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.

Lore Podcast Verdict: GO LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW (Aaron Mahnke's Supernatural History Podcast)

Hello!

In the words of Fats Domino, "Yes, it's me, and I'm in love again....". I had my Louisville loot to show you this week, but haven't I been a lazy-so-and-so and not gotten around to photographing it in the daytime hours. Well, tell a lie, I have been busy. This week I've been to a dr's appointment for a yearly checkup (kept waiting for an hour, not a happy camper that afternoon), eaten dinner and gabbed my head off over at Emma from Fiercest Lilliputian's g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s new house (I love eating pizza and talkin' trash more than anything in the universe), and have been clawing my way through a French book for the Alliance Française book club meeting next month (it's good, but reading a whole fiction book in another language is more grueling than I remembered-- I read so fast in English that it's hard for me to slow down in French so I actually understand what's going on). However! I thought I would check in with you to give you a podcast rec that will change your life if you're a fellow devotee of the creepy and unexplained.

GUYS, STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND GO LISTEN TO LORE RIGHT NOW. Do it! I'll wait....just take your time. Come back here when you're finished so we can talk about it.

Ok, so you're obsessed now, right? Or if you didn't immediately heed my exhortations to jump on the Lore bandwagon, 1) shame on you, don't you trust me by now and 2) let me tell you a little bit more about the series/where I'm coming from podcast-wise and see if I can't sway you to my way of thinking.

Working as I do in an atmosphere where there's lots of audio dead time, I am always on the lookout for new podcasts. I review books with my headphones on, solo, and at a relatively repetitive speed (unless I'm grappling with a particularly difficult French title about semiotics/philosophy/politics or something else where a firm grasp of the language doesn't necessarily give me an understanding of what the book is about), so I like to have programs that are essentially the equivalent of having company with me that I can focus on/disregard as needed. Problem? I hate like 99% of podcasts. Something about the medium lends itself to either being stultifyingly boring and pretentious (see: almost all history podcasts I've listened to) or too dumb to bear (see: most unscripted "comedy" podcasts where there's a comedian prattling on about the yogurt they had for lunch and "wasn't it weird, y'all! It was crazy! The yogurt was all like 'Eat meee, get in my belllly....' so yeah....that was good..."). Ones I listen to on a regular basis, and cannot recommend enough:

• Fresh Air (duh, even though Terry Gross gets on my last nerve sometimes, how am I supposed to get my fix of pop culture/current events otherwise)
• What's the T with RuPaul and Michelle Visage (for obvious reasons, it's like hanging out with two super cool people with only the occasional compulsory commerical about shaving kits by mail and mattresses)
• New Yorker fiction podcast (because who knew writers could be such good readers of other people's work for the most part, and I've found all kind of authors I want to read more of through this one)
• No Sleep Reddit podcast (I should be ashamed of this one, but I'm not-- I am so desperate for scary stuff I will go to the mirage in the desert and drink the sand when it's not water...and honestly, sometimes it IS really scary )
• Le journal en français facile (sounds like it would be "easy, preschool" French but is actually pretty rigorous French daily news for even an experienced non-native speaker)

I've tried a lot of comedy/history/literature/French/movie podcasts with little to no success. And then along comes Lore under the "editors' choice" section of the Featured tab. The description says "Lore is a bi-weekly podcast about the history behind scary stories", which piqued my interest. But yeah, it probably sucks, right? WRRROOONG.

Like stories about witch trials and tribulations? Check out episode 12, "Half Hanged"

Aaron Mahnke writes, researches, produces and performs a twenty minute program every two weeks that focuses on a different supernatural, grisly, horrible or just downright creepy event. Subjects? Salem witchcraft, unexplained creatures, old wives' tales, mental asylums, haunted dolls, goblins, ghosts...he's only 15 episodes in so far, but to say he's made a favorable impression on this listener is a grand understatement. Each story is presented in an intelligent context with details and careful pacing enough to avoid the pitfalls of most history podcasts, the plodding retelling of events-- and THEN THIS HAPPENED, and THEN ANOTHER THING HAPPENED, dates dates dates, sources sources sources, then THAT ALSO HAPPENED. While using actual historical facts, he arranges said information with a fiction writer's attention to narrative suspense, keeping your thrill loving little listener's heart fluttering with interest for the duration of the program. This podcast feels kind of like a Twilight Zone/In Search of... mashup, with a healthy dose of that Reader's Digest encyclopdia set "Mysteries of the Unexplained" thrown in...and I don't know how to praise something higher. This is what we've been looking for, people! And someone actually made it!

