Spritzdekor at the Vide Grenier

It's not often that you find a title on this blog in German, is it?

However, our local 'meduim-sized' Vide Grenier was on today, and I had a wonderful time there, including in my haul a piece of genuine Spritzdekor - can you work out which one it is?

The standard French plates I collect are stencilled, and in fact really they fit in with the description of Spritzdekor (which means sprayed stencil-ware, made between the wars). However, the Spritzdekor that I've seen in magazines always has a very modernistic quality to it, which means that, marvelous though they are, these boat plates aren't the real thing.

This, however, IS the real thing, and grubby though it looked on the stall, I had high hopes that it would be a nice little collector's piece once it went through the dishwasher.

And indeed it is as sparkly as any of the cake plates featured in this Martha Stewart Living article (thanks to my friend B for some copies of MSL a few year ago!) Apparantly they sell in America for about 25 dollars so they aren't really valuable, but I still think 50c for a slightly chipped one is very good! I won't use it for cakes - I think it will be just right as a coffee pot stand when I don't want the table cloth to get marked or dripped on.

These kitchen canisters are very much run-of-the-mill round here, but they still make a lovely collection, with or without their lids. I saw one in Homes and Antiques (perhaps, or maybe another magazine...) without its lid, holding cutlery, and I realised it was time to stop worrying if some of the canisters no longer have lids. After all, there's more than one use for a pretty canister:

In addition, I found a useful vintage zinc colander, to replace the nasty, peeling copy of a vintage one that I bought new a few years ago. There was also this charming little wooden measure.

I really love that.

On the washing line, and therefore not featuring in my kitchen-table photo shoot, is a lace stole. The woman I bought it from told me it's 1920s, and it's going to look great over a strappy/strapless dress on summer evenings. I can envisage it being worn a lot here in the next few months!

Town Vide Grenier

Hello there - long time no blogging! Thanks to those who checked I was OK (thanks Kezzie) - yes, I've been fine, but blogging really takes a back seat when you work and parent full-time! But today I'm happy to share with you some fairly restrained shopping brought back from the local Vide Grenier. I found this charming, and very space-saving vintage camping stool for 50c on one of the first stalls. Ben is very impressed by its folding design. I like the fabric best! I then spent 3€ on the match holder. It should sit beside our fire (newly cleaned out) and I especially love the lettering.

Marie-Antoinette and the Midden

In the middle of our town there is a church. Next to the church there is an old school. Next to the old school there is a play centre. Next to the play centre there is a car park. And in the car park there is a hole.

 

Holes in the ground may be a nuisance to some, but to an archaeology-lover they are a magnet! I know that before the old school (1900s) and play centre (1920s) were built, this area was the livestock market. Son 2 studied photos of it in school, looking at how life has changed since the days when farmers drove their cattle and geese into our town for sale down the hill from the church.

Ben and I were passing the other weekend and decided that the ‘stuff’ piled up next to the hole was just too interesting to ignore. We spotted a huge ox shoulder-blade and many other bones, indicating that meat as well as livestock was sold around here.

 

There’s so much ‘stuff’ in the hole – in layers as you can see – that it’s clear that the area was covered with rubbish at some point, probably to form a base before the car park surface was laid.

It’s hard to pin down exactly when the layers were formed, but we seem to have a ‘pre-school’ market layer, and a ‘post-school’ layer of 1950s and 1960s bits and bobs which probably just pre-date the car park.

You might feel that rubbish from within living memory is, well, just, rubbish, but it’s from a very desirably ‘retro’ period and tells more about life in our town in those days than finding the same things on a Vide Grenier stall, so I rather enjoyed peering through the fences and picking out a few things from the spoil heap.

Well-washed, they look rather special around the house.

Four little bottles, glittering, iridescent and impossible to capture in a photo.

 

And Marie-Antoinette, a Limoges ‘cameo’ – a very popular and inexpensive form of jewellery from the 1950s and ’60s - although I can’t find a photo of this specific cameo on the net, there are many, many others for sale, some of them in the little bronze setting which has corroded around this fragment. I bet someone was upset when this broke – maybe she still lives in our town! Wouldn’t she be amazed that her treasure has resurfaced after all these years?

Countryside images

Our mantelpiece is rather calm at the moment (for me) but it seems to draw people to study the various images...

I asked Son 2 the other day: "Are you OK? Are you LISTENING to me?" (classic mother question...) He replied vaguely: "Yes, but I'm just looking at those badgers..."

Well yes, I think they are worth gazing at too! They're from an English book of nature through the months.

