More things I didn't buy: matches, family pics and FDR

I didn't buy this nice assortment of vintage matchbooks because I've already got a well-documented matchbook problem, so I tried to do the right thing. I'll admit to being annoyed/pleased/relieved/annoyed when someone else snapped up this collection as soon as I set it down. [Grits teeth...]

I didn't buy this portrait of FDR, though I quite liked it. It was kind of expensive; there was some paperwork detailing the provenance that was somehow meant to justify the price but since it wasn't something readily googleable, I passed.

You've heard me make this lamentation before—seriously, surviving family members? You're going to sell off your ancestral photos to strangers? This sale, one of the best I've been to all year, was absolutely chock-a-block with personal mementoes—amateur artworks, certificates, trophies, tons of photos, scrapbooks, albums, even the family Weimeraner's AKC papers (somehow I did end up with those...). Let's just say I wasn't the only customer feeling judgey, though I'm sure they had their reasons mutter mutter blah blah...

That ’70s childhood

I was born in 1968, which makes me a true child of the ’70s. I was two when the dazed-and-confused decade began and 12 when it ended. I guess that means that I "came of age" in the ’80s (does anyone come of age outside of novels?), but I formed my aesthetic in the ’70s. At least that's what I've been telling myself these last few years that I've been obsessing over vintage decorating books, especially those of Sir Terence Conran. And finding this detailed illustration of what looks like a Studio 54 after-party in some old box in one of my parents' many storage units confirmed that notion.

Yes, people, I am the wielder of the Flair pen who created this marvelous time-capsule drawing on a 5" x 8" sheet of notepaper, most likely in sixth grade. Take away those swingers with their Halston dresses, ample cleavage, martinis and cigarette holders and you have yourself one hell of an estate sale—or a page out of any of Conran's house books. Note the fully stocked bar, the Marimekko-style wall hanging, the abundant houseplants (in wicker! and macrame!), the built-in hi-fi, the purple-and-red color scheme, the Arco-style floor lamp... and is that a picture of the Manhattan skyline over the bar or an actual window? It is most definitely a window into the consciousness of a certain New Jersey middle-schooler: Moving into a rad pad in NYC, something out of Apartment Life magazine, was my dream. And I did end up living in (many) NYC apartments, but funny how my home didn't start to resemble this ideal till I moved to Texas. Make of that what you will.

Stripes and stripes forever! From Conran's The House Book.

Sunrise, Sunset Books

First edition 1968, fourth printing, 1970.

Sunset Magazine is what you might call venerable; a lifestyle mag focused primarily on the West, it's been around since the late 19th century. I'm not sure how well it's doing these days. For a time, a few years back at least, I noticed they had prime pockets at the check-out at my local supermarket chain, but I haven't seen a copy in ages. I would thumb through it, hoping their sense of style would be somehow frozen in time (frozen in the 1950s-70s), but alas, why would it be? 

Anyway, there's no reason to bother with the magazine when so many copies of their floppy midcentury guide books and idea books can still be found at garage sales, thrift stores, library sales, etc, at least in this part of the country. I started buying Sunset Books not long after moving into our midcentury ramshackle ranch house and only when I started taking inventory of my piles a few months back did I realize quite how many I had amassed over the past eight years. I've sold almost all of my doubles, triples and quadruples at the etsy shoppe (very pleased to be spreading the Sunset goodness all over the country), but I can't bring myself to get rid of the revisions and later editions of the originals, even though the content is often not that wildly different. 

It's those covers! Just look at how "recreation rooms" evolved into "leisure rooms" and on into "family rooms, dens & studios." The names changed, but the propping didn't necessarily: guitars remain a feature, as do art projects, though painting is replaced by textile art and then the typewriter.  

Second printing of 1974 edition.

First printing, October 1979.

I love the way the kitchen covers progress (or regress, depending on your POV), especially the way the model moms are dressed—I'll take the ’70s cover, thanks! Especially those Bertoia counter chairs. But why are the mom and daughter shooting daggers at one another a la Betty and Sally Draper over a bowl of fruit? When did a mother ever give a kid the stink-eye for helping herself to an apple? Mysterious...

Fourth printing (December 1968) of 1967 edition.

Revised edition, first printing, April 1974.

Sixth printing (June 1980) of 1976 edition.

