Ventriloquist Dummies

Good morning! After the banner weekend Saturday and Sunday last that was the "couch and lamp" extravaganza, I guess I couldn't expect my estate sale luck to hold out. My dad and I hit two this weekend, where I DID pick up an amazing, felt appliqued-and-hand-beaded oversized clutch from South Africa in the fifties' (four bucks?!?! Featuring native dancers? It's gorgeous) and the stole I mentioned in yesterday's post. What's most memorable, sadly, for me about the last bout of sales was the bitter taste left in my mouth by dint of my having to leave a perfectly gorgeous Charlie McCarthy doll behind. He looked a little like this, but I'm almost positive his eyes were smaller:

Did you ever get your heart broke by a "dummy"? 
Hahaha....I crack me up. Source

The sale was in Donelson and it had to be the CLEANEST mid century house I've ever been in. And I've been in a lot! Down to the radiator in the bathroom (which, from having one in my own bathroom, I know is notoriously hard to clean, and this one looked like new somehow), everything was spotless. Unfortunately, the owner's mania for immaculateness was probably also reflected in the sparsity of vintage items...I found the purse, which was amazing, and then I saw Charlie. Propped up on a table in the living room, maybe 12'' in height, and just as darling as they come. In a tux! Monocle intact! I flipped over the attached-with-string price tag and felt positively boo-hooey about the three figures presented to me. $100...!! I asked if there were discounts, as it was the second day of the second phase of the sale and an hour before close-- I was told in so many words that there were not. Whaddaya meeeeean!

I know ventriloquist dummies and old dolls freak some people out, but they're a perfect-buying-interest-storm for me in that they mix cuteness and creepiness in equal amounts. I have an eerie little assortment of handmade dolls in less-than-perfect condition and composition dolls (the eye-rolling kind) on a wide vanity chair in my bedroom, and for someone who was very little interested in baby dolls as a child, I sure of a lot of (weird!) ones now!

Speaking for Charlie McCarthy memorabilia, though, I just wanted a companion piece for this guy!

Source

This 1930's hand puppet is closer in the eye-size to the ventriloquist dummy I was so cruelly denied this weekend...my great-uncle George gave one like this to my sister who out of the kindness of her heart (and the fact that I was going to take my own life if I didn't have it) gave it to me sometime in high school. I've always been a biiiiiig old time radio fan and who woulda thunk that a ventriloquist act ON THE RADIO was one of the hottest tickets going back in the day. Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy started out on the Chase Sanborn Hour in 1937 and ran 11 years on that program before branching out into simply The Charlie McCarthy Show (you can hear more HERE). Charlie's feud with W.C. Fields is one of the more hilarious highlights of the show, but know that pretty much everything he says is this funny. Second only to Jack Benny for comedic timing! Catch some gems from his ongoing feud with W.C. Fields on the Wikipedia page (sharp as a tack!).

Trying to drown my Charlie-related sorrows in the rivers of Ebay, I couldn't find one exactly like what I was looking for, but on an auction site I did see THIS mint-in-box- thirties bakelite Charlie McCarthy radio. For a cool $250 starting bid, it's even FURTHER out of my range, but heck. What a snazzy little collectible! Looks like something Andy Warhol would have collected to me. Back when you could get it for $10! Oh, the days.

This dapper little Dan comes from a current ebay listing that calls him "Antique Rare Ventriloquist puppet Doll! Great condition!". And I agree! What a little cutie. Is it the Kewpie-ish face, the tuxedo, the carnation, or the beret that makes this little proto-Boyer such a winner with the ladies? You tell me. Something about the scale of the chair and how tiny he looks in it is also selling me on him. Not as much as the long-lost-Lenore feeling I have for the one I had to leave at the sale, but still.

Thennnnnn....I saw this one:

I also agree with this seller's labelling the doll as "FREAKY ANTIQUE VENTRILOQUIST DOLL DUMMY HAUNTED MAGICIAN DOLL". Down to the all caps! Because that's what my mind does when I see this lidless demon. How can you have this in your home, and still go to bed at night?

