The vintage connoisseur is not limited to the collection of old things. The true connoisseur will also collect the stories of old people. When I said I wasn’t sure about taking the time to go to a Friends of the Library book sale last weekend, my eighty-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Boaz, a dependable font of discriminating…
Devoting oneself to the study of artifacts by default means thinking in terms of obsolescence. For the contents of the curiosity shop are often those forlorn orphans unable to cross over into modern aesthetics or make themselves useful to 21st-century life. Let’s face it. Kindles have a lot on printed books. And Kindles are good—great—for…
I must say, Lady Bricabrac and I thought that we knew, if anyone did, what the New Eclecticism was. We assumed (naturally) it referred to the recent mushrooming of curiosity shops in all their guises: antique shops and malls, vintage markets, consignment stores, and even the so-called “eclectic” co-ops. By offering alternative (repurposed, refinished, rediscovered,…
Beautiful things never go out of style. Classics endure. …Some pieces will be welcomed as they are, but others will need tender loving care or urgent cosmetic surgery. Choose a piece if it has promise. –Chalmers and Hanan, Flea Market Style There are many…
The place … was one of those receptacles for old and curious things which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town, and to hide their musty treasures from the public eye in jealousy and distrust. There were suits of mail, standing like ghosts in armor, here and there; fantastic carvings brought from monkish…
Former neighbors and good friends in Nashville, the Maxwell Beddingtons, had a maxim that comes in very handy when a collector has plenty of ambition but limited time. (I trust Lady B will forgive my French.) It goes like this: “If you see clothes, the yard sale blows.” This is true in the extreme. Excepting…
If those who have studied the art of writing are in accord on any one point, it is this: the surest way to arouse and hold the reader’s attention is by being specific, definite, and concrete. The greatest writers–Homer, Dante, Shakespeare–are effective largely because they deal in particulars and report the details that matter. Their…
Lady Bric-a-Brac and the Duchess of Emporia set out at an unreasonably early hour this past Saturday morning to investigate South Carolina’s “Largest Garage Sale” at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. Now in it’s 25th year, the “extravaganza” boasted well over 200 vendors—some who had cleaned out their attics and basements, others who were re-selling…
Oliver Douglas: Mr. Haney, that pile of junk isn’t worth $8. Haney: To the unappraiseable eye, yes. I had each and every one of these objects de art evaluated by an in-unpeachable source: the county tax assessor, or as we sometimes call him, Cousin Joe. Before Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz of American Pickers, there…
There’s something sad about an estate sale. I can’t go to one of these things without feeling a little bit vulturous, jostling with the other vultures and swooping down to retrieve the scraps of a life from a folding table of knick knacks. In fact, it might be impossible to go to an estate sale–or…
I’ve been looking for a dresser for what’s known affectionately as my Totally ’80s Guest Room–for months. Dear Lady Bricabrac is known to quip that there’s no real rush to buy, that most of the pieces I’m interested in aren’t going anywhere—because, after all, who else wants them? This is often true. My friends these…
Now look at that old church. And them old houses. Did George Washington ever sleep here? Of course he did. This whole neighborhood just stinks with atmosphere. –Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) Brooklyn–of all places–“stinks with atmosphere” in Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace. The main commercial streets off the central square once held a full…
Yet the heterogeneous forces did cooperate to a reality which [we] could not deny… and the first number was representative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. –William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) The Old Curiosity Blog is now OPEN.
The Old Curiosity Blog 