Flea Market Treasures

Foreground: groovy black and white Royal Copley Vases. Background: Dyan packing her loot for mailing back to Georgia.

After a Saturday night in which Mr. Man Friend took us out for Mexican food (we'd forgotten until we walked into the restaurant that it was actually Cinco De Mayo) and some rather larger than advisable margaritas, we were ready for a good night's rest. On Sunday, Dyan and I had almost as much fun sorting and bragging about our loot as we did conquering the flea market. I think it's how the Vikings must have felt, only with mid-century ceramics rather than gold coins (though we could have had a few of those at this flea market too.)

Ceramics was most of our haul. You'll remember the big ol' tables of Royal Copley mentioned in the previous flea market post:

It pretty well stopped us dead in our tracks! Then we saw the "1/2 Off" sign....and we were slaves to the bargain. Dyan has been collecting black and white colored pottery ceramics for awhile--ironstone, art pottery, things like that. So it only seemed natural she would come home with the pair above, at the top of the blog post.

I like green, and was looking for planters to populate a screen porch yet to be renovated. So I found this, for $10:

 And these. I love the tawny and green-y stripes on the one on the left. These were $3 each:

 Dyan picked up this pair of sweet little bird planters, $14 for the yellow and $3 for the rose/brown one (he has a little chip on the tip of his beak you can see in the photo):

 

I also came home with this speckle vase as an "inspiration" piece for my main floor bathroom, the direction I'd like it to go. It's going to be used to round up toothpaste tubes and toothbrush clutter in the meantime. $5: 

Another flea market seller unloaded tons of estate sale box lots onto tables with a sign that said "any item, $1." I have to admit it was pretty nasty going. They were full of mildew, rat poop, dirty glassware with sludge in the bottom. Yuck. But here's what we found:

The photo below is a big ol' holla to Eartha Kitsch, who has a sort of can't-look-away-from-the-train-wreck obsession with panty-hose crafts. This one is especially just for her. I would have brought it home, but I didn't want those beady little eyes looking at me from the back of the van. I think Eartha'll understand.

I woulda let 'em out, but then they might populate the planet.

More heartbreaking than funny were boxes and boxes of old 45s and 78s, some of them valuable, from Decca, Del Fi, Sun, Atlantic, Columbia, Vox, you name it. More than I could carry away, and I knew some collector would be wobbly-kneed with emotion over them. I hope they were rescued. I felt terrible about it:

Who lets this happen to Carmen Cavallaro?

I did find these, still in the same state I found them in. They stink worse than a pig farm. Still, nice tiki touch for the screen porch renovation. They just need a good stiff cleaning. $2!

The plan for the basement retro rec room is tourist kitsch, and I picked up these state/city souvenir plates for $1 each. My sister picked up the Arkansas coaster set for $1.

Also fished up out of the bottom of the nasty, nasty estate boxes for $1 was this cute little stinker:

Out of the sun and away from the bargain bins, buildings sheltered the nicer collections and things like jewelry. My sister found some milk glass goodies like the Art Deco spice containers below:

And a beautiful Westmoreland piece that I wish I had managed a better photo of (if you haven't gathered by now, my sister has a bird thing going on):

And....I'm still not done with show and tell! I've got a few more things to prance around in front of blog readers, but I decided they really needed to be cleaned and spiffed up before I could show 'em off. With those items I'll do a wrap up and review of our flea market trip, and let you in on the location. Keep coming back. There's more!