If you're interested in ventriloquist dummies of the non-haunting-your-dreams-Twilight-Zone style, your library might have a copy of Bergen's How to Be a Ventriloquist, which is both funny and instructive.

Where do you stand on the "creepy vs. cute vs. both creepy and cute" side of the issue? Will I ever find another Charlie doll in the right price range? Is there one waiting for me out there in an attic or closet shelf as we speak? Do you think I should avoid buying one for fear of finding it at the foot of my bed with a knife in its teeth? You tell me!

That's all for today, see you guys Wednesday!

Photoplay Stars in Color (1937)

Good afternoon! It sure is dreary outside today. I think it is p-r-o-b-a-b-l-y going to be one of those "go to Provence" days for this inside-the-library worker's lunch. If the library was open to the public today, I could just scoot in via the convenient located-inside-the-library connecting door! Unfortunately, I will have to schlep around the side of the building, in the rain, if I really care to grab the "librarian's lunch" special of a half sammie and soup. But I think it will raise my cheer to do so!

At any rate, the second thing to cheer me on this gloomy work day are the color insert pages of Photoplay magazine from 1937. Available in its entirety for that year, you can see the whole shebang via the Internet Archive. But if you're into instant gratification (and why wouldn't you be?) check out these GORGEOUS shots of some of the top stars of that year in (almost, kind of) full color!

Here's Bette Davis and her knitting. A lot of Hollywood stars had some kind of handiwork past-time to keep them occupied while sets and shots were being put together (did you see my post on Sylvia Sidney's needlework?)...Bette Davis was a bi-i-i-ig knitter.You can see her on set, doing her thing, here via Vintage Knitter's flickr set. I'm crazy about her hair and her collars-and-cuffs-match-blouse ensemble here. I also think her hair is about the exact color of mine! What do you call it? It's not brunette, but it's not blonde either.

Carole Lombard looking very modern in a black strappy evening gown. I love the huge mink to her left like "Oh...this? You mean my wrap? Yeah, it's a huge mink." I just bought another stole this weekend, against my better judgement, but it's gonna get cold eventually! Carole Lombard, besides being so impishly adorable and effortlessly soignée at the same time, had such an interesting life story that I think it's a shame the best Hollywood could make of it was that drecky seventies' biopic with Jill Clayburgh (?!?!!?!) as Lombard and James Brolin as her famous husband (James Brolin is a dreamboat, but he's no Clark Gable). God, it was bad. I had to run right out and grab Mr. and Mrs. Smith (not that one, this one) to rinse the taste out of my brain.

Claudette Colbert, looking positively Grecian in a long white gown in a green room. Do you LOVE the wallpaper and the silver urn filled with cut roses or do you LOVE the wallpaper and the silver urn filled with cut roses. The older I get, the more I envy that early forties', Dorothy Draper home decoration look of bold colors and harmonizing furniture. Alas, I have too many tchotchkes!

Frances Farmer, who I know more from being infamous than from being famous, in an adorable beret, an agressively plaid suit, and a red neckerchief. Along with the anemone, this is a look I can really get behind!

Fred MacMurray, in a non-Dad capacity, is actually SERIOUSLY handsome. He made a handful of semi-screwball movies in the thirties' with the aforementioned Carole Lombard, and it always wigs me out that he's not the fatherly figure from sixties' tv. Weird!

Gary Cooper looking blank and handsome as usual. I would really like to have a full-sized poster of this in my kitchen to eat cereal in front of. It would be a great way to start the day, looking at Gary Cooper's big beautiful mug.

