Vintage Finds, Booth Displays, and Home Vignettes Lately

Hello, vintage lovers! Today I'm going to share a mashup of vintage and antique finds since my last Panoply update. Some of these finds will be shown fresh from the picking, others as displayed in our antique mall booth spaces and, lastly, a few which ended up in my personal collection, temporarily or for good. Find a comfy spot like the Art Deco girl below, grab a drink, and let's go on a virtual shopping trip!

Louis Icart's 1926 "La Robe de Chine" (The Silk Robe)

Let me preface this post with some background. This blog started out as a means to share all of Panoply's finds and booth displays, primarily because one of the three of us sisters who comprise our antiquing endeavors lives out of state. A few years into blogging, we created a Facebook page for sharing our booth displays, but only for those items already in our booths. Concurrently, the blog grew into a lifestyle journal, including more than Panoply antiquing (namely, gardening, tablescaping and travel). 

Bottom line, you'll be seeing items that haven't hit the market (our booths) for the most part. They fall into one of three categories: finds for keeps, finds for resale, and finds for fostering until ready for resale (or already sold). Hence, a mashup!

It's a photo-heavy post, and here we go.

From an auction where mother/daughter were closing up shop, I snagged some fab finds, ranging from turn of the century to mid-1950s.

The Louis Icart framed art print is already in our booth, in a space redo just completed this week. 

The leopard swing coat, Beau Brummel tipsy martini glasses, and magnetic guitar bottle opener were gifts to my oldest daughter and son-in-law (throwback kids whose spirits were truly born in another era).

The Majolica tea set with birds....well, what can I say? It's currently being fostered in my home (along with every other vintage item within the bookcase - also a vintage find - excluding the Vicki Sawyer bird plates and books).

More vintage pickups from the same auction: vintage framed team photo, WWI African American convex framed soldier photograph, antique oil wick teapot mining lamp, coal scrip, belt buckles, and WWII army wool trench coat.

West Virginia has a rich coal mining industry history. Take a closer look at the oil wick mining lamp (below). These would be lit and placed on a clip on the coal miner's hat for illumination while he worked underground. Methane gas in the mines made for obviously extremely hazardous conditions, and these lamps were later replaced with battery-operated lamps.

Also in this group of wins is coal scrip. Scrip was "money" paid to miners whose families lived in coal camps. Scrip was an advance of wages for labor in the mines, and could only be used in exchange for goods from the company store, which was situated within the coal camp.

If you want to see more of what those coal camps looked like, I wrote about it in a trip to an exhibition coal mine in this post. 

Panoply's methods for shopping vintage finds are primarily in estate sales, whether private or public, or by online auction. My personal approach is to buy what I like, and also to anticipate what I think is something I think others will like. Here are a few more recent finds.

From one estate, the following Valentine and Easter items.

From the collage above, the Herend heart (second from L, top row), and Fitz and Floyd center bunny pitcher are the only items I'm keeping....for now.

This next grouping was a pig in a poke from the same sale, one lot for one price, but Holy Halloween!

Christmas items were part of that same estate. I'll be keeping the Arita tartan set, as I have several plates matching this pattern. Other items include Whitley Bay & Tom Clark figurines, and Fitz & Floyd decor.

The following were from different, but still local, estates. 

The Kensington rabbit pitcher (center top in collage above) is already in our booth space, as shown in a photo shared earlier in this post. The nesting, lop-eared bunnies sold the day after I placed them in the booth. For now, I'm fostering the Fitz & Floyd candle holders and fox set, the concrete rabbit, and the majolica pedestal plate.

Another grouping from another estate:

It's both a blessing and curse when you're a dealer of vintage and antique items, simply for the decision processes of a) what to purchase and b) how to divide among keep, foster and resale.

Here are some keepers of late:

These include (clockwise): Frontgate's drink cooler on lazy Susan, a pair of heavy Frontgate lanterns, a vintage mid-century Americana ice bucket made by the Noble & Cooley Co in Granville MA (makers of drums since the 1880s), souvenir Napoleon bottle opener, chinoiserie candle holders for either sticks or votives, and a heavy chinoiserie plant stand perched on a lime green garden stool.

Here are some finds of late, all of which are currently being fostered, except for the top center Easter plate and sleeping bunny, and bottom right copper stock pot. The bunny and copper pot just sold recently.

And then there are items which I won't hesitate to sell (below).

While I really like the blue & white canisters, I don't keep canisters on my counter. The tole tray, concrete frogs, vintage linens, terra cotta birds, tiny Toby creamers, hand-painted wooden egg, and juice set were easy decisions for selling. 

Earlier, I showed you a bookcase in my home with vintage finds. Here are a couple more examples of how I use things I buy in my home. I have the art print of Monet's Garden hanging in my kitchen, over the window / sink, along with two other prints of old world bunnies I bought a few years ago.

The green garden stool is in my office, as a side table to my chaise lounge. 

That fabulous Americana drum ice bucket is actually in a spare bedroom as a decor item, and the Frontgate lanterns were used from fall through Christmas on my front porch.

I know this was a lot of ground I've covered in this post, but it was long overdue. If you enjoyed this, you can see more Panoply Antiquing as one of my subjects at the top of my header (if on a handheld, scroll to bottom and click on web version and you'll see the header topics). Gardening, Tablescapes, and Travel are my other main subjects. Plus, we actually have an appointment for a private pick, coming up next week, so I already have more items to share in a future post.

See anything that strikes your fancy in this virtual shopping trip? Tell me, what do you gravitate toward when vintage shopping? What's your jam? Where do you like to go for vintage finds - thrift stores, estate sales, auctions, and / or antique malls?

Thank you for your visit today, and I hope you'll leave a comment and return again! If your comment shows as anonymous, please let me know who you are so I can reply to you!

Rita C. at Panoply

Parties I Share With: Pieced Pastimes, Love Your Creativity, BNOTP, My Wee Abode, My Family Thyme, French Ethereal SYS, Eclectic Red Barn, My Thrift Store Addiction, Our Hopeful Home, Karin's Kottage, County Road 407