Photo Friday: Kodachromalicious Edition

Hi-ya, kids!

Running out the door this morning for errands...but you know I wouldn't leave you hanging for Photo Friday! I just love the Kodachrome slides from this flickr user's account, documenting his midcentury childhood in scans from his family's photos. He's the handsome tot in red in most of these photos, his parents looking respectively like young Jessica Lange and the perennially dashing Zachary Quinto (see, I have the movie all planned out!). I love the gravitas lent to every day scenes by the fine color and shadow of the Kodachrome stock...each snap looks like a museum piece to me. What details do you spot? Which of these photos do YOU think I like the best?

•  the hula hooping photo's twilight exposure, so that the hoops almost look neon
• the fancy dressed gal with her shoes off and her dirty stocking'd feet from dancing
• the mother in front of the Christmas tree in that red dress
• the gold sofa behind the parents when the mom's wearing a white sheath dress
• the family friend (or aunt? I can't remember) dressed in the middy blouse and Keds
• the random gal dressed in costume as an Indian in a GORGEOUS patterned room
• the parakeet on dad's shoulder
• or ALL OF THE ABOVE? :)

Have a great weekend! I'll catch you on Monday with even more vintage goodness. Talk to you then!

Lisa

Finally! Flea Market and Goodwill Finds

Good morning!

 How's tricks, kids? It's Thursday/Friday for me, as I am offfff this weekeeeennnd...! Roll out the barrels, I'm not sure what I'm doing, but I'm doing something! :D As promised both Tuesday and Wednesday, here is your day-late, dollar-short report from the flea market this past Saturday! My favorite thing I rounded up (other than the purse we spoke about on Tuesday), is this pair of clip earrings. Aren't they GORGEOUS?

The last couple of months I have been really lucky at picking up these baubles for almost nothing in the sheds...this pair, winking at me from among the other trinkets, was $3 (that's a buck fifty a clip on, people...can't beat it with a stick). Compare that to the ebay or online prices of similar sixties' earrings and you could see where I would be giddy with excitement over serving Joan-Crawford-on-a-Pepsi-Cola-promotional-tour realness in my choice of jewelry for less than the price of a takeout sandwich. They pinch like the devil, and I don't like the spacers you can buy as a kind of Scholl's pad for your earlobes, so I'm grinning through it today! The black jet beads were also from the flea market; I forgot to take a better picture of them, but they are chic as chic can be and similarly inexpensive.

These two pins were brought back together this week....remember when I bought the devil pin in March? I looked and looked and LOOKED, combing through the other various pieces on a table, and came up goose eggs for the angel I had a hunch was part of a two-brooch set as I'd seen them on other lucky so-and-so's blogs and Ebay/Etsy before. Then I looked again last month, nada. This month, as I was getting the earrings, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the missing brooch! Can I almost not wait to wear one on one shoulder and one on the other? I cannot.

Inside the Exhibition Building, my dad and I stopped at a vendor booth just inside the west-facing door and were stopped cold by a suite of Barbara Mandrell autographed items perched on a fruit crate. What are the odds?! Barbara Mandrell superfan runs smack into a whole slew of Mandrell-o-bilia, including an autographed copy of the audiobook Get to the Heart, a signed photo, SANS name, of the country queen (maybe I'm weird but I don't want to shell out for a photo inscribed "To Jerry with love"), and a pair of turquoise two-tone boots with "BM" emblazoned on either side. Sadly, they were sold together for $200, and that was way more than either of us was willing to shell out, but in the same booth, I found the following:

One: Acid pink floral-and-green-velvet-ribboned hat? This isn't a very good shot of it, but with my melon-like cabesa I'm always on the lookout for hats that will sit boater-style on my head, and this one fits the bill!

Two: This crazy thing:

This is a mother-of-pearl oyster shell that opens into a change purse. Kooky enough, right? I think the paint on the outside must have a floral embellishment of some kind like the ones you see here. What really got me interested in it was the date written inside: "Nov 30, 1894". Oh reeeeeally? she says. Imagine some little turn of the century Gibson girl snatching this up as a souvenir of her beachside vacation. I should start carrying this around in my larger purse-- can you imagine the effect of "Oh, wait, I think I have the change--" at Goodwill when I whip out a clamshell and produce the required coinage. TRUE LIFE SUCCESS.

And third: This strange little picture, which is 3D, GUYS. IT'S 3D. I usually find roses or religious art in this format, but a children's picture featuring dolls as storybook characters? Yeah, let's just go ahead and do that, thanks, yes, take my money. I love the detail of the tableau and also the fact that the owner scrawled her name across the back of the picture in a child's looping scrawl, "MARY".

