Estate Sale Diary (Weekend Recap)

Good morning!!

Like I said earlier in the week, I'm back to check in with some reportage from the field. What field? The estate sale field, naturally. I realized the other day, talking to a friend, that while there are some crazy out-of-the-ordinary estate sales or Goodwill runs that stick out in my mind by sheer force of weirdness, I've been missing a great opportunity in not keeping some kind of a log of the selfsame. I want to get better about taking pictures and documenting the digging-- I yanked most of these from Estatesales.net, but I'll try to be a more diligent shutterbug in the future.

1) Knob Hill, Donelson:

One of my favorite sellers from Gallatin (you can see her shop on the square here) was running a sale in Donelson, and greeted me at the door. "Are you wearing your charm bracelet?" she called out. "YOU KNOW IT," I replied, both of us referring to the sterling silver charm bracelet Matthew had gone up to Sumner County to procure for me. Remind me to tell you more about that and my ensuing obsession with vintage charms in a later post. ;) As nervous as it makes me to run into people I know at the sales (because I have the inborn natural skittishness and self doubt of a feral cat), it kind of also make me happy to see my peeps. In we went.

This house was gor-GEOUS. Five bedrooms and a kitchen like something out of a Franco Zefferelli Shakespeare movie, with a big brick hearth outfitted with grill, cooktop, double oven, and who knows what else all in one gorgeous Tudor package. I was knocked back by visions of hanging garlic and copper bottom pans and whatever else Julia Child would have in her kitchen to make it yet more impressive, too much so to notice the in-wall stereo system (!!) that another estate sale attendee posted on a midcentury Facebook group to which I belong. If it were a snake, it would have bit me. My mom walked up to the house and went, "This is so-and-so so-and-so's house! I've been here!" And sure enough, it was a woman who had worked at the Red Cross with my ma at some point in her long career there. I'm not sure if the homeowner passed away or moved to retirement, but it's weird when that happens! The strangest incidence of that was when my dad and I accidentally went to my great-uncle James's house for an estate sale-- he was still walking around on God's green earth, thankfully, but was selling a friend's estate in a yard sale type set up. Me: Didn't you recognize the address?! Dad: I knew it was the same street, I didn't know it was the same HOUSE. You never know what you're going to come up with in service of searching for other people's household junk, haha.

Can you make out the cook top under the pans? Imagine it had a curved type alcove in which it was situated.

I really wanted this vanity because it reminded me of one Marlene Dietrich had in her house, but I couldn't think of anywhere to put it (and it was dead cheap, too! Dommage). It was in bad shape but in that cool, glamorously down at the heels type way. Look at that elephant! Better believe if that was there or I'd seen it somewhere I would have been mightily tempted.

I also almost bought this faux ostrich skin hat case, but the handle was busted and I wasn't sure how to fix it. Love you, miss you, train case:

I want to look up this house when it hits the market, but I'm sure with five bedrooms in a leafy part of Donelson, it's going to be 400k if it's a day. Keep dreaming, Lisa! Keep those dreams alive.

2) Bellshire:

Parker sales was having a blow out sale in Bellshire-- the people who lived there had owned a five and dime type store, I think they said, evidenced in part by the fact that there were two outbuildings full of vintage toys, the kind you would trade for tickets at the roller rink or arcade. I loved just seeing all these little bits and bobs but it was a little overwhelming in sheer volume, plus the added intrigue of trying to fight your way past resellers taking advantage of the half off day. They were out in FORCE this morning. 

Pan Am and TWA!

Even at half off, I was a little miffed at the dollar-to-four-dollar price tags on a lot of the stuff, though as I showed interest in things, the sales employees would often quote a price that was way lower than even half off-- you'd think I'd be pleased with that, but instead I was more like, "Then WHY is it marked xyz?" I think my #1 thing that the estate sale people can do besides choosing a house with bonkers-crazy-neat-stuff is to clearly display prices and clearly establish discounts-- if things were marked fairly in the first place, half should be plenty to liquidate the remaining items on a three day sale; if you've still got beaucoup de stuff on the third day, you messed up your prices. I may not be a professional estate sale runner, but Lord knows I know the buying side of the business, and it makes your die-hard shoppers like me ticked to not have consistency with pricing. End rant.

