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!!

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

Good afternoon!

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

Allons-y....

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

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

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

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

Lana Turner

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

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

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

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

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

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

In summation: LANA4LIFE2015.

Rita Hayworth:

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

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

I mean:

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

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

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

Judy Garland

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ava Gardner:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Craiglist Forever (Wheelin' and Dealin' at She Was a Bird)

Good morning!!

Man oh man, it's opposites day here at She Was a Bird...instead of telling you all about the vintage stuff I've been BUYING (and there's still been a steady stream of that, we'll get to some new finds next week), how about a story about selling? That's right, I should never say never, because I have spent years saying it was too much trouble to clear out my attic/utility room/closet/every available square space of my house to make room for new collections-- well, let me tell you, I've been cleaning out and rehoming some stuff, and it feels GRAND.

Wanna hear all about it?

Don't worry, I'm still buying things, as you can see from this photo, taken in the wild from last weekend. :)

A couple weeks ago, I went up into the attic to look for a box of Hawaiian dresses in preparation for a tiki-appropriate dress code for a social event (like you do). On top of a pile of boxes was a bar cart I'd picked up at a yard sale and had been meaning to do something with...next to that a trunk that I was going to clean up...across from a man sized ziplock bag (not sure why they make them in this size, it's so enabling for us clothes hoarders) of vintage coats and dresses. "How did all this accumulate?" I asked myself, before doing another spot check of my person for spiders and switching off the naked bulb that illuminated the space. Over the entire den in my house is a wooden floorboard attic, and every square inch of it was full of S-T-U-F-F stuff. I definitely couldn't tell what was in a lot of it by my seemingly purposefully cryptic labels in magic marker ("DRESSES S/M/L ALL TO KEEP VINTAGE" is less helpful than you'd think it would be when there are fourteen identical boxes labelled the same), and seeing as it is hotter than the hubs of Hades up there at any point the sun is out, I've taken to planning my attic assault by taking a box or two down, going through it, and sorting it in the good old fashioned way: keep, toss, donate, sell. That last category is where things have gotten interesting in the last few weeks.

Can you spot the children's piano, crate of Life magazines, 1960's endtable, picnic basket, 1950's suitcase, and bright orange traincase in this photo? I can but I wish I couldn't!

Much like my steadfast conviction, five or six years ago, that there was nothing at the flea market except as-seen-on-tv junk and homemade soaps and other non-antiques (how mistaken could I be!), I was equally prejudiced and equally wrongheaded about selling things on Craigslist. I don't know where this preconception came from, but before starting to sell things, I was positive that there was zero market for the kinds of non-furniture vintage smalls I've been sitting on for weeks, months, years and I might as well give the stuff to Goodwill instead of trying to hawk it on the internet. Doesn't everyone on Craigslist buy like used cars, outboard motors, big pieces of contemporary furniture, or surplus renovation materials? I know I've found a piece of vintage furniture or two on the site, but when it came to a lot of the kind of stuff I like (small, less than 100 years old, cheap), I can remember seeing the same two lamps or the same 1950's piggy bank sit on the site for what seems like years without finding a happy home.

When I mentioned downsizing, lots of my friends suggested eBay or Etsy, but I've heard my share of horror stories with regard to buyers not reading the condition info, turning up their noses at non-mint-condition items, saying they never got an item, etc, etc. With working full time, I don't exactly have a lot of time, energy, or patience to make online selling a successful habit, so I thought, heck, I'll put some stuff up on Craigslist and see what happens.

To get straight to the point, what happened was, I made A BOATLOAD of money.

Take exhibit A:

Shown in the ad with and without window dressing, haha...I just borrowed things from my in-use bar cart to feather out the image a little.