Both my clothes people in the Antique shed were MIA this month (Bobby COME BAAAAACK), but I did grab this surprisingly heavy real estate sign for a couple bucks. There were three others that said "INDUSTRIAL", "COMMERCIAL", and something else, but I liked this one best for the bold, plain typography. What I'm going to do with it...search me. But sometimes liking something is enough! My dad found three WWI brass ammunition casings at a booth I'd bought some oversized earrings from sometime earlier in the year. Not bad, huh? We were settin' 'em up and knockin' 'em down (deals, that is, not the brass casings). I still wish I'd found some clothes, though.

At Goodwill on Monday, I found two skirts, two dresses, and a couple weirdies, like this record:

I think it's a training record for med students to learn what a heart murmur sounds like through a stethoscope? I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that my recent binge-watching of Grey's Anatomy does not actually count as medical training.

I ran across these books, interested in both the museum overview and Panorama color slide aspect of the titles, and there was a secret bonus!

One, they came through on their promise of color slides...now I just need a Panorama projector to truly benefit from this boon.

But that's not the best part....THE BEST PART is the three record set of my pal Vincent Price taking me on a personalized tour of the art exhibitions. Veeeeep! I missed ya, buddy! Remember the Vincentennial party I threw oh my God three years ago? We need to have a 104th birthday party for this guy next year.

Well, that's all the news that's fit to print. What did you grab at the sales or the flea market this weekend? Had any unusual record finds lately? What should I be looking forward to seeing this weekend estate-sale wise, anybody got the inside scoop? Let's talk!

Have a great Thursday and I'll see you tomorrow for Photo Friday-- til then!

Rare Paulette Guinet Cabana Sunglasses (1950's, lookinglass on Ebay)

Good morning!

It's Wednesday of a three day work week-- OH MY GOODNESS, CAN ALL WORK WEEKS BE LIKE THIS. I wish I could work part time and receive full-time compensation, because I'm telling you-- there's a spring in my step just thinking about only having to make it through 1.5 more days of book slingin' until the weekend. And I didn't get you your flea market pictures...this giddy lack of responsibility, I should be ashamed. But maybe tomorrow?

In the meantime, at least the sun is out and about today! I was nosing around on Ebay earlier for vintage sunglasses when this number about sent me into cardiac arrest:

RARE Paulette Guinet Hand Carved Prototype Gold Leaf SNAKE Sunglasses C. 1950's

YES, MAMA. YESSSSS. This pair of sunglasses is serving gold Cleopatra-and-the-asp realness and HOW. At $8,000, the price tag is almost as impressive as the accessory itself, but let's just think rationally for a moment here-- while these are handcarved French original vintage designer sunglasses, surely there is a knockoff shop SOMEWHERE who could put these be-all, end-all lunettes de soleil into production for a fraction of that cost, please?! 

Vintage Paulette Guinet Pearl Gilt Pierced Tiara Cat Eye Sunglasses Circa 1950

While I wasn't able to find much more information on the web about Paulette Guinet other than she was a midcentury designer (um, duh), the Ebay seller lookinglass, who specializes in "COSTUMES, MASKS, SUNGLASSES,  FASHION & SPORT, MARDI GRAS ITEMS, VICTORIAN PAPER MASKS" (on a scale of 1 to 10, I would give this shop an 11 for "things I would like to purchase"), has a ton of rare and whimsical examples of her sunglasses on hand in the shop, ready for you to drool over if not purchase (four figure price range has me bugging almost as badly as the designs themselves).

Liiiiike....these Walther PPK embellished James Bond prototype glasses. Who would even think of this?!

Vintage Paulette Guinet Pre-Production James Bond 007 Sunglasses Circa 1950

I love how the iconic barrel of the gun contributes to a dramatic cats-eye effect. And the hits just keep on coming! While I myself tend to stick with plain, black, oversized Jackie Kennedy type haterblockers, or offbrand Wayfarers, I am not going to say I'm not 100% in love with these crazy, Elton-John worthy concoctions of equal parts glamour and imagination.

Take a look at the other spectacle-of-spectacles glasses up on the shop:

Vintage Paulette Guinet Hand Made Pearlesque Flower Sunglass Frames 1950

Very Sylvie Vartan, n'est-ce pas? And flower power as the day is long!

Paulette Guinet Black Swan With Inset Rhinstones Sunglasses Circa 1950 Hand Made

Black swans AND aurora borealis rhinestone embellishment? THANK YOU, and YES.

Vintage Paulette Guinet Black Extreme Tiara Cat Eye Sunglass Frames Circa 1950

These are so extreme they'd amount to pretty much a faceplate, don't you think? I wish some of these were modeled on people's faces or even a mannequin head so we could get a good idea of what they would look like in the wild.

RARE Paulette Guinet Hand Carved Prototype Gold Leaf Reader Sunglasses C. 1950

A little surreal but amazing...

Vintage Paulette Guinet Hand Fabricated Blue Fire Flame Sunglasses

Another faceplate-- but less severe than the black pair.