Gloria Stuart is a pretty blond woman whose horrified face makes up a lot of the great, classic horror movie poster for The Old Dark House, which she starred in five years before this picture was taken. Did you recognize her as being the old woman at the beginning and end of Titanic? I thought not! I really want to read her autobiography that she wrote around that time-- imagine starting out in early sound movies (~1932) and being in freakin Titanic (1997)....that's sixty five years in the biz!

Joanie!!!!!! Ever my very favorite, La Crawford models a gorgeous print evening gown in the Photoplay Fashion spread above. Look how long the peplum skirt comes down on this...is it even considered a peplum at this point? This weekend, I watched two Crawford movies from a new box set I got the other day with my grandma...I can never decide whether I like feisty, can-act and is-older Joan from the forties', or over-mascara'd, over-enunciating, sleek-as-a-racehorse thirties' Joan, so we saw one from each period (Flamingo Road and Sadie McKee, respectively). The girl really knows how to make you root for her! In the first, she was an ex-circus dancer who's pitted against a government machine boss who wants to elect Zachary Taylor to a governorship, without Joanie in the way (though why someone would be gaga over Zachary Taylor is a mystery to me-- and she did it twice, once before in Mildred Pierce!). The other has later real-life husband Franchot Tone as the second love-interest in a from maid to high society type story, and features a LOT of heavily mascara'd eyelid batting and blinking back tears on JC's part. It's what I love!

Loretta Young in a PIP of a playsuit! From what I can see, you've got striped harem pants with matching hooded coat, all over a white midriff baring top! Cuckoo, but as usual, I love it.

Last but not least, I had to share this completely insane "casual" shot of Bette Davis. How did they take such a glamorous lady and make her look like a little nerd! How! (I secretly love this photo)

Which Hollywood star in color do you like best? Are you a "fan" of old fan magazines like Photoplay? Who's your go-to favorite old time Hollywood star?

Gotta get working on the afternoon's book chores...have a great Monday and I'll see you tomorrow!

Photo Friday: Sonny and Diane Get Hitched Edition

Good morning! IT'S FRIDAY. I thought this day would never come. The Doris and Ray photo archive offers up a look at Sonny's 1970 Michigan wedding to the same Diane we saw in the "Every Dog Should Be Named Ralph" post. And I have to say, looking at the cover, we are already off to a good start. Big-eyed Goji girl wandering minstrel in pigtails? Sure! Why not? Doris has pencilled in at the top of the album "Sonny & Diane 5/9/70":

 I think my scanning skills are deteriorating! This album folded out in a weird way and it seems like 90% of the pictures I scanned ended up crooked. Ah well. I think you can get the general gist of it. Click any picture for a larger version of the scan. Because of the weird width of these, Blogger made them oddly small.

Here we have the rehearsal dinner at a place called the Red Vest-- if you look closely at the placemats in the photos, you can see the little logo.Note the GORGEOUS pinch pleat drapes (perfect for my living room, which is just a shade darker than the wall color here) and the pretty floral arrangements Ruth and Doris are laying out at the bride and groom's table. I was thinking it might be the reception, but based on the clothes, I'm pretty sure this is a day before the ceremony.

Below, on the left, is Diane with the rest of her family, looking comparatively tiny. How do you like her sherbet-striped dress? The guy to her right is sporting not only a strange haircut, a ghost of a mustache, and a double breasted suit jacket, all the way buttoned, but thinly checked pants. It's the details, folks. To the right, Diane's dad sits next to her, she next to Sonny, and Sonny next to Doris. Can you believe Sonny's straight-from-the-Mod-Squad suit? I TRULY love it.

I was just thinking that, with comparatively few cousins and an engaged but unmarried sister, I've only been to one rehearsal dinner! It was at a Japanese steakhouse in Mt. Juliet, and I have to say for flair, you can't much beat the panache of a hibachi chef. A rehearsal dinner with a little (welcome, not crazy) drama! Do you see in the pictures that there are three whole rows of tables devoted to the wedding party? Instead of renting out the whole restaurant, or having a noisy party of thirty plopped down haphasardly in the middle of the dining floor, I'm thinking that is probably one of those special occasion rooms or banquet hall type situations you used to see in a lot of nice restaurants.

