When my sister was here we spent some time at Powell’s. I came away with a couple of gorgeous new decorating books: Modern Vintage and Flea Market Style. It’s been a while since I’ve paid much attention to interior design, but these books made me stop and realize how good things look right now. I love the secondhand chic, mix-and-match bohemian thing with modern lines and plenty of kitsch. I’d happily live in any of these rooms.
All photographs by Debi Treloar
Our rooms are looking pretty sparse at the moment, what with the move and my tendency to avoid collections. But the style of the region has reawakened my nest-feathering instincts and I find myself craving some clutter. Suddenly I’m on the hunt for colored Christmas lights and linen tablecloths, banged-up mirrors and old silk scarves. Yesterday I scored a colorful weaving from a lady whose parents brought it home from Mexico in the 40s. The day before that, two down pillows embroidered with flowers. I usually hate shopping, but I think I’ve discovered the joys of junking. I think this is part of a re-imagining of the way we’re going to live, here in Portlandia. Whatever the case, you’re looking at my new hobby.
My mother is rubbing her hands with glee; she’s coming out to stay next month, and for the first time ever, she won’t have to talk me into stopping for a yard sale.
What are your prized possessions, and where did you get them?
Such a question.
I thought first of people, but we can’t possess them.
And then I thought of my life, and of how many times I’d wanted it gone, and how lucky I am to still have it. I guess I got it, originally, from my lovely old dad’s nut sack, but of course, the sum of a life comes from more than just there, and the thing about it is, we keep getting it again, every time we move or feel or do or be or dream or sing or you know what else, and it really is the gift that keeps on giving.
Sorry, I guess that’s way more kitsch than was called for…
No, it was called for.
Tulasi-Priya mentioned something at Betsy’s place about the way a nap sort of reboots the day and gives a person a second chance at morning. I love the idea of this, the reboot, whether from a nap or a fresh sunrise or a relocation–or from making your home in a dear little bus that you can point in any direction you choose. We all deserve to start fresh.
My cherry wood bedroom set was quite a find – complete with the fancy four poster bed frame, two dressers, and two end tables. My parents’ neighbors were moving back to Georgia and they said furniture is so much cheaper down there, that it would save money to sell this set and buy a new one there instead of pay to have it hauled. They sold it to us for $600. My sister-in-law works in a furniture store and does interior design, so she came over and looked at it after we moved it in. She said it had certain patterns that are popular and the maker was top line. She said the set at her store would cost over $2,000!!!! That was 11 years ago and I doubt we’d have a bedroom set like this even now if we hadn’t bought the neighbor’s!
That’s lovely. A four-poster bed is classic, and it’s the sort of thing that looks good sporting a vintage chenille bedspread or floral quilt or something really muted and soft. Good on you for making such a sweet deal.
Your mention of Powells has left me momentarily verklempt …
I know. I hear a choir of angels every time I say the name.
Sent you an email to gush about how happy I am with your new-found love of ol stuff. We could call it re-cycling to be more in vogue. But your question is about prized possessions. Things. My first piece of Roseville pottery purchased on a trip with your father along the Oregon coast. It was sitting on a dingy shelf near the ceiling and I sent the old gentleman up on a ladder to retrieve it. It cost $5 and is a treasure in memories for me. My little “Heidi” doll. The Australian book about Snugglepot and Cuddlepie that Dad had re-bound for me. The little antique oak table purchased on a rainy day in Laguna on a last trip with your father before we buckled down and became parents to your beautiful sister. Lots of “things” that have meaning and give me pleasure in keeping them safe during my life ready to be passed on after I am gone.
I tried to explain to someone recently about the gumnut babies but I sounded a little gumnut myself, what with all my talk of Ragged Blossom. Oof.
Of all your possessions (all your many, many, many possessions), I love the Chagalls best. They make me so happy.
I’m not a clutter bug, but I’ve got one thing: an odd little diary my mother kept during her last year.
That IS a prize. That’s the sort of thing you’d go back for if the house was on fire.
“What are your prized possessions, and where did you get them?”