This, the aforementioned bar cart from the attic, was slung over a stack of boxes. I was using one of the glass plates to protect my Silvertone radio console/nightstand in my bedroom from getting scratched up, the other plate was behind said radio, and this frame was hanging out in the attic. It was really the impetus behind this whole selling thing, because what a CLASSY piece of merchandise to be being treated like an old shoe. I found a piece of plexiglass at an estate sale for a dollar to replace in service of the Silvertone, windexed the heck out of the thing, and put it on Craigslist with an asking price of $100. This seemed steep to me, as I'd paid only $10 for it at a yard sale on my street, but as other carts were selling for as much if not more on the Nashville site, I added the necessary "hollywood regency", "mad men", "vintage retro" word tags to my listing and crossed my fingers. Keep in mind the only work I'd put into it whatever was the windex treatment-- no spray paint, no refurbishing, nada.

Within an hour, I had three emails asking about the cart-- not even to check it out or give it a looksee, but offering cash money in hand for it at my soonest convenience! You could have knocked me over with a feather. Telephone arrangements were made, we met at a public place in Inglewood, and I was $90 richer. Who would have thought?! Anybody but me, I'm sure.

Since then, I've been listing things left and right as I can from the attic and the second bedroom/office in my house. As I've been telling people who've been buying the stuff, it's all GREAT stuff, I just don't have room for it anymore-- and that's the God's truth. The goal, ultimately, is to get that room completely cleaned out in the next year to house our future progeny (though I did point out to Matthew that technically any room a baby lives in is "the baby's room"...even if that room is full of 1960's house decorating manuals and stacks of new wave singles on 45s). In order to keep the things I like, I think 90% of the stuff in the attic has got to gooooo. And especially areas of collecting where I have WAY. TOO. MANY. of a certain thing.

Case in point? Hats. Oh, Lord, the number of hats I have bought in my lifetime.

"But Lisa, you love hats!" And as I'm sure I've mentioned a dozen times or so on this blog and hundreds of times in the real world-- I love hats, hats don't love me! My rule for the last ten years or so as been if it's less than $10 and it's stylin', buy now ask questions later. This left me with, oh, right around 60 some odd hats floating around, forty plus of which do not fit my oversized head. I went all Kon Mari and piled them in a chair in the living room, and started taking pictures at the kitchen table (with the help of this wig mannequin I bought at a Michael Taylor sale a while back...I knew it would come in handy eventually!). I put them up on Craigslist and waited...and waited...and waited. Nothing. My initial success with the bar cart had left me primed for disappointment, I guess.

But then....

About two weeks into the post, I got an email from a  super nice girl representing a group in a small town in west Tennessee. They're doing a WWII themed homecoming this year, and needed clothes and hats and sundries to wear and to decorate store windows in the town square as if it were 1945. Would you believe, they drove all the way up to Nashville to buy almost all the hats I'd displayed and a bag of purses, to boot! I couldn't believe it. En plus, the woman who bought the hats forwarded my supplementary flickr folder of items for sale to another person in the group who bought two boxes of further stuff I hadn't even listed on CL yet. SUCCESSSS......

Other things I've sold so far:

• Mid century pole lamp (bought at 75% off sale from the last post with the china, got home, realized I had nowhere to put it, sold it at great profit to someone who loves it = win/win)
• 25 vintage dresses, one 1970's yellow tuxedo jacket [miss you til I join you...it was too big for Matthew :'( ]
• Two vintage radios (don't worry, I still have like 10 more to make a keep/sell decision on)
• Two barcarts (the second is on the right here...the barware and jackelope decanter stay with me, though!!)
• A Butterprint Pyrex dish (which I only sold in order to keep myself from trying to collect more...I need another collection like I need another hole in my head...)
• 40 something hats

It doesn't sound like a lot, but oh my gosh, it feels like a lot. So here's a fond adieu to some of the stuff I've already sold, and boy, am I looking forward to the stuff I'm going to sell/donate in the future. It's been great actually seeing some of the things I'd had squirreled away for years and years UNDER all these things I'm ready to get rid of, so there's a silver lining to it other than the monetary reward or re-selling! I feel way less like the people on Hoarders when I can, with great discernment and personal dignity, tell Matthew that I AM keeping the Mexican embroidered tourist jacket in that plastic bag, but that he may take these three seventies' maxidresses "that never fit quite right but I was going to do something with them" to Goodwill (after I've noted them down on a piece of paper for our itemized tax deduction...props to Goodwill for updating their site so you can keep track of these things online after you donate!). With the caveat of "quick, quick, put them in the car before I change my mind!" following swiftly on the heels of that statement, but hey...progress is progress. :)

