One Shed Left From The Old Days . . . In Falmouth!

Photo by MarashGirl©2021

Grandma Jennie's Autumn Harvest Kitchen China Featured In Falmouth!

Above Photos by MarashGirl©2021

Label Those Antique Dishes!

Getting together for a summer outing this weekend? Taking an antique cake plate full of freshly baked pastries? Make sure you put your name/address label on the underside of the plate, a label that identifies the dish as yours, especially if there are many folks attending, and your platter is antique. The failure to do so by Marash Girl recently elicited a near loss of Grandma Jennie's treasured cake dish to a stranger who insisted that the dish was hers . . . a cake dish that Grandma Jennie had won at a movie theatre in Cambridge when her ticket stub was the winning stub drawn at the theatre all those many years ago. Marash Martha cautioned Marash Girl to "Label Those Antique Dishes"!!!

Vandalism on Maple Avenue

Photo by MarashGirl©2021 The police left Marash Girl's house on Saturday morning, April 24, after inspecting (and writing a report on) the deliberate damage that had been done to the antique bird bath (see above) that had been sitting on Marash Girl's front lawn (unbroken) for many a year, a bird bath that Marash Boy had grown up with in his back yard in Springfield, Massachusetts . . . Marash Girl first noticed that the bird bath was broken on Saturday morning, the day after she had posted the sign you see below.

Photo by MarashGirl©2021 The bird bath had been in perfect condition on Friday evening. If you, dear reader, have any information on this incident, please email, or call the Newton Police Department directly - 617 796 2100. Let’s keep each other safe! Let’s keep Newton safe!

A Pincushion?

Is there anyone out there who knows what a pincushion is? (No cheating . . . no looking up online!) A prize awaits the first correct answer!

Mystery in Cold Springs Park

 

How long has this been there?  What is it?  One day left from the very old days? Or a recent planting?

Bargaining in Isfahan

Remembering my friend Rostom (rahmetli olsun Rostom) who accompanied Gail and Marash Girl south of Tehran to the Armenian stronghold (Isfahan) where Armenians fled and were welcomed after the genocide of the Armenian people by the Ottomans (1912-1915).   Rostom took us into an antique shop in Isfahan owned and operated by an Armenian man.  Walking into the shop, Marash Girl spied an interesting small metal dish with Armenian script around its edge.  It was priced at $25.00.  Marash Girl had been warned that in the Middle East, one should always bargain, as it was expected, and so Marash Girl did so, offering $20 for the interesting piece.  The salesperson immediately called for the owner, who came out, looked Marash Girl up and down, and asked, "How much did you say that dish was priced?"  "$25.00," replied Marash Girl.  The owner replied without pause, "Oh, no.  That dish should have been priced at $35.00, but you can have it for $30!"

Wedgwood and the Senior Citizen Center

Browsing the Resale Table at the Senior Citizen Center, Marash Girl picked up an unusual piece of what appeared to be Wedgwood and peered at the bottom of the piece to see if there were any identifying markings.  None that she could see, but it was still a pretty piece.  The woman next to Marash Girl took the piece out of Marash Girl's hand (gently grabbed?) and turning it over, said, "See, it's not Wedgwood!" as she (the woman who had grabbed the piece) proceeded to hand the antique vase over to the saleslady and pay the $2 listed on the price tag.

Was she the model for this nautical figurehead?

Was the ancestor of this antique shop owner the model for this antique nautical figurehead?

Known as "Neptune's wooden angels", carved nautical figureheads, usually of women, wooden figureheads such as the one pictured above, used to be mounted on the bows of  ships  and were thought to bring good fortune to the ships on which  they were mounted, as well as to those ships' sailors.

The nautical figurehead pictured above was for sale in an antique shop on Route 6A, in Sandwich, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, this past August. The only nautical figurehead Marash Girl has ever seen outside of a museum! It may still be there, if you hurry.

A Drawer from the Past; or, What Tales An Empty Drawer Can Tell

Why does this drawer look so familiar? Where is it from? Marash Girl struggled to put the drawer in context.  It took Marash Boy to remind her of the story that the drawer told.  To prevent the then newly acquired antique Empire Bureau from being stolen from the never locked cabin, she had insisted on removing one drawer from the bureau that sat in the middle bedroom in their summer Wilbraham abode . . . a trick she had learned from her antiquing friends.  Whenever they saw a bureau on the sidewalk that they could not tote away without the help of a truck, the antique dealers would lay claim on  that abandoned antique bureau by simply removing one drawer, and taking that drawer with them, for, after all, who wants a bureau with a missing drawer?  We know now that tornados make no distinction as to whether or not a bureau has a drawer, a bedroom has a bureau, or a cottage has a bedroom . . . no distinction whatsoever, as the arms of the Wilbraham tornado, on June 1, 2011, took bureau, bedroom, cottage, and all, five years ago yesterday.

