pocket on my $20 investment? I'm thinking about calling around to art schools locally to see if anyone wants to take it on as a class project-- even a semi-professional restoration would be better than these useless hands of mine at this specific task.

For now, I'm just going to hang it carefully on the wall in the office and bide my time. Maybe a solution will present itself! Until then, isn't that about the craziest thrift store find I could have made on my trip? I love the background on it almost as much as I love the picture itself.

How about you? Have you found anything bonkers out at the sales lately? Have any experience/know anybody with experience in art restoration? What have you bought for $20 that ended up being worth 10x that?

Gotta get going, but listen, have a fanTASTIC weekend and I'll talk to you next week! Til then.

Movie Star Paper Dolls (1940's-1950's)

Good afternoon!

How's tricks? I was felled by illness most of last week, so I've been steamrolling along trying to catch up at work THIS week...but that doesn't mean I've forgotten my blood oath to return to a regular blogging schedule! Not in the slightest. The last week, in between book slinging here at work, I've been reading Glenn Ford: A Life on Overdrive, listening to a lot of New Wave via this Youtube channel, and poring over 1940's and 50's paper dolls on Google image search, all thanks to the ceaseless wonder we call the internet. Since the third topic lends itself naturally to a visual medium like this very blog, want to take a look with me at some of the particularly eye-popping instances of Hollywood high glamour? I knnooooow thatcha doooo.

Allons-y....

Hello, gorgeous! I'm to the chapter in the Glenn Ford book where he's making Gilda, so doesn't that just dovetail nicely with this discovery!

When I was a young, American Movie Classics network obsessed kid in the 90's, I can remember seeing Tom Tierney's Hollywood and other historic paper doll collections in Waldenbooks and the like. The books were (and are) fascinating for fashionistas and cinephiles alike, particularly in the case of the movie-related ones as the screen-worn costumes were recreated in miniature manipulative versions for the titles ("Ah, look! It's her little tam o'shanter from the part where Dana Andrews says he's in love with another woman! And you can put the opera coat over the cocktail dress from the ballroom scene...but she might like the Walter Plunkett one from the first scene better...hmm..." ad infinitum).  Since then, I've seen my share of of-the-era vintage paper dolls at estate sales, and don't they always catch my interest for the gorgeous colors and heart stoppingly wonderful clothes illustrated in their little paper trousseaux. So many interests intersect here, and the best part, for a collector-- you can store like 1,000 outfits in a manila envelope. Do you know how much easier my life would be if this were true of clothes in the real world? 

Speechless with jealousy over this girl's estate sale find on Collector's Weekly's website...hot tamale....!! I spot at least two Hedy Lamarrs, a Greer Garson, two Gene Tierneys, a Dorothy Lamour and a Judy Garland...can you? #itsjustlikeispy

I know it's the not the same as having the original, lithographed print of these vintage pieces to gawk and gander over, but one of my favorite things to do on Google image is punch in the name of one of my favorite actresses along with "paper dolls vintage" in the search box and limit the results to supersized pictures so I can see every sketched button and bow on the costumes in question. While a simple search will yield up everyone from Rock Hudson to Jane Fonda (as a "groovy" young go-go type, no less, waaay pre-Vietnam and Klute), I chose just four of my favorite screen personalities from the forties' and fifties' to talk at you about today. Let's take a tour of "wardrobes I would like to own" by yours truly.

Lana Turner

Is the turban AND the star of India sized medallion too much? Nay, I argue that it IS NOT ENOUGH. Also those sleeves.

