Vintage tiles - the photos and the reality!

Two beautiful kitchens in the March and April Homes and Antiques Magazines have featured vintage or antique tiles. I've always fancied tiles like this, and Ben is currently looking for some tiles, so when I saw vintage tiles for sale locally, I moved fast:

I bought this pretty flower tile, and two other blue and white ones, for 10€ the lot.

The vendor was on the 'For Sale, Swap, Wanted and Giveaway in Toulouse' Facebook page - she sells items to raise money for a local cat charity. I've bought and sold plenty of things (bunkbeds, books and bikes, for example) on this wonderful English-language page since it was set up a year ago, but this is the first time I have found vintage items.

Here are the magazine pages with some beautiful ideas...

I shall have to keep shopping!

PS The sunshine and blooms were yesterday. Today, everything has been covered in snow!

Brocante - the finds

I've loved reading your comments on my brocante post yesterday!If you'd been there with me, my brocanteuse could have sold a rocking cot, a water pump, garden tables and chairs, bed ends a couple of times over and that red shutter. In fact, Sarah's suggestion, that: "The shutter would be hung on a wall by the bed like a picture. A pretty quilt on the bed. Roses on the bedside table..." nearly had me rushing back and snapping it up!
But I resisted the big stuff (good thing too, now we've had the garage bill...) and instead picked up more vintage china:

It's the pink polka-dots that are new, but I couldn't resist a photo of them on last month's blue stencilled roses. And the red plates, above (seven of them, 1€ each) have already been put into good use for Son 1's courgette and feta fritters. He is a Hairy Bikers-obsessed cook this summer! I'm building up a really nice mixed collection of French stencilled china this year. Last year it was just stuff I saw in magazines, but now I'm finding it myself. It's mainly from the '50s and therefore still in good condition, and dishwasher safe...

The rest has gone into my blog shop. (With a few sighs, I have to tell you, especially for the little lotus tin, above.)Pop over if you want to see what I found in that pastilles tin!Sweet...And oh, so French.

Brocante in Big Sky Country

I needed an antedote to a week and a half's work on shutters - even thought it went along with fantastic family meals prepared straight from the garden, I was needing a bit of a change today! So two hours ago I drove off into le Gers, which I always think of as my own Big Sky Country...
I was following this sign, which I'd spotted on our local roundabout last week...I do prefer the prices and the wonderful open-air nature of Vide Greniers, but a braderie at a brocante (a closing down sale at an antique shop) really did draw me in!I've been to this brocante before, when we had a rental house not too far from it on our arrival in France. I found the prices of the big stuff quite overwhelming, and didn't yet have my eye in for the small things I've come to cherish and collect over the intervening years.
But it's worth showing you some photos of the 'big stuff', which the brocanteuse had put outside (in the frequent showers). It's worth a gawp - go on, what catches your eye?
Would you snap up those bed ends? I would, given the right circumstances...
And they'd clearly been serving coffee on their antique garden tables - what a nice idea.
Look, shutters! But not at all like ours - more on those to follow (when we actually get them finished).
So, go on, what would you have bought? This is what I picked up - I'll clean it all up and show you tomorrow!
The big sky was wonderful after a week staring at woodwork. The sunflowers in the fields (grown for oil) were also wonderfully cheering.
I was delighted to spot a little patch of 'volunteers' by the edge of an empty field. These self-seeded sunflowers will never be harvested, so I think they're fair game!
They do look cheerful in the house on a gloomy day!

Brockin' all over the world...

No, of course I haven't been brocante shopping all over , but who can resist such a cheering pun? OK, the French couldn't (they are masters of word play) and neither could I... apologies if you have higher tastes in either music or humour!

However, I have picked up some lovely things both in Brittany and back here near Toulouse, so it would be perfectly accurate to call it 'Brockin' in two diverse regions of France', if you want to be pedantic.

