Goldilocks and the three Dollhouses

I have been on the hunt for an antique dollhouse for quite some time now.

A cupboard style house; taller than it is wide, and with a flat or mansard roof.   Widow's walk and original wallpapers would be a huge plus.   They are harder to find than regular farmhouse or  Victorian style dollhouses, and usually very expensive.

This week at Brimfield, however, (loaded with cash from the Labor Day weekend thankyouverymuch), I was amazed to find three houses that I maybe coulda shoulda woulda bought.

I'll start with the one that got away.   Home made cream Italianate. 

I loved the details like the tower, trim,  and the elevating base with steps, like you see in old English dollhouses.  Also, the panel doors had old brass locks (children are not allowed to play with my miniatures!), and, the seller had already crafted replacement parts for the missing trim. Much bigger than it looks in the picture, the size of this house was out-of-scale for my collection of antique miniatures (1:12 scale), but I perhaps would have let that detail slide. Unfortunatly the house was sold before I got to ask the price. 

This next one was old and sweetly tattered, small enough for a table top, and in very poor condition. $500.  

Probably commercially made, maybe by Gottschalk or Bliss.  I've bought and sold a few dollhouses like this, but none was "just right" for my needs).... 

This one was restorable but didn't have enough going for it.  Had all the wallpapers not been violently scratched and scraped off every surface, I might have sprung for it.  That was the deal breaker.

Lastly, the one I loved the very most.     If I were to build one from scratch it would look a lot like this.  

Looked like an old FAO Schwartz store display or something.  Wouldn't it look amazing in my shop window at Christmastime?   Over 5 feet high, with balconys and side windows letting in lots of light. No doors to open; just reach right in. Electrified but (again) in need of much restoration.   At $1800,  it was way out of my league.  Even at 7 am, the seller insisted I make any old crazy offer.  I did, he declined, and when I went back two hours later to take a better picture --and maybe make a better offer? --- it was gone.

Boomerangs

This dress called out to me from across the room at the Salvation Army this morning.

It was bright, fun, very Phyllis Diller, and very familiar. I walked over to it and realized why.   It had cycled through my shop already. It had a Salvation Army price tag stapled to it, AND, it had one of my five&diamond price tags attached under the arm with a ribbon and safety pin.  From April 2011, $65.
 I've been scratching my head all day trying to figure out whether the dress could have been stolen (I almost always remove my tags when selling an item) and then discarded --- or --- was it purchased, never worn, and then discarded?   I'll probably never know, but yeah, I purchased it again, and it will be out on the racks this week with a much more reasonable price of $35.

Boomerang #2 is this very "Goodfellas" knit shirt-jac.  My friend Michael brought it in a couple weeks ago,  claiming he purchased from me in 1996, when he and I had shops across the street from each other in Tivoli.  (Can't say I remember a shirt I sold 16 years ago, but I took his word for it.) It is still vintage and still  fab, here in the 21st century.

My favorite boomerang of late is this slinky rayon late-30s dress, which is, in fact, now, a double-boomerang.  I sold it to Holly a couple of years ago, who needed a dress for a wedding.  I told Holly she could always sell it back to me if she wanted to, that's how much I love this dress.   

 She took me up on the offer, and returned it a couple of months later, trading it in for more Holly-appropriate garb.  The dress sold quickly again,  to Patty, and I offered Patty the same return-for credit deal.  Patty owned the dress for about a year. She wore it once, and just recently brought it back to me and traded it for a jacket she will get much more wear out of.   I'm more than happy to have the dress back in the shop for what is now the third time, but come September will probably put it away for next spring.

Hudson PRIDE: A long way, baby

2010

2011

2012

Some April Arrivals and Departures

Costume Season Wrap-up

Let me purge the system of the last 3 months worth of costume fun, and then maybe I'll move back to the subject of vintage clothing.

First, in early October, during Artswalk, artist Melora Kuhn and Dina Palin hosted a Victorian Dinner in the shop window of Historical Materialism.  It was dinner, costume, and photography all in one.  I called it the Fishbowl Feast; this picture was taken by Melora from the sidewalk outside.

We should definitely do this more often. 

Window Mannequin Izzy wore the still-high-in-google-rankings Morticia dress

while I got busy on my Halloween costume of an Earl dog.

If you don't know what an Earl dog (or cat) is, you don't live in Hudson, and are missing out on a wonderful local institution: the Earl painting.  Earl is a local artist who sells his work on the street.

Cats, dogs, birds, celebrities, musicians are his favorite subject matter.

