On Dansk ice buckets, butter churns and what I learned from the Kovels

If you are a very serious student of midcentury design, this item needs no introduction. For the uninitiated: It's a teak ice bucket designed by Jens Quistgaard for Dansk around 1950. A solid, heavy, wonderful object that reminds me of Vikings (which I believe was the intention) but also of a bull's head, or maybe a goat's head, or some horned creature (Satan?). In other word, it's more than a mere receptacle for ice, not that I could imagine ever putting actual ice in it.

So if you're a hardcore midcentury person—a completist, like the homeowners featured in the pages of Atomic Ranch magazine—this is also the sort of object that you would pursue single-mindedly, cost be damned, for your Danish modern sideboard. That's not my trip; I don't like to pay top dollar for anything, and I'd rather spend years on a quest than pull the trigger on ebay or etsy or rubylane or firstdibs. My patience was rewarded several months ago when I spied the telltale teak "horns" in the corner of an image in an online preview for a nearby estate sale. Somehow I managed to restrain myself from going to what looked like a promisingly eclectic sale (not an art teacher this time but one of those "world traveler" types) on the first day when there would be no discount. On day 2, I arrived not long after the doors opened (i.e., right after I'd dropped the kids off at school) and made a beeline for the corner where I was pretty sure I'd find the bucket if no one had snapped it up on the first day, and, lo, there it stood, at the discounted price of $30.

When I removed the lid to make sure the inside was that trademark orangey red, I found a note, written on the backside of a page from a 2002 desk calendar. I scanned the note below:

Apparently the previous owner of this ice bucket was, like me, a fan of Flea Market Finds with the Kovels, a great show that aired on HGTV back in the early 2000s and featured the First Couple of Collectibles mixing it up with dealers and collectors at flea markets across the country. Dang, that was good TV! Frank Kovel would sign off every show with words of wisdom to the effect that if you see something and you like it, BUY IT. Cuz if you don't, you'll end up regretting it. Words to live by, even though they might eventually cause some space issues in your house. 

Well, I followed Frank's advice and bought the Dansk ice bucket, which the woman running the estate sale thought was some kind of butter churn (apparently she had not bothered to remove the lid, where she would have found the deceased's helpful note). I also bought the "Black Couroc Bucket with the birds" for five bucks, which I resold in my antique mall stall for $25. Contrary to what the previous owner had hoped, Couroc is definitely collectible but doesn't fetch the big bucks, like Jens Quistgaard for Dansk. But I very much respect the spirit in which that note was written—the thrill of discovery that something you own has a far greater value than you'd imagined, that it's desired by others but you're the one who's got it and you're not selling it. I get that. Which is why her note remains inside my ice bucket, instead of ice.

New discovery: Woodstock Handmade Houses

I'd never heard of Woodstock Handmade Houses, written by Robert Haney and David Ballantine and photographed by Jonathan Elliott, until I liberated it from the clearance shelf at my local Half Price Books (ha! love that I can still make scores there). It is funny to find a relic from upstate New York here in San Antonio, but it's not like I'm the first New Yorker to relocate to this godforesaken place, and doubtless not the last. Anyway, this book is light on words, heavy on spectacular photos, but here's the first lines from the introduction:

When the American dream still seemed a good trip, about seventy years ago, some nonconformists got together to explore a different lifestyle up in Woodstock, where the Catskill mountains start getting tall. They were mostly artists, craftsmen, tinkerers and thinkers. In those days they got labeled: Bohemians. Today, perhaps they'd be tagged freaks. Their first shelters were sometimes just a hunk of oilcloth or a free flop in a farmer's barn. But when they really started to build they went heavy on imagination, light on money.

Let me say up front that while I admire the houses-yurts-forts-domes-secret hideouts featured in this book, I don't think I'd want to live in one. I'm intimately familiar with New York winters and these singular domiciles don't seem to come equipped with many of the basic amenities. But, holy crap, aren't they incredible? I mean, call it outsider art, hippie homesteads, freecycled, upcycled, the original green design, whatever. Some rose out of the ruins of old schoolhouses, churches or barns; others appear to have sprouted from the trees. 

According to the introduction, both authors had built and resided in their own handmade houses. I wonder if they're still standing? Or if any of these houses remain? The book was published in 1974 so who knows? I'd like to assign some intrepid reporter to go find out, please.