Laaaaaana Turrrrner. I feel like LT doesn't get mentioned as much as she should when people talk about the big stars of the golden age of American cinema, because how could you have gotten any "bigger" of a star than Lana Turner circa 1940-something? I never liked the original movie version of The Postman Always Rings Twice (I know, I'm crazy, but I couldn't get over my general disinterest in John Garfield to properly appreciate much more than Lana Turner's iconic all white ensemble in that entrance in that first scene between the two of them), but a recent viewing of Johnny Eager with Robert Taylor put me squarely in the pro Lana Turner camp....she's just. SO. CUTE. And cute isn't really the word for it, there's vulnerable, sex kittenish thing going on with her that's Marilyn Monroe without the forced bubbliness or vacuity of some of MM's roles. You feel like you might burst into tears if anything happens to her in her movies-- and as you would expect, that's exactly what filmmakers were banking on when they put her in properties where the male lead (from Spencer Tracy to Clark Gable and back again) was the love 'em and leave 'em type. Furthermore, her daughter Cheryl Crane (of the infamous Stompanato incident) wrote one of the best coffee table books on a movie star I think I've read-- I spent an entire snowday this spring up to my neck in Lana: The Memories, the Myths, the Movies, and my appreciation for the woman grew ten fold. 

And her clothes! From the book, the things you see here from her paper wardrobe are a lot like what she would wear in real life-- loud and splashy and fun without an ounce of tacky. She was one of the first people to wear jewels (real and paste) in the daytime in Hollywood, and WHY. NOT. You'd better believe if I had a jewelry box like  Elizabeth Taylor, I would be walking around looking like a Halloween costume of Mrs. Thurston Howell III morning noon and night. Shameless!

Anyway, look at how cute these midriff playsuit ensembles are:

I love the idea that there's nothing new under the sun-- you could take any of these pieces and pair them with a solid blouse or skirt in place of its coordinating piece and look as fresh as paint out on a sunny afternoon, though it be year of our Lord 2015. Do you ever notice with vintage clothing that just about the CRAZIEST print can go from costume to super chic with the addition of some toning-down element? When fall finally comes back around, I'll be busting out my all-over print polyester long sleeved dresses, which, solo, would give people seizures for the gaudiness-- however, pop a skinny black sweater vest on top of the same thing and it not only gives a better silhouette, but looks like perfectly acceptable office wear (in my mind, anyway...who can say about the rest of the world). Also, please see the crazy hat, for which I would give my eye teeth. 

I think  personally I would be more likely to wear one of these mint green outfits...ugh! I love that color so! I would never have thought to pair it with navy blue, as seen at bottom left, so that's interesting, but that big gold applique/possibly braided gold corsage on the shoulder is giving me life. One of my #1 physical regrets in life is that I have the height but not the body type for these kind of high waisted pants, because my GOD, would I be wearing them if I did. Another crazy hat, and could die for how much I love the entire outfit at upper left.

In summation: LANA4LIFE2015.

Rita Hayworth:

MUST. HAVE. SAME. SUIT. WITH. OWN. NAME. OMG.

I've mentioned before on this blog how nuts I am Rita Hayworth (see Life magazine article post on her here...how in the world was that almost four years ago?!), and safe to say nothing has changed. If I could swap corporeal forms with anybody it's a dead heat between Hayworth and Ava Gardner, they're just IMPOSSIBLY beautiful. The illustrator doing this set did a less than perfect job with RH's doll, but I think this transgression can be overlooked in light of the fact that the clothes are out of this world.

I mean:

I'm almost too thunderstruck by the outfit on the right to even say anything about the one on the left, though that canary yellow color and saucy flower placement would still look like a million bucks today. The slightly mutton leg sleeves of the red and cheetah print, plus the nipped in waist...too, too much to handle for this little heart of mine. This dress is one of those so-spectacular outfits that I would buy it out in the wild at an estate sale even if it didn't fit me-- you don't pass up something that will haunt you nights if you can help it, right? Uhhhhmazing.

I was interested in this page because I actually have all the items pictured-- you know about my mink situation, and I bought a winter muff like this at an estate sale as weird bout of "how Victorian!" washed over me. I have a dress in the attic that I doubt would fit me anymore, as it was sk-i-i-i-in tight in high school, but I bought it at a yard sale along with a Lily Munster-esque sixties' dress...probably late forties'/early fifties' black halter top with a voluminous print skirt. Do you ever think of things you've bought "before you were into that" and wonder what opportunities you must have missed when you weren't looking? Who KNOWS what else was at that same yard sale and seventeen year old me yet too ignorant to buy it. At least dumb luck brought me this jewel. I love the idea of wearing everything but the black purse together. Also--do you ever think about how Hollywood women of the era had whole rooms devoted to furs...and live in a climate where you wouldn't need them 90% of the time? I felt bad about my coat closet in mild to moderate Tennessee, but when you compare it to California, I'm sure it seems like Yukon territory w/r/t cold weather.