The happy event itself! As you can see from the invitation Doris saved at the bottom of this post, the wedding took place on May 9, 1970 at the Crestwood UMC in Muskegon, Michigan It's still there! After those heart-wrenching Historic Preservation Trust commercials that superimpose the 16mm footage of people's weddings/class pictures/ etc over "what's there now" (i.e. a gas station, a parking lot), I get worried! What was a Tennessee boy like Sonny doing all the way up north in Michigan? He joined the service at some point after high school, and from what I understand was stationed there in some capacity when he met Diane.

Now, here's a shocker...I had assumed Sonny's father, Harry Senior, had passed away sometime in the forties' or early fifties', as Doris was obviously a single woman in that time period (see the "Meet Sonny" post) leading up to her mid fifties' marriage to Ray. It didn't even OCCUR to me that they'd gotten divorced until I saw this "the new couple with the groom's family" photo in which Doris appears with an older, very fair-colored guy who looks A LOT LIKE SONNY. Jeepers! He lives! I guess they DID get divorced! Compare that guy with the guy in this picture and I'm almost a hundred percent sure they're the same guy. Wow!

In the photo to the right, the receiving line offers up a larger woman in a compilcated paisley pattern dress. It's amazing to me sometimes, when shopping at Goodwill, I stumble across these gorgeous, crazy, op-art looking dresses that are four times too big for me-- sometimes it seems like you were either a modern size two to four in the sixties' and before, or you were a modern size 24W, with NO SIZING IN BETWEEN. I either see stuff that's way too big (like this woman's garment) or way too small (like Diane's rehearsal dress in the first picture). What is the deal, sixties' people?

The bride's family (R) and the bridesmaids. Tell me what you think about the daisies-in-hair AND in bouquets situation going down here because I don't know how to feel about it. While bridesmaids dresses are kind of supposed to be ugly (and I don't care what modern brides say about letting their wedding party choose their own clothes, I demand matchy-matchy, horribly unflattering, monotoned bridal parties or nothing at all), were the cap sleeves really necessary? Maybe if the matching flowers-to-hairpieces had been a different shape? I just don't know.

You thought Ray might have skipped this family event based on the earlier photos, but no way! Here he shows up in a pair of photos with the new couple. Why does Sonny always look so "squished" in these photos? He has the weirdest camera face in spite of demonstrated handsomeness (see high school photos)!

Ah! I don't know what relation the chipmunk-bright little guy on the left is to the family, but GOSH isn't he cute? I can tell from the myriad of early to mid seventies' childhood photos of my cousin Jamie that seventies' little boys clothes aimed to make you look as much like a grown dandy as possible. This kid has on a newsboys cap in matching fabric to his blazer, for goodness sake!

Here's the altar and the newlyweds. Isn't the washed-outness of the Polaroid kind of adorable?

Fellow servicemen, the brother from the earlier picture (he of checked pants) and a guy in a midnight blue blazer, string tie, and sideburns that I would like to retroactively date. He looks like Rory Storm (Beatles-intimate, skiffle heartthrob) from the hair all the way down to the ensemble!!! Also catch that the little boy from earlier is now wearing a collarless nehru style jacket with short pants and black knee socks. I don't even know if that goes together, but I like it.

Now HERE'S the reception; seems like it's onsite at the church from the look of that room:



A kiss for Aunt Ruth, well dressed as usual in powder blue lace. Look at the square tiered cake! And more daisies. And a bit of cake eating from the couple. Ah, it was a pretty wedding, wasn't it?

The aforementioned invitations below. The Muskegon Women's Club still exists, too! Way to go, Michigan.

So what did you think? What's your favorite outfit from the assembled parties? Do you have any seventies' wedding memories that are particularly off-the-wall? Why can't I find more vintage clothes in the size 6-12 range? Where would you have a rehearsal dinner? Let's talk!