My kind of estate sale

Two Fridays ago, I went to my ideal estate sale. It had all the ingredients: unrehabilitated (i.e., smelly), overstuffed, shag-rugged midcentury house belonging to (dearly departed) art teacher. I've addressed this topic in a previous post but I'll reiterate: Yes, I feel like the lowest bottom-feeder when I trawl the classifieds for the estates of artists and art teachers—but I can't help that they always have the best stuff!

The first clue that you've stumbled upon my ideal estate sale is in the photo above; the house must have a built-in stereo/PA system, preferably in the kitchen. (I still nurse regrets about the House that Got Away nine years ago, which featured just such a hi-fi—the controls were housed in a built-in desk in the center of the kitchen. I love my ramshackle ranch, but, alas, she does lack a built-in sound system.) 

Still, it's not like you can buy the sounds system, so let's move on to the craft room. Is the existence of a craft room a good sign? Why yes, yes it is—especially when it features a wall of shelves groaning under the weight of vintage decorating, crafting and art books. I scored books for myself and I scored books for the etsy shoppe, including doubles of some great books I've featured on this very blog, which I'll be selling soon. 

This lady had a ton of diet and exercise books, including Jane Fonda and Heavyhands and all that kind of thing from the glory days of aerobics. Mostly I resisted, but I had to get this ’70s gem from Family Circle,  How to Stay Pretty & Trim (hint: it takes lots of Jell-o salads!).

I bought a pile of crafty books. As you know, I'm no crafter so these will probably get listed on etsy. Then again, they are so very pretty...

And I'm not sure I've seen more Sunset Books in one place as I did here. As you also know, I have a bit of a Sunset Book obsession so not one could go unpurchased. But now I face the conundrum of what to sell because I like to hoard the various editions of each title. So, for example, while I have Cabins and Beach Houses (sixth printing, May 1959), I did not have (till now) Cabins and Vacation Houses (seventh printing, May 1970), which means I've gotta keep both, right? (Another awesome thing about this estate sale is that the homeowners appear to have actually used their Sunset Books to build shelves, furniture, weird cabinets—all the stuff I enjoy looking at but would never attempt to make.)

And just to clarify: This family's library was not confined strictly to crafting and DIYing and decorating and other artsy stuff. Makeshift shelves and DIY bookcases filled every room and were grouped by theme: theater arts in one of the bedrooms, psychology in the living room, classic lit in the den. I bought this 1950 Perma Giant edition of Emile Zola's Nana cuz the silhouette illustrations by some genius named Fred A. Mayer are absolutely amazing. I'm thinking about buying another copy online (they're quite cheap) and pulling the pages out for framing, but since dissembling books makes me feel like a monster I'll probably never do it. 

When previewing this sale online, my kids were excited to see enough textiles to fill one of those punnily named sewing stores (we patronize one called Yarnivore). The older daughter has recently taken up finger-kintting, which I don't understand, but basically she makes very long chains that end up stuck between sofa cushions So both kids put in orders for specific colors of yarn, which I ended up totally having to fight for in the apparently very popular sewing room (yes, there was a sewing room, separate from the craft room). Why so crowded? It seemed that a search party had been sent to this sale by one of our local cults, possibly Yearning for Zion. Not that I'm any kind of expert on our local cults. 

I'm making this assumption because the party consisted of one stern, Amish-looking gentleman bossing around several meek women of varying ages, all of whom wore hand-sewn, floor-length dresses, Little House on the Prairie–style. Perhaps they were just odd, and had made their sartorial choices of their own free will. Perhaps. Since they seemed to be focused on furnishing their compound and dressing their family—as opposed to buying old books to hoard or resell—we didn't really throw elbows, but I gotta say the action was pretty hot in the sewing room. I barely got out of there alive, with just a few technicolor skeins tucked under my arm. But that's what made this my ideal estate sale—driving away with a car full of stuff, and a story to tell.

The return of the Trapper Keeper

Having school-age children will make you nostalgic for all kinds of things that you didn't think twice about back when you had them the first time around. For example, I've had borderline-Rosebud yearnings for my fire-engine-red Mead Trapper Keeper, the binder-cum-briefcase thingie that all ’80s kids carried with pride in junior high (Lindsay and I had a protracted discussion about this last night—by high school, the Trapper Keeper had lost its luster and was replaced by multiple single-subject college-ruled spiral notebooks, one for each class). 

