Antiques for Weekend Street/Reflections

After our visit to the glass museum at Limmared last Saturday, we also went for a little stroll to have a peek in the windows of some antiques/second hand shops nearby. We kept strictly to "window shopping" and did not really step inside any of them... But when looking at some of my photos afterwards, it's a challenge in itself to sort out what's supposed to be inside vs outside!! :)

 

With this one it may even be hard to guess what that "thing" is supposed to be in the foreground... It's actually an old "double-sided" rocking horse (with the seat in the middle).

 These animals are easier to identify, but I have no idea where or when they were made.

 One  or two shops had put some big stuff out on the street as well - like rusty coat hanger stands...

 Linking to Weekend Street/Reflections

 

Old Books & Things

Last weekend (as previously mentioned) my brother and I spent some time at The House going through books. Among them were quite a few (four big boxes full!) on local history, which we took to a second-hand bookshop on Monday. It’s the only shop of its kind in town, and with local history as special interest. As far as I know the owner (an old age pensioner himself) has a good reputation. We left the books with him and he phoned me back two days later with his evaluation and I went and collected the money on Thursday. We did not make a fortune but I assume he gave us a fair deal based on his experience. And perhaps more importantly, being sold through the antiquarian bookshop, these books are more likely to end up being bought (and perhaps even read !) by people who know how to appreciate them and might even have been looking specifically for them.

Unfortunately, some books of other kind, in spite of venerable old age, are not considered to be of any monetary value. After thinking about it for a long time now, I ended up taking home one of those, not because of the content of book itself (I’m pretty sure I will never find neither the time nor the energy – nor, to be honest, the proper inspiration! – to read more than snippets from it) but because my great-grandfather used it as “Family Bible” and made notes in it of the birthdays of all of his (11) children. (It’s not a Bible but a collection of sermons by Martin Luther.)

See more photos and read more about this book in my Greetings from the Past post for this week’s Sepia Saturday.

  

Coincidentally, last weekend Ginny had a post on how to use books as furniture… Having scratched my head about where on earth to keep this giant old book (my bookshelves are really full!), I decided to put it “on display”, but discreetly, in a corner next to my grandmother’s old treasure chest (in which I also keep various family history-related stuff), and underneath an old basked that also belonged to her. That basket I took home 20 years ago (or more). Parts of it were miscoloured so I painted the handle and the trimmings and the bottom inside. But the flowers on the sides are the original decorations and probably there when the basket was bought – whenever that was. 

Weekend Reflections: Mirror, Mirror on the Street

For Weekend Reflections
Guess who went out Christmas shopping today?

This year’s ice sculpture – created only one week ago – got a very short life. Good thing I was able to take a picture of it last Sunday (and also of the artist at work on Saturday). Today’s morning paper reported it melted and collapsed already!

The artist takes it with a shrug though. An ice sculpture is not meant to last forever and it’s part of the excitement that you never know how long it will keep or what the weather will do to it.

Today, in the place where the sculpture stood last week, they had put up a lot of things for an auction.

I did not stay for the auction but I did have a look around.

Traditional Yule goat made by straw.
My parents had one like that but with shorter legs.

 

Maybe I should have stayed. Not to buy, but to see what people might be willing to pay for this kind of stuff. Considering that I/we (my brother and I) have a whole house full various articles of similar kind. What I really don’t need though is to get carried away by the general generous Christmas spirit and start bidding on someone else’s old cookie tins… ;)