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.

Curtis Jere and Marc Creates (Brutalist and MCM Wall Art for Pennies on the Dollar)

Hello again!

Do you ever get a "when it rains, it really pours" feeling about vintage items? Sometimes it seems like I'll spend years looking for something, and all of a sudden in a short period of time, I find not one but two or three or four of the same thing that was scarce as hen's teeth before. Remember my $10 Curtis Jere from March? Well, buckle your seat belts, kids, Mama brought some siblings home for my now growing metal art wall collection:

Trying to find juuuust the right place to put this now. Cameo by Matthew's arm and Al Jolson.

I was minding my own business at work on a Friday afternoon, making my list of houses to hit on Saturday and combing through estate sale listings for suitability, when a picture caught my eye. Tangent: Do you fellow estate sale lovers look through the pictures on estatesales.net or Craigslist before venturing out into the wild for fun stuff? I always try and rank sales by what I see in the preview pictures, be it sixties' green carpet or a very Leave it to Beaver kitchen, to gauge whether or not I'll be able to find more goodies. All tools in a garage? Naaah. All contemporary furniture? Noooope. This house in Hendersonville looked to be from the late eighties' or early nineties', and nothing furniture or smalls wise really spoke to me. I usually flip through the gallery with my finger pressed to the right arrow key, giving me a split second montage of all the images, and I had to stop and go back for this one in the midst of all that maroon and forest green upholstery:

Well, well, well...what do we have here?I was pretty sure I was seeing a Curtis Jere Brutalist piece hiding in plain sight. As poor, beleagured Matthew was getting off work two hours before me, I sent him an SOS via text message of the above photo and an address. "PLEASE GO GET THIS, MUST BE LESS THAN $50", the distress signal read, and off he went out of his way to go grab it (because he is #1 husband of the year, in case you were wondering). About an hour later:

Me: Did you get it?!

He: Yeah! 

Me: [elated] Really?!

He: Yeah!! It's right here in the Cube!

Me: How much was it. It was like fifty bucks, wasn't it.

He: No, it was $25!

Me: What'd they say at the sale?

He: Well, I just walked in and went straight to it, took it off the wall, and then went up to pay. The ladies there were like, "I guess you know what YOU want!" And then said didn't I want to look around in the garage or anything, so I did, but they didn't have anything.

The poor guy didn't even get rewarded for his hard work by a secret stash of old video games or computer monitors. C'est la vie. The conversation continued:

Me: Can you look to see if there are any markings on the front of it? It'll look like a little CJ in a circle, or like someone wrote "c jere" on one of the squares in Sharpie.

He: Ok, let me seeeeeee...[pause]....yeah, no, I don't see anything like that, but it might just be a case of Bab eyes. [a medical term for when he's sent looking for something and I come in five minutes later and pluck in from directly in front of his field of vision].

Me: [a little disappointed] Yeah, it might just not be a Curtis Jere or whatever. Can you look on the back of it where it hangs on the wall?

He: Oh! Here we go! [as hope swells within my bosom] There's a little sticker that says "Marc Creates".

Me: [très deçu] Oh....well...that's ok, It IS metal, right? Is it heavy?

He: I mean, it seems heavy to me? But...?

Me: I'll just look at it when I get home. 

Was my usual acuity with antiques dulled by disuse? Had I been fooled? I was worried that I would get home and the piece might be some Syroco or similarly down market version of what I was looking for. Matthew brought the piece in from the car when I got home and I was pleased to see that it was real metal, and heavy! AND GORGEOUS! Get a look at it next to the C Jere Brutalist guy from earlier (and no, I'm never taking that $10 sticker off):

YES MA'AM. "Marc Creates, huh..." I says to myself, and started googling.