This French dressing-table mirror is my latest find, from the charity shop. It's sitting with a few other favourite French discoveries.

The little jug is also a September find - it has cows in a field on it. I guess I've grouped together various countryside scenes, French and English, and am rather pleased with the results. The large feather in the jug comes from a Spanish bird - Son 1 picked it up in the Picos de Europa last month.

Hmm, a peaceful, countryside display. Just what we need for la rentrée!

Nearly a Nest Egg...

Continuing an Eastery theme, I have learned a bit more about the table service I picked up in a charity shop for the huge sum of 40€!

As you can see, this set with stencilled/hand painted hens, chicks and cockerels is quite large - it must have originally been a 12-place setting, with several sizes of lidded bowls, serving plates and fruit/cake stands on pedestals. A few are actually cracked. The platter has been used and used and used again. There are chips on one or two items. But the rest is in super condition, and we are now using the plates every day.

I turned the plates over one evening and started Googling the text on the base of each item. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly easy given the curly-wurly writing, and the first thing I had to do was type in 'faience', which is the name for this kind of pottery. A great list of the faience manufacturers of France pointed me in the direction of Sarreguemines, which is apparantly what that stencilled writing says! It's one of those towns that kept switching between Germany and France in the nineteenth century, and remember that date, folks, because that's when this pottery mark was used!

I was pretty certain that the pottery must date from the 1930s-1950s, because nearly everything I buy does, and the design certainly isn't 'Victorian' to my mind - too simple and even faintly modern, I'd have thought. But I guess that it was based on the lovely hand-painted pottery of rural France (from Quimper in Brittany to Martres-Toulouse down here), and that its simplicity doesn't imply a recent date.

I called Ben to see the results of my research, and we began to get a bit worried, because what if I'd accidentally bought something that is too good to use and to put through the dishwasher?

Our final conculsion is that, although the set must add up to being worth quite a bit (a lidded bowl like the one above, whose lid I've put on the shelf above, could be worth about 90€), if we're careful with the big pieces, never use the cracked ones, and stack the plates carefully in the dishwasher, then I just happen to have bought us the best quality but also most useable table service that we will ever own!

It goes well with the other handpainted, Denby or Portmerion pottery that we have collected over the years, and we have ourselves a collection!

A little red hen... or 20!

Spot the difference?

On the right, Rosie the French hen. On the left, the only cracked plate from a large service which I found in the charity shop for 40€ today!

40€ is an awful lot for me to spend, but see the hand-painting on the large cockerel serving bowl, and note how he's different to his red hen, above. Some of the other serving plates, platters, bowls and soup dishes have chicks on them too!

I'm going to pack away a lot of my other vintage plates and bowls, and go all-out for this vintage French chicken theme for a while... and my 40€ expenditure was quickly vindicated when I heard an antique dealer excitedly asking to buy the service, which was already half-wrapped! Yippee - I got there before the brocante dealer, for once!

Roses, enamel, lace, and a lesson in French living

I had a wonderful Sunday morning. I went to church alone (which I have to admit it, is sometimes easier than taking teenaged boys along...) and then visited the all-year Vide Grenier at Frouzins on the way home. It was as though the stall-holders had planned it all specially for my first Vide Grenier of the year!

I bought three stencilled bowls/plates for our eclectic collection - the theme of our 'set' is red, white and/or blue 1950s stencil-ware, with a bit of an emphasis on roses. I have to admit it's more to my taste than to the boys'! Ben seems to put up with it very generously... but don't you think these additions are wonderful?

Then there was yet another of the fantastic little lunch tins - this one is tiny, and I'd like to know what the working French man of the 1930s expected to fit into it! Perhaps it was for a child to take a gouter (snack) rather than for a grown man's lunch? The fabric box (to join my alarmingly large collection) has a beautiful paper lining, unfortunately rather torn, and will need a bit of a clean-up on the lid - I found some good dry-cleaning powder for doing this a while back, and will give it a go some time this week. Then I think I may re-arrange my collection - hurray for less work during the second week of the holidays!

The lace is handmade bobin lace, rather like English Honiton - I shall have to look it up in my lace bible, because it's clearly a French lace which influenced the Devon lace industry. And the beautiful picture of the fruit stand is one of many, many cards which I bought for a total of 7€ (a big spend for me).

The beautiful pictures are children's flash cards! And if you don't know what a fruit stand is in French, here's your answer:

For your next vocabulary test, what is a cooker in French?

You guessed it!

I personally always forget the word for bib. I don't have much call for it these days...

But here it is:

And here's a skimmer... I do love vintage kitchenalia.

In French it's an...