The kind of scary I can get behind...show me some love, girl! says both the skeleton and the sea creature. (Source)

Two other programs I tried to listen to in the "others like this" made me appreciate what Mahnke DOESN'T do as much as what he does. One program seems to specialize in mindless ranting about "omg, y'all, I f-ck'n love f-ck'n ghosts and sh-t, you guys, REALLY, I'M SERIOUS" with the cohost call-and-responsing "Yeah, you like, like crazy horror type things and I mean, who else would go on a ghost tour like you did, did you like, see anything or was it scary or....?" "OH. MY GOSH, I was like freaking out because I'm just that weird kid who like has always been obsessed with scary stuff?" It felt like a documentary about upspeak more than it did a horror/history podcast, and I gave up after ten minutes. The other had three nerd dudes (my own kind, I know, but that doesn't make them immune to criticism) talking about historical events in very grave, serious tones, with super attention to source material ("And then this comes out of the August 1891 issue of the London Police Gazette, there's a pdf of it on our website if you want to check it out, and it reads [reads entire thing]") and little care for whether or not the information (which was spot-on spooky) was presented in a manner that was anywhere near listenable/interesting. If you read Dracula in a monotone with no inflection and paid special attention to the footnotes rather than the fact that dude is climbing up walls like a lizard and seducing young girls to drink their blood, I don't know what to tell you, you need to reassess what your POINT is.

I know I'm being mean, but again-- you have to recognize how this is not only a great show, but based on its competition, it's heads and shoulders above the field of horror podcast as we know it. I WANT ALL THE SHOWS TO BE LIKE THIS ONE.

I like that it looks like they're fighting. Also, maybe I should do a blog about the Illustrated Police Gazette bc holy heck.

Through interviews across the internet, I've learned that it takes this one-man operation about 30 hours of research, writing, and production to come up with each episode, which is kind of awe inspiring when you think about it-- a lot of the time, especially in this modern day of instant updates and instant gratification, I think it's hard for people to wrap their heads around how long it takes to actually create quality content. What takes me 15 minutes to listen to not counting commercials took him almost a full-time gig's week worth of time to create. No wonder he's a little chary to commit to a weekly rather than biweekly schedule. Don't kill yaself, Mahnke! We need you! I'm thinking about subscribing on Patreon and kicking in a few bucks so I can listen to the extra episodes and read the transcripts and support the whole endeavor. You know when yours truly and her hard earned dolla dollas are willing to part ways to something like this, it has to be truly awesome, and it is. 

YESSSSSSS....

Anyway! I don't want to give too much of it away, but go listen and do tell me what you think, I think it's BRILLIANT and I hope he makes 1,000,000 more episodes.

How about you? Seen anything horror-related I need to know about? How psyched are you about Halloween coming up in a couple weeks? What kind of podcasts do YOU listen to?

Gotta get going, but I will pull it together and take some pictures of what I brought back from Kentucky this weekend for your viewing pleasure next week. Have a fabulous weekend (IT'S THE FLEA MARKET, OMGGGG) and I'll talk to you soon! Til then.

Happy 2nd Anniversary To Us! (Vintage Anniversary Cards 1940's-1950's)

Good morning!

Daaaah, dah na na na, daaaah, daaah... do you hear those distant strains of Mendelssohn's wedding march? Don't worry, it's not an aural hallucination-- it's my two year anniversary today, marking seven hundred and thirty crazy wonderful days married to my partner in crime and life, Matthew. We've been together since 2008, and as corny as it may seem, these past two years sharing a last name along with everything else have been two of the very best. Since we said "I do", we've traveled to Paris (twice!) and Oxford, both landed new and better jobs, and spent just about every day trying to keep climbing slowly but surely up that ladder to adulthood. I hope the next year holds a few more milestones in store for us (Baby? Dog? House? Ski-doos? Two of those I'm dead set on, haha), but whatever it brings, I'm glad I've got my bub by my side for the journey. :)

Some of my favorite snaps from two years ago.

Today, I thought I would mark the very special occasion with a series of vintage anniversary cards! I was looking for one to post on Facebook (as is my wont) and came across so many I liked I thought I would turn it into a blog post. Come check 'em out, kids, they're pretty adorable! You can click on any of the hyperlinks to see either the Ebay/Etsy listing or web source from which is was culled (where would we be without the internet?).

Allons-y!