"Marc Creates" is the brand under which Marc Weinstein, an artist from St. Louis, MO, sold his own line of midcentury metal creations. His website mentions that he got his start in metal objets d'art in the late 1950's, when he started working in a scrapyard his father owned.  From the website:

Weinstein began experimenting with different welding techniques after learning the basics from a local handyman. Welding brought Weinstein's artistic abilities to the surface and by the early 1960s, he was transforming scrap metal into works of art.... He spent the next two years welding textured metal sculptures in a shed in the corner of his father's scrap metal yard. What started as an artistic release in his spare time, was now starting to consume his days. Weinstein said, "My Dad thought the sculptures were interesting, but was also concerned about running a business." 

On a whim he took a metal wall sculpture to a local furniture store to see if they would buy it. "The old guy who owned the place didn't like it, but his son stopped me before I left and said that he wanted it. He purchased the sculpture to sell in the furniture store and it sold immediately," said Weinstein. Shortly after he sold his first work, he was receiving orders at a slow but steady rate until a furniture sales person spotted his sculptures hanging in a store. The sales person contacted him to see if he could carry his artwork. The sales person used Mark's sculptures to accessorize the walls of a furniture show in Chicago. As a result of this exposure, manufacture representatives from all over the country began to inquire about selling his art. By 1967, the demand for Marc Creates metal sculptures was outgrowing the shed in the corner of his father's scrap yard. In need of a full-time production facility and showroom, Weinstein opened a studio in downtown St. Louis. By the early 1970s, Marc Creates was producing metal sculptures and furniture, shipping thousands of pieces of art throughout the world.

PLUS THE WEBSITE HAS A PDF OF HIS 1975 CATALOG. Color me thrilled. Check out the cover and some of the pieces from inside:

As in most of the vintage things I bring into the house, what I love about these brutalist pieces are how dramatic they are. Anything that catches your eye and holds your gaze is something I want in my house, be it a cow skull or a ventriloquist dummy or one of these characters. Also, that one on the left? That would be mine! :o I know it's goofy, but the wanna be archivist/ former librarian in me gets thrilled to pieces when I'm able to track down the provenance of something neat I've found. Nowadays, Marc Creates is sold under the name Curtis Jere thanks to some business merging, and I think that's actually a good idea as the two look so similar!

Speaking of Curtis Jere....

What you can't see in this picture-- how badly this thing needs another three nails to hold it up, or how sharp the edges of those leaves are! Caution, peeps.

Ta DAAAAAAAH.....

The day after Matthew brought the Marc Creates home, my parents and I ventured out into the sweltering heat to visit one of Michael Taylor's warehouse sales. I wandered around the unairconditioned space (there were fans going, but the air that day was so hot they weren't doing much but moving the air around), not really looking FOR anything so much as just looking. Michael Taylor is the KING of estate sales, and I regularly just hit whatever sales he has going on a given weekend-- this one happened to be a number of items relocated from other sales to his business location on Allied Drive. I had seen a few knickknacks I was interested in but resisted mightily light of our recent clean out efforts. Then, draped over an ottoman like "one of your French girls" was this gold leaves metal piece. Two in one weekend? NOT POSSIBLE. I shimmied through a bank of couches and chairs to where the glinting leaves lay. As a lot of the items at the warehouse sale are priced...how do we say this...competitively (read: sky high for a little pennypincher like me), I was worried that even with the half off discount running the dadblamed thing would be marked $200, effectively placing it out of my price range. Mais non, the postal tag attached to it read $45 in magic marker. 

"Oh, well then it's probably not an actual Curtis Jere, right," I said to myself, eyeing it for a signature. I turned it over in my hands carefully and squinted as beads of perspiration started forming on my brow from stationary activity. "OR MAYBE IT IS!" I thought, spotting the tell tale signature bold as brass across one stem.

So, a real C Jere for $22.50, bayBEE, quite a mark down from this 1stDibs listing at $725. YAHOO. I told friends I almost paid with my life as the line to checkout was long and fraught with credit card reader difficulties (side note: if I see one more person paying for items at an estate sale that total less than $20 with a credit card, I might just lose my actual mind), but in the end, it was worth almost heat stroke to add to my collection of knock-yer-eye-out vintage wall hangings.

The family all together, for size comparison.

