S ~ Shelves
Shelves overflowing with Bric-à-brac
I wonder how many items above you owned or used? The ceiling light shades bring back memories from my childhood and we had one of those old glass washboards, it came from my paternal grandmother’s home in County Clare.
Glass Cabinet, sometimes called a China Cabinet
I remember visiting homes where bric-à-brac had a place of honour on mantelpieces, cluttered tables, and shelves, or was displayed in cabinets with glass doors to display the items within while protecting them from dust.
Shelves filled with oddments of willow pattern crockery
Willow pattern tea sets with large breakfast cups were in everyday use in my other granny’s kitchen.
“Bric-à-brac” nowadays refers to a selection of items of modest value, often sold in street markets or shops like the one above.
I’ve often wondered what your home looked like, GM. The photos show it to be just a bit cluttered. How long does it take you to dust?
Nance, good to have you back on board. Compared to this…. my house is an empty canvas!
The last time we went into shops like this, we were looking for a table. At the second — or was it third? — place we found an nice sturdy old table for about $100. After we got it home, I cut about 3 inches off each leg — an inch too much, it turned out. So we went to the home improvement store, bought some sturdy little wheels, which I attached to the legs. Just right!
Karen had bought a “new” sewing machine and needed a table for it.
http://karensquilting.com/blog/2013/04/table-for-juki-and-quilting/
Great idea to add castors to the table. It makes it easier to move about from room to room if needed. That is SOME machine Karen has, am I allowed a little green eyed moment?
I found this place in a very small village returned to sleep after a motorway took the heavy traffic away. They had a coffee shop at one end of the building and once inside I discovered this Aladdin’s Cave!
It’s Juki. She had been looking at them for some time, A friend had one that she just used for piecing quilts, but she was looking to cut back on the number of sewing machines she has. She sold the Juki to Karen and that was the second machine (or third?) machine she sold recently — now she’s down to just 9 sewing machines, including a monster long-arm quilting machine that hardly gets any use. (I don’t think they have anything put away for retirement — they’re always buying new “toys.”)
The castors are good for use in the room too. When Karen uses it for machine quilting, she pulls it away from the wall and sets up a portable table next to it to support the quilt so that the area she’s working on can be fed straight with out being pulled or restrained by the weight of the quilt. She doesn’t do much machine quilting, though. She just finished one and says it was more like work than a pleasant pastime.
I’ll wipe the green off my eyes, I have patience in abundance for fiddly projects, but large quilts are not for me. My arms would not hack it anymore.
I am so glad that those photos are NOT my house. We used to have far more bric-a-brac than these days . . . but we still have room to continue paring down.
I love wandering stalls like these though. Thanks for the share.
I couldn’t live with all that around me, but I like to look, I see things that remind me of people and stories from the past.
This reminds me of the kind of place my wife will not let me drive past. I’ve taken to distracting her when I see one in the distance.
Meanie! 😛
At first I thought this was your home, GM and sez I to myself: does Elly know about this? Where does Elly fit when she comes to visit the ma?
Phew….glad you enlightened us all…… 😀
I recognise so much stuff here. I could spend all day in a junk shop.
XO
WWW
I hardly fitted into those little rooms, Elly would never have a hope and George would need to go in on bended knee as the ceilings were so low. There were so many items that I had seen down the years, and thought they might jog a few memories.
I have an somewhat older male friend that was always a pleasure to shop for at gift-giving time until around two years ago when he declared there was no more room in his tiny pensioners unit for anymore BRIC’A’BRAC and it nearly kills me each year to get him something else…apparently even no more room on walls either!
I used to love finding treasures that would need dusting, not that in the end he ever did, saying the dust added more character. I would pour through such shops until I found something that would suit his “hobbies” usually in the fishing/sea line and then feel virtuous when I wrapped it in swathes of tissue and nice paper 🙂 sometimes the shop would find me box ….
These days I prefer time to another dust collector or cut flowers. The flowers die, the bric-à-brac seldom has a use, but a chat over coffee or lunch warms the heart and leaves me with good memories to recall at a later time.
I love the lanterns. I collected them for years, but now they are dust catchers. My daughter owns a complete willow pattern set. I don’t know if they are mfg. anymore. Dianne
Dianne, I found a link here for Churchill Blue Willow:
http://www.louispotts.com/acatalog/churchill-blue-willow.html?gclid=CNDZ19qJjLgCFWzItAod22gADA
I would have bought the silverware. Interesting things, to be sure.
That box of cutlery is incomplete with several items missing.