Have a great weekend! I'll see you guys on Monday.

Cleopatra Makeup (1962)

Good morning!

I ran across this 1962 Revlon ad for "Sphinx Pink" and "Sphinx Eyes" makeup this morning and just had to share it with you. Inspired by that year's famous film fiasco Cleopatra, I nevertheless ask: WHAT IS NOT TO LIKE ABOUT THE ABOVE SUZY PARKER BY AVENDON PHOTO? You've got a midnight black cat, a long pageboy wig in the style of Donna Summers...gorgeous and usually rousse Suzy Parker made over into the Queen of the Nile, and a necklace I would wear over t-shirts, formal dresses, pretty much every outfit in my life if I owned it, every DAY of my life. Oh, and then there's the makeup. What did you want to tell us about the makeup, Revlon copy men?

I love "Madly mysterious! Egypt-inspired!" and "Unforgettable! (And almost unforgivable!)". I really want to give the beige and grey accent shadows a shot to add to my normal out-to-there eyeliner. For goggle eyed girls such as myself, eyeliner really is the last word in beauty cosmetics. I wouldn't go as far as tattooing a permanent line to my lid, but I don't leave the house ever, ever, ever without a basic cat's eye. There was an article in Cosmo in the late sixties' that I'll have to drum up for you guys sometimes, showing a diptych of a gorgeous, Liz Taylor esque woman in a powder blue peignoir sitting up in bed, and the other a plain Jane in the same peignoir and stacked hair. They were the same woman, and the title of the article was "Why I Wear My False Eyelashes to Bed"! I always take it off at night, but you'd better believe it's the first thing I put on in the morning.

Did I mention the makeup comes in these pretty containers, and includes a matching lipstick and nailpolish? OH MY GOODNESS LOOK AT THE CLEOPATRA HEAD ON THE LIPSTICK CASE. I think I've died.

 I tried like heck to find a "sphinx doll" case for sale, but I only dug up two expired ebay listings from this year. This one sold in June for $178:

This slightly prettier version sold for $275 in January. All I know is, if they made a commemorative lipstick like this in 2012, I would buy like thirty of them.

While I'm a massive, massive Burton/Taylor fan (if you're not, grab a copy of Sam Kashner's superb joint biography of them from 2010, Furious Love, and you soon will be), I've never been able to get through the whole of the movie Cleopatra. Much like the Gigli/Bennifer connection of 2003, the main interest for me in the movie is the off-set romance-- compared to how exciting all those sneaky Italian paparazzi on-yacht photos of a still-married Burton smooching a still-married Taylor were, where's the spark in the movie? Gorgeous photography and costuming, yes, but overlong and stiff from a dramatic point of view. That said, can you believe these makeup and costume designs are from 1962? SCANDALOUS! Check out Elizabeth Taylor's down-to-there decolletage and up-to-there eyeliner to eyebrow pencil eyeshadow. Wow!

Revlon printed this Cleopatra Sphinx Eyes tutorial as a tie in with their makeup products. Wanna see how it's done?

 Don't act like I'm not going home and trying this TONIGHT.

What do you think? Would you buy a hundred of the little sphinx doll lipstick cases or are they too kooky? How far would you go with a Cleopatra eye? Do you habitually wear retro eyeliner? Let's talk girl talk!

That's all for today...see you tomorrow (with dramatic, dramatic eyemakeup)!

Gossip Columnists Tell All (1973)

Hello, all you out-there-in-the-afternooners...

I had a brilliant post all lined up but I don't have any time to write it now! Trying to cobble together some different historical curricular theories without a textbook, and at the mercy of Google, before 4 pm today is proving to be a little harder than I thought. But while I'm away, why don't you watch this David Suskind Show episode called "Gossip Columnists Tell All", from 1973? Hulu, you're an angel for posting this kind of stuff...