All right, enough blabbin-- what do you think! And apologies to my Facebook/Instagram friends, I blew up soc'med at the time with my finds, but you know how I love to write things out longform here on the blog. :) Do you have any metal wall art in your house? How/where do you display it? Had any crazy "when it rains it pours" estate sale or flea finds lately? I'd love to hear all about it!

That's all for now, but more next week! Have a fantastic weekend and I'll talk to you soon!!

Pinch Me, I'm Dreaming: Curtis Jere Thrift Store Find of the Century

Good morning!!

How's tricks? I am back and whoooo boy, the things I have seen since last we spoke. Diana Ross, for one. Joe Gillis still stuck floating in Norma Desmond's swimming pool, for another (why do I always root for him?! Why am I always disappointed!!). But most shockingly of all, a rare southern snowpacolypse. The whole country's been experiencing weirder-than-usual weather patterns lately, but tell you what, this little non-snowbird has had a DOOZY of a fortnight with regard to the wintry conditions. After week-before-last's Ice-Planet-Hoth-like mix of snow and black ice in the usually temperate corner of the South I live in, I did manage to:

1.  Eat up three consecutive days of vacation drinkin' mer-luht and suffering a semi-constant state of anxiety as to whether the weather would let up and let me go back to work, while binge reading three books cover to cover, 
2. Manage to, on the one day I did get out of the house and into the car, get stuck on a hill/ almost  spin out into another car in the space of ten minutes' time, and
3.  Stay home the following day for sheer fear of facing the ice again.

Lord, these nerves, people! I'm trying not to worry like an octogenarian over the potential icy conditions on Thursday, but until then, let's get my mind off it by talking about oh, maybe one of the best thrift store finds I've ever made.

Let me introduce you. Folks, mindboggling cheap Curtis Jere; mindbogglingly cheap Curtis Jere, my readers. I am so excited over this hunk of metal I could cry salt tears. Take a look:

I kept my ocelot print coat on so we would match. And also because I never want to take it off.

I was at a junk store with Matthew over the weekend after a long, fruitless day of flea marketing and junk store perusing. He was nice enough to come with me, trailing at a distance with his PSP as I dejectedly price guessed Hall vases ("$8. Is it $8?" ((checks bottom of vase for sticker price)) "$7.99. Am I good or am I good?" or "$20." ((checks price)) "$68?! Are they HIGH?", and so on). To have no luck at the flea market is pretty bad (I did pick up a dress and an Asian inspired fifties' charm bracelet, but nothing to write home about), but to have no luck at three subsequent non-chain thrift stores is downright depressing for this spendthrift. I'd lost my husband to a pile of snarled Game Cube controllers midway through this, our last destination, and wandered down another aisle. "Well, this is all right," I thought, picking up a pair of vividly pink elbow length gloves for $3 (Schiaparelli, anyone?) and a little black turban from defunct Nashville department store Cain Sloan for $4. I was almost at the end of the second aisle of the store, headed towards the front to take a maudlin swipe at the glass cases, when I stepped into a booth full of framed photos. Still on the hunt for something to display some thirties' sheet music, I stooped to look, but first I had to move a giant metal rectangle out of the way to see the frames underneath.

The booth minus one very important item, which I practically ran out of the store screaming with.

As I picked it up, I noticed it was H-E-A-V-Y, which, if you know your Jurassic Park quotes, usually means expensive. "Huh," I thought. "Wonder what it is." With some effort, I flipped it over and saw this abstract panel of oxidized brass and three dimensional strips of squares and circles. I still wasn't convinced, thinking maybe it was one of those Rent-a-Center/TJ Maxx style oversized art pieces. All T, no shade, you know what I'm talking about. I thought, idly, as I sometimes do when wistfully willing the next album in the Goodwill bin to be Judy Garland and not another self-produced seventies' religious recording, if it might be a C Jere...but no. Surely not. Surely I wouldn't find something I've been looking for nigh on four or five years here, in a booth next to a booth that sells nothing but diabetic socks....