I tend to be a pack rat o’crap, so I avoid yard and garage and estate sales pretty much the same way I avoid heroin and biker bars and the South Side of Chicago.
Susan and I moved a couple months ago and as much crap as we have thrown out around that exercise, we still have a lot.
Prized possessions (a sample, not a complete list):
1. All the artwork I didn’t toss when we moved
2. All my correspondence from Gordon Lish
3. The glass telephone insulator I collected from a scrap pile with my gang back in ’71
4. My German copy of Mein Kampf from 1938 when the Nazis gave a copy to every newlywed couple in Der Vaterland and I got at a used book sale fifty years later (no, I don’t read German and I tried to read that trinket in translation once but it is the unreadable screed that slew millions)
5. The American flag I found in the street blown off some Bubba’s truck during the happy days of war a decade ago and which I took home and laundered and fastened to a small branch so I can put it out on National Holidays
6. My long-deceased Uncle Henry’s Purple Heart
7. A battered old green footlocker that contains all the old papers and stuff, such as the bottle of Avon cologne my first lover gave me our last Christmas together and which I’ve never worn
8. A few of my son’s baby teeth
9. The baseball bat my grandfather the carpenter made when he was an old man and had pretty much stopped making anything but children’s toys and which my son and I used to knock baseballs around with at the university field when we were younger and etc.
Okay, that’s enough of all that. One last thing and that is, dusting’s a bitch. You may not have to deal with that as much in a wet place like Portland, but you know how it is out here in the desert.
Tetman, this is one fine list. I admit I’m drooling a bit over the German Mein Kampf …. even though it feels totally strange to say that.
This list is the bomb-diggity, the lifelong work of a natural magpie. The green footlocker–my favorite color, by the way–makes my heart go pitter-pat. But the fact that it holds your first lover’s gift of unopened Avon cologne?
{swoon}
Assorted costume jewelry from my mother’s side of the family, especially a chandelier necklace in purple glass.
The beaten-metal ring my daughter bought at an art fair with all of her money, so she could give me her own, special Mother’s Day gift (I wear it with my wedding ring and never take it off).
A clear-plexi paperweight with a dandelion puff inside, with the cracked base that lets the luck flow out when I need it. I bought it during a very bad time and the wishes I make on it always come true, even if I have to work for them.
Pictures of the kids.
Books. Lots of books.
My Dad’s old manual typerwriter. It smells like acrid ink and stories.
Oh, you have some good treasures, Sarah. I still have my daughter’s first gift to me: a perfect tiny leaf from a walk in the park. I can still see her chubby little fingers plucking it off the grass, and the look on her face when she gave it to me.
Kidgifts are the best.
I only shop at thrift stores and garage sales. I’m so obsessed it’s moved beyond politics, economics, and the environment and moved into something almost spiritual. (See me moving clothes on mismatched hangars along a metal pole in some mystic trance.) But besides the photos, my prized possessions are family things (and since my family lived in China and Japan for so long, the things are Asian–the carved wood wedding chest from my grandmother, the wood print that hangs over our bed, and the silk embroidery. Also, my great-grandmother’s OED, held together with masking tape, and all the paintings by my mother. (I consider myself a minimalist but as I write this I’m realizing how materialistic I am.)
Preach, sister. I’m here to be saved. (Along with a stack of old pillowcases and three dusty milk bottles.)
My mom handed off one of my prized possessions just before the move. It’s a picture of us, taken when I was about three. I am smiling adorably at the camera while my mom is smiling at someone else. It was shot by a professional photographer at my dad’s company picnic and enlarged to 16×20, and I have always loved it because the look on my face is sort of, ‘this is my MOM and I’m sitting in her lap and all is well in the world’. It makes me happy every time I walk past.
My mother didn’t marry her Armenian true love because she couldn’t deal with his disapproving mother or the thought of so much of society disapproving of her marriage and future children. She married my father instead because her dying and much respected aunt thought he was a good man who would treat her well. He wasn’t so much a bad man, but the longer they were together, the more he showed his resentment of her strong will and intelligence.
When the Armenian gentleman heard that I was born, he sent a sliver teddy bear and a tiny gold locket for me with a note telