Great Estate Sale Finds

So, a little over a week ago, I shared some furniture swapping I did in my home with some great buys at a recent estate sale.

Today's post is all about my fourth quarter (4Q18) vintage finds to date, the majority of which came from that great estate sale. I know it's just the end of October, but with the holidays fast approaching, I don't expect any additional Panoply purchasing through year end...famous last words. At the end of this post, I'm also including a few bonus pics of some of what my sisters bought from that same estate sale. So, are you ready to do some armchair vintage shopping?

I'll start with this tole-painted lidded steamer pot (for lack of better description). It is signed (Mary Hoffman). This could be a local piece, or it could be European, I am not certain, as this couple did a lot of traveling. Many of their pieces had provenance with the items, but this one did not.

Local interest panoramic photographs of my city, dated 1923 and 1990. They are of opposite sides of the Kanawha River, both very special to me. The lower right portion of the collage shows them as they were hung in the home.

Bank bags, bookends and magnifiers. I have an assortment of bank bags, probably near two dozen, and most are local to West Virginia. They remind me of my dad. Though he was not a banker, he had a keen sense of money management and an entrepreneurial spirit. He, in effect, was a bona fide lending bank, financing many a deal with me and all eight of my siblings at one time or another during our early adulthood. My career was spent in accounting and management, so I tend to buy office-type items. The bookends are Baldwin brass.

The framed cross-stitch below will be a gift to my daughter whose dog is a Welsh terrier. Her dog before the Welsh was an Airedale. The silhouette in the cross-stitch could pass for either breed.

The Mail Pouch litho below, though water damaged a bit at the lower portion of the matte, is still a regional favorite item for customers. This one is dated 1977, #286/400, by a West Virginia artist.

The two pitchers below were found in the living room display cabinet of this home. The brown earthenware smaller pitcher is incised with maker's initials, but I haven't tried to identify the artist (most likely West Virginian). The creamy yellow pitcher has no markings but I really liked it. The pewter cup was the son's, engraved "MATT".

I liked the way this pitcher looked with the assortment of butter crocks below, which I also purchased. I believe these are English, based on initial research.

Two half-gallon mason jars - one is Ball (identified as circa 1910-23), the other is Keystone Mason's in straight lettering. The date 1858 does NOT indicate age, merely the patent date for this jar.

The woman of this household estate died in 2010. She was artistic, as evidenced by things around the home, such as the items below. The plates are glass, decoupaged with fairies, and then gold-foiled on the back side. The butterflies are overlays on the back, signed "F. Upton '71". The bisque porcelain doll in the bottom right corner was as found, inside the pewter cup above. My Panoply sister, M, is a master dollmaker, so I gave her the dead baby to bring back to life through restringing.

The purple afghan reminded me of my mom, plain and simple. My family often jokes that our mother WAS the color purple. She wore it regally, and even the Monsignor who presided over my mother's funeral said he wore his purple vestments in her honor. 💜 I may use this for a vignette or tablescape in my home, and then sell it. The color purple also reminds me of my blogging friend, Christine.

The tartan throw below - well, what can I say? I'm a sucker for tartan. It is 100% wool, "Coming Home", made in Portugal.

The bull horn and deer racks below are part of those mantiques that always seem to attract me when buying for Panoply. These are already available in one of our booths at the antique mall.

The items below - more tartan - are also already available for sale in our booths (that's a hint of what's to come in my next post).

Now, for a few select items my sisters purchased, all of which are already available for sale at the antique mall.

The scales below were in the homeowner's office. I had mentioned in a prior post he was an attorney. The scales are marked England. They appear unbalanced below because the photo was taken prior to properly assembling the right hand pan's brackets.

The gavel below is a special piece of local and even national interest. The wood from the covered bridge in Philippi, WV - of which the gavel was constructed - was, indeed, from the bridge of the scene of a skirmish during the Civil War. The suggested legend of Lincoln and Davis meeting in the shelter of the bridge may simply be that - a legend.

The table and chairs below were purchased by my sister J. I know, I know, in that last update I lied said we were committed to buying and selling no more furniture. However, we were all together and unanimously decided this was a worthwhile purchase, and it went straight to the booth space.

The items below were my purchases from a different estate sale in October, most of which are already available for purchase in our booths. They include an early 20th Century euphonium (a tenor tuba), a penguin cocktail shaker, vintage Paul Masson wine box, cross-stitched fall pillow cover with mallard duck, shoe horn, belt buckle and framed Irish prayer with dried flowers (from Ireland).