[And speaking of empty drawers, let's think about the 8 empty drawers in the desk pictured below, the desk without a top!  Not a tornado, but a family on Eldridge Street, a Newton Corner family that sold their house and emptied their garage, abandoned this desk full of empty drawers and untold tales . . . what stories those drawers must hold!]

Happy Camper: The last hour of the last day at the Brimfield Antiques Fair.

                                                             Sunday, September 13, 2015
          Happy shopper heads home with her Mid-Century treasure from the Brimfield Antiques Fair.

High and Dry in Brimfield, Massachusetts

                        Brimfield Antiques Fair, Brimfield, Massachusetts - September 13, 2015

Childhood In A Box

All boxed up and ready to toss when even yard-salers didn't value the woman's past.

The moment was heartbreaking for Marash Girl, who  had had only one doll in her life (the one Uncle George brought her from Germany after WWII, a doll which one-year-old Carol threw into the mud). Marash Girl rescued the dolls and here they are, 

to be remembered forever, 

or at least as long as this blog lasts!

                                                      Childhood in a Box                           Photo by Marash Girl

The Bee Haven

The Bee Haven -- no, not the bee hive, The Bee Haven!  Yes, that's what it says on the front of this little house that Marash Girl found in a church thrift shop on Cape Cod.  Marash Girl thought it was cute and put it up on her front porch as decoration, but yesterday, a honey bee (who apparently can read) went right inside and took up residence!

A Ceiling to Remember

                              You never know what you're going to see when you look up!

                           Ceiling, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts

Overheard

While helping set up for the church fair,  Marash Girl overheard the following interchange during a coffee break:

God helps those who help themselves . . .

But God help those who help themselves (to the antiques on the flea market table!)

The Lord's wrath upon them.

Minister: I'd rather wreak my wrath upon them!

From the gutters of Wilbraham, to the Hallowed Halls of Houston

Years ago, yardsaling in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, Marash Girl found a broken up chair in the gutter alongside the house that was having the yard sale.  Knowing that her father loved to tinker and rebuild furniture (he had built his own glass fronted bookcase in junior high school, and a man-sized oak desk in high school), she asked the proprietor of the yard sale if the chair pieces were being trashed.  Oh, yes, said the woman; that chair belonged to my old aunt -- it's broken to pieces -- that's for the trash man.  May I take it? Marash Girl asked her.  Of course, replied the woman from Wilbraham, all too happy to clean up the gutter in front of her perfect Cape house.  Marash Girl dutifully gathered all of the pieces and brought them to Newtonville to present to her father and sure enough, her father was thrilled;  soon he rebuilt the chair to its original dimensions and had his artist friend -- the friend that painted his portrait on the day of his 90th birthday -- carefully restore the painting that was on the upper back strut of the chair.  Marash Girl treasured that chair in her home until Karoun asked if she could take that old black chair with her to her new apartment in Houston.  Sure, enough, the chair went along with Karoun, a reminder of her home in Newton, Massachusetts.  And it took her Texan landlord to recognize the chair for what it was:  "That's a real antique . . . a very early Massachusetts chair," he told her.  "Value it!" 

Whatever happened to that chair, anyway?

A Man Before His Time: Theodore Roosevelt wanted to ban football . . .

Even way back at the beginning of the 20th Century, football was seen as a dangerous sport.  Despite his rough and tumble ways, President Theodore Roosevelt attempted to "change the rules" and nearly banned football "due to its undue violence resulting in many player injuries.  This CALAMITY Bank, shown on the cover of a Collectors' Showcase magazine (January/February 1983), "considered among the most desirable of old cast iron mechanicals typifies the popular rough and tumble sport."

Collector's Showcase Magazine, #51610,  available at OldCornerBooks.com

A Contemporary Cautionary Tale . . .

A contemporary cautionary tale that arrived in Marash Girl's email not even a day after she had seen her friend driving the 1968 Merecedes . . . here's the sad tale about a long-loved, long-lived 1968 Mercedes 250 SL that had once belonged to the owner's mother . . . 

The email began:

"I totally forgot that the person who had been starting the Mercedes for me said that he had seen fluid come out of it…

But he said he thought it was nothing…..

"It’s never nothing when fluid comes out of a car!

And that’s what I told him…

"THEN,

I totally forgot and drove it.

It’s an automatic with a stick shift.

When I went to park it, I was backing into the space and it would not go into park.

I had to pull the key out of the ignition just so it would stop.

Then when I went to start it again,

I turned the key and it looked like the electrical light went on….but it would not turn over!

Did I drive the car without transmission fluid and destroy the transmission?  I fear the worst!"

Anchors Aweigh!

                                                                                              Photo credit: Marash Girl

Walking along Indian Hill Road in Chatham, Massachusetts, you may notice a heavy iron anchor propped up against a pine tree . . . an anchor that looks as if it should be on the bottom of the ocean rather than on the side of the road . . . how the heck did that ever get there?  Was this (as in North Texas) once the bottom of an ocean?  Or a very large kettle pond?  But in those days of course, there were no anchors, much less folks to lift them aweigh!