Last but not least, that dress and this cape. Note the crisp collar and gold epaulets, and the green lining. I am just as giddy as the 1940s child who would have cut these out about how LUXE that outfit is.

Judy Garland

GIVE. ME. THAT. OUTFIT. I don't know if my life will be right until I get a similar get-up together.

Judy, Judy, Judy! It's funny how, I guess grâce à her iconic performances as Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester and Dorothy Gale, people don't think of her as much of a glamour girl/clotheshorse but her forties' movies beg to differ. Stars back then were dressed to the NINES, and Judy in some of those off-the-production-line musicals looks better than a lot of us 100% dressed up for a Saturday night (one of my favorites is the outfit in this clip  from For Me and My Gal...I could stand up and cheer for it). 

As you can see from these, the illustrator was not playing around with kill-me-cute outfits:

It's interesting that they give the more petite girls these sun suits, I wonder if they look better in general or just give oomph to littler ladies. Even this tall one would love to get her hands on the navy middy inspired piece (THAT. SHOULDER PURSE. SHUT. UP) and the colorful necklace at the top.

I like in this set how each outfit has a corresponding hat. The black straw one paired with the rose dress is maybe my favorite-- I hadn't thought to add a coordinating ribbon to a black accessory to match it back to my outfit, but don't think I'm not going to now #knowledgeispower. That boxy beige coat over a skinny little skirt and sweater set is killing it dead. Not a huge fan of the plaid, but maybe if I saw it on someone I'd like it better?

Side bar: If you're a Garlandite, did you read that Stevie Phillips book that just came out this year? I read it on the plane back and forth from vacation and while I was kind of thrilled to hear a real gutbucket celebrity dish from the nuts-and-bolts part of show business (Phillips was one of the first female talent agents when there weren't a lot of women in the field, and rising from secretary to personal assistant to Garland to that position, no less), I wasn't a big fan of the horror movie like treatment of Judy in it. While I'm sure it was exactly THAT BAD when it was bad, I felt a little wrong/didn't like reading about it at all. #teamjudy [end side bar] 

Ava Gardner:

Last but not least, the aforementioned Ava Gardner couldn't escape my notice in the paper doll category-- she has not one, but TWO sets that I could track down.

This doll and outfit come from the first one, and I included them (and just them) because a) this doll looks the most like AG of all of them and b) that set was not nearly as gorgeous as the second one, in spite of its closer fidelity to the star's actual appearance (sorry, Charlie).

Now THIS set...I mean, just look at this set:

While the girl looks more like Paulette Goddard than she does like Ava Gardner (and she doesn't even look THAT much like Paulette Goddard), the pages of clothes are shockingly good. Take a look:

Can you imagine rooting through a suitcase or a plastic bin at the flea market and finding all this mess? I would lose my ever loving mind. The black hat and gloves with the pink dress and tied pearls is very much something I would like to wear, thank you, please bring these to me, Santa.

Did you or did you not flip when you saw that ski suit complete with stylish glasses? The western outfit is a little much with those pants (if you're going Nudie, go FULL NUDIE [as I trademark that bumper sticker] ), but I will take both the hot pants looking numbers at the top plus Ava Gardner's legs to go with it. Did you know she was only 5'6''? Like (the even shorter at 5'3'') La Crawford, she somehow reads on screen as being VERY tall...long torso? Not sure.

Hold your hats, kids:  the folder it comes in features these pages of "jewelry box" mock ups for you to imagine as you play dress up with AG's clothes closet. You didn't think she was going out unadorned, did you? One of the best parts of vintage children's toys and playthings like this is the aspirational aspect-- you hope to have a house JUST LIKE your dollhouse some day, clothes JUST LIKE your paper dolls or Barbie-- so think about where accessories like this fall in. Me, I just want that charm bracelet. BAD. Do you see the ice tongs?