These change purses were INSANE. I have no idea why I didn't buy at least one

Besides the prices being a smidge high and all over the board, there was so much STUFF, and most of it not very good/interesting. Not even counting the outbuildings, in the house itself, it seemed every room had an enormous grouping of like items, as if someone had gone "oh, I collect little dolls like that, let's buy one EVERY time I see one." I guess these might have been part of the aforementioned business, but again, there was way too much of everything

That skinny dog was gone, but the pair of dog-with-mailbox pieces was there, and $25...even at $12.50, I thought that was a little high. Which means I guess I didn't want it very badly, haha!

I've omitted like another 10 pictures of grouped figurines, imagine this times 10.

The big deal at this sale was Jadeitegate 2015, which went down in a big way about five minutes after I got to the sale. Whooo, peeeeeeople, hold on to your hats.

The cause of the sturm und drang

I caught this set of Jadeite mixing bowls out of the corner of my eye immediately upon entering the house-- and again, this is maybe 8:40 on the last day of the sale, so the fever pitch of resellers snapping up items at a deal before they've even had a chance to be looked at by us civilians was pretty high. Since seeing Lauren from Apron Strings Vintage build an impressive collection of this type of glassware on her blog and Instagram, I always am on the lookout for a good piece of it at a good price (because I obviously need another collection like I need another hole in my head :p). But they're cute, right? That milky green is so unusual and I know it would look good against my black table top, so it's not a completely impossible/crazy dream. A middle aged woman with a short hair cut was turning the bowls over in her hands, looking for markings, discussing the bowls with her taller, black-t-shirt-tucked-into-jeans husband who stood to the side. Nothing makes someone want something more than knowing someone else wants something, so I monitored the situation for maybe a minute to see if she'd decide against them and set the bowls down, before finally deciding to keep looking in the next room on the off chance that she would be done looking at them/given up on them by the time I came back, or would have bought them one. Nothing was well served by me pretending to look at ashtrays in a stationary position catty corner from hers, so with a shrug of my shoulders, I kept moving.

I could overhear "Do you see 'Fire King' on any of them? I don't know, I just think maybe this one..." from on down the line and my heart sank a little. Then another woman in a work apron came on the scene and dropped the bomb on this lady: "I'm sorry, those are already sold."

Now, what do you do in this kind of situation? Me, I would have colored visibly with embarrassment and disappointment, surrendered the bowls, and been kind of heartsick the rest of the day about how I'd almost got Jadeite bowls at a fraction of the cost if someone hadn't beat me to the punch by the tiniest of margins. Nooooot this lady.

How pretty do these things look altogether?

With the strength of conviction of some self-styled martyr, she dug in her heels but hard. "What do you mean?" The worker started to stammer then something about how someone had already bought the mixing bowls and was just up at the counter paying. "How can they be sold when THEY'RE RIGHT HERE IN MY HAND? THEY'RE RIGHT HERE IN MY HAND!!" the buyer lady spat, loud enough that several fellow shoppers turned in her direction, prairie dog like, at the commotion. "Let me check for you, I mean, they might not have been sold, but I'm pretty sure that little girl who was here earlier bought them," the salesperson said, making fatal error #2. Fatal error #1, either mark the dishes or move them to the sold table, don't leave them in the field of play where someone who is waiting to chew someone else out for no reason might take offense at their presence. Fatal error #2, not standing your ground, thus planting hope in the already ticked off lady's mind as to the possibility that she might be going home with said dishes.