Even more mysterious is the transformation of the children's craft book covers over just a few years, from primitive illustration (love the dollhouse) to pitiful elephant craft to menacing puppet. But I like it.

Tenth printing February 1970.

Tenth printing February 1973.

Second printing April 1976.

More Mary Quant stationery, please

I knew that mod 1960s London designer Mary Quant was famous for her boyish shifts and rad Vidal Sassoon haircut. That she may or may not have been responsible for inventing the miniskirt and hot pants. But I did not know that she designed stationery until I found a box of it in somebody's garage here in San Antonio. The design is completely charming—a rainbow landscape rendered pointillist-style—but I had to wonder if this wasn't another one of those cases in which a designer loses the rights to his/her name and some taste-free opportunist starts churning out crap in China under the once-hallowed label (most recently the shoe design geniuses Sigerson Morrison come to mind as victims of this perfidy. Didn't it also happen to Halston and DVF and countless others?).

Anyway, it seems this stationery set is legit, based on what else I'm seeing out there on the internets. Also, according to her Wikipedia entry, Quant devoted the 1970s and 1980s to creating housewares and makeup—she even claims to have invented the duvet. Duvet, stationery, it's all comes from the same place, right? Quant is very much alive and kicking—I think Target should pay her a pot of money to collaborate with them (though after that mostly execrable partnership with Neiman Marcus last Christmas, maybe they're off that whole concept). Still, it seems the perfect match—and I want more of this stationery! It was a total bargain for a buck, but turned out there was only 11 envelopes and two sheets of writing paper (insert sad face here). We forget that once upon a time people actually used their stationery, to you know, write to their friends and stuff.

Quant with husband Alexander Plunket-Greene. Shot for Vogue in 1962 by Brian Duffy.

How you say...?

I wish I were multilingual, but I am not. I have a decent handle on English, and I used to be pretty fluent in Latin (real Latin, not porcine Latin), but my high school German and high school Spanish are but dim memories. I still fantasize that a day will come when I continue my higher education and add a few languages to my repertoire. In the meantime, I buy old-school language records and vintage phrasebooks so I will be fully prepared should I suddenly have the opportunity to dash off to Europe.

These Berlitz books date from 1954. They're cute and spiral-bound and fit snugly in your hand. They also give you a good idea of what it must've been like to travel abroad in the Mad Men era. First-class, all the way! Following is just a random collection of phrases considered essential by the staff of the Berlitz School of Languages (under the direction of Robert Stumpen-Darrie and Charles F. Berlitz) for the American visiting Italy. Remove the quotes and I think it makes a pretty convincing bit of free verse:

"Give me a match please."
"Please send me the chambermaid."
"Some writing paper."
"I want these shoes shined."
"I need a secretary."
"I want cigarettes."
"Snails."
"I want one in rayon."
"What time is the next floor show?"
"May I have this dance?"
"Please ask the orchestra to play 'Torna a Sorrento.'"
"Have I time to buy a newspaper?"
"I think your sister is beautiful."
"Here is a picture of my wife."
"Pomade."
"A face massage."
"I am nauseated."
"I cannot see."

All tomorrow's parties

Coke Party invites by Buzza/Cardoza

When I was in NJ last month, I bought these old-school cocktail party invitations at one of my usual thrifting stops. I wonder if Hallmark makes an invite equivalent to this "Let's unwind" anymore, or if American Greetings still perceives a market for "Cocktails"... And does anyone still make invitations to, ahem, Coke Parties? Seriously, WTF. I'm going to give Buzza Cardozo the benefit of the doubt and assume that "coke" was being used as the generic for "soda" or "pop"—that rooster (cock?) is clearly a Coca-Cola bottle but did Coca-Cola really not care about trademark infringement? And did a "soda party" ever seem fun to anyone?

Anyway, these too can be filed under Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Ephemera, thanks to the rise of the evite.

Let's Unwind invites from Hallmark

Cocktails invites from American Greetings

Match game

The 21 Club

I promise this will be the last post in which I gas on about the odd poignancy of other people's matchbook collections. The collections that belonged to the unrepentant smokers, the older generation, the ones whose estates are being sold off object by object to junkers/thrifters/dealers/pickers/collectors/bottom-feeders, whatever you want to call us/them. Few types of ephemera give you a sense of the (late) person the way matches do—matches are like the digital trail you leave on Facebook or foursquare, but you know, tangible and cute and not an invasion of privacy. The person who collected matches was a person who got around, maybe even globetrotted, smoking and drinking and dining and dancing their way through life. Hell, they probably used cigarette holders! Who were these people? And don't they seem like they would've been fun to hang out with?