I borrowed liberally from the internet for all of these, but I think you can find all of the sets (including extra outfits and commentary by the scanner) on the blog Miss Missy's Paper Dolls. You can also find more celebrity and non celebrity paper dolls alike-- the woman has THE BEST examples of vintage pieces and has obviously spent a lot of time scanning them for us to enjoy. I'm obsessed with the Movie Dressographs of Greta Garbo and Doug Fairbanks Jr she's just put up this week, along with a lot of other items 'round that way. So thanks, Miss Missy! And go check her out!

How about you? Seen any of these type of dolls out at the flea market or estate sales? Which starlet's wardrobe is your favorite? Did you have paper dolls when you were a kid? What kind of "things to shoot for as a grownup" toys did you have growing up? I'd love to talk shop!

Gotta get a move on, but have a FABULOUS Friday and I'll talk to you next week! Take care! Til then.

Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner (set one, set two)

Peter Terris Shenango China (1950's)

Good morning!!

Did you think I'd up and quit on you? No chance, no chance. Not while there's still breath in my body and tons of vintage stuff to discuss...and today, there's both! :) I was telling my friend Eartha Kitsch the other day that in spite of not having blogged for a few months, I still constantly get a pang of, "Hey! That would make a great blog idea!", and isn't it just about time that I heed the tugging of my vintage writing heartstrings and tell you the good news about Peter Terris Shenango china. 

Hold your hats, kids, there's some INSANE deal-getting going down in this post. And not a little midcentury marvelousness! Let's talk brass tacks.

Proof of life...I should be holding up a newspaper with today's date on it...

For anyone just tuning in, my parents and I have gotten into the swing of hitting estate sales pretty much every...single....weekend in the last couple of years. Hey, everybody's gotta have a hobby! And truth be told, I'm happy to have accomplices in crime-- we usually have a good time even if we don't find anything. Of a regular week, Matthew works Saturday morning into the early afternoon, so this girl reporter is free to roam the 615 in search of vintage paydirt and get home with just enough time to clean everything up and present it to the man of the house. ("Look, bebe, I got this...and this...and this was only freakin' $5...and I probably shouldn't have bought this for $15 but I wanted it..." [Matthew, examining the umpteenth vintage swing coat to join my closet] "Well, that looks EXTREMELY Babbish..." #hesanenabler #maisjelaimecommeça). So two weekends ago was no different than any other, my mom and dad and I were tooling around West Meade in search of the third phase, third day sale that was going on at the piquantly named "Gun Club Road". The house, when found, was gorgeous....the house, when found, was also still P-A-C-K-E-D to the rafters. Score! The race was on.

Marking on a Peter Terris Shenango set

Saturday, as opposed to Thursday or Friday, is an interesting day to make a "day" of sales, because whereas you might have missed the McCoy planter or Eames knockoff that got snatched up on the first day, what you will FIND are items that were too high on the first and second day of the sales, and are now on the chopping block for criminally low prices. Best case scenario, you can find something that was fairly priced on the first day, a pretty good bargain on the second day, and a no brainer on the third and final day of the sale. I was a victim of "75% off everything panic" upon entering the house, which is how, in spite of a new age of austerity in vintage buying, I ended up with a pole lamp, a framed fan photo of Gregory Peck, two 1940's frames, four 60's peignoir sets, a bunch of various and sundry smalls, and an extensive set of Peter Terris china for about $40, "But I thought you said you were done buying china," a close reader of She Was a Bird might remind its authoress. Guess I was wrong! Couldn't pass it up. $7 was the total cost expended cost on the two boxes of paper packed china . Remind me to tell you about the rest of it later, but for now, here's a picture of the service altogether, and the best part is-- that's only HALF. I have a mint condition setting for eight! Eight plates, saucers, tea cups, bread and butter plates, and a gravy boat.  I don't even know if my table, leaf added , will seat that many people-- but if it does, I'm prepared!

The whole megillah...weirdly enough, the gravy boat is just a bowl permanently affixed to a saucer in one piece. I scared Matthew by turning it upside down the other day without explaining it was a single piece of china, haha. Poor bub.

