furniture

Hubby and I decided to take another ‘road trip’ and try to find more antiques and collectibles. Some are to sell, others to add to our home’s décor. We’ve had luck in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota before and drove up to the border at Hudson, Wisconsin.

Abigail Page Antiques, Hudson WI

Our first stop was at Abigail Page Antiques, a first time visit. It was a nice clean place, lots of variety and the people at the counter were very friendly! I overheard a shopper asking “what does it take to become a dealer? I would be interested in becoming one since I have two sons with absolutely NO interest in my old stuff.” The gentleman at the counter laughed and responded that this seems to be the way almost everyone gets into it. They collect for years, then either change their interests or start to get on in years and realize the kids don’t care about the items. While he went over the costs involved in renting a booth, I thought back to how we became dealers.

I recalled our first ‘for profit’ endeavor. While at a yard sale, hubby came across an 8 legged, side-table with a small taped price tag. It was a lowly amount and he wanted to be sure that it was not left over from a knick-knack that had been moved off of the table. But the lady confirmed the price and said “if anyone wants that rickety old thing, they can have it for that price – 10 cents.” We paid, put it in the trunk and sped off. (You can tell it’s an old story – we haven’t had a car with a trunk for over 12 years, we are always buying vans.)

The very next day we checked our basement for refinishing materials, for it was admittedly in poor condition. The wood was pretty bare, not much finish remained, so it was not a difficult project, just time-consuming. It took a few days due to drying times, adding several coats of varnish, but it turned out to be beautiful. As luck would have it, our neighbor was having a yard sale the next weekend so we dragged some kids’ clothing, old glassware, and the table to her house. We put a ‘pie in the sky’ price tag on it of $75. The 2^nd lady that came to the house just loved it, and offered $65 – SOLD! Putting things in perspective, our rent was $70 at the time and we were pretty excited to realize that type of profit.

Another time we found a Victrola cabinet. It had no record player, but the wood was in nice shape. Hubby negotiated and got it for only $5. He then added a few shelves and I did some touch-up. It turned out to be a wonderful liquor cabinet, with a lot of height for the bottles and spots for glasses too. We talked my mother-in-law into having a sale that fall and sold it for $80. Another month’s rent made.

You get the picture, we continued to shop, refurbish and sell. We started sharing space at a local flea market and eventually rented a booth at an antique mall. The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, back to the antique mall. We found quite a few nice items at Abigail Page’s. They even kept it open an extra 15 minutes for us. But it had been a long day, so we drove 5 miles down the road and got a motel. I always check the receipts before we get too far and could not find one in the bags, and was also unable to find a pair of cufflinks I’d purchased. So I called the store, expecting an answering machine, but got the lady from the counter. She checked around and found both items and then volunteered to drive them to our motel. How is that for service? Pretty good, I’d say.

More on our road trip in my next blog. We’re heading up to Stillwater, Minnesota. I would love to hear how others started their love of antiquing!

I don’t collect furniture for the same reason that I don’t collect elephants or car tires. I don’t know what to feed either one once I’ve got ‘em home. Also, all of these things are typically really big.

Regardless of my ‘the smaller the better’ rule of collecting, I can’t help but be attracted to various items of practical home decor during my tag sale adventures. We got an early start this year, as April had a few warm weekends and my town was itching to get rid of a winter’s worth of stuff. With the sudden influx of inside-stuff being cluttered into outside-driveways, we set out to buy more stuff that other people didn’t need anymore, but neither did we. Anytime it looks like a house puked all over its own driveway, we’re there wading through it.

I didn’t think that any item of furniture could really beat last year’s collapsible table. While compact and narrow, the table’s lid opened up to reveal a nice bit of inside storage, and then telescoped out in two directions to expose three more areas that would be perfect for paintbrushes, sketches, pencils, and all manner of creativeness. For about ten bucks, I carted it home, glued back on a broken handle, and added it to the growing mess of studio furniture. At that point, the studio was comprised of a stack of metal film cabinets that the library was throwing out, and a set of miniature drawers that I found on the side of the road one day, and had very obviously been painted for a little girl’s bedroom. I didn’t change a thing. Give me anything with a lot of little compartments or drawers or sectionalized storage and I’m in heaven.

This year’s first tag sale was near the end of my own street. Unlike the rest, it wasn’t listed in the Pennysaver, which I usually use to plan the weekend’s hunt. Not only was it unlisted, but it bore a sign saying ‘OPEN EVERY DAY 9-4′, which was an unusual (and slightly unnerving) schedule for the typical tag sale, which is sadly relegated to weekends. We arrived at the end of a long dirt road and found an open garage, but no one around to inquire about prices. After about 5 minutes of delicately walking around tables of old Christmas decorations and about two dozen plush Garfields and Grimms, I had a handful of Batman pins and a nesting doll in the likeness of Santa Claus. An old German man emerged from the door adjoining the house to the garage, greeting us.