1) Vintage Wedding Anniversary Greeting Card Sea of Matrimony

I love this card's third wheel, the birthday suit'd cupid, who looks alternately bored and busy through the four panels of this extended-sea-metaphor anniversary card. I also like the inexplicable change of clothing through the course of the narrative-- the sailor mister begins barechested, gains a mariner shirt somewhere along the way, and ends in a more formal collared shirt in the last panel, while the girl keeps a consistently cute red shirt dress on until changing into a long, poufy-sleeved evening gown for the finale. But overall, could this card be cuter? I love the watercolor meets Dick Tracy coloring and illustrations, and the cheeky little cupid would be perfect if someone would only give him some pants. You know what would be neat, would be to have these in the original illustrations of these, which you know have to be out there somewhere. Before seeing examples on Antiques Roadshow and in the movie Loving (George Segal plays a commercial illustrator in 1970), I never thought about how somewhere there's some original art these cards would have to be based on!

Grade: A- (for cherub-related nudity) 

2) Vintage Used Anniversary Greeting Card Birds Bluebirds Silk Ribbon Silver Foil

You should have seen the original version of this post before I culled down the cards to a reasonable number for the post-- there must have been ten cards with bluebirds on them that I'd chosen! I guess with the whole idea of "bluebirds of happiness" and "lovebirds" you're bound to have duplication of ideas (and not to mention, I am bird-biased :) ). At any rate, I'm not always a fan of the verse-card (especially versus the funny-rhyme card), but the birds on this were so beautifully geometric and vibrantly colored, I couldn't help myself. Could they be cuter? Also Matthew has an almost pathological weakness for cutie/sweetie little illustrations, so this reminded me of him.

Grade: A+ for art, C+ for verse.

3) Early 40s Vintage Wedding First Anniversary Greeting Card Couple Paper Insert

It's not our first anniversary, but I about died when I saw this card:

The newspaper comes out for a bonus message! [shrieks with delight]

And then the inside has a sweet sentimental message, two dressed-to-the-nines mid nineteen thirties' people, and adorable typography. This may be my favorite card out of the bunch. It feels like one of those Joan Crawford MGM glamorama pictures in greeting card form, and if that's not something I love, I don't know what is.

Another thing that struck me perusing these cards-- isn't it interesting that a large number of people used to send anniversary cards out? I mean, reading these and others, you might expect to get one of these from your kids, and maybe your friends and extended family? I think nowadays, it's NICE to get a card or some kind of remembrance from your parents (my MIL sent us a Jacquie Lawson e-card this morning, for a 21st century example), but other family members or friends I wouldn't expect to go out of their way to remember the date. It's hard enough to remember YOUR OWN anniversary (which is why I built a song aide-memoire to the occasion for extra help, haha...all I have to do is remember the Earth Wind and Fire lyrics from our first dance!). At any rate, the "Dady Joe + Mother" signature on the newspaper is so sweet I could die.

Grade: A+++++++ for EVERYTHING, I WANT THIS CARD.

4) Vintage Greeting Card Anniversary Kitten Cat Good Luck Keepsake

This card appeals to me because it combines voodoo right alongside the cute/kind sentiment of an anniversary card.

JK, it's not really voodoo, but it IS a weird little human-shaped good luck charm made out of beads accompanied by this caption:

The repetition of "Sitting pretty" three times in the text of the card makes me wonder if it's some kind of incantation to ward off/garner evil wishes? And IS the cat wearing a witch's hat? As someone who takes spooky very seriously, I am very into this card.

Grade: S-P-O-O-K-Y +

5) On Your Anniversary Two Fold

This one was just cute, what was I supposed to do. Something about 1900's-1940's illustrations seems so strange at the same time as being whimsical, and I like the butcher paper texture on the card colored with such primary colors.

Grade: B+ for cute-i-tude and A+ for dog fashion.

Last but not least:

6) Swell eggs:

Anthropomorphic cards might be MY FAVORITE kind of cards, and I like that this one takes it a step further with such a forties'/fifties' turn of phrase. "You're a swell egg, you know that, kid?" sounds like something Spencer Tracy would say grudgingly to a teenage copy boy in his newspaper office in a 40's movie. Wait til you see the inside:

And it's even for a second anniversary! PERFECTION.

Grade: A for puns and eyelashes on lady egg.

In summation: H-A-P-P-Y A-N-N-I-V-E-R-S-A-R-Y to me and to my cute little mate. Two years down and another sixty some odd to go! <3 p="">

Which one of these is your favorite? I can't choose, like I said, they're ALL amazing. Do you exchange cards/gifts for your anniversary? Does anyone outside of your parents send you cards/remembrances for the same? I'll tell you later in the week about our anniversary trip this past weekend and all the goodies we found in Kentucky...wait 'til you see our loot! :)

Gotta get back to the grind, but have a fabulous Monday-- I'll talk to you soon!

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!