This pattern is called "Calico Leaves". How do I know that? I popped "Peter Terris Shenango", "Peter Terris Shenango midcentury", and "Peter Terris Shenango leaves" into an Etsy and Ebay search and scrolled through the for sale and sold results until I could find items that matched, trawling for any history or additional info I could. It never ceases to amaze me how 99% of post 1920's things I've bought are somewhere posted on the internet somehow, no matter how weird-- this was an easy one, but I've found bi-zarre things I would have thought were rare as hen's teeth or at least a little unusual being sold thither and yon on the world wide web...usually for a higher price than I paid for it, comfortingly, but the fact that it's out there is crazy! Mass production in the midcentury means most things we drool over at the flea market and estate sales were produced in numbers you couldn't imagine back in the day... which is good news when one passes up a crazy cool thing. Odds are, you'll find it again (though not always at the price you wanted to pay for it, haha).

I digress...here's the plate in detail:

I love the colors.

While the pattern is pretty enough, what drew me to these plates more than other midcentury sets I've passed on (other than the price), was how heavy these plates are. The thin, fine (and oh-so-breakable) 1930's and 40's china I'd been collecting at thrift stores and estate sales are about a fourth the weight of the Shenango plates. I decided then and there to go out of the shabby chic china business and embrace the "dare you to drop it" (but seriously, please don't try to drop it) thickness of the new plates. Side note: if you're looking for some bargain shabby chic china in Nashville, GIRL, I have got you covered on Craigslist (see link here). I kept one set of gorgeous handpainted plates/cups/etc, but listed all my others to make room for four of everything for everyday use, and four of everything for replacement/dinner parties. We're moving up in the world, cabinets!!

Teacup and saucer design

And why are the dishes so heavy duty? Because turns out, the Shenango china company happens to specialize in restaurant ware!  Ah HA. The Peter Terris line was their attempt in the mid 50's to capitalize on suburban consumer culture...what if you made dishes as cute as they were contemporary, and as HARDY as commercial grade cafeteria plates? You can see some of the ads for the line from 1956 issues of Life below. Nota bene: while $12.95 sounds like a deal, that actually works out to $113 and some change in modern money. Historical inflation data, as always, bowls me over. Actually, mine probably consists of two 16 piece sets (as said, I have 8 of everything and a gravy boat)...that's $226! Which is $219 more than I paid for it. YES.

I saw a few sites mention 1957 as the year Peter Terris was discontinued, and that makes sense, as these 1956 ads were the only thing to pop up on the usually generously populated midcentury Google books archive. And why, I wonder! Information is scant outside of listings for sale and this master's thesis (!!) on Shenango in general from a student at Kent State University. Thank goodness for the latter! Page 104 brings up the info we want-- Peter Terris was a less expensive option than Shenango's expensive Epicure line (the author describes the Terris line as "thinner"...can you imagine!) and, as said above, was marketed at housewives for its sturdiness and practicality. I will gladly have this marketed at me in spite of being employed and it being the year 2015. By the time Shenango changed ownership in the early sixties', the Epicure and Terris lines had both been abandoned in favor of a focus on the commercial restaurant ware that made the company's name in the industry.

I couldn't find many other "atomic" or "midcentury" looking Shenango patterns online except this one, the "Charpinx" pattern, which is for sale for $48 on Ebay as we speak! Not bad, and honestly a little cuter than mine (sssshhh, don't tell my plates I said that). Here's the link and a picture:

SHENANGO CHINA CHARPINX PETER TERRIS ORIGINAL 1950S MOD 16 pcs. 4 place sets

Anyway, I have to get back to work, but I missed you guys! What in heck have you been up to? Have you seen any of these pieces in the wild, or do you have a dish or a set at home from the Peter Terris line? What kind of vintage china do you favor, if you do? I will once again make fervent promises to get back here before too long-- especially to tell you about my exploits on Craigslist as a seller rather than a buyer for the first time! But again, we'll get to it, soon. :)

Take care!! Talk to you later!