He seemed as perplexed by his wares as we were, quietly poking through things and explaining to us ‘I don’t don’t vhat the hell ees this’, or grabbing something dusty from a box and trying to charm us with it. He would give me the handful of eight Batman pins for free with a purchase of anything else. He was one of those tag-salesmen that really wants you to buy something, buy somehow, he wasn’t bothering me with his subtle enthusiasm. That’s when we spotted the Game Table.

It’s a short, cubical thing with four drawers, and inside each drawer is a game board for a different game : tic tac toe, chinese checkers, backgammon and chess, cleanly painted into the bottom of the wood. In the case of the chinese checkers, divots were carved for marbles to rest. Baggies of game pieces were there, and the thing was made of a solid, heavy wood. I didn’t know if I’d use it for games (it almost seemed like a travesty not to), but I did know that it had four flat drawers, and I painted a lot of flat things that had nowhere to live.

It’s dangerous when I start imagining purposes for things, because that’s when my judgment disappears and I’ll pay almost any price to give the object of my desire the ability to live out its destiny with me. As far as I was concerned, the game table and I had already grown old together. I’d already carelessly left rings on it from ill-placed cans of Dr. Pepper, and stubbed my toe on it at least three times.

The price, aside from three injured future-toes, was five bucks. After it was hefted out of the driveway and loaded into the car, we realized that this season’s tag sale bar had been set way too high. Where do you go after a game table and a handful of Batman pins?

We’re not too sure, but it’s going to be fun to find out.

Living With Antique Furniture

If an item is older than I am it must be an antique, so if I won’t stick to the strict 100 year rule in calling our house full of stuff, ANTIQUES, you will understand, and most only have a short time before they become OFFICIAL. All our rooms have some “antiques”. We live with them, use them and enjoy the stories they tell us of their past. Some non-believers see no beauty in our “used” items, worshiping only new, but don’t judge them too harshly for once I too looked toward the future and not to the past. So when was my conversion? It could have been when I bought a 6 legged 1900s lamp table for ten cents and sold it for our next month’s rent money, early in our marriage, NO, I didn’t keep that item so it doesn’t count. Well then, there is Valerie’s grandmother’s bed, which she already had when we married. It’s surely a true antique, lasting all these years in great condition. Although in the first few years of our marriage the side rails needed to be reinforced several times.

No, that wasn’t it either, how about the Kitchen Table? That’s it.

Valerie found it at a garage sale, probably made in the 1880’s or 90s of oak, and having a crude slide to insert an extra leaf.

Part of her dowry had been 4 old chairs in need of a table.

Prior to this great find, we had purchased a new table and chairs. Val’s sister was kind enough to buy the set from us, so the “old” table wasn’t a financial burden. But some friends, seeing the old table in place of the new, thought we had it repossessed.
My transformation came when I sat at the old table and rubbed my fingers on the underside, and felt a series of bumps. After some time, curiosity got the best of me and I had to explore further. Pressed into the wood were rings, all equal distance from the edge but randomly spaced along the edges, sometimes overlapping. Instantly I knew what these rings were, remembering my Granny grinding cranberries for Thanksgiving dinner, in a food grinder clamped to her kitchen table.

That table spoke to me of its past life in someone else’s kitchen, with a grinder clamped so tight it left rings in the hard oak top. I Was Hooked.
Other items in the house can tell tales of their past life, but will wait for another time. I can assure you many of the items are being put to good use, but not all are used as originally intended. Details to follow.

Of all the American furniture making traditions, the Shaker style has one of the more interesting histories. Founded by a British Quaker, the Shakers were a religious sect that thrived in the United States from around 1780 until the mid 1800s, and Shaker communities existed well into the 20th century. They lived apart from non-Shakers in self-sufficient farming communities in the Northeast, Ohio and Kentucky and believed in a celibate lifestyle. The furniture they created during this time period is known as one of the first design styles to originate in the United States and since then has influenced furniture styles both here and abroad, particularly in Scandinavia. To this day many furniture companies advertise furniture created “in the Shaker style.”

The difference between Shaker furniture and other types was not so much in the appearance, but in the way the furniture was made. While the Shakers turned out the ladderback chairs and tripod tables that were being made elsewhere in the country, the Shaker furniture was of noticeably better quality and construction. They believed in simple, functional designs without unnecessary decoration and embellishments. They were focused on bettering themselves and the things around them, coming up with unique designs and simple improvements for everything from pens to brooms to dining chairs. For example, one such innovation was a chair tilter, which allowed the seated person to lean back in his or her chair without ruining a wooden floor.

Some of the finer examples of Shaker furniture have found their way into museums and there is even a Shaker Museum & Library, dedicated to preserving Shaker artifacts. The museum is in the process of preserving the Shaker village at Mount Lebanon, NY which was the largest Shaker community in the country.