However! BEHOLD:

My eyes went O_O

At this point I really think I felt my heart leap in my body and do a little somersault. Eeek! It was what I wouldn't have thought in my wildest fancy it would be. Lip bitten, I rotated the rectangle to get a better look at the price tag. Keep in mind I'd picked up a pair of Beatle boots, ankle length, deadstock, IN MY SIZE, in another booth and been outright shocked by the sixty dollar price tag. What would this be, like $300? $100? At least $50...

OR HOW ABOUT $9.99. For less than the price of a Woodlands buffet lunch, I could own an honest-to-Garshen piece of high end sixties'/seventies' kitsch. At this point, Matthew caught up to me. The following conversation ensued:

He: Whatcha got there, cutie?

Me: ((in a furtive whisper)) It'saCurtisJerethesethingsareworthlikehundredsofdollarsletsgobuy thisrightnow.

He: ((in a stage whisper)) How much does that one cost?

Me: ((through teeth)) : TEN DOLLARS. 

He: Wowwww....

I know it could have been Marlene Dietrich's earrings or an old soup can to him, but he was sweet to feign being impressed until I could later explain to him the far reaching implications of this purchase (or the short reaching ones, which are mainly that I now have a vintage wall piece that isn't super easy to find in the wild for under $100, much less under $10). For his trouble, here's a photo of him holding the Jere himself (I love that tiny face) :

On display. Like I said, this ish is heavy, too!!

Here's a picture of the piece precariously balanced on that-one-nail-I-can't-figure-out-what-to-hang-with-but-am-loathe-to-remove-from-the-wall. I have also found out that if I take a photo of a single object against that wall, it looks like the Polyore version of a clipping, haha. Did you know C Jere is not a single person (in direct contradiction of Artisan House's promotional material from the seventies', which described "his" schooling and "his aesthetic"), but the portmanteau pseudonym of artists and brothers-in-law Curtis Freiler and Jerry Fels? I didn't. Good cocktail party conversation in case anyone ever asks you (how I do wait for someone to ask me...). Also, I might leave that price tag on there forever. It's half the fun of the story!!

I was struck by what someone said in a documentary I was watching the other day about context while antiquing or junking-- the dealer in question had bought a slim, pale green lamp at an antique show for $10 "as a joke", thinking it was maybe a fake from the 90's of a better known design. The further he got from the dismal little corner of the field that the lamp had been on, however, the more life the lamp seemed to take in, until he realized it was actually a very good 1930's art deco piece, not derivative of anything, and that he'd bought it at a fraction of its actual value just on a lark. The lamp's proximity to so much "bad" stuff had made his otherwise impeccable eye for the "great" versus the "ok" fail him. Now, if you see a gorgeous rhinestone bedecked flapper masterpiece in a pile of polyester, sure you're going to know it's the best thing going on that sawhorse table. But sometimes, it's true, I buy something on an inkling of interest, get it home, and realize it's really something. This Jere is definitely a great example-- I wasn't even sure it was worth the energy of picking up when it was balanced on top of some cheap Home Accents 8 x 10 frames...but having it leaned up next to the record console every morning (pending my getting my dad to help me hang it on these thin walls with a certain degree of certainty), it's really grown on me how gorgeous it it. 

Once more, with feeling!

I haven't been able to find an exact copy of this on Ebay or Etsy, but if you've seen one there or in your grandmother's basement, you have to promise to let me know! The  more   ubiquitous Brutalist designs by C Jere go for anywhere from $400 to almost $6,000, with the figural windmills and sailboats and birds a little less expensive. My socks were knocked right off when I did my usual Google newspapers search and turned up this ad from Artisan House (which Fels and Freiler cofounded in the  early sixties') from the 70's :

$160 for the farmhouse, and $35 for the shipwreck. Do you know how much that is in 2015 money? That's $695 and $152, respectively. Holy smokes! It will never cease to amaze me how much old stuff cost before it was old.