                

Featuring my beloved, ever snarky Rex Reed (author of 1969's compilation of celebrity interviews Do You Sleep in the Nude? which is a rollicking fun read if ever there was one-- no holds barred! Ava Gardner, drinking away the afternoon in the late sixties'! Barbara Streisand, married to Elliot Gould and LOUD! Sandy Dennis, living with twenty cats and a beard-o husband! Me, loving the witchiness of it all!), as well as additional gossip columnists Joyce Haber, Kandy Stroud, James Brady, and Patrick O'Higgins, this program pretty much sits the five columnists down in a very retro-ly bare studio (you can't exactly imagine Ryan Seacrest in such a dour setting) to hash out interesting topics at the time. "What do you think about blah blah blah?" Suskind poses. Almost in unison, the columnists:"Ohhhhh we hate it!" Rex Reed loves only Candace Bergen (in those pre-Murphy Brown days, she was something else!). I also want to re-adopt the phrase "I wouldn't cross the street to...", because it really does get the message across.

Anyway, watch! Learn! Soak in a little seventies' cattiness! Are there any retro programs on Hulu you can't live without?

If I make it through these classes, I'll see you tomorrow!

Bar Carts

Good morning!

I'm still struggling with what to do with my fourth wall in my new living room set up! I moved the yellow arm chair from the den up...no dice. Moved the couch from the long wall to the windows in the front of the house....nope. Tried putting the chord organ along the windows...whatever I tried, it was weirdly out of place, and I ended up having to move everything to its original position by the time I was through. Half an hour, wasted, turned into an hour, wasted. Scraped knuckles and aching-of-back, I called my mom to lament the disharmonious situation going down in one of the most important rooms in the house, when she suggested I bring up my seventies' bar cart (which looks pretty much identical to the one below). Genius, woman!

Ain't she a pip? (Source)

 I picked this guy up at an estate sale in Bordeaux for $15, attracted by the art deco shape of it, and had been using it pretty much as a glassware shelf in the den. People, among the many things I have problems collecting, I would put glassware at the very tip top. It is well nigh impossible for me to see a sixties' sour cream glass or a Tang pitcher or a souvenir cup from Mammoth Cave and resist taking it home with me, and the bar cart had been a victim of this historic injustice.

I'm not getting rid of them... I just have to figure out another place to put them!

I took the cart up to the living room and removed each and every piece of glass from it, then windexed the glass panels, then looked dumbly upon it trying to figure out what one puts on a bar cart (other than the aforementioned items, which, by the way, were all on the cart before I moved it). I knew immediately that two things have to go on the cart: this ribbed cocktail shaker and stainless steel Penguin ice bucket. I also have some nice whiskey tumblers, an assortment of wine glasses, and a number of vintage books on entertaining...but after that, I'm stumped! Do you put actual booze on the bar cart? I've never been a gimlet or martini girl myself, but should I go out and buy fancy bottles to put on the cart and give the Dorothy Parker lifestyle a go? How does one dress a bar cart?

I KNEW I'd picked these up for a reason...

 I dimly remembered seeing someone's Pinterest posts on how bar carts were coming back in style (here's a particularly good one), and boy, when I googled "bar cart", did I come up with some faaaancy ideas. From professionals, no less! Let's take a look at the inspiration board, shall we?

Via Emily Henderson

1) Emily Henderson bar cart:

• Overview: I love Emily Henderson and her HGTV show Secrets From a Stylist (the day I figured out that HGTV has full episodes of a lot of their home decorating shows was a very good day, indeed). How cute is this cart?!
• Bar inventory:
• Booze (including glass skull bottle of vodka!)
• Stainless steel carafe
• Tumbler set and tray
• Deer's head ice bucket (!!)
• Three empty decanters
• A vase with cherry blossom cuttings
• Verdict: I think I like the cart and the wallpaper better than the cart-dressing itself. The cherry blossom thing would be too "I copied this from a magazine" for my taste. But it does add drama! And my house decorating aesthetic is alllll about the drama.