Yaffa Cafe

But I try not to buy other people's matchbooks—dust magnets!—especially now that I've rediscovered my own. Last week I shared some relics from places in NYC that no longer exist—here are some from much-loved establishments that are still standing. Though in the case of Yaffa Cafe, I had to google to make sure (if Life Cafe has been shuttered, how is it that Yaffa continues to survive?). I don't think I set foot in the place past my 23rd birthday, but I did love it fiercely for a while there. The food was crap, but that twinkling back garden just epitomized the boho East Village setting I'd been imagining myself in all through my teen years.

Docks

I wasn't sure about Docks either—a very slick noisy yuppie ’90s place—could it still be around? Apparently so. When we lived on the Upper West Side back in the day, good restaurants were few and far between and dang if Docks didn't have the best oysters. We used to celebrate birthdays there. One time we were wedged into a corner table by the window facing Broadway, and Oliver Platt was with a date at the table adjacent to ours. The whole time Lindsay and I just kept staring at each other and trying not to laugh and communicating telepathically "Look, it's Oliver Platt. We are dining next to Oliver Platt." Why do I even remember that? Why will Docks, a place we ate at dozens of times, be forever associated with Oliver Platt (who at the time was starring in a very terrible version of The Three Musketeers)? That's the kind of story other people's matchbook collections will never really tell. You might be able to draw a few accurate conclusions about their lives—about where they traveled and how old they were and whether they liked Chinese food the most or Mexican—but the good stuff, the details, the Oliver Platts, well, that stuff just gets lost.

Michael's

Is it morbid to ponder your own future estate sale—especially on the day after a quasi-milestone birthday...? Perhaps. But I do it all the time, not just around birthdays. What will my legacy be? What's the story my stuff will tell? What does my matchbook collection say about me? Here lies a person who lived hard in NYC for a pair of decades, who went on a lot of expense account lunches and late-night dinners and continued to smoke even when she knew better. Of course this is assuming my matchbook collection will ever be up for sale. I can easily imagine one of my pack-rat children hanging on to it.

The King Cole Bar

Veritas

Balthazar

My city was gone

I miss you, Savoy.

So yesterday we were talking about matchbook collections. About matches as time capsules, touchstones. How they were not only great souvenirs but very handy for lighting cigarettes and temperamental stoves. When my collection of matchbooks was recently dislodged by a closet avalanche, my first reactions was, damn, did I really move a sack of matches across the country? But then I started sifting through them, and, wow, how does a THING give you such a rush of nostalgia? I dumped them out on the dining room table and was all like, hey, Lindsay, remember this place? And remember when we went here? And wait, is this one still open? When did this one close again?

On my visit to NYC two weeks ago, I purposely took a three-subway-stop stroll down Broadway, through a neighborhood where I'd worked two different jobs on the same block between Bleecker and Houston (did I really just mentally pronounce Houston "HEWsten" like the Texan city as opposed to HOWsten like the NYC street? I'll never tell...). Back in high school, I used to hang out on the same short stretch of downtown. My friend Rob's dad used to work at a print shop in Noho (can you imagine? a print shop in Noho?) and sometimes we'd go in with him so we could shop for weird clothes at Antique Boutique and Unique, then over to Bubba's near Washington Square for a Ruben lunch. Is Bubba's still there? I'm not sure if I was visualizing the addresses accurately, but it looked to me like Antique Boutique and Unique are now American Apparel stores.

Godawful food, great sign. Replaced by a Chipotle.

My New York has more layers than a particularly fine wedding cake. If you've lived there for any length of time, I expect yours does too.

I've quoted from this Nora Ephron essay in the past, because, well, she hit many, many nails on many, many heads during her illustrious career but none of her bons mot touch me quite as personally as this one, about what it's like to voluntarily exile yourself from NYC and then come back a mere visitor.

