d.Sharp Journal

Behold - Globes

 One day, as a little psuedo gutter punk Morrissey wannabe teenager, I was sitting downtown with some friends and this man walked through the square holding an enormous globe {as there was a globe store beneath the courtyard} and we all spontaneously serenaded the gentlemen with "He's got the whole world in his hands". The volume of our singing, the fact that we only knew pretty much that line, and the general good looks of our motley bunch perhaps had something to do with his quickened pace. We laughed.... then lit up a clove. Oh, the eighties.

The silver globe is the first one that I bought and is still my favorite. I nabbed it at an estate sale super cheap about 13 years ago. I have only seen one other silver globe since then, on Ebay {but I'm not looking.} Geez, you think I would have dusted it better for the photograph.

One globe was fine for a while, but then like most who collect, they spawned. Here are a few others that I think are neat.

The small tin globe on the left is one of the older ones we have, dating before WW1. One interesting thing about dating globes is finding out what countries existed {that are no longer} or were named during a certain time period. The globe behind it is vintage French. The one on the right is unique because it is all cardboard, even the faux-wood stand. The cardboard piece on the top is used to measure airplane travel.

This globe below is kind of funked out, but I love the cast iron rings that rotate around it - they show, along with the pointer on the base, the solar and lunar cycles according to season and even month of the year.

Behold - Vitalogy

Medical books are a self-diagnosed weakness of mine. This is one of my favorites. It may look familiar, I picked up this 1910 edition at a doctor's estate sale a few years after this came out, whose packaging and booklet was reproduced from a 1920's edition.

Many vintage medical encyclopedias have fold out 'manikins' {as Vitalogy describes them} - these four layers display the brain and neck muscles, the center of the head, the arteries and veins and the principles of Phrenology.

Another manikin, this one a favorite, it keeps opening like a book.

Vitalogy also makes for interesting reading, take this for example:

"Young man, if you want your wife to be as attractive in your sight and as loving toward you after marriage as  before, see to it that you occupy SEPARATE APARTMENTS most of the time."

An illustration demonstrates the physical response from a snake bite. Another warns us of  ' The Greatest Destroyer Of Health, Life And Beauty In The Civilized World ..... The Waist Belt'.

{Oh, how I wish that was the worst of our problems.}

Behold - Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.

I collect quotes, just like I collect a lot of things. And that first line{by Emily Dickinson}, Hope is the thing with feathers, is one of my favorite lines of poetry and this little trophy reminds me of that, without words.

Behold - Not to be my child's Last Supper.

Spend any length of time around my family and chances are you will be told the story of how I , being the delicate and charming two year old that I was, shoved a piece of pea gravel way into the nether regions of my nose. Or how my brother had me eat some foul poison with him, necessitating a trip to the ER for the two of us. As to avoid such drama for my offspring, I am going to put these small religious figures up out of reach of our littlest one, lest we have to explain at the emergency room why our child swallowed some of the apostles.

These little figures are beyond ticky tacky. I bought them a number of years ago and feel compelled to bring them out at Christmas. They were made in Hong Kong, probably as vintage as I am. {that statement is depressing} The box says they are hand-painted. The box itself has seen better days, but it really is the reason I felt I had to plop down the $1.49 at the thrift store. I love the gothic arcade diecut into the box and the column details printed on the face. Each figurine has their special spot with their name, all Hollywood Squares style. Also helpful in case one goes missing.

Behold - Nine lives times one hundred

We spot it and know instantly, it is the perfect Christmas tree. We cut it down and when we take it up to pay for it with the other Noble Fir -  they laugh at us. They thank us and give it to us for free. The tree is a Noble Fir,  it is about 6 feet, and it is a perfect conical shape topiary. A Seussian tree with a slender triangle top and a trunk that is bikini wax bare for the first 5 feet. It is perfect.This is about 12 years ago, in our first house. At that time G. and I had two dogs, a wonderful white mutt, Wiley and an older but exuberant chocolate lab, Solo. Solo would often wag his tail so hard that it would bleed, leaving a spray pattern on the kitchen wainscoting. If he was happy to see you it could be like a policeman's billy club. His tail was dangerous, to him and to others. So when we saw this tree in the clearing we knew it was perfect for the dogs. Yes, we got the dogs their own tree. We put this one in the nook off the kitchen, Solo's tail couldn't clear off any ornaments as it was only hitting the trunk. We went back to that same tree farm for many years, each year looking for a 'dog' tree. That first year we decided to decorate it only with paper and that became part of the tradition as well. The original dog tree had a litter of cats among its branches -  over 100 vintage feline photographs hung by round paper clips.