Anyway, I can't tell you how many times I've thought "I loved my Trapper Keeper therefore my children shall have Trapper Keepers and love them as well" (really, I can't tell you how many times—it's too embarrassing). I always assumed I'd find one at an estate sale or thrift store, but it's never happened. Which is both frustrating and not: I mean, this is just the kind of grail I enjoy questing for, so I purposely avoided searching for one on ebay or etsy—I only do that when Iabsolutelyhavetohavesomethingthisinstant. Otherwise, I prefer the leisurely thrill of the hunt.

Well, the hunt is over. Kind of. Yesterday, I found myself at Super Target, futilely searching for some last-minute supplies in the desolate echo chamber that is the back-to-school section of any big-box store three days into the new school year. Only the least popular items remained; the aisles resembled an Island for Misfit School Supplies: Bieber notebooks, grimy white binders, folders with the wrong kinds of brads, #2 pencils that aren't Ticonderogas and...Mead Trapper Keepers?!?

Hello. Apparently I've been asleep at the wheel for a good six years because according to my friend Wikipedia, Mead reissued the Trapper Keeper back in 2007. In my defense, my kids were one and four years old at the time so organizing homework in a snappy retro binder wasn't a big priority—I guess that's why I missed all the fanfare when it made its triumphant comeback: "Trapper Keeper, the iconic school supply that defined organization is back and better than ever" trumpets the Mead website. 

Feh! The new Trapper Keeper totally sucks. Or, okay, it's not how I remembered it. For one thing, the snap closure doesn't work. For two, it's encased in clear plastic that gets all scuffy and gnarly—hence the abundance left on the shelves at Super Target, destined for the clearance section. And I won't even buy one when it's 75% off! They are an abomination. So naturally, I was driven to google the vintage variety, and naturally ebay and etsy is crawling with them. Average price? Around $75. Curse you, vintage resellers!

P.S. If you are wondering what the photo above has to do with anything, it comes from a Sunset Book I'm selling at the etsy shoppe, Children's Rooms and Play Yards, which was published in 1980 (the Age of Trapper Keepers). The photo appears in a section devoted to "enriching" a child's room and the caption is quite funny: "Classic technology clusters around an intriguing—if still costly—newcomer: a home computer....The computer broadcasts math exercises via the family TV (it can also straighten out a parent's tax confusions)."

P.P.S. Yes, that's Lori Loughlin starring in the Trapper Keeper commercial posted below. You may know her as somebody from some show called Full House, but I will always remember her as Jodi from the great noir-y soap opera, The Edge of Night.

A Trapper Keeper I didn't buy at Target.

More things I didn't buy: Game of Thrones edition

I bought a ton of stuff this past weekend at one major blowout of a sale (books!), but now that school has started and I'm back in the blogging saddle, I need to catch up on some old, dusty posts first. Like, don't you want to know all the stuff I haven't been buying? Starting with this totally awesome lantern sconce, which reminds me of Game of Thrones, probably because I really, really miss Game of Thrones, though it wouldn't be out of place in any medieval-style restaurant or B-movie. I appreciated it, but I didn't want it. There is a difference.

I seriously wanted to buy this giant medallion/sun dial wall plaque thingie (is it Mayan? Incan? cursed in some way?) because I have seen similar ones proudly displayed over fireplaces (as this one was) in many of my vintage Sunset Books. It's clearly the only place you can hang one of these things. But in my house that would mean relocating the family-room flat-screen and I don't think that's a negotiation I would win.

It amused me to see someone's old cache of Playboys squirreled away in a closet at an estate sale. I'm guessing this is where the original owner kept them and the estate-sale company didn't have the stomach to display them more prominently. All my early encounters with Playboy were in the closets of friends' parents or brothers (I think that sounds worse than it was), so this came as no big surprise. Sadly, these issues were all from the ’80s and I draw the line at the 1970s when buying nudie mags (and $3 each? Oh, honey please).

And the living is easy...