Things change in New York; things change all the time. You don't mind this when you live here; when you live here, it's part of the caffeinated romance to this city that never sleeps. But when you move away, you experience change as a betrayal. You walk up Third Avenue planning to buy a brownie at a bakery you've always been loyal to, and the bakery's gone. Your dry cleaner move to Florida; your dentist retires; the lady who made the pies on West Fourth Street vanishes; the maitre d' at P.J. Clarke's quits, and you realize you're going to have to start from scratch tipping your way into the heart of the cold, chic young woman now at the door. You've turned your back for only a moment, and suddenly everything's different. You were an insider, a native, a subway traveler, a purveyor of inside tips into the good stuff, and now you're just another frequent flyer, stuck in a taxi on Grand Central Parkway as you wing in and out of La Guardia.

Every time I go back, I think about how I used to be able to glide through the city without thinking, without looking, how I probably could've negotiated the subway blindfolded. Eight years after my departure, I definitely have to keep my eyes open—and often glued to my GPS. Did I really live in New York before cell phones? Before Metrocards and Starbucks and 9/11?

NYC will keep changing but I'll still have my matchbooks, artifacts from another age, proof that the city I lived in once really existed, even if it's now full of ghosts and shadows and unfamiliar subway lines.

I come from the ’90s. Rialto was my hang.

Didn't the waiters wear rollerskates?

Many an expense-account lunch was consumed here.

The Tall Ships: lost on 9/11.

Matchless

A handful of matchbooks advertising defunct restaurants, mostly in San Antonio.

I don't collect matches. At least, I didn't think I collected matches until a few bags full of matchbooks resurfaced in my life after a recent closet avalanche. So I guess it's more accurate to say I never set out with intent to collect matches, but I ended up with a collection just by virtue of being a smoker and a New Yorker who warmed many barstools and dined in many fine restaurants and never could turn down a complimentary matchbook, especially if it was cute but mostly because I was always losing my lighter.

I see a lot of matchbook collections on my estate-sale rounds; the graphics are so great and the establishments being advertised sound so awesome, it can be difficult to resist buying them. But usually I resist. I have my own memories in matchbook form—do I really need someone else's? The handful you see here are from two Ziplocs I selected at random from two laundry baskets overflowing with matches at a sale last summer. Somebody used to really get around!

A lifetime's collection of matches.

I've been mourning the ephemeral nature of ephemera on this blog for some time now, and most often the digital age we live in the culprit: Concert tickets, greeting cards, invitations, business cards, address books, etc., have all been outmoded. But we can't blame the slo-mo extinction of matchbooks on the interwebs ’cuz last I checked, fire had not yet been digitized—obviously, it's because no one smokes anymore. Okay, people still smoke, but they are (for the most part) no longer encouraged to do so, and judging by how my children react to the sight of some pathetic smoker, huddled in the cold for a furtive puff, I don't think the tobacco companies are going to have much luck seducing the next generation (seriously, my kids are ready to make a citizen's arrest of any smoker they see; I have to remind them that even when we're visiting the Nanny State of NYC, smoking is not actually against the law). I assume Red Bull, or some pernicious variation thereof, will be their version of smoking.

Ah, to have frequented the Gay ’90s or Ichabod's...

But what a pity, right? Towers of Future Red Bull and its accoutrements will never have the panache of a serious matchbook collection. We used to keep ours in a large wooden bowl in the living room. My parents (not smokers) kept a container full in the kitchen. Lindsay remembers his grandparents having some sort of  three-tiered platter—like the kind for serving those extravagant shellfish apps at your nicer brasseries—where they displayed their assortment of matches.

My rediscovered matchbooks are still in a plastic grocery bag in the Closet of Doom. I've thought about displaying them in a jar or bowl but they're just another dust magnet and what if the kids take it upon themselves to burn the house down? I did photograph a few of the choicer ones, however, which I'll share this week here on the blog.

Gail and Harold, was it a good marriage?

Framed

Me, at the end of my illustrious dance career

It's always a bummer to see family photos at an estate sale, framed and forlorn, resting atop furniture for sale. If anyone buys them, it's for the frame, and presumably the photo gets tossed.

I love my family, I love images of my family, but I can't get on board with the whole concept of covering every surface of my house—or a few large surfaces designated for this purpose—with framed family photos. In mix-matched frames, cheap or expensive, or matchy-match frames. I don't like it. The clutter! Maybe it's because I don't have a ton of surface space in my house. Which is maybe because all those tabletops and shelves are covered with books, I dunno.