That's it for 4Q18 Panoply vintage finds, and I hope that holds true through year-end. There is so much work involved with purchasing, photographing, listing, pricing, and either storing or styling these items. That is why I say I hope it's the last of the year's buying.

The Panoply holiday booth styling is already complete at the antique mall, and that post will go live later this week. I hope you'll return to see how we've set our spaces with many of our new finds.

In the meantime, it's always fun to invite you to armchair shop the things I buy. I enjoy having your company through blog readership, and encourage you to comment on any or all of what you see. Thank you for stopping by today!

Rita C. at Panoply

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Bountiful Baskets of Fall

Welcome, readers! Today's topic is all about bountiful baskets and how they are used throughout the seasons, but particularly fall, with the goal of inspiring you with some potentially new ideas. I am sharing my use of baskets while, simultaneously, weaving some of my favorite blog topics throughout. If you're new to my blog, you'll have the chance to get better acquainted with my style in links back to the topics as they are threaded throughout today's post. If you're a regular reader, welcome back. In either case, I hope you find a little take away of something which inspires.

I'm joining several other bloggers whose like-themed links are conveniently shared at the end of my post. If you're coming over from Cecilia's blog, My Thrift Store Addiction, I hope you've had the chance to see some of her unique ways of utilizing baskets.

My home decor is one topic I journal with the seasons. In celebrating fall decor, my use of Adirondack baskets on my front doors was this year's mainstay for welcoming the season. In the leading photo of this post, I also used the party tray woven basket for displaying my pumpkin patch.

In years past for fall decorating, I have used simple bushel baskets for a spill effect with small pumpkins and Indian corn on the porch. Since the squirrels enjoyed making a mess of the buffet they found in it, I've since abandoned the Indian corn element. I was having to clean the messes within ten minutes of arranging! But the spill effect can still be accomplished with small pumpkins, leaves, etc.

My landscape garden is most definitely one of my favorite hobbies and topics on the blog. A cornucopia basket with one of the garden's last bouquets made a colorful fall table centerpiece a couple years ago, as seen below. Tablescaping is also a favorite topic on my blog. I love styling tables such as this one, incorporating garden and vintage elements as often as I can.

Outside by the garden flag, I used a basket and wooden apples (vintage finds) alongside my MacKenzie-Childs bag as a teaser for an installment of the Tales of the Traveling Totes, another of my blog's topics. The basket has come in handy for the real deal ever since, and the tote is my constant companion.

I mentioned the basket and apples above as vintage finds. Another blog topic and hobby near and dear to my heart is antiquing with my Panoply sisters (the reason I started blogging in the first place!). Another vintage find a few years ago was the French market basket on wheels pictured below. With it, I've created floral arrangements with plants straight out of my landscape garden. The arrangement below was created as a tutorial to demonstrate fall styling with clips from my garden.

Yet another arrangement of mine in the market basket was the holiday styling below. A smooth transition from fall to holiday/winter styling, I utilized several of the same garden plants and simply tucked in some little lights.

Elsewhere indoors, some baskets are simple, utilitarian vessels. The sweetgrass baskets pictured on my kitchen scale below hold produce I like to store at room temperature in everyday living. Sweetgrass is a tall, supple water plant indigenous to the Lowcountry of Charleston, SC, where these baskets originated. From the hands of the African slaves brought to the Lowcountry, this basket-making tradition still thrives in the area. My baskets, as well as the countertop scale, are also past vintage finds.

In the sunroom, a canvas basket is a mainstay for garnering extra pillows and seasonal throws.

A woven basket under a table in the sunroom has been a staple for many years for me, corralling all my mail order catalogs. I've used this method for so many years, I instinctively know where I will find a particular catalog, just based on the repeated purging and updating I've done with new ones in, old ones out. I keep my bird songs book handily on top for when new birds are spotted in the garden and I want to identify them.

Last but not least, another topic I dish on every now and again on my blog is miscellaneous musings. In this post, I was musing on the fact that this time of year is quite a blur of so many holidays being exploited simultaneously. A very important use of basket for this time of year - a basket full of Halloween candy for trick-or-treaters (or just us, as the case may be)! 