Firstly, when I went to visit elizabethd, she very, very sweetly gave me not only this pretty set of fat quarters (they are featured behind my giveaway items) but also bits and bobs of embroidery, lace and buttons from her collection, including some initialled napkins! This is only a little selection of what she gave me... Thanks so much!
At a brocante market in Auray I discovered the truth in what elizabethd has always said - broc in Brittany is priced high for the tourists! It did make me re-think what prices I am willing to pay down here though - the prices I sniff at for embroidered French linens would look very good up north! I did however buy some ephemera, including some vintage papery bits and bobs from my giveaway, and these buttons:
Once home, I set off for my before school timetableing meeting with a little time to spare, and popped into Vetirelais. 'How much for this tea set?', I demanded, not noticing that it can't be a tea set as one container has a lid and the other has a spout, but nothing is teapot shaped.
The price was good - very good. And the china was paper thin - terrifying to pick up!
It's Limoges! Michaela has noticed that my flowery collection is 'Limoge-style', but actually, it's quite chunky, and I feel safer with it that way! The real thing is porcelain and I am going to sell it on, as I don't dare keep it in the house...
The charity shop had no paper for wrapping, so it came home in a smelly onion box wrapped in this lovely sailing boat fabric. The fabric will go very well in my red, white and blue scheme for autumn, once I've washed it very thoroughly!
Chanel seems at home as I unwrap everything...
In the second charity shop, when the meeting was over, I discovered a button drawer for the first time! What a haul..!
Now, if you like France or brocante, please remember to enter my giveaway (click the button at the top of my blog). It's full of old and modern school goodies, for la Rentreé.
Sarah at Red Gingham is also having a giveaway - click her button just below mine to enter that one!
And Denise in the UK is also giving away some lovely stuff, as well as having a very charming swap. Please click her button to see what's going on chez elle...

Tomorrow, I have more to say on my Rentrée resolutions, assuming I have enough time after the Forum des Associations...

Definitions

Clare of Summerfete asked, the other day, about the meaning of my blog name. It's a good question! Here are some definitions, both from the dictionary, and in terms of what the name means to me.
troc: nom masculin - barter, exchange, swappingSo that's the dictionary definition: 'troc' means swapping or bartering. As you can see above, in modern France it's becoming the word to describe second hand shops - 'deposit... we sell' proclaims one of our favourite winter shopping grounds. I bought Raja's kennel there - you can see it in my first picture.
In the summer, however, most of the second hand shopping goes on out of doors, in the Vide Greniers ('Empty Attics') which are held in each town in turn.
All year round we visit the Charity Shops, which are fewer in number but larger than those in Britian; the Braderies, (below) like over-organised jumble sales, tend to run in spring and autumn to help people offload/stock up on seasonal clothes.
So, in my mind, if not quite in the dictionary, all of these second hand outlets come under the definition of 'troc'. I bought my cake stand in the troc shop near work.
Broc' is a step up from troc!brocante: nom feminin - dealing in antiques, antiques
Vide Greniers often have great brocante stalls - the line between Vide Greniers and Flea Markets is unclear at times, although I think prices might be better at VGs.Some brocante is really over-priced, in my opinion. However, ephemera seems to be undervalued so I buy it up whenever I can!
Who could resist these little mementoes of past lives?
I sent two of these to Sarah in New Zealand!
Sometime I can afford other broc too.
And now to our last definition...
récupérer: verbe - to recover, to make up, to salvage
Récup' has a great history in France - the painting above by Juan Gris (1913) uses 'printed bar room ephemera including labels, packaging and advertising leaflets', which 'were the trademark ingredients of of the Parisian Cubist's collages', or so the book below tells me.
This is the 'Make Do and Mend' side of troc and broc!
Most of my recuperations tend to be fabric-based, like the mended basket above, or this battered trunk recovered in denim from an old skirt.
I like to up-cycle clothes too, as the phrase goes! You can see that récup' is what we variously call recycling, upcycling, repurposing etc... It's fun, cheap and environmentally friendly - what's not to like?
I was brave enough to récup' something non-fabric-based this week, thanks to the inspiration of Sarah from A Beach Cottage. Feeling a lot like her, but less Aussie, I found these battered old shelves by the side of the road a few months ago and brought them home. They were hideously stained, but after a wash of white (very Sarah) and two washes of blue (very Floss) I think they look fun for holding some house plants that desperately needed some summer fresh air on our covered terrace.
So that is it: troc, second hand trading; broc, low-grade antiques and récup', repurposing. Thrifty, vintage, fun and environmentally friendly!