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.

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.

Mrs. Mia Wallace (Pulp Fiction Makeup series from Urban Decay)

Good afternoon!

I'm feeling a little under the weather today-- haven't stopped sneezing since what seems like yesterday afternoon and don't seem to have much hope of stopping before night fall today! I took the day off work and have just recently ingested some antihistamines which will hopefully knock me out until such time as my nasal passages decide to cease and desist, so keep a  good thought for me that they do! However, I wanted to check in on you and show you this little blast from the past: here I am in 2004, in the apartment dorm I shared with my friends Ryan (pictured, as gogo dancer) and Torey (not pictured, but probably equally awesome in costume), in all my sophomore year of at UT glory. Because of my goggle eyes, above average height, and long nose, I used to get a lot of comparisons in college to Uma Thurman (believe me, I'll take it!), so the year after Kill Bill's I and II came out, I decided to embrace Tarantino's muse in one of my all time favorite movies, Pulp Fiction, for Halloween*. You can't see, but I'm wearing black cigarette pants and silver flats, the latter of which MW took off for her iconic dance with Vincent Vega:

Why this trip through time? To show you I don't think I ever even tried to smile in photos until at least 2007? To reminisce on how I had to hack the wig I'm wearing down to a shorter length with bangs, which I overshot by a tad? To highlight the assortment of weird things taped to our kitchen wall (including a TV guide cover of Will Ferrell that is cracking me up a little now just to see it?). No! To commemorate the good news that Urban Decay has just released a line of makeup products, twenty years after the release of the movie, that bear homage to what is arguably one of the best written movies of the nineties'. Folks, check it out! Pulp Fiction makeup!

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Yes, that is misquoted bible verse Ezekiel 25:17 on the back; yes, I used to be able to recite not just that passage, but the entire scene from the car ride to Brett's house to Brett and friends' demise in a cloud of "great vengeance and furious anger" as a party trick. In high school (have I told you this story before?), I hooked my dad's cassette deck and tuner up to the VHS player, and recorded two 90 minute cassettes of the audio of Pulp Fiction, and while I may have only physically seen the movie ten or fifteen times, I've listened to it something like 500 times. In my defense, it was before the internet! We had so much time on our hands back then, people. Also, how else was I going to internalize lines like "My name's Paul, and this is between y'all" or "Ha ha ha, m'f--ker, they're you're clothes", which still bring me joy to this day? I digress. Are you seeing the packaging? Wait til you check out the eyeshadow inside:

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Yep, each are also from the speech. Urban Decay even includes a tutorial on how to get the Wallace look from the movie (in case you haven't studied that scene from Jack Rabbit Slim's nearly as much as you should have):

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How do you think that stacks up to the real deal?

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Though the lipstick and lipliner looks a lot more red than what they went for in 1994, I'm still drawn like a moth to this red, red, RED lipstick. I only wonder if in real life it wouldn't be too dark for my complexion. The Revlon "Fire and Ice" that I favor has like no dark undertones to it, which makes it so wearable for me and my fair-ish coloring. Isn't it super late forties' looking to you though? I might have to treat myself to this $22 lipstick..Fire and Ice is like $5 a tube, so that's a heck of a splurge, but maybe it'll be worth it to live out my dreams!

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And last but not least, glitter eyeliner and rust red nailpolish. I'm less excited about these, because the eyeliner seems more Lou Reed's Transformer than Pulp Fiction, and I'm just not brave enough to do nail polish that isn't Revlon Red, but I still think they'd be neat on someone else. Is that someone else you?

When in doubt, What Would Lou Do?

Update: My friend Kelsey, who clued me in on this whole amazingness to begin with, has ordered us both some of the lipstick, so I'll have to let you know how it turns out when it gets here. Also, THANK YOU KELSEY!!!! How about you? Are you a huge Pulp Fiction or makeup fan? Which of these are you probably going to break down and buy? And what movie do you think would be a fun one to do a beauty-along with? I'm thinking of all the vintage color movies I would like to emulate, and am drafting a letter to Urban Decay in my head as it happens. This is only the beginning, haha!

PS, I now want to watch Pulp Fiction again. Did you know we almost used this as our first dance at my wedding? I finally decided you wouldn't be able to see my feet under my bell-shaped gown, and that Matthew's superior dance skills would shame my own, but it would have been neat to do anyway!

I have to go lay down my weary head, but have a fabulous Tuesday! Godwilling, I'll talk to you tomorrow! Til then.

* Just wanted to mention that on the way out of Andy Holt Apartments, the night this photo was taken, I was in an elevator with a Kill Bill Uma in the yellow track suit, a katana bearing O-ren Ishii, and another Mia Wallace, this one post-heroin-O.D. with a syringe sticking out of her chest. Isn't that wild? "Calling all Tarantino characters, please board the elevator at the same time". I still think mine was the most convincing, but I'm biased. :)

Weekend Finds: Furs and Jewelry, Daaaahling (and a Couple Other Odds and Ends)

Good morning!

