Chequered Past: Shopping Til I Fall Down Dead in England

French Lead Crystal Cross

On Sunday we hunkered down to get everything we had bought so far wrapped and boxed. It was a grey, cold autumn day with high wind chill and squally rain so we were glad to be inside, phaffing about. Boy are we happy with our purchases, with a good range of high quality Deco glass and ceramics, a wide selection of interesting kitchenalia from Victorian era ceramic jelly molds to French enamelware and giant wooden platters/chopping boards, plus great metalware and beautiful costume jewellery. If we can keep up this level of quality and interest in our buying this trip will easily be one of our best ever.

Embroidered Postcard

Among the more unusual things we sourced are some lovely WWI embroidered postcards, which were made in France for English soldiers heading to the Western Front and some of them have touching messages of love written on the back. One just says Yours, Charles, so young Charlie was a man of few words. I wonder which of those boys made it home.

We’ve also found some really beautiful large bookplates of birds of prey, mostly owls but also some hawks, and they will look lovely on the wall in the shop. And this time we have found two brass-topped Byzantine Revival tables, which we are particularly pleased with. We’re usually lucky if we can find one every second trip, so finding two this time was great.

Turquoise Glass Chicken Dish.
They usually only come in white,
so this one is especially good

So having packed the purchases so far and dropped them off with the shippers, we started on the main week of the trip, with three of the biggest antiques Fairs in the world occurring back-to-back. I’ve had a head cold that moved to a chest cold for a week, so this time I really am shopping until I fall down dead, but we’ve now completed the first Fair and it was a lot of fun and the shopping was brilliant. On the way there Doug said he doubted I would spend all the money we had on us, but I told him I accepted that challenge and yes I was the winner. In addition with really fabulous glass and ceramics, I also caught up with the lady I buy lovely Lea Stein brooches from and she didn’t let me down so I have some really good examples of cats, owls and foxes to offer as soon as we get back.

This time I didn’t get filmed in the background of Bargain Hunt, as I so often do, but I did come across Tim Wannacott doing a spiel to camera on some clocks, so I got some photos of him and his film crew. What wasn’t apparent was that a small dog was running about under his table, trying very hard to get his attention, but he didn’t miss a beat and just kept on talking about antique clocks.

Tim Wannacott from Bargain Hunt
ignoring the little dog under the table
and soldiering on.

News from home is that all the moggies are happy and well – they always get spoiled rotten by the house sitters – but cryptic reports were that Caleb had been pushing the envelope in terms of bad behaviour. So I sought a more detailed report but he doesn’t appear to be doing anything other than what a normal ratbag kitten would do. Although he does seem to be developing Klepto-Cat tendencies, making off with pens whenever he comes across them. Mischka stole jewellery whenever she could get her paws on it when she was little, and there are still a few little pieces that we still haven’t found, three years on. I’m really missing the moggies and looking forward to being home with them again. Only 11 days left until we leave the UK, and there’s an awful lot of shopping to be done in that time.