I hope you've enjoyed visiting today and getting acquainted with me and my basket full of topics. I hope you'll leave a comment to let me know you stopped by, and if you're so inclined, come again or subscribe for regular posts in your mail. I won't sell your email, and I won't inundate you with emails, that I promise.

Next on the tour is Carol from the blog, Art and Sand. A big shout out goes to Amber Ferguson of the blog Follow the Yellow Brick Home for hosting and organizing this bounty of bloggers today!

Rita C. at Panoply

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An InLinkz Link-up

Dining Room Furniture Finds, Flips

I went to a really nice estate sale in our neighborhood recently. The preview picture album even had Mr. P. intrigued (the guy who doesn't like 'stuff'). The homeowner was an attorney, and he and his wife apparently lived good lives, traveled the world, and curated some quite nice furniture and decor items along the way. I ended up purchasing three different pieces of furniture (!), and have already made changes in my dining room to accommodate them. I'll show you the current look (AFTER) and show you what I purged in the process (BEFORE).

AFTER

The pieces I purchased are all from Hekman Furniture's "Copley Place" line, dating from the mid-20th century. They are constructed of mahogany solid woods with yewood (English yew wood), ebony, and mahogany crotch inlays and veneers. 

This is the way my dining room currently looks, with the new pieces in place.

The console table with drawer is finished on the back side also, making it versatile as a sofa table. In fact, it is still manufactured by Hekman and is referred to as such online. It is a much better fit and look under my mirror in the dining room than what was previously there. The two nested tables were sold as a pair (my second "piece"), and fit perfectly flush beneath the console. That's where they're being kept for now, but Mr. P. seemed to like the idea of using those next to his recliner in the family room. 

I love the straight legs of these Hekman pieces, which I find very versatile when mixing furniture. In my dining room, I have broken up the original and homogenous walnut dining room suite (Henredon "Scene One") that bachelor Mr. P. had when I met him. I am using the console and three bookcases from that set in our family room. Most of the furniture in this room is traditional style (except that French vitrine in the corner, which I can't part with anytime soon). All of the woods blend well and satisfy my need for not having an all matched look. Everything in this dining room except the table and chairs has been purchased from estate sales or estate auctions.

The third piece of Hekman furniture I just purchased is the accent table shown below. It's nice and surprisingly heavy, with a marquetry inlay on top and a contoured shelf near the base. All of this furniture was in excellent vintage condition. From what I could determine online (Chairish, One Kings Lane and EBTH), I paid less than the current retail price of the accent table for ALL of what I bought. I could not find the nesting tables currently in production, but the console and accent table are still being manufactured (Hekman website).

The cabinet with inlays pictured below was previously on the other side of the room. It was full of one of my sets of china (and then some), so I had to empty it before I could move it. It is a heavy piece with solid wood shelves, perfect for holding the weight of my dishes. I will not be getting rid of it anytime soon either.

BEFORE

My dining room prior to the latest changes is pictured below, from this post. This was Christmas 2016. As you can see, the piece pictured above was on the opposite side of the room until now.

The table below is one piece that has been displaced. It is what's referred to as a game table. It can be folded on a right angle as pictured, closed as a half table, or opened and pivoted on the legs to be the square game table surface. The stool and writing desk beneath the game table are now to the left of the cabinet that is currently situated on that wall (as seen in a previous photo).

The other table being purged is the small accent table pictured below, sometimes referred to as a candle table. It is wood with leather, triangular insets.

I'll either sell these purged pieces or see if either of my girls need or want them, which I doubt. At some point we want to downsize, and I have been thinking hard about what I hope to use going forward. Top priorities in deciding what I love and want to keep will be in pieces that are versatile in style and use. Furniture with straight lines which can lean toward more than one style such as traditional or contemporary are one example of versatility. Multi-use pieces would be those which can serve as a console, buffet or sofa table/cabinet (read storage!). If I keep the dining room chairs, they will definitely be reupholstered. Vintage accessories will remain in my decor always.

Oh, and the main reason why these pieces of furniture intrigued Mr. P., the man who doesn't like 'stuff'? The inlay and style of furniture is exactly the same as a very unusual desk he uses in his office, which was purchased for a song from the utility company I worked for in the late 1990s. It doesn't have the same finish on the wood (it's a little darker), but will likely be refinished, if and when we downsize.