All right, I have to get going, but what do you think? Do you love it or do you LOVE IT? Have you found anything you were cuckoo go gaga over lately out at the sales? Any amazing finds that defy the odds and spur the vintage imagination? You know I'd love to hear about it!!

I have a veritable backlog of things I need to gab at you about, and don't you know I've missed doing it! I hope I'm back soon, schedule permitting, to tell you all about what's been going on lately. Stay warm and safe in this crazy weather, and I'll see you in the funny papers. :) Take care! Til next time.

UPDATE: I found the one I have online on 1stdibs! And it has A BROTHER:

Also they're hanging it wrong if the orientation of the signature says anything about how you should hang it (I follow the same logic by judging where the front or back of the vintage hat is based on the maker's label...do you fellow vintage ladies do the same?).

This one looks like a relative from the same collection:

My reaction:................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Art Totes (MoMA Store Online)

Good afternoon!

I have been a luh-haaazy so and so today, I will tell you what! If I'm 100% honest, I would have to admit that a good portion of the morning was devoted to watching Alfred Hitchcock Hour and browsing the MoMA store online. The former yielded this episode with a creepy Bruce Dern and this episode with later Family Affair dad Brian Keith, the latter these gorgeous tote bags from the museum's gift selections. I am seriously in the market for a big tote bag with some kind of flair to it, and don't these just fit the bill to a tee.

Come take a look!

UNIQLO Jean-Michel Basquiat Collage Tote Bag

Q: Jean Michel Basquiat? A: Jean Michel YES. I was googling his name and tote this morning, which clued me in to MoMA's tote bag holdings in the first place. I wish this was one of his more intricate drawings, or on a darker background so it looks a little more dramatic, but as it is, I can't believe this just popped up at the top of my search results. Thank you, internet. Also, this exchange at the non-fiction desk: Me to my friend Jesse: I wish they'd done one of his self portraits or something instead of this, people are going to think I just made it myself. Jesse: So, one of his more tortured, painful pieces of art-- Me: ((sheepishly)) For me to carry my lunch in or whatever. #thedayimhaving #consumerist

UNIQLO Andy Warhol Flowers Tote Bag

When I started teaching and needed something other than a Jansport backpack to carry my lesson plans and grade book to and from school, I had the TJ Maxx Andy Warhol market cornered on tote bags. I must have had five or six of them, the ones I can remember being pink Elvis on a yellow background, "Happy Bug Day", a black and white striped one with a pink cat, and my favorite, Jackie Kennedy on a red background. The only problem with these bags is that the silver material on the straps (with quotes like "If I weren't me, I think I'd like to be Jackie Kennedy" and "In the future, everyone will be world famous for fifteen minutes") flakes off when you put too much weight on the sturdy canvas bag itself, and it looks bad. Uuurgh. So, maybe this print of his famous flowers series would be nice!

Or maaaaybe this Keith Haring bag:

UNIQLO Keith Haring Turquoise Tote Bag

It is both a) the slickest looking of all four of these bags but conversely b) the one that looks the most like something from Forever 21, due to Haring's oft-copied, youthful street designs. Have you seen the documentary The Universe of Keith Haring? Watching one of his wall high murals being completed at time lapse speed is really neat.

And back to the Warhol:

UNIQLO Andy Warhol Soup Can Tote Bag

You can't get much more iconic than Andy Warhol's soup can series, and here it IS. Not some knock-off, but the real deal (or as real as a print of a soup can forty some years after the initial frisson of newness struck the art world).

Bonus: this bag by artist Lauren DiCioccio...about twice as expensive as the other four, but the cheeky play on throwaway plastic bags (as a luxe, satin and hand embroidered satchel) is wonderful. Maybe I could get this and carry it as my purse with one of the other totes. It's almost my birthday, after all!!

Thank You Bag

How about you? Which one of these bags would you schlep to work as a reminder of the outside world? What artwork would you like to see on a tote bag? Do you have a go-to brand or website for fun, novelty items that are more kitsch than kawaii? Let me know! I'm in the market!!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow. Have a great Wednesday! We'll talk then.