Here in San Antonio, despite the continued triple-digit temperatures, summer is most definitely winding to a close. School inexplicably begins the week before Labor Day (this either has to do with bureaucratic hokum or with air-conditioning), so we've got little choice in the matter: The new lunch boxes, backpacks and shoes have all been procured; the outdoor pool at the health club is now closed so the lifeguards can get educated; even our own pool has become mysteriously chilly. Last week I tried to get my kids their umpteenth pair of replacement goggles only to find that the pool section at the sporting goods store had been subsumed by the hunting and fishing department. No more wacky noodles, no more inflatable recliners. All of which leads me to believe that there's a conspiracy to make us forget that summer actually ends on September 21, not August 25, so we'll sooner submit to the lash of structure and routine and punctuality and carpooling and early-birds-always-getting-the-worm. Bleh.

But before it's too late, before Summer turns into a pumpkin, I wanted to share this dreamy coffee table tome I picked up at the used-book store at our city library (a signed first edition—I love that store!): Summer Places, written by renowned critic/bon vivant Brendan Gill and photographed by Dudley Witney. Published in 1978, it's a quintessential hostess gift—a visual survey of the great, historic summer towns and summer homes across North America, along with some nostalgic summer rhapsodizing courtesy of Gill:

Unfailingly, summer places have been the agreeable ghosts that accompany me throughout the winter and help me survive its bitter humors. They are robust and yet tender-hearted ghosts, not shadowy, unfeeling ones, and I hold out my hands to them for warmth. As I grow older, these ghosts of mine remain ever the same age, ever youthfully on tiptoe. It is morning with them; there is dew on the tops of the hedges among which they stand and somewhere far off a glint of sea.

I spent the bulk of my childhood summers at the Jersey Shore, a place that's full of robust yet tender-hearted ghosts so I think I know what he's talking about...

But does anyone read the text in a coffee-table book? It's all about the photos. Some of the ones in this volume are a bit blah to my eye; too many architectural details of grand old seaside hotels, too many empty landscapes. It feels a little lonely, like maybe it should've been titled Off-Season Summer Places. I prefer the photos that feature actual human vacationers (maybe because I like to look at the clothes, hairstyles and eyewear). Still, it's all here—the salty breezes, the smell of lake on your swimsuit, the creak of a saddle, the clamor of the boardwalk, the clink of boats nudging the dock... Sayonara, Summer.

Playing shuffleboard and beanbag in Quebec

On the beach in Galveston, TX

East Hampton, Long Island, NY

Asbury Park, NJ

Camp at Lake Timagami, Ontario

Ranch near Cody, WY

A shell shop in Galveston, TX

From the etsy shoppe: Architectural Digest Celebrity Homes

Coco Chanel's staircase

I hope it's not troubling anyone that lately this blog has been more bookish than thingish; that's just where my head's at during these waning, hideous days of summer. I know in other parts of the world early August is prime-time hazy crazy dazey what-memories-are-made-of, but here in San Antonio you just want to wither and die. So I like to stay hunkered in my cave as much as possible and sort books.

Architectural Digest Celebrity Homes is a great big honkin' coffee table book published in 1977. I'm not a huge fan of the magazine—too glossy, too remote—though I admit I haven't really read it since the renowned EIC Paige Rense "retired" a few years back. When Conde Nast shuttered two of my favorite shelter mags, Domino and House & Garden, they sent AD in its place and mostly it collected dust. This book, however, is different. I love it because it's a 1970s time capsule; the selection of celebrities is just the right mix of right on and WTF. Gayelord Hauser? Who he? Sybil Connolly? Huh? But then: Woody Allen, Pauline Trigere, Robert Redford, Joni Mitchell,  Bob Newhart, Diana Vreeland, Sonny & Cher... The list goes on (and on—I also have the second volume, which I'll feature at some point).

For the most part, the interiors in this book are not my particular cup of tea—too much toile, too many French antiques, heavy fabrics, you know—rich people stuff (though Joan Crawford's pad was pretty cool). But imagining Woody holding court at his farm table or Truman Capote descending the spiral staircase into his Hamptons library? You gotta love it. I've got a copy for sale at the etsy shoppe, but you can be sure I wouldn't be selling it if I didn't already have one in my library.

Woody Allen's dining room

Senator Edward Kennedy's living room

Pauline Trigere's guest bedroom

Barbara Walters' living room

Truman Capote's living room