My Panoply sisters went to this sale with me, and there are several more items we each purchased, most for resale, and few for gifts. I will capture my other vintage finds in an upcoming post (soon).

Do you shop estate sales and auctions?

Rita C. at Panoply

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Adirondack Basket Floral Arrangement Tutorial

Earlier in the week I shared my outdoor fall decor with you in this post. I used Adirondack baskets filled with floral arrangements as my front door decor. As noted, these shouldering baskets were originally created by Native Americans, intended for carrying gear and harvested foods. Though my baskets are newer, vintage Adirondack styles can be found online in various shopping venues or, alternatively you could choose a different style basket altogether. In today's post I'm illustrating how easy it was to create these arrangements, with inexpensive florals.

There are no affiliate links to my post (mine is an ad-free blog). I'm just sharing information of my own style and sources. The source list pertains to making one basket, and I simply doubled the materials to make two.

Supplies for Each Arrangement:

• 1 Large Basket (mine are Ballard Designs Adirondack, purchased on sale with free shipping)
• Plastic Bubble Wrap as bottom filler (mine came from package shipments received)
• 3 Dry Floral Foam (singles available at Dollar Tree, 3-pack available at WalMart)
• 10 -11 choice florals (4 or 5 like pairs) from Dollar Tree, each pair 12-15" (mine are 4 like pairs (8), plus 3 unique stems, for a total of 11 stems)
• 3 longer floral stems, 21" or so (mine are 1 like pair, 1 unique, purchased at local drug store for $3 each)

Lay all your florals out in like pairs, along with all other supplies, on a working surface.

Keep the taller stems separate from the others.

Roll the bubble wrap as pictured.

Place in base of basket until at least half full, adjusting amount of bubble wrap if necessary.

Place three foam blocks side by side, in basket, on top of bubble wrap. It should be a tight fit so as not to have floral movement once you begin arranging.

Once satisfied with the positioning of the bubble wrap and foam, a quick cleanup with the vacuum keeps the mess to a minimum for OCD people like me.

Starting with what I'll call Layer 1, using the tall pair of like florals as the center point, arrange your choice of two pairs of the shorter stems symmetrically on either side (see picture below). This will eventually be inserted into the piece of foam at the back of the inside your basket (Foam block 1). But don't start inserting yet! Keep going with your arrangement on your working surface. This allows you to visualize the entire bouquet and make changes before inserting into the basket.

On top of Layer 1, start Layer 2 by arranging the remaining one pair of shorter stems and, in my case, three additional unique stems (from the supplies) until the look appeals to you. My centermost florals are the three unique stems -  a white mum, tan hydrangea, and the stem of round seed pods (brown). I arranged them centrally, with the like pair just below, on either side (see photo below).

For the last and final layer (Layer 3, as shown below), place the single, taller (21" in my case) floral stem in the center, and the final pair of shorter stems flanking it, one on each side. Rearrange anything at this point before starting to insert the layers into the foam.

Keeping with how you layered the florals - 1, 2, and 3 - insert those stems in each respective block of foam, 1 being the back piece in the basket, 2 being the middle piece, and 3 being the front piece.

Pictured below is the first layer of florals arranged in the foam inside the basket. At this point, I could see the one, smaller purple flora on the left needed to be situated a little farther left in my arrangement, so I adjusted it. Do this for anything that looks "off".

After working with each layer in similar fashion, you should have a full basket. What I did next was take that final, third layer of floral stems and started bending them forward, as if they were spilling from the basket. You can adjust any of the stems similarly. If it becomes unwieldy in handling, don't worry. You can always just pull the stem out and stick it back in. It's just a little easier to arrange the florals from back to front, in order. My total amount spent for supplies for each arrangement (excluding basket) was $23. If you already have faux florals on hand, your cost could be even less.

As mentioned, since mine are double front entry doors, I created two of these Adirondack basket arrangements.

This is but one season of a suggested floral arrangement for an Adirondack basket, and but one use for the basket itself. You could place this on an outside door as I have, an inside door, shelf, or even on the floor inside an entry or by a fireplace. I have ideas of arranging my fallen birch logs in one for a winter arrangement, or maybe using the basket to store throws in. How else would you suggest using them?

Thanks for your visit today. Feel free to leave your comments.

(A special thank you to Cindy from Dwellings - The Heart of Your Home Amaze Me Monday #286 for featuring this post!)

Rita C. at Panoply

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