After a summer in and out of flea markets, auctions, thrift shops too many to count, vintage snapshots remained frustratingly out of reach. Saturday on the phone with my mother, cranky that summer was ending, cranky in general, feeling cooped up my mom suggested we try the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market. We hopped on the bus, made a pit stop at my favorite City Bakery (my standard antidote to most stress) and then headed towards the West 25th Street Market between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue. This weekend outdoor flea market features up to 125 vendors selling antiques, collectibles, and other types of vintage and retro decorative arts. It was just what I needed! There were photos galore, amid used clothings, vintage velvet love seats, gay porno, vintage militrialia, and tools. 7th heaven. Then, we headed towards the Garage across the street, an indoor market with slightly higher quality goods housed on two floors of a car garage. Beautiful prints, vintage stationery supplies (triple yum), postcards, stamps, china, lamps, lots of prints.

Now that our apartment is pretty well full of every decorative object T. can tolerate, I’ve decided to start selling some of my vintage finds on Etsy since I love the hunt so much.  The lifeguard snap above is for sale as are some other finds from this summer (glasswear and dish towels).  Give it a look and let me know what you think!

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vintage bw photos, snapshots, postcards

trays

vintage postage stamps

metal animals

cards

vintage lanvin shirtdresses

cake carriers

landscapes

8 days of pure vacaction!!!! I’m packed up, checked the work email one last time and I’m ready for a break. We’ll spend 4 days at the lake in NH, 4 days with my parents in N.C. and then back to NY to recover for a day. NH has me thinking of picnics. More Ebay for vintage photographs, vintage tin picnic baskets and finally, a modern retro inspired basket.

These photographs are offered for sale at Sotheby’s April 25th auction of photographs from the private collection of Margaret Weston, one of the first photography dealers, and a major force in the development of the international market for fine art photographs. Starting in 1975 she exhibited photography in her gallery in CA, long before it was de rigueur in New York and London. According to the auction catalog, her passion is for 19th century photography of which the above are a small sample. I’m drawn to these early nature photos, although I’m hard put to explain exactly way — they are beautiful, a little ghostly, and oddly innocent. In any case, check out the rest of the online preview at Sotheby’s — it is a chance to see some of the most highly coveted (and expensive) photographs in the world before they are snapped up into someone’s collection to never be seen again.

Hand and Heart: Collecting, Curating, and Creating American Folk Art

Saturday, March 31, 9:15 am–5:00 pm
Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Lecture Hall

The 15th Annual Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Memorial Symposium is organized in conjunction with the exhibition Made for Love. On Friday evening before the symposium, Steven Mintz, Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History, University of Houston, presents the keynote Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque Lecture, “Private Passions: Art and the Hidden History of Love and Friendship.”

The conference program, including registration information, is available as a downloadable PDF. Or, for more information, please call 203.432.0615.

Exhibition organized by Erin E. Eisenbarth, the Marcia Brady Tucker Curatorial Fellow at the Yale University Art Gallery. The exhibition is supported by an endowment made possible by a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and by Friends of American Arts at Yale Exhibition and Publication Fund.

I had begged and pleaded for this Lacquer box from Shanghai Tang for Christmas.

But Santa didn’t supply. So, Ebay will have to suffice since the Shanghai Tang box is really too small and no one seems to sell what I really want — a long (24-30 inch box) that will store my jewelry in an unfussy way. I don’t want lots of little drawers (although I love the first example below) or compartments — I’m not good at keeping things organized like that and I’m always in a rush in the morning (not a morning person). Found these on ebay:

While I dislike the pollution, heat and general sense of dislocation I’m experiencing as a traveler in Paris, I would move here just for the bakery bags (and for Kayser). They are such lovely bits of design in the everyday. Scanned examples to follow PP (post Paris).

We weighed our wedding invitation today and found that is was… 2.10 ounces. A 2 ounce stamp = .63 cents of postage. Anything over 2 ounces a .87 cent stamp. So much for using the beautiful, pastel .63 cent “wedding” stamps. The post office only sells one .87 cent stamp. Of a scientist.

Visted zazzle.com and stamps.com which were too expensive at a $1.30 a stamp for the face value of .87 cents. Six hours later I’m still looking and now am desperate for 1970s stamps. A selction below:

I was trying to explain to the budding stamp obsession/appeal to Tim: is it that stamps somehow represent our collective best intentions in less than a cubic inch? And, they are just beautiful, affordable design in our every day lives. To be continued…