How about you? Been on any massive clean-out binges lately? Have you ever sold or bought things on Craigslist? How did the experience treat you? Any tips for beginners? Let's talk!

That's all for today but I'll be back next week with some things I bought (you didn't think I'd done a COMPLETE 180 from collecting...never!). Until then, happy hunting! Talk to you next time.

PS: Not long after posting this, I was going through estate sale listings for this weekend and saw this-- it's the same cart! $200! #nowidontfeelsobad #mustabeenapopularbrand.  -Lisa

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!

Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio Program Celebrities, 1950s-1980s)

Hello out there!

Sorry for the extended radio silence! As was foretold in my initial job swap post a couple months ago, I knew that in my new boulot I would have less and less time for putting together a daily blog, but good GOSH I had no idea how little. At my present job, I'm in charge of the French Canadian materials (working with titles entirely in French), and while I knew the language wouldn't be an impediment, I didn't knnnnoooowww about the cataloging. Lord above, I did not know about the cataloging. I've been committing Library of Congress numbers to memory like I was actually in an MLS program. Except without a teacher. Or a textbook. I appreciate you, Internet, like I never thought I would before (shout out to my best friend, Class Web). While I'm excited to be using library skills and slinging books and stackin' bills, I have miiiiiiissed talking to you all. So I thought I would try to pop in on a more usual basis with more of the vintage ephemera and ephemeron (apparently, like candelabra and candelabrum, I've been using that wrong lo these many years), because ain't I just bustin' with things to tell you.

Liiiiiike....Desert Island Discs.

Like this, only with more excitement. J/k: exactly this exciting.

A lot of the work is assessing titles for readership or trying to decide what goes where and to whom in terms of academic libraries, but when you get into a particular run of a series or of a type of book, you can kind of put your mind on autopilot as you methodically enter the same numbers and information for consistency across titles. This means lots of time for things that are aurally but not visually stimulating. I listened to scads of old scary radio drama and audiobooks and TV5 French radio streaming before I found that the BBC offers mp3 downloads or even streaming of their programmes. I'm not a huge anglophile, but the BBC has been doing radio longer and better than we have (excluding a golden age in America's 1930's and 40's) pretty much since its inception. Programs on history, well produced and researched, abound.

While I was nosing around looking for something slightly more my speed than the royals, I ran headlong into a programme called Desert Island Discs, created in 1942 and subsequently helmed for decades by broadcaster Roy Plomley. As everyone o'erseas probably already knows, it visits the familiar concept of "what you would take with you on a desert island" by confining a celebrity interviewee to eight records, one book besides the Bible and Shakespeare, and one comfort item. In between, the interviewer chats with the subject about their career and life, sometimes unearthing pretty candid and interesting facts. I made a master list of ones to which I'd like to listen (and with 500 + to choose from, it's a good starter list if you ask me) which I'll post at the end of this blog, but why not walk with me through some of the celebrities I took time to listen to this week? 99% guaranteed you'll like it (or your money back)! Click through the hyperlinks to listen along as I point out some highlights.

Voyons....

1) James Stewart  (Broadcast 17 Dec 1983)

Where else could I start but with one of the most famous names I recognized on the list, America's boy next door Jimmy Stewart. What's so interesting about listening to James Stewart in interviews is that he sounds exactly the Frank like you thought he would sound-- warm, boyish, slightly reserved, folksy, endearing, His musical tastes run almost exactly to what you'd think they would, too, littered with big band favorites and WWII themes. 