The saleslady returned with the person who had actually bought the dishes, who I couldn't see from where I was, but I could also hear. There was actual flapping of the receipt in the person-trying-to-buy-the-dishes's face by the person-who-had-bought-and-paid-for-said-dishes, which seemed a very adult and mature course of action to me, followed by the would be buyer again loudly exclaiming that she HAD NEVER heard of someone buying something and not taking it with them, how could she have bought the dishes when they're (again) RIGHT HERE IN HER HAND? Suffice to say the items were handed over without bloodshed, but a weird tension fell over the sale both during and after the verbal conflagration. I was like "Aaaaaand I'm ready to go."

What do you think? Shouldn't the lady who bought them have carried them with her or marked  them sold? Shouldn't the other lady have just gracefully admitted defeat? What would you have done?

Sorry, even glassware this pretty isn't worth getting in a bar fight over.

 Last insult to injury, I was on my way to the car when I saw this:

This conversation ensued:

Me to my dad: Oh, cool! Look they still have that old computer. I wonder if that's something I could get Matthew for his anniversary present. Go look how much it is.
Dad: Well...[looks at price tag, makes face]
Me: It's like $500, isn't it.
Dad: Close!
Me: [inspects price tag] FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS?
Dad: It's only half of that today, so that's $225!
Me: I am not paying two hundred dollars for that.
Dad: They were like three thousand dollars back in the day. I remember there was a tv commercial with Bill Bixby in it where he showed you all the things you could do with it...you could type....and I guess add stuff....
Me: [a "Nancy" comic strip caricature of Nancy in a bad mood]

FORGET THIS SALE. #booooooooooooo

Michael Taylor warehouse:

I mainly went to the Michael Taylor sale to see if they still had this:

They didn't. And this:

They did but it was $450 with 40% off. You do the math, I can't see through my tears here to do the necessary figuring.

This I was mightily tempted to get IN SPITE of its $40 after discount price tag. It's a 1930's/1940's circus wagon toy, with about the most charming illustrated lions you're likely to see any time soon:

Best part? When the wheels roll, they have some kind of thing rigged up to where it makes a sound like a calliope or a pretty set of chimes. DID I NOT SAY CHARMING?

Epilogue (and a Navy Suit):

We went to one last sale where I didn't take any pictures or save any pictures from the website-- BLVD estate sales has a commercial space right around the corner from MT, so I thought "Ah, why not." There wasn't much of interest, but as I was leaving, I almost knocked something off a wall where it was hanging (because I bear the grace and carriage of Dovima, obviously, in my day to day dealings), and when I picked it up, it ended up being the only thing I bought at all the sales! This WWII Naval Officer's uniform was $48 with 75% off, so I snapped it up, along with a picture of the group on their ship the USS Alaska, for $14 total. What am I going to do with it? WHO KNOWS, I wanted it. Here's a picture of the goods:

I need a haircut. Or some curlers. SOMETHING. Also note Marc Creates piece from post before last sulking against the wall, unhung. Shame!

Impressive, right?!

The pants and jacket are VERY skinny, but I like having the complete set, and for less than fifteen bucks!

I gotta get back to the grind, but do tell me what you got into this last weekend! Any great finds? Any near catfights? Any weird houses? I'd love to hear all about it. :)

Have a great Friday, and I'll talk to you next week!

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!!

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!

A House Fit for a King (Estate sale at a 1940 Tudor riverfront house)

Good morning!

Hope you all are staying warm wherever you're reading this, as it is positively glacial in Nashville, Tennessee! It's been a great long weekend for me-- I took Friday off to visit friends in Memphis, who showed us the BEST goldurn time the 901 had to offer. However! As I was going to miss a whole weekend worth of estate sales, I managed to squeeze in two just before I left Davidson County. One was a little forties' house off of Nolensville Road, chockablock with vintage clothes that were all about a size two (darn that dream), and the other....well, the other was this one.

(("Theme from Tara" here))

I had my mind made up to skip both sales in the interest of travel time, before my mom called me the night before. The conversation went something like this:

She: What time are you leaving tomorrow?

Me: Early-ish.

