January 31, 2010

Wabi Sabi

I prefer to call my avocation - saving the destiny of a trash pile. I have an old bushel basket from the 1920’s when they still made such containers to last.  The bail handle is of sturdy iron with a wooden turned handle. The green paint is well washed into the lapped weaving though the inside of the basket has wear. Someone around the 1960s cut newspaper tin used by a printing press and overlapped the exterior of the basket with V shaped metal newsprint telling stories and life in the southern town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. This the perfect example of a Wabi Sabi item because we all know when a container has holes, it’s a goner.

January 30, 2010

The Truth About Antique Dealers

An antique dealer is someone who finds "lost" objects and bits of buried history or forgotten “treasures” (either for free or for purchase at auctions, estate sales, flea markets, friends houses, garage sales, thrift stores and more), evaluates their condition, has them restored if needed, assigns them a monetary value (called “valuing”) and sells them to the public or to collectors and sometimes museums.

January 3, 2010

Antique Myths

Slide 27
Legends grow on antiques the way moss grows on trees. As a family heirloom is passed from one generation to the next, its history takes on added flourishes. A spinning wheel made in 1820 becomes the spinning wheel brought over on the Mayflower. A bed of 1840 becomes a
bed George Washington slept in.