And I bet you know what this is:

And, if you've got the vintage French vibe going now, I bet you realised it was going to look like this:

The whole set is a beautiful illustration of French living in the mid, or even slightly earlier, 20th century. I really am enamoured of these cards, and I think I'm going to use them as a kind of bunting on our balcony. Watch this space...

An update and a dotty bowl!

Thanks for your kind thoughts and prayers - Son 1's rash and fever are still a bit of a mystery, but both have reduced under the onslaught of medication that our doctor prescribed last night.

The very good news is that the blood test passed this morning with only mimimal panic and teenaged-grumbling, which given his state last night is a real relief! And the even better news is that the results indicate that his operation wounds, which a just a little infected, are not causing any trouble to his general health, so that there is no fear that the rash indicates something serious related to the operation. Therefore the mystery remains, but we have antibiotics now to add the the medical attack if his temperature goes up again, and there's no real fear for his health.

In fact, Son 1 was cynical about the whole 'being ill' thing, and spent some time in the hen run observing the spring-crazy hens. We decided to take Raja the cocker spaniel to our local safari park, where she is allowed to watch the animals from the enclosed car - Son 1 talks to her as though she is a small child, and she whines and barks. It's an odd way to spend an afternoon, but it seems to satisfy the invalid! We had a quick drive-past the troc shop on the way home, eyed up some interesting possiblilties, discussed Son 1's tastes (he likes glass and dark wood, so I told him to start buying while it's still unfashionable!) and I just happened to buy this cute dotty chocolate bowl for my collection...

Have a great weekend, friends!

The Thrill of What You Already Have - May

We've all been slightly suspicious of the azure-blue 'sea' in this month's picture of  the Clyde holiday resort, Dunoon.

Those who have been there deny that it ever looks like this:

But the inspiration is fantastic - I knew I had something with that incredible glossy blue, and it took me a while to work out what it was. That's the excitement of  this challenge, I think - the pictures trigger something, and it may take a while to work out what is lurking on shelves and in boxes... and this time it turned out to be on top of a kitchen cupboard...

It's this blue-glazed vase. I bought it from the stall-holders next to us when we had a stall at the school Vide Grenier, years ago. I got it very cheap, as they'd manage to chip the rim as they were transporting it (sound familiar?). It's been sitting on top of various kitchen cupboards ever since, because I like to keep a blue theme in the kitchen.

It's been really fun to take it off the top shelf, give it a thorough wipe, and find another home for it!

I have to admit I cheated with the Cornish-ware style bowl below it - I only bought it on Saturday at a Vide Grenier (four of them for 50c). It does look good, and reflects the architectural lines of the resort building at Donoon!

The yellow plate below it came from Leclerc (the big hypermarket) when several of our Denbyware plates broke in The Great Collapse of 2007 (it was a shelf-collapse, but deserves capitals and a place in family history). The yellow supermarket plates turned out to be woefully inadequate in terms of staying power - I really don't mind a few chips on vintage china, but I do object to new stuff chipping as soon as you use it. Give me modern Denby-quality or vintage toughness any day!

The flowers are from the garden - the large blue ones are new this year, and the others are staples of Ben's 'flower meadow' area - I pick them (and love them) every year!

Let me know when you do your 'Thrill' posts and I'll link to them in my sidebar - I'm looking forward to them!

French Red and White

Thanks for your supportive and kind comments on my post below. I'm relaxing and enjoying a little bit of French red and white (although only the white of the alcoholic variety) tonight!

I bought two of these items at last weekend's Vide Grenier in our town. The other two came from events last year - I only noticed how good they looked together when I ironed the chequered cloth (which has spent the winter under our coffee machine) and then the new shelf-edging, and draped them together over the balcony to air!

What a great combination! The shelf-edging fabric may be new - I really can't tell if it's something made by the excellent reproduction company, Comptoir de Famille, or one of the originals!

The platter with red-stencilled flowers was my other find from the weekend. It would have been a bit pricey, but the vendor had chipped it on the way to the sale, so I got it (admittedly for display purposes only) for 30c.

The red-stencilled plates were bought in reasonable quantity at a brocante sale last year. I love them - they're cheery and vintage and go through the dishwasher on a daily basis - best of all worlds!

Son 1 and I are both doing fine after our accident yesterday. At various points we've felt pretty confused/dazed/out of sorts, but have had some time to sit down together in the shade with a cold drink after school, and chat about how it's going. We're both staggeringly glad it's the weekend! And next week brings another round of holidays - Thursday off for Assomption (I think - I loose track) and the Friday off for the whole family too. Hurray for the May holidays!