About the 20 minute mark, you get a doozy of a song selection, "Rollin' On", a tie-in single from the western Cheyenne Social Club. Costar, fellow movie great, and lifelong best friend Henry Fonda takes the duet and recreates some of his screen dialogue...and though, even between the two of them, they are painfully bad singers, you can't help but think it's sweet he would include such a GODAWFUL record in the seven platters he gets to take onshore with him so he could remember how much fun he had making a movie with his friend.

Seven, you say? I thought they got to take eight discs, you might be thinking to yourself. I'll clear that up now by explaining Stewart chose a single song as number 4 AND 5 ...two of his eight selections...as "Don't Cry Joe (Let Her Go, Let Her Go, Let Her Go)" by the Gordon Jenkins Orchestra. Bless his Irish heart, I want to make sure I have a maudlin break up song to listen to not once but twice in the eight song canon I'm able to take with me. "I just love the tune, and I find myself hummin' it every once in awhile."

Do you forget sometimes James Stewart made four Hitchcock pictures? Count 'em, Rope, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Rear Window, tying Cary Grant (also four) for the most male leads in Hitch's suspense plays. Stewart clears up the interviewers assertion that Hitchcock once said, "All actors are cattle" with the correction, "No, he said 'All actors should be treated as cattle.' " Better? Ehhh, not really. But next time I get to be an auteur, I'll question auteur theory, right? Right.

J-stew ends the interview by saying that he a) could probably rig up shelter, b) wouldn't mind fishing, and c) would wait to be rescued. Bravo, Jimmy! I wish we had another broadcast to spend together.

Book: Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (resourceful!)

Luxury: Family photo album (awwwwww)

Single disc: "Dream" by the Pied Pipers. (he left behind two copies of "Don't Cry Joe"! Wonders never cease).

2) Louis Armstrong  (Broadcast 05 Aug 1968)

Act like you didn't know Louis Armstrong, the old Satchelmouth himself, wouldn't be one of the most interesting interview subjects on the show. Raised in New Orleans' famous redlight district, Storyville, the celebratory shooting of his father's pistol on  New Year's Eve landed him in reform school, where he found his true love, the trumpet, in the waifs' school band. And it just got more and more colorful from there, as far as I can tell-- listening to Buddy Bolden's band down at Funky Butt Hall (could I make this up? No) and rising to prominence in orchestras for King Olivier and Fletcher Henderson before striking out on his own with his "Hot Five". AND SO HOT did they play folks...if you want real New Orleans jazz, the mainline drug is 1930's era Louis Armstrong.

Primed to listen to a great interview, I wondered how the people in England in 1968 could even understand what he was saying throughout most of the experience. Between his word choice, the gravelly tone of his voice, and Louisiana elisions, it would definitely prove a challenge to a non-American ear. To me, he sounds 110% like my grandaddy on my mother's side, a Nashville native with vocabulary bank that held more words-for-things-you-would-have-to-figure-out-was-a-word-for-a-thing than anyone I have probably ever met. And charm, Lord. I kept sitting up with genuine delight to the way Louis, like my grandaddy, would turn a phrase so strangely yet so descriptively, you couldn't help but wish everyone talked like that. Best line, in describing co-star Barbra Streisand's performance on the soundtrack to "Hello Dolly":

Here's Madame Streisand here...she singin' up a brilliant...look like she tryin' to outsing everybody this year...just left a big sequence in her movie..Hello Dolly, where she and I walk arm and arm singin' Helllooooo Dolly...it's gonna hang you when you hear it. But right now, she don't have that record, so let's put "People" on, she sing it too

You're gonna like it so much you're gonna die, sure, but go ahead and conjure up this tarot card next time you listen to "Hello Dolly", hahaha.

Actual best part of the interview-- most of the records he's going to take with him are his own. HIS OWN, PEOPLE. And for a book, well...how about my own book? "It's good to pat yourself on the shoulder ever' once an' a while." We should pretty much all be like Satch.

