Themes

I planned to sleep in this morning because I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.  And when I say sleep in, I mean way in!  I wasn't going to bother opening my eyes until noon.  But the cute little gray kitty who has taken up residence in my house had other plans.  She let me sleep until about 10:00, but after awhile even Mary Poppins gets impatient, so she let me know that it was definitely time for breakfast.

Mary Poppins, cute enough to wake up "early" for.

Once I got up and fed her, I found texts on my phone from both Mayberrys of my acquaintance to the effect that I was missing out on a sale full of stuff I would get a big kick out of.  And as I have no willpower at all to stay away from sales when even mildly provoked, I hit the shower and headed out the door.  And they were right, this sale had a very clear theme, and I stuck right with it.  Wanna see?:

MUSHROOMS!  They somehow both compete and go perfectly with my wild 70's kid-sized card table, don't they?

A closer look?  Why certainly!

Tossed a couple of tissues in there so you can see the details.  I'm classy like that!

Love polka-dotted ones!  Strangely I've never seen a polka-dotted one in the wild...

The two tiny ones in front are porcelain, apparently intended to hold tiny candles.  The lager, almost-matching one with the flowers painted around its base is wooden, and came with (some of) its own candle.  The little mug is plastic and way too reflective to get a decent picture.  The pitcher has a chip right in its pour-spout, and there's also some chipping to the enamel on the big saucepan, but if I told you what I paid for the whole bunch of stuff, you'd know why I just don't care.  It's all adorable!

The second theme of the day wasn't really dictated by the sale itself, which had lots of other totally unrelated things, but for some reason I was drawn to things that all sort of told the same story:

Vintage desk lamp, address "book", stamp holder/letter scale and bow-tie.

In my head his name is Martin.  He is very meticulous, but not uptight.  His work is something academic that involves lots of correspondence to confer with colleagues around the world.  And these are his things:

Add Love the font and the star-burst, and you gotta know bowties?  Are cool!

It was hard to get a decent close-up, and now you can see I didn't bother dusting it first, but check out the awesome little scale.  You slip your envelope in the little clip to weight it so you'll know what postage to use, and then your roll of stamps is right there handy.  So cool!

A little glamour shot of the lamp.  The perforations in the shade are little Eiffel Tower shapes.

Anyway, I quite like Martin and his lamp and I'm glad his become one of the many fictional residents of my brain ;)


Wanna see what some non-fictional folks came up with, too? Visit these fun link-ups; I am!

Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party, Chic on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday

Strange coincidence

Of all the posts I've done since I started this little enterprise last December, one from last February has had way, way, way more hits than any other, mostly due to Google searches involving either a certain kind of Le Creuset hollow-handled sacepan or Dru Holland cast iron cookware (you can read that whole post here if you like).  The strange coincidence of my post title today involves the saucepans:

Le Creuset hollow-handled saucepans.

The research I did at the time lead me to believe that this particular style of Le Creuset pans with the fat hollow metal handles that are all of a piece with the rest of the pot originated with another company, Cousances, that was bought out by Le Creuset in 1957.  The serendipitous new find I've made throws a whole new element into the game:

Sorry, rather crummy phone pic here.

As you can see, there is a definite resemblance between these two little pots and the little pots above!  The handles and style are the same, and then there's that gorgeous orange flame enamel.  The interiors are different - gray on these, and white on the Le Creusets - and unfortunately there's only one lid with this set, and it may not be original to the set, despite the color match - it's not cast iron, it's much lighter.  Also these two are the same size.  I haven't gotten all four of them together in the same place for comparison, but I don't think these are any bigger than the larger of the two Le Creusets.  

But where it gets interesting is this.  These are neither Le Creuset nor Cousances.  These are marked Trianon, Made in Belgium.  So of course, I asked good old Google about "enamel cast iron trianon", and found... not a ton of information.  The first thing returned is the most interesting.  It's a page from the Milwaukee Journal from December 5th, 1952 with an ad for Trianon "Terraflame":

As you can see it shows not-very-good black and white illustrations of various pots and pans, lettered, with prices listed like in a catalog.  G. looks awfully familiar with its fat little handle, and apparently, for Christmas 1952, it could be had (size-depending, I assume) for $3.20-$5.70.  The image is terrible, so it's hard to say if the lid looks anything like the one I got with my thrifted treasures.

But what interests me about the whole thing is... I thought I had settled in my mind that the design of these little pots came from the Cousances company, since they predated the ones made by Le Creuset.  But Le Creuset bought out Cousances in 1957.  The above ad proves the same design was being made by Trianon at least as early as 1952, so they could well have been doing it first, but I can't find much else out there about Trianon enameled cast iron.  Anybody out there a connoisseur who can fill me in with the scoop?

In the mean time, check out a couple of great link-ups here:

 

Cap Creation's Thrifty Love Link Party and The Thrifty Groove's Thrifty Things Friday

Booth update - no more cockeyed suitcases

It bugged me all last week, those suitcases hanging crookedly like that.  When I did it, I thought it was jaunty, but when I saw the picture it just looked sloppy.  So when I went in on Tuesday, I rectified the situation.  I also found that the gorgeous Jens Quistgaard Dansk pot sold - my biggest-ticket sale ever so far - yay me!

I also learned that the month, in terms of sales, is actually the 25th-25th.  I apparently wasn't very observant last month, because it's written right there on the sheet.  So the pot wasn't on March's sheet.  But enough was on there that I still covered March's $125 rent and the commission and the extra 3% the credit card companies eat up when people pay with plastic, and the amount I paid for the items that sold.  But, like February, I only really made maybe five or six dollars actual profit.  Still, with the pot kicking off April sales, and the bunch of new items I put in the booth last week, and the (awesome) items I added today, I think I've got a good shot at beating that in April.  

So here's what I added to the booth this week:

The Disney Big Golden Books I showed you last week, plus one more (Uncle Remus Stories) and an awesome 1960s Better Homes & Gardens Handyman's Book.

The super cool Needlecrafts tote I also showed you last week, plus the cool orange trivet
hanging behind it.  I'm guessing both are 70s?

You know I had to replace the Dansk pot, and what better way than with a pair of Le Creuset Orange Flame saucepans from the late 50s-early 60s (love the handles) and a similarly orange flamey Dru Holland cocotte.  You may have seen both in this post awhile back.

A sweet little pair of softest leather vintage ecru peep-toe low-heels from Neiman Marcus.

And here's the booth-shot this week:

Kenrick Antique Mall, Shrewsbury, MO, booth #78 - come and get it!

And in appreciation of Springtime and the coming of Easter weekend, I leave you with a picture I took last Sunday that makes me smile:

Pretty fungus!