Vintage Paulette Guinet Handmade Awesome Cat-Eye Sunglasses

THESE I WILL ACTUALLY WEAR, someone get me a knock of these, but quickly, before I lose my nerve...

Vintage Paulette Guinet HAND CARVED Black White Clear Square Lense Sunglasses

So! What do you think? Would you have to be either a French yéyé singer along the lines of Françoise Hardy or a bold Audrey-in-Courrèges à la 1967's Two For the Road to pull this off? Both those examples are a decade after when a lot of these sunglasses would have been originally produced-- can you imagine how wingding these must have looked on any but the most courageous of sunglasses wearers? Do you have any heavy-with-novelty novelty sunglasses in your collection or are you a staid shades wearer like yours truly? Seeing a pair of these in real life might convert me yet!

That's all for today....have a great Wednesday! I should have flea market finds for you tomorrow (yeah, yeah, you say, I keep hearing that). :) Take care! Til then.

Dreams Do Come True: My Gary Gail of Dallas House Purse!

Good morning!

Boy oh boy, what a weekend. Mine was split in two by Saturday off (flea markettttt....), a Sunday shift, and a Monday holiday, but as I would tell anyone that would listen, any time off of work is ok for any reason is ok with me! I'll spill the goods on the rest of the things I brought home with me tomorrow, but how about this bright, shining example of the junker's maxim: "If you look for something hard enough, you usually end up finding it" ?

Behold... A Gary Gail of Dallas House Purse! And mine, all mine:

Remember the post I did in February about my unmet need for a house-shaped purse? Well! My dad and I were seeking shelter from the sweltering conditions dehors at the fairgrounds Saturday in the Antiques building, and wasn't that a mistake? "I think it's actually hotter in here," he said, as both of us reached for our respective hankerchieves (his plain, mine floral), to dab the sweat from our faces, like the dainty 1920's Egyptian explorers we are. "Let's just do a quick run around the aisles and we'll try for the exhibition building. It's bound to be more temperature controlled, think about it, this is an arena, and the other is an exhibition hall, you know they're not sweating over quilts and pies come fair time," I posited, and he acceded. While wheeling around a corner and resisting the temptation of a 1939 Army Basic Training group photo, I ran smack into this purse in one of the regular dealer's booths. It was marked $10, and when I asked the woman running the booth if she could do any better, she knocked another three dollars off. It never ceases to thrill me when people even give me a dollar's discount on something at the flea market or an estate sale-- try that at Kroger's or Target and see where it gets you (i.e. nowhere).

Seven bucks! And it was a done deal. She grabbed a plastic bag for me to cart my wooden bag in while a man from across the way hooted of another dealer, "Look at Jerry over there! He's looking for his glasses to see what the marking on that lure is and they're on his face!" I never did get to see if poor myopic Jerry did have his glasses on his face while he was looking for them-- I only had eyes for THIS PURSE. 

I wasn't able to find any information about "Gary Gail of Dallas" besides Ebay and Etsy listings for other purses of his. From what I could cobble together from those, Gary Gail purses were inexpensive accessories made in Japan to meet the demand for wackadoodle, gaudily embellished handbags created by sainted Enid Collins of Texas. While Enid's still my girl, I am a big fan of this purse because it meets several requirements on my handbag list-- unusual, eyecatching, and not-likely-to-be-duplicated by others around the town. While it's no match for my clock purse (which, for the record, has probably drawn more attention than any actual accessory I have ever worn-- my dad's taken to whetting an imaginary pencil and marking an imaginary scoreboard every time someone says something about it while we're out and about), I love how dainty and cute this purse is...plus, do you see the little guy in the window looking out at you? I AM SLAIN BY THIS DETAIL. SLAIN.

Besides the roof and flowery front step of the house purse, each side has a window as well. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be what we see outside the window or inside, but if it's inside, you've got a strange, Surrealist living room, little disproportionate stick figure tenant of this house purse. I love the little shingles on the roof. While, technically, yes, maybe this is something I could make at home with determination and materials, isn't it more fun to just grab one up for less than the price of an Indian lunch buffet? (I have chana masala on the brain, it's almost lunch time for me)

Do YOU have an insatiable hunger for Indian buffet Gary Gail purses? Well then, it's high time you check out what kind of purse real estate there is out there on the world wide web. I found several copies of the house above on Ebay (though none as inexpensive, she gloats quietly) and a couple other models on Etsy. Take a look, and marvel at how tempting it is to build a whole subdivision of purses in your closet:

Vintage Gary Gail Dallas Wooden Purse Cottage House White

Vintage Gary Gail Dallas Wooden Purse Cottage/House

How about you? Do you know any more about this mysterious Gary Gail? Which of these houses is the cutest (YOU KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT THE ANSWER IS, haha)? What's the most unusual shaped purse you have in your own collection? Let's talk!

Well, that's it for today, but I'll be back tomorrow with some various flea market finds here and there! Have a great Tuesday, and I'll see you then. Take care!