Learn more about the Shakers: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/shaker/shakerstyle.htm

My mom and dad taught me everything about collecting. Since I spent the holiday weekend with them, I thought why not interview them?

Mom began her own appreciation for the hunt in the mid 1960s. As a kid, I didn’t have much choice in attending sales with her. I remember my sister and I walking with mom and my aunt, going from sale to sale in our neighborhood. The adult women searched for the coveted costume jewelry, while my sister and I spent nickels on kitschy ceramic poodles and other animal figurines.

Dad had not gone along then. In fact, dad claims he never went to yard sales before my mom. You might say, as mom does, that “life began with her”. Dad did, however, know the trill of finding treasure. One of his childhood buddies lived near the city dump at 35th & Lincoln (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), and he remembers the boys liberating a few items that had mistakenly been left to die there. So it wasn’t difficult for mom to get dad into the game. Soon in addition to those weekday walks of the neighborhood Saturday morning car tours of town took place.

Back then mom & dad searched for items to furnish our home. It wasn’t just a practical streak that compelled them to search for used furniture bargains, but a love of design and a flair for the unique. Our home became a mix of old and new, borrowed and blue; always filled with creative and interesting decor. For example, grandpa’s old fishing lures displayed on an old fishing net in the three-season room, and the vintage umbrellas held in an old railroad company’s train commode base.

Not only did they mix and match, but they would take ideas from vintage magazines and recreate them in our modern ranch house. Money saved on thrifty rummage store buys was put to use to purchase ‘used’ stained glass windows or hire an artist to paint tiles with the pattern from a set of dishes. With all this attention to detail my parents taught me all about interior design; long before I new the word ‘eclectic’ I knew the look.

And with every hunting trip I learned valuable lessons. Mom taught me how to clean up items and to take care of them. Dad told me how to figure out not only how old they were, but how they were made — and just what that item meant at the time. Mom taught me how to inspect glassware by running not just my eyes over it but my fingertips as well. You had to do so carefully, so as not get cut (she was a mom first and foremost!), but while your eyes might be fooled into mistaking a chip for a sparkle, your fingers wouldn’t be so easily fooled. Dad taught me to have the confidence to approach strangers, negotiate prices, how and when to walk away from ‘the table’ — even as a child. I learned how to handle money, how to value craftsmanship, how to look at old things with appreciative eyes — or at least creative ones.

But one particular sale changed everything.

It was the early 70s, and at a sale, dad found an old 8 legged library table. It was in need of some TLC, but he couldn’t believe the price written on the masking tape stuck to the table top: 10 cents. Dad asked if that was the price, or if the tag was there for some other item which had been sitting there but sold. The lady said, “If you want to put the work into it, for 10 cents it’s yours.” Mom & dad decided they would, and they did. They cleaned it up, used some left over stain they had at the house, and soon a real-looker of a table emerged. They in turn sold it for a whopping $45 — which may not sound like much, but their rent at that time was $50 a month. That was not only an excellent return on a 10 cent investment, but a profitable endeavor!

This success lead to more buying for the sake of selling. First with yard sales of our own. (I say ‘our’ own because my sister and I participated as well. We got rid of our old toys and unwanted kids’ junk, making more money for ourselves to spend at other people’s yard sales.) Mom and dad did well enough with each sale to continue them for a few years, but by the late 70s mom & dad were no longer content with yard sales. There was more money to be made where there were more people, and so they began selling at flea markets.

Since we lived in Wisconsin, weather dictated the ability to have sales, be they in our yard or at a flea market. Having temporary sales meant less regular money as well as lots of work to both set up and take down a sale, so in 1981 they got their first booth in an antique mall. Happy with the results, they increased the number of booth spaces to five, in four different antique malls. In May of 2000, mom started selling on eBay. All of this was still considered a part-time or hobby business, but in 2001 mom took the plunge and became an antique dealer full time. Mom recently opened her own online store, No Egrets Antiques. From all of this I learned more about the business of being a generalist antiques dealer and that you can make a living doing what you love — if you pay attention to the details.

Through it all mom & dad remain in love with the hunt. If it’s challenging to find rare items, it’s even more so to buy them at ‘wholesale prices’ in order to make a profit at retail. And they still love collecting for their home.

When asked if in their pursuit of antiques and collectibles as dealers they found themselves buying ‘more’ or ‘less’ for themselves, Dad says “More” and Mom says “Less.” But since dad recently put up the additional shelf for the teapots, coffee and cocoa pots; the number of antique sterling mirrors has increased; and mom sure hasn’t stopped collecting vintage costume jewelry; it’s rather clear that dad is right. They buy more.

Next week, the interview continues…

All images copyright No Egrets Antiques.