Shop like the wind!

12 x French felt egg coddlers, c1930. Tres cute. $12 each.

I am a Shopping Demon!  There’s no stopping me.  I can shop like the wind.

Yes, the Peterborough fair was an outstanding success.  I hit the semi-industrial mother-lode, and literally filled the van with great finds.

It wasn’t a promising start, though.  We were there for the traders’ early entry at 7am (costs a lot more than the normal entry time at 10am), but at first the pickings were slim.  Slim to nothing.  I saw plenty I really liked, but the prices were ridiculous. 

Oh no, I thought, this isn’t good. 

Actually, I thought something a lot ruder than that but this is a lady-like, well brought up blog, thank you, and we don’t use that type of language around here.

French lunch boxes, way cool, c1920.  $64 each.

So for the first half hour I couldn’t find a single thing I liked and could afford.  But that all changed when I found a fabulous French dealer, selling fabulous French semi-industrial stock.   

Voila!  Suddenly my plaintive cries of I-got-nuffin changed to me doing little jigs.  What’s French for I shopped like the wind?  J'ai fait des courses comme le vent.  I think that’s actually a nonsense sentence in French, but you know what I mean.

I bought really old wooden well buckets, seriously cool wooden industrial stools, big, big pieces of enamelware, big metal milk carrying pots, big galvanized grape picking baskets – lots of big stuff. 

A few of the French utensils, c1930. $30 each.

But I also carried off colourful enamel utensils, and those nice, dinky enamel lunch boxes that customers variously use as handbags through to kitchen storage containers.  

And I got my hands on the most enormous green glass wine bottles I’ve ever seen.  They’re called carboys and they’ll look very fabulous on our stand at the Peregian Beach market.

After that the floodgates opened, and I shopped nonstop for the next six hours. 

Finally, finally I found a few small French wooden dough troughs.  I’ve been looking for small ones for the last few trips, with no luck because the very big ones are much more common.  I’ve only got three so far, but we’ve only been here for three days so there’s plenty of time.  If there are more out there, I’ll find them.

Vicki Carter are you reading this? This is yours.

And yay, I’ve also been looking for nice French Art Deco glass lidded trinket boxes for the last few trips, without a great deal of success.  Now I’ve got five.  

I've also got some really unusual pieces, including six English wooden kettering racks (used to store potatos during the winter), and a benchtop French bottle drainer that will look fabulous with small thingies hanging off it in someone’s kitchen.

I always look for French wire flower baskets, and so far I have three, but I also scored a good metal potato basket.  

The really big rectangular and round wooden French boards that everyone loves have increased enormously in price - thanks for nothing, Jamie Oliver! But I did get one of each.   I want to find a whole lot more of these boards, but there weren’t many to be had at remotely affordable prices at this fair.

Are we having fun yet? Poor Doug lugging a lot.

Poor Douglas was run ragged because I kept buying heavy and oddly shaped things.  He made many trips back to the van and had to get creative to jigsaw it all in.  Now he’s knackered, poor chook.  My own feet and back were complaining vigorously, and I didn’t cover anything like the kilometers he did.

I think it’s safe to say that Quarantine’s going to have a cow when it sees this shipment.  We’re trialing a new freight clearance company this time, though, so we’ll see how well they fend off the Feds. 

French wooden laundry tongs & butter pats

We had a bright, bright, sunshiny day for the Peterborough fair, and it was lovely.  But now it appears the English weather is closing in on us.  We’re traveling down to Somerset later today, to position ourselves for the Shepton Mallet Giant Flea.  Unless we’re lucky, we might be shopping in gales and driving rain down there.

The Shepton Mallet Flea is great fun, but knowing how to thwart the Queue Police is essential to ensure a happier shopping experience.  Happier for us, that is.  

The Queue Police aren’t keen on being thwarted, it has to be said.  I’ve devoted an entire chapter on this in my book, because the Queue Police’s antics are almost Python-esque in their absurdity.  And their apoplexy when you thwart them is dead impressive and worth seeing.

I’ll report from the wilds of deepest Somerset soon.

Ghouls are no help when shopping

Ah, England in Springtime.  I like it here. 

It’s grey and chilly, but what would Springtime in England be without early morning mists and a little bit of damp?  Yes, okay, a whole lot of damp.  But there are also thousands of bluebells and daffodils, and little baby squirrels.  I like it here. 

What a contrast with Bangkok earlier in the week.  12 degrees in Lancashire, after a hot and steamy 35 in Bangkok.  My hair goes into Total Frizz Mode at this time of year in Thailand.  As soon as you step out of the airport you’re engulfed in an invisible warm, wet blanket and instantly develop a fine sheen all over your body. 

And we’ve never yet had Thai a taxi driver who wasn’t practicing for his Formula 1 debut.  On the way to the hotel we hit 130km at one point, as we gaily breezed past a flashing 80km speed sign.  Got to the hotel promptly, though, which is just what you want after an interminably long flight on a packed plane.  

And at least the drivers in Bangkok more-or-less stay in their allotted highway lanes.  A few countries over, in Borneo, it’s a total free for all.  Almost like dodgems.  And of course there are no seat belts.  But what can you do?  We turn to each other and smile.  We laugh in the face of imminent death.  Ha ha! we say.  Welcome to Asia.

But now we’re in the land of Road Rules and Queuing.  Much more sedate.  And we’ve hit the ground running.  As soon as we collected the hire van we made the trek up to Lancashire to visit Bygone Times.  It’s a huge converted mill, with over 500 dealers.  It’s one of the biggest indoor antiques venues in England but it’s seriously hard to find, even with a GPS.  Even when you’ve been there plenty of times.