The stack of black and white photographs at the estate sale were a good two and a half inches thick, well over one hundred photos. $2.00. All of  this dear old couple's cats. Now, I am not much of a cat person, but I couldn't let these photos be tossed. {It was the last day of the sale}I adopted them. I learned that the couple had no children, they had both lived into their eighties. These cats they photographed over the years were everything. A large number of the photos chronicled two decades of Christmases - cats perched in front of holiday cards. My favorite- a series of a cross-eyed Siamese celebrating the New Year with a bottle of old cat nip. We had so many of these holiday cat photos that the following year we mounted them with photo corners and sent them out as Christmas cards to our friends. Many other photographs had product shots - like Still Life of Kittens With Canned Beef. What is interesting is how few of them are candid. More of my favorites here.

As for the dogs? Well, they heeded the season's call for 'goodwill to all' and didn't even brag that they had effortlessly treed so many cats.

Behold - The Model Patient

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." - President George W. Bush
Preaching to the choir,  Mr. President. And what of those doctors still in practice? Clearly, times must be tough for them too - the box for this vintage plastic model has been stabbed, scribbled, and oddly, has a liquor list  scratched upon it. Can you just imagine the doctor pulling this out of his/her pocket at the liquor store?

Yes, it is strange, but I like this thing. I got it on Ebay cheap a few years ago - the only bidder, go figure. It looks like it is from the  60's  and pretty crudely made. The pregnant belly comes off and many little parts are removable including the baby. She lays perfectly still on a black plastic table. A model patient.

Behold - Mr. Bones

Happy Halloween!

Hope you have a great holiday.

This guy is made of a weird almost foam/composition material. He is from late 40's and is one of my favorite items of our small collection of Halloween things. I paid under ten for him at an estate sale. He is pretty fragile so I created the coffin shaped board which I covered with marbled endpaper from a decimated antique book and wired him to it. He likes me for that.

Behold - the devil

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I got that once in my fortune cookie and I have to tell you I felt really ripped off. What, exactly, is that trying to tell me? Does that mean I should have bad intentions? 

This is a snuff bottle, do you see the dramatic juxtaposition of good and evil, the hand-painted devil atop the snuff spoon and the teensy angel head with wings in the sterling filigree? The Victorians perfected that vice/virtue shtick.
He now lives among my husband's hot sauce collection and a few other devil things in kitchen cabinet purgatory. Serves him right.

Behold - I like to do a little vaccuuming now and then

Small things are cute, this is a universal law of sorts. These dollhouse pieces are really cute because they are small, when they are normal size - not so much. They came from my mother-in-law's childhood dollhouse, so technically they aren't 'finds', but they are favorites and vintage so two out of three is close enough, right?

Behold - Paris

This wee little photo souvenir album was picked up at an estate sale here in Portland maybe 9 years ago.

It has a velveteen cover with brass Eiffel tower, sweet little marbled end papers and is full of little photos of all the famous Parisian landmarks. It is a humble little thing, it was $8. Really, a small price to pay as a reminder. A reminder of the two trips I took with my mother - finally finding the Pompidou, being so happy and grateful to see the city and share it with my mom, being frustrated with my mom {sorry}, getting stuck in the Metro turnstile because the rolling suitcase I bought and filled to bursting at the flea market was too heavy to lift, the Orsay and  Courbet, asking vendors at the flea market to enter the price of an item on our calculator {language barrier} and the sweet old man who waved his arm with a baroque flourish before each number, his laugh when I copied him with my counter offer, and the scruffy chien that nearly nibbled our sandwich.

And that is not all - I am also reminded of the first leg of my honeymoon, a lovely, heady week in Paris with my husband. Stopping at the flower stand our first errand, the colors of St. Chapelle, our tiny hotel room, climbing any monument that had stairs, making G. ask for slightly embarrassing items in the pharmacy because he knows some French, the Latin quarter, feeling saturated with inspiration, G. going out and bringing me coffee every morning, hitting the mother-lode at the flea markets then sending it all home as unsolicited "gifts" to people, watching an American movie {with characters speaking in a Cockney accent} dubbed in French with English subtitles, Nutella crepes, the hotel lobby that looked like Van Gogh's sunflowers had melted on every surface, giggling when G. snapped a photo of a man checking out my backside on the top of the Arc de Triomphe.  Reverie that takes off 11 years [cough} and sheds 25 pounds of upholstery {cough, cough}. Not bad for $8.