The things I do for this blog, I'm tellin' ya...this morning, just before setting out for the book factory, I was in my driveway, listening to the trash collectors' truck trundle down my narrow street at its usual breakneck speed, wearing a fur coat in the already-eighty degree heat, and getting my picture took. The good news, though, is I bought a fur coat this weekend! Take a look:

I think it's a mink, but I can't tell a fur just by looking at it...all I know is, my dad and I drove aaaaall the way to Gallatin on Friday and this was the only thing older than maybe 1980 in a smoky house way out in the outskirts of a town that is twenty miles outside of Nashville to begin with. It was hanging in a back bedroom where a large flat screen tv was blaring Tombstone on TNT, and just as they got to one of my favorite lines ("You die first, get it? Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I make your head into a canoe, you understand me?" PS Kurt Russell, call me), this vision of loveliness appeared, hung on the outside of the closet door. Taped to the hanger was a letter sized piece of cardstock bearing the legend, "VINTAGE FUR COAT $35". And other than the smoke smell, which has already dissipated substantially after a day or two in the shade airing out, in mint condition. How could I resist!

The sales lady cornered me in the walk in bathroom as I was trying the coat on for a spin. "Oh, I knew someone would appreciate that fur coat. It looks like it was made for you!" I bet you say that to all the girls. I preened for a minute, tried to look disinterested, and felt a twinge of "Does this coat make me look broad? Was it made for a shorter woman?". Plus, you all know about my $20 cut off (which has gotten me into trouble with stoles...five. I'm like a mink hoarder). "And I'll make you a deal on it," the lady said, bringing back my interest. "What kind of deal are we talking here?" She looked at it, looked at me, "How about thirty dollars?" I already felt like thirty five was criminally low, and while I might have been able to dicker down another five dollars or so, I was feeling a little like a spendthrift and told her it was sold.

I am thinking of this in winter with a mink hat (got one) and a fitted forties' dress (got one), and some cute little heels. I am feeling an overall sense of satisfaction at this idea.

The coat is from Kramer's in New Haven, Connecticut. I was able to dig up this article and this article on Google Newspapers, and another that recounted a robbery that happened in 1924, but other than that, nada. Google Newspapers is really coming through on regional history, though, I couldn't find anything on regular Google other than other furs for sale (at much more than $30, thankfully). I love the typography on the tag, and that giant, swooping "K".

Best part though...this strange, pretty reverse embroidery of the owner's name, "Merita". I die.

One of my favorite sale companies was having another estate sale in Gallatin this weekend, where I swung over and picked up these baubles. None of them are marked, but jumpin' Jehoshaphat, the sheer drama of these earrings and the matched brooch and earring set! As I was checking out, an elderly lady leaned over to me and said, "You picked the exact ones I would have picked, out of all that jewelry!" Birds of a (n outrageous and opulent) feather. The set at bottom was $15, the large earrings on the right $5, and the smaller ones to the left $3. Can't beat prices like that, either!

"These earrings are soooo big..." "HOW BIG ARE THEY?" Take a look for yourself:

They match my dress and I almost wore them to work today, but decided for some less wild, but still purple rhinestone'd earbobs.

From Michael Taylor:

Taylor's sale was in a warehouse out in the farmlands of Franklin this weekend, and while I was just delighted by everything I saw, nothing was really in my price range (see these lamps I just instagrammed for example...oh, so beautiful!). Then, out of the blue, I came across the hat...and when I realized it was matched to the purse...well, hell.  The tag (below) indicates it's from Sears Fashion, and I wore it out on the town to Holland House with Emma and Tyler on Friday...didn't I feel like an Egyptian queen in this turban like pretty? Again, more evidence on instagram.

This Native American choker was at the same sale as the fur coat-- I also bought a Frederick's of Hollywood from the seventies' pair of stretch leopard print pants and matching halter...I forgot to photograph it but know the world is a better place for such a two-piece outfit to exist. I've been wanting a choker like this since I saw one at the flea market, but that one, being some kind of real-deal antique, was $50. This one, much more reasonably priced at $6. Now, to plan out what to wear this with...

Last but not least, I was on my way to drop my dad off in Madison when we came across a sign that said "ESTATE SALE" and pointed us towards a kind of sketchy part of said part of town. Always down for another sale, we tooled over kind of behind and to the right of the county clerk's office on Heritage Drive, where it was pretty much a yard sale with some estate items. My dad: "Ah, do you want to go? I'm good, we can just go home." Me: "We already drove all the way over here and I need to find out what is going on with that eagle." This is what is going on with that eagle:

Sooo...sequined, embroidered eagle majestically landing on a branch on a black velvet background? With one wing cut off by the inlaid frame? Of course I bought it. AND its twin. Yes, I have not one but two panels of this magnificent image. $7 for the pair, and they're like two feet high by a foot across. AMERICA.

I think that about covers everything I got this weekend. How about you? Make any crazy scores? Buy any insane wall hangings? Do you have a similar weakness for vintage furs at bargain basement prices? My mom this weekend was like, "What are you going to do with all these furs, make a teddy bear out of them?" (as people's grandma's sometimes do to repurpose old stoles) Me: "No, I'm going to wear them! All at once, too, one on top of the other. String 'em together with rhinestone brooches." Pappy: "All right, Cruella de Ville." (say it like it's a bad thing, daaaad). Go to any good estate sales? What would you wear this fur coat with? Tell me all about it!

That's all for today, but I'll catch you back here tomorrow for more vintage tchotchkes and tangents. Have a great Tuesday! See you then.