The first time you visit you have to pay to get in – yes you have to pay them in order to buy things from them.  But then you’re given a pass to allow free entry for the rest of your life.  And we’ll probably be coming back for the rest of our lives, because the shopping is that good.

This place is supposed to be haunted – thoroughly haunted.  It’s meant to be one of the most haunted places in England.  And I’m as open as the next person to help from The Beyond to find nice things to buy.  

But despite my best efforts – suddenly spinning around to see if something mysterious was watching me, quickly peering into mirrors to see if an ethereal presence was at my shoulder, it always turned out to be Doug. He obligingly yelled Rah! to give me the fright I deserved for lurking in dark corners in such a haunted place.  

But nothing Other Worldly accosted me.  Or possessed me to make me shop better.  I did occasionally feel all tingly and odd but I’m pretty sure that was my jetlag rather than the resident ghouls – we had landed in England less than 24 hours earlier, afterall.  So I just had to find nice things by myself.

As you can see from the photos, this place is totally packed and totally chaotic.  The shopping is slow because of the sheer volume you’ve got to get through, much of it not worth a second glance.  Plenty of other things are perfectly good, but with delusional prices. 

But with enough hunting, you’ll find the gems.  I carried off nice Hungarian enamelware, Art Deco pink glass, a fabulous ceramic dragon-shaped teapot and a Victorian ceramic cat teapot, English and French copper pieces, a very beautiful and enormous Art Nouveau cheese cover with plate, and much, much more.  All in all, it was a terrific start to the buying trip.

Then we headed south-east, down to Peterborough, to position ourselves for the first of the big northern antiques fairs on Good Friday.  It’s largely an outdoor event and the weather forecast isn’t at all promising, so we’ll see how that works out.

The fair starts early tomorrow morning - trade entry is three hours before the normal punters, so we have to get up very early.  We usually do well at this fair, so I have high expectations.  More soon.

A Change I Didn't See Coming

Small Chinese Dragon canister, close-up.

No-one would have believed, in the early days of 2016, that my business was being watched by intelligences greater than my own.

That as I busied myself with my various concerns, they observed and studied.  The way a man with a microscope might scrutinize the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

With infinite complacency, I went to and fro about the globe, confident of my empire over this world.

Yet, across the gulf of space, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded my business with envious eyes.

And slowly, and surely, built their plans against me.

Well okay, just lately life hasn’t been as interesting as a Martian invasion.  Nice catch, those of you who recognized me stealing shamelessly from The War of the Worlds.

Nice French enamelware.  Half price!

And yet, recent events have stirred things up nicely.  And one of the protagonists certainly believes herself infinitely superior to me.  To be fair it’s not just me; she’s infinitely superior to the rest of you as well.

Okay, long story short.  Malcolm, who bought my business almost 3 years ago but then ran off before paying, has come back.  He’s bought my business and most of my stock-on-hand.  He’s made good on his obligations and I am a happy camper.  No, I did not see that coming.

His proposed shop assistant, Alexandra, tried endlessly and stridently to talk him out of honoring his obligations.  If he was going to hand over any lump sums, she preferred they went to her.  In return for what?  Well, that’s a good question.  Nothing really springs to mind, I have to say.

Nice seaside-themed dish.

With zero experience as an antiques dealer or international buyer, she informed me that she would be so much better at it than me.  And she could style an antiques shop so much better than me.  And she could run a business so much better than me. 

Being long-term unemployed and currently obliged to work for the dole dents her credibility only a little because, heck, she does being unemployed so much better than me.  I’ve never even set foot in a Centrelink office, so she’s way ahead of me there.

But this is a long story short, remember?  So here’s the short version:

-  Malcolm has honoured his obligations towards me, and I am no longer plotting his demise by ninja assassins;

French enamelware & English stoneware.

-  With a lump sum not coming her way, Alexandra has apparently flounced off in a fit of pique;

-  Having sold most of my stock-on-hand, I am selling the rest via a half-price sale at the Peregian Beach Market this coming Sunday (7 February).  As you can see from my random pictures, it’s good stock even at full price.  But I’m clearing the decks.  And that’s because;

-  We are going on another buying trip to France and England towards the end of March.  It will be a quickie trip this time, four weeks to get to Europe, buy like the wind, and skip home.  Can’t wait!

In other news, the latest edition of Indulge magazine is now on the newsstands.  OMG, it has the most hideous contributor photo of me, so skip that page and head instead to this link:  http://indulgemagazine.net/vintage-style/  There you will see the article I wrote on the lovely Helen King from French & Gorgeous.

It's feeling like a real book now.

In yet more news, I have finished writing the book and it’s now in the editing stage.  A front cover has been designed, and I’m very happy with it.  Thank you to everyone who voted on the design choices on Facebook, it’s much appreciated.  I decided on the Eiffel Tower because it’s an iconic international image, as well as a distinctly French symbol, and it ties in well with my business.  If you’re going to follow the advice in my book, you’ll find yourself in France a lot, as I do.

The final news for now is this:  because I sold the business to Malcolm we are rebranding.  The new business will be French & Vintage Home.  I’m currently briefing a website builder, and when that’s ready I shall move my blogging efforts to that site.  More on that as it happens.

Okay this really is the final bit of news:  The first Collectorama antiques fair for 2016 is coming up in Nambour on Saturday, 5 March.  Although Malcolm bought most of my stock-on-hand, that didn’t count the stock-waiting-to-be-tarted.  So I am tarting like the wind (that’s not as rude or as fun as it sounds).  And I’m dragging stuff out of everywhere so I will have lovely and never before seen pieces to offer.  Hope to see you there.

English 'Asiatic Pheasant' plate, c1840.  Half price!

Meanwhile, utter, utter bargains will be on offer on 7 Feb at the Peregian Beach Market.  It will be nice to see you there, too.