Book: His own autobiography

Luxury: Trumpet

Single disc: Blueberry Hill by Louis Armstrong and his All Stars

(everybody else's answers go home, Louis just won)

3) James Mason  (Broadcast 2 Oct 1981)

Confession: I am c-o-m-p-l-e-t-e-l-y obsessed with James Mason right now. So, so irritatingly -to-others interested in his movies and his life, after happening across a collection of interviews he did in the seventies' on Youtube. My poor friends and family have been hearing nothing but individual critiques of his entire film career for the last three weeks, with no end in sight (at 154 screen credits, I'd wager I've seen 30 of those in the aforementioned time period). When I get on a tear, I get on a tear. But imagine my surprise when I was going through the list and saw Mason sat in Plomley's chair three years before his death in 1984...still sharp as a tack and eloquent as the day is long. It's interesting to hear someone actually erudite use language like a fine-tuned instrument. In my adult life, there's nothing that gets under my skin worse than someone using vocabulary poorly in an attempt to look more intelligent and failing parlously by dint of that misuse. Betting that whoever they're speaking with doesn't have even as rudimentary of a grasp on the word "phantasmagoric" or "chiaroscuro", as they do, they blunder on, writing out "agnostic" when they meant "ambivalent", "gesticulate" when they meant "gestured". If you're even a little unsure of how to use that word in a sentence, ask someone who does, GOOGLE IT, or please, PLEASE STRIKE IT FROM USE. There's an egghead somewhere who will thank you. [end public service announcement]

To that end, I can't lie, I've been jotting down turns-of-phrase by Mason that are curious but correct. See if you can spot the hidden gems in this extract:

Yes, well you mentioned earlier...you brung up the subject of bag pipes [chuckles] ...which bewitch me. I might just remind you that this was played with tremendous effect at Winston Churchill's funeral, do you remember? And they came out of St. Paul's and into the march again and piped up "My Home" and it was just...shattering. This is the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

Answer: "which bewitch me" and "to tremendous effect" said with perfect ease, in that GORgeous voice. Daffy about this actor right now. I've been writing down things all week to tell you about, so I'll be back with that another time, but for now, his choices-- boring, boring, more boring. Except that Billie Holiday and Nabokov, I can't say I'd agree with any of these, but... stillcallmeJamesMasonIdidntmeanwhatIsaid. :)

Book: Ada by Vladimir Nabokov
Luxury: Guitar
Single disc: My Man by Billie Holiday

As for me? If I had half a chance to go on this show I'd take it, though I'm not sure what I'd talk about career wise ("I had a CRAZY book about Mesopotamian medicine the other day...you boil a lizard and then grind it up with a papyrus describing your sickness, and its spirit runs down to cure you!"
--> true), but I have my discs lined up (or at least a working list). Note: lots of these songs do not appear on the record in my pictogram. Also note: don't care.

• "When You Rock and Roll with Me" David Bowie
• "Heart and Soul" Huey Lewis and the News
• "Jezebel" Charles Aznavour
• "The Man That Got Away" Judy Garland
• "One for My Baby and One More for the Road" Frank Sinatra 
• "Sisters of the Moon" Fleetwood Mac
• "Loving Cup" Rolling Stones
• "It's Been a Good Year for the Roses" George Jones

Book: A Pictorial History of the Talkies by Daniel Blum. You're allowed Shakespeare and the Bible, so I can read those, and look at/remember my movies.

Luxury Item: Typewriter and paper. Not to be pretentious, but because I would need it work without electricity.

Single disc: Uuuuughhh....probably "The Man That Got Away". But I am already dissatisfied with only eight songs.

And here's your list, if you can make out my handwriting-- had every intention of typing it; not going to type it.

Well! I gotta get, but let me know what you think about these star choices and my own. What would yours be? Which of the celebrities are you the most excited to check out? Have you heard any audio-only, spoken word type things I need to know about lately? Let's taaaaalk.

Hope to see you again much sooner than the last time! Take care! 'Til then.