For a while, I thought these pictorial shrines were a Southern thing, or a Texas thang. The first time I visited Texas, I stayed at the home of Lindsay's parents. I remember availing myself of the powder room (another term I never used till moving here), and being disturbed—and then highly amused—to see it decorated with framed family photos. In the bathroom? Seriously? The best was a little oval portrait of high school Lindsay with big glasses and a floppy Cure-style hairdo sitting atop the toilet tank. What kind of crazy narcissists was I getting tangled up with? (Years later, when I was planning our wedding, my mother-in-law told me about how it's always nice and traditional to have an enormous framed portrait of the bride and groom greeting guests at the reception. Hint, hint. I'm pretty sure I told her she needed to stop smoking so much crack, or some words to that effect.)

Lindsay was a big Hee-Haw fan

That may be extreme, but I realize this need to blanket one's living space—especially the public living spaces—with pictures of ourselves is not a Southern thing; it's a human thing that's dated back centuries, probably millennia, and that I'm the weird one (weren't there family portraits on the surviving walls of Pompeii?). I guess we had framed pictures sitting around my house growing up but they were engulfed by another form of clutter—tchotchkes—so they didn't really stand out. At my own house, you'll find a gallery of family photos in the guest room—which also serves a museum showcasing furniture from our past lives. (Not sure I'm being a very good hostess: I read in a feng shui book once that it's bad to display family photos in your bedroom. Or was it mirrors?) I've limited our main public display to one photo per family member, the four you see here, which I keep on top of the Telefunken stereo console that doesn't work, in the "formal" living room that no one really hangs out in since the cat died.

There's me, age 8, fierce in my Spanish dancing costume, the last year I was forced to attend dance school. Lindsay the preschooler, in his beloved Hee-Haw overalls (really that picture is more about the overalls than Lindsay). The older daughter at age 3, surrounded by prop bunnies and ducklings for an Easter portrait (yes, an Easter portrait! Who ever thought my kids would get formal Easter portraits?). And the baby, as a baby, quite unrecognizable now but I thought she would feel left out if I didn't get her framed mug out there within a few months of joining the family. To this day, she doesn't acknowledge that photo or even believe that it's her.

The baby eternal

I'm never happy with the arrangement, I don't like the frames, and I keep thinking I need to switch the photos out for different ones, or at least update the kids' pictures, but then I can't commit to any. (I definitely don't need to be looking at updated photos of myself—happy to remain a pissed-off Spanish dancer forever.) Then I wonder, should I add more people? I mean, we have a ton of great photos, both ancient and recent. But if you add one grandparent or sibling or dear family friend, then you have to add all of them. And what about the pets? Should they be included? Live and dead? Or is it enough that they have a shelf in my office reserved for urns of their ashes, their collars and other relics?

I know. So many questions on such a small matter. But that's how I roll, in case you haven't noticed by now.

Easter portrait

The Eames House of Cards

At some point early in my life I came into possession of this House of Cards set. My parents gave them to me, I assume, and of course, Crazy Lady still has them. The House of Cards, if you're not familiar, was designed in 1952 by Charles and Ray Eames for children. Like me! A deck of cards, a series of images, that celebrated what they called "the good stuff...familiar and nostalgic objects from the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms." I loved my cards to tatters, as you can see from the box.

The cards have small notches on the sides so you can build all manner of structures, but I was never a builder—more of a gazer—so I think I mostly just gawped at mine. A lot. Because those images—the snail shell! the pills! the technicolor veggies! the buttons!—all of them are absolutely etched in my brain, the way the Eameses meant them to be. And every time I see them, I get that Proustian chill of recognition and remembrance (excuse me for being one of those assholes who references Proust without actually having read Proust—I need to learn French! I don't trust translations! You already know that about me!).

So here are just a few of my favorite images from the cards. I've been thinking about them lately because I've discovered that they are also used on a couple different vintage editions of the Memory game, which I plan to share this week if I get my act together.

On a practical note, you can still buy these cards—I believe they're published by the Museum of Modern Art and come in a variety of sizes and styles. They're a bit pricey, but I think this is one of best gifts you can give a kid who has advanced beyond the stage of gnawing on cards or ripping them up just for ha-ha's.