#vintage decorating

[therecipelibrary]

Vintage Decorating Advice

-The Successful Housekeeper 1882

[becbecandherlife]

Inspiration comes and you can’t wait to go searching in flea markets and antique stores to recreate such a beautiful space for yourself. For me!!!

📸 miss mustard seed @IG

[thegroovyarchives]

Colorful Felt Christmas Decorations From the December, 1969 issue of Women’s Day magazine (via: ittybittybirdy)

[setdeco]

MARTHE DE FLORIAN’s Time capsule Apartment was locked up for 70 years, Paris, France, 1939-2010

[bellapinquecottage]

Cottage Comfort

[danismm]

Ad from the 1950's for paper, and home decorating, interior design 

[becbecandherlife]

The problem with being an artist is that you must surround yourself with beautiful object de art. Clearly~ il fait accompli. Now the time has come to let this too big for one person house go. Downsizing is not for the faint of heart. So many years of antiquing and Saturdays spent at flea markets , estate sales and vintage shops and I have the haul to prove it. Early on I was introduced to yard sales when just a teenager, my stepmom dragged me out of bed at 6 to have breakfast together and begin The Hunt. She taught me well.

I developed a love for mix-matched China, linens, old bottles, antique and vintage books, bibles, handkerchiefs, China teacups and saucers, pillowcases, baskets. Oddly enough, I love antique photos of folks that were left abandoned and unclaimed by family and so I adopted them. The problem with this is they are mixed with authentic vintage photography of my ancestors and so I must label them.

Another problem with being a collector of beautiful object de art is that those close to you learn what you love and start adding to your collection as well at birthdays, Christmas, random “just because” gifts that I get a lot because my aunts and cousins love antiquing as much as I do and when they hand me a box or a bag the next thing they say is, lI saw it and knew it was you and had to get it for you”. And they are almost always right.

How do you get rid of years of collecting without the guilt? I told my daughters as they have helped me through this purging season that if they see in a pile a gift they’ve given me know that it was lived but I have to draw the line somewhere otherwise those two girls will be sitting in my living room after my funeral cluelessly foraging through stuff with no idea what to do with it. I have such a vivid memory of my mother and aunts doing that very thing...at Grandma’s making piles, keeping literally nothing and throwing away really good stuff. In I walk exclaiming ,”Why are y’all throwing away Grandma’s hat collection and her aprons and her tablecloths? “

Of course I saw only one course of action, rescue that stuff from the piles and carry it all home with me. I’ve cared for it for 40 years. The hat collection is now over a hundred years old, her aprons handmade and tattered, her threadbare quilt a treasure as is her faded baby blue linen tablecloth(many a leftover after Sunday dinner after church was covered with that tablecloth waiting for the evening meal. And not once did anyone get salmonella.

As a little girl I would venture into my grandma’s chifferobe and plunder, looking through all of her treasure. She had an antique wardrobe in this tiny room off her bedroom that held her hats, gloves and scarves. I would learn as an adult that room was actually supposed to be the master bath but back then one bath was the norm. And she crammed her dresser and wardrobe into this little space that to me was like a lair, the enchanted wardrobe cohere I could leave my real world filled with arguing parents and fighting brothers just to find peace and quiet there in that safe place, alone with her wardrobe , her chest of drawers (chesterdraws) and I would ramble through her stuff for hours, unnoticed unaccounted for, all by myself and my imagination. The wardrobe had a mirror so in order to see myself with the Hat on, I’d have to climb up on a dresser, like an acrobat just to catch a glimpse of me with this black velvet hat on.

I think I have kept these hats all these years for that sweet little girl who spent hours alone wishing and dreaming in of another life, another world. I just don’t know if I can part with them for fear of losing with them a little piece of myself.

It’s just stuff they say. Not to a poor girl in the South. To me that stuff has a story with each item and a dream.