He also does commissions, and makes house calls. 

Gretchen and I dressed up as an Earl cat and dog for Halloween.  

On the night of the big party, there was freak blizzard here in Hudson, and I had to leave my bootie paws at home

but I so enjoyed being anonymous all night, and I'm quite sure I want to do another paper mache costume again next year.

My dog head even had a moving jaw and wagging tongue, held on with (hard to find!) paper fasteners.

For Halloween Day/Evening, I opted for a Tweed Ride around town dressed as Miss Elmira Gulch. 

photo by Trixie Starr

(The zombie crawl thing I attempted in 2010 never caught on but I'm still game if anyone's interested in 2012)

I had a basket and a Toto, and might've freaked a few kids out, but it was fun, and I managed to keep the long skirt out of the spokes and chain somehow.

A few days later I got to revive some of my vintage Barbie costume at a Habitat for Humanity fashion show.  According to stats, this Barbie is still the main reason anyone ever visits this crappy blog.

photo by Aaron Enfield

My last-minute Winter Walk costume was basically a recycle/rehash of my 2010 Gaga costume,

photo by Gretchen Kelly

with a long sparkly dress added, and silver crown, gloves and boots.

This costume was very popular with the hundreds (Thousands?) of children out that night, and I plan to do it again next year.  I need to name it though. I got called everything: "Glinda" "Glenda", "Wanda" "the Fairy Godmother,"  "the Fairy Princess"  and the "Wicked Witch of the West".(?)

Christmas came and went , and I forgot to wear this wonderful old red and green dirndl I bought over the summer. 

 I seem to have accumulated a nice assortment of vintage dirndls, and they are for sale---but you have to ask to see them.  Hit me up, even if only to ponder

the amazing smocking on these things.

Lastly, New Year's Eve.

For the Red Dot Moulin Rouge party, Gretchen and I dressed up as can-can girls. 

                        Before we went out, Gretchen did some quick paintings

                                                         which are for sale, and

 

 can be seen better on her blog,  Gretch Kelly Art.

Why did I buy this?

So I spotted this hideous dress at Sal's the other day:

and was equally attracted to/repulsed by it all at once.

First, I've been obsessing about ruffles lately (more on this in a future post perhaps),

but more so, ugly as it is-- I thought it was a potential cheap/bad shimmery dress that I could turn over quickly for New Years this week.

What clinched the deal for me was actually the unique craftsmanship.  The person who made this 

dress did not have much in the way of sewing skills, and they did not have any ruffling attachments.  Not only is much of this dress hand sewn (crude hand stitching with blue thread all over the place inside), the ruffles are finished with wire and electrical tape!  

How craftastic is that?

Yards and yards of crude ruffles made this way! They laid wire down along the fabric's raw edge, and then crimped over the electrical tape as though it were a sticky-backed bias trim.  (And let me tell you, it did not behave like bias, and did not stick well to the cheap metallic fabric at all.  I spent about 90 minutes glueing, primping, shaping, fixing it.)

This amazing piece of unique modern folk art is now available for purchase, for a mere $30.

Happy New Year!

I'm baaaaack.

I know. Really long blogging hiatus.  Rest assured, I have only neglected the blog, not the shop or the never-ending search for treasures to put in it.  In fact, I'll start purging the blog file with a brief show-and tell of items that I picked up this summer while out riding my bicycle (the major distraction this year that had me neglecting blog and millions of other things). I stumbled onto several random yard sales I wasn't even looking for.

Blue silk velvet 1930s bias-cut evening gown.   Turned the bike around for a yard sale in Claverack that clearly had nothing at all for me, but I decided to ask the seller if she had any old clothes lying around. She went into the house and brought this out.   The price was reasonable enough that I didn't mind finding out it had holes in it after I got it home; 'cuz it fits me and Izzy (window mannequin).

New (but old) leather sandals in original box --from Tom and Mary's sale in Taghanic.

 I didn't have a bike rack yet and it took me EIGHT weeks to go back and pick them up after I asked them to hold them for me.  "uh, Remember me?".  Very sweet people.

Carpet bag purse.  Route 9H estate sale.  Very likely manufactured at the Pocketbook factory up the street here in Hudson.


Remnants, children's books, flower-power recipe file, awesome vintage novelty hankies:

(great Lakes, Palm-reading, and How-to speak spanish!)

And last but not least, vintage neckties, purchased at a Tuesday garage sale, on a back road in Ghent:

I know, the price is embarrassing, but what are you gonna do? I gave the lady a dollar and told her to keep the change.  Still felt like a thief.