She: Like after eight?

Me: Definitely after eight.

She: You're gonna to want to see this one house before you go out of town.

Me: I am?

She: Uh, yeah, I'm pretty sure you will.

Me: Where is it?

She: It's in Madison down by the river.

Madison? Down by the river? I scoffed. While I spent many of my formative years in this suburb of Nashville, lo-o-o-ong before the East side became popular, the idea of crossing over to "the wrong" side of Gallatin Road in Madison did not hold much appeal. Behind the commercial district is a labyrinth of sixties' and seventies' apartment complexes and houses on streets with weird fairytale names like Peter Pan Road and Cinderella Drive. It's almost like the subdivision people were trying to add insult to injury-- here, live in this shoebox of a fifties' house on a street you don't even want to print on a Christmas card. "You live WHERE?" This house had a nondescript, Perrault-less address, just beyond the apartments, and on a dead end street, the property line terminating in the Cumberland River. "Wouldn't hurt," I thought, and after appealing to Matthew's better nature ("Do you want to go? Well, I guess we'd better go then!" quoted my favorite partner in crime), we drove up past a pair of wrought iron gates and were already pretty impressed.

And that was before we went inside. Whoooo boy. Fasten your seatbelts.

Now, being a dyed-in-wool estate saler, I have been to a LOT of houses over the last ten years. Small houses, big houses....million dollar addresses in Franklin and musty four square Victorians in Belmont, cottages in Old Hickory and once a penthouse condo in Bellevue on the twenty third floor (though the elevator button was haughtily labelled simply "P"...didn't I get a kick out of pressing it, like I was on my way up to Franchot Tone's 1930's abode!). AND YET, I don't know that I have ever been so surprised by a house in all my estate saling days. It went on, and ON , and on, and each room was just as elaborate and extravagant as the last.

Remember how I want to live exactly as say our-Joan-Crawford-who-art-in-heaven did in 1936? Um, this is the house I would need to execute that dream to the fullest extent of the law (barring time travel and/or a six million dollar time capsule style house in Holmby Hills). Get Matthew an ascot and a pipe, let me slip into something bias cut, put some Fletcher Henderson on the phonograph, and LET ME DREAM. I can't even describe this next picture to you without bursting into tears, so just look:

THE SCONCES.

((Anguished cry)) IS NOT EXACTLY AS I DESCRIBED IT? I would axe the giraffe and replace the couch with something boxier, but are you seeing the lighted chandelier style wall sconces? The high, dark overhead beams and the dark windows leading out to the patio? The dadblamed arches? Judas wept. Let's take a closer look at the back wall there:

Yep, still perfect. Davidson County Webpro data (my go-to site for finding out about other-people's-houses) dates the building to 1940. I love thinking of the swellegant people who would have lived here at the time and what their furniture must have looked like. Even these latter day tenants were kind to the house, putting a kind of Hollywood Regency spin on the interiors. While, owing to the many treasures from the Orient and wild exotic fabrics in the basement rooms and an addition, this one estate sale attendee in track pants kept breathing, "Musta been some kinda foreign people lived here. Nobody from around here would have stuff like this...", he was actually dead wrong-- the folks who lived here for several decades were actually from a tiny rural town north of Hendersonville and (from what I could find) lived in middle Tennessee all of their lives! You don't have to have a dramatic lineage or origin story to have dramatic flair (see: yours truly). The woman of the house ran a relatively famous nightclub in the Madison area for many years-- and if the house is anything to judge its owners by, she and her husband had a lot of vim and vigor to them!

Missing: threadbare Persian rug, movie screen that is hidden behind a tapestry....me.

This is one of enclosed patios with a full-fledged view of the Cumberland. My dad mentioned while we were gossiping about how impressive the place was that a) that was a million dollar view of the river and b) the people who lived here must have loved to entertain, as there were probably forty chairs in ten or twelve different seating areas complete with wet and dry bars! Again, I want to be this person.