2) Christian May bar cart:

• Overview: I don't know who Christian May is, but I am bugging out about his swank bar cart, so I might have to do some investigating around his website for more interior design ideas. This 2009 blog post, from his website Maison 21, features tips on how to stock the blamed thing! Bless him!
• Bar inventory:
• Booze:  "vodka, gin, scotch and vermouth, maybe a bottle of red, and a few random liquor bottles just to prop it out"
• Mixers: " It's important to have multiple bottles of mixers to keep the bar looking welcoming, yet not junked up, so keep the variety slim, but lots of each"
• Accesories: "bucket, a carafe or shaker to mix, tongs, knife and bottle opener on the table at all times, along with a selection of double old fashioned glasses and stemware"
• Lemons and limes (which he says, if unsliced, don't go bad for a long time...I didn't know that!)
• Verdict: It's probably the alcoholic in me, but I LOVE this fully-functioning dry bar set up. It looks swank and actually serves a purpose at the same time. 

3) Deborah Needleman's bar cart 

• Overview: This bar set up appeared in several tumblrs/Pinterest boards/etc that I came across, but Apartment Therapy finally clued me in to its provenance. Deborah Needleman is the editor in chief of WSJ and has worked for/created/helmed several other magazines. That's not important-- what's important? How fresh and inviting this bar cart looks!
• Bar inventory: Extremely similar to M21's bar, but add
• Mini bottles of club soda/tonic
• Tabasco sauce
• Stacks of books (! It's like she already knows what my house looks like!)
• Extremely tall carafe made of such clear glass it almost looks invisible (can you spot it on the bottom shelf?)
• Verdict: Close tie with the last one. I think the mini mixer bottles would serve a better purpose but I like the look of the skinny ones better. I'm counting the number of glasses so my cart can have a similarly reasonable number (so not eighty? Why not eighty?).

Soooo, what do you think? Is it too "magazine-y" to have a bar cart, even if I promise to use it? Do you have one in your house? What kinds of things did you put on yours? Which of the above designs do you prefer? I need your advice!

That's all for today... I'll take a picture of the finished product sometime this week. See you tomorrow!

Weekend Finds-- NEW BROYHILL COUCH AND CHAIR!

Good morning! It was a heckuv'an exciting weekend at homestead...we got a new couch!!

 

I saw this Broyhill couch and chair set in the preview photos for Dogwood estate sale this weekend and went, "Thaaaaat might just be the couch of my dreams". Full knowing that 90% of the really stellar furniture pieces at estate sales are usually snatched up by resellers in the first ten minutes after the doors are opened at 8:30, I nevertheless crossed my fingers and ventured out to Bellevue with my sister in tow. Sus couldn't go until she dropped her fiancé off at work, which pushed us back to 9:30; we then tried three different iterations of "Hicks Road", including one that simply led to the driveway of Ensworth Academy, crossing the Harpeth River twice, before happening upon the fourth and correct one around 10:30. I plodded through the neighbor's yard with no high hopes that the set was still there, but upon wading through the Friday-morning crowd, lo and behold! It sat patiently in the front room under several trays of jewelry and two sets of sterling silver flatware, looking even better in person than in the photos online! Maybe the furniture-snatcher got called in to work or was under the weather? Or still stuck on another version of Hicks Road in Bellevue?