This room actually made me suck air through my teeth. OH. MY. GOD. It looks like something from one of those David Hicks books on interior design, maybe Decorating with Fabrics? Because that's exactly what's going on here-- the walls are the same fabric as the drapes, as the settee, as the accent pillows:

Perfect.

Something about the wood tones and the white, white ceiling with all this pattern is so jaw-droppingly gorgeous...at one point looking around, Matthew, impressed, stage whispered, "I wonder what they're asking for this place?" I guess he was given hope by the down-at-the-heels neighborhood that we'd been through to get to the riverside mansion area. That and my sweet Bub has no idea how much houses cost. Already having looked it up on my phone out of curiosity, I balefully rejoined, "Wellllll, it's $550,000, and it's already under contract," ((cue me singing "I Can't Live" by Harry Nilsson while performing a sorrowful supercut of all the wonderful times I would have had in this house)). Oh, it's cool. That's just like, over twice our reach price. In for a penny, in for a pound, right? I'm still staying out of the real estate market this year, but good God, why can't I live here.

Here in the bedroom, I once again stifled a gasp. Ok, those ruched curtains, that brocade wallpaper, MORE CHANDELIERS, and a quad-fold baroque mirror in front of a dainty little settee.

Which leads us up to the main focus of the boudoir. Um, excuse me, while I start listing all my furniture on Craigslist in the vain hope that I can redo my entire room to look like this. UUUUGH. Do you see...I mean, where do I even start? Crystal-roped headboard thing, sconce above the bed thing, and those tall, thin mirrors? The little bombe chest/nightstands? My tears fell like rain (not really, I'm super brave, but this was A TRIAL) :

I've packed my bags, I'm #ready2livehere.

My mom really didn't like the kitchen but I thought it was charming. Plus, who besides me do you think can reach those toppermost shelves with only a little help? I'm not sure what color I would paint them but some color, or maybe a less oatmeal, more white shade? If you thought you were impressed with the wallpaper reaching to the ceiling, in the words of Al Jolson, you ain't seen nothin' yet:

See, I could hide Christmas presents in the higher up cabinets. I hope our
kids are smaller like Matthew so I can retain my vertical advantage...

BAM. This room is fully committed to that wallpaper and it's so wingding it works! Update the appliances, lend me a couple hundred thousand dollars, and I am ready to move in!

Again, if this were my house, I would lay Spanish tile in this room and have it be the ballroom. A bantam sized one, sure, but how swank would it be to throw parties and instruct guests to "follow me into the ballroom for dancing and light refreshments." And with a house like this, it wouldn't look one jot out of place. Pappy kept mentioning Sunset Boulevard in his descriptions of this house and he's not wrong-- what an old world charm and new world verve the place must have had in 1940...and still has some almost 80 years later!

Have castanets, will travel.

One of like eight places you could eat dinner...again, a house after my own heart.

There were plenty of rooms in the bottom of the house where the basement was finished and a catacomb of bedrooms and sitting rooms and an office set up, along with a newer addition, but the top floor of the house was really the heart of the house. And was it ever still beating. I hope the new owners have a lot of happy years in these to die for rooms!

Want to see what I got at this sale (or that matter, things I've been hoarding up since the last)? I'll do a swag post soon! In the meantime, here I am via the She Was a Bird Instagram in one of the lady-of-the-house's many out of this world accessories, a hubcap sized vintage [Incan? Aztec? Meso-American?] pendant, which I am loathe to take off for how much I love it:

I both looked and felt that tired after a day at work, but I can't
resist a selfie!

                   

Anyway, let me leave you with Fats Domino telling you how I feel about this house! I hope you're having a wonderful 2015! Any crazy estate sale finds? If you're a Nashvillite, did you go to this one? Have you ever been to a sale that you stepped back and went, "OH WHY do I not live here?!" Which room in this house is your favorite? Tell me all about it!! I'll be back before you know it with more vintage tips and quips. Stay warm!! We'll talk soon. :)