Having had the heartache of dry-rotted cushions on a vintage couch before, Sus and I cleared off some of the merchandise from the couch and started squeezing the cushions to make sure that the foam was still viable (this is totally normal behavior, btw). Hurray! One nickel sized cigarette burn on the underside of one of the cushions was the only noticable flaw to an otherwise mint-condition couch. The Broyhill tag lettering and the wild, seafoam and sky blue and green and dark blue pattern makes me think this is probably from the late sixties' or early seventies', possibly a cousin to the "Gracias" line featured in this advertisement. The price for the chair and the couch together ended up being around $200...while the parsimonious side of me was coming down hard on that price not being, say, $100 for the set, the slightly more reasonable side of me offered the argument that it would have been twice that in a vintage-resell setting. Which was probably where it was heading if I didn't pull the trigger on it. I made a brief, harried call to my dad to make sure he would be able to help me pick it up the next day (with his always-comes-in-handy pickup truck), and marched up to the checkout desk with my credit card. Mark it sold! MARK IT SOLD!

 

The sofa set that predated this great change (see here, from the Magnificent Magnavox origin story post in 2010) was a hand-me-down from the original owners, my aunt and uncle, who bought it in the early seventies', and gave it to my grandma in the early nineties'. She, in turn gave it to me around 2008, when I moved into this house. While they weren't my dream couches, I had managed to style the room and all the knick-knacks around the insane gold-velvet trim of the three piece suit (chair, sofa, and love seat). Plus, there was a certain "jungle room" charm to having so much crazy gold in one room. Just before I started moving the furniture to go back to my grandma's, I had a tinge of regret-- had I done the right thing? Was it going to be a lot of work to make this big of a change?

On Saturday afternoon, after going to get the pieces and safely moving them into their new home, Matthew and I were out at the Rivergate Goodwill when we found this tension-pole lamp. With its 1890's oil lamp style fixtures, I was momentarily "wow'd". I'd never seen one at a thrift store, and the ones that I'd seen at estate sales were always in the sixty dollars and up category. This one was only $20! As I was lamenting the lack of shades, an employee pointed the box of them out to me, a few feet from where the pole sat. "Somebody brought that in just this morning!" he said. "We were all surprised because usually, all the chimneys are scratched up or missing...these don't hardly have a nick on them." My war whoop of MARK IT SOLD! came rushing back to me. After some initial struggling with the extension part (which Matthew's mechanical brain somehow figured out, and I'm still not sure how), we had it installed. I am apparently medically incapable of taking a good photo of the inside of my house (remember, I'm working with an iPhone camera, not a Nikon), but this is about what it looks like:

 

In our haste to get the pole attached to the ceiling, we forgot to check and see if the lights worked. Switching it on, only one lamp lit up. After some Yosemite Sam style stamping and dog-cursing, I went back to the pole, and switched it again. This time, the two lamps on the left lit up. A THREE WAY SWITCH. Of course, Watson! I flicked it a third time and all three lit up like Christmas. Hurray!

The last big change for the living room is the tv situation. I have a great Motorola tv from the mid sixties' that does work...however, as anyone who was there in the mid-sixties' can attest, the picture is less than perfect and liable to start "skipping" unless you keep an eye on the vertical and horizontal holds. A neat find, but not suitable for every day use after fifty years. I also have a RCA Color TV from 1962, which is extremely cool looking, but doesn't work (to my knowledge...there might just be something I'm not doing or a loose switch). I bought the RCA at a Patterson sale, then ended up finding the Motorola two months later for fifteen dollars. FIFTEEN DOLLARS. I put the RCA in the den and the Motorola in the living room. I think my new plan is to sell the RCA to a good home, keep the Motorola in the den, and buy a larger, flat screen tv for the living room, to sit on top of this (again, beautiful, but nonfuctioning) Telefunken console. Here's an idea of how it will look--again, this is a horrible picture, but I love how fancy the base looks and how functional having-a-tv-in-the-living-room will be for inviting people over to watch movies. 

In spite of the bad photos, what do you think? Have you ever been through a dramatic restructuring/re-decorating of one of the main rooms in your house? Any hints for the novice furniture slinger? I'm happy as a clam with the pieces, but I think it will still be awhile before I feel like I have it "exactly right".

Hope you guys had similar luck at the sales this weekend and the fish were bitin'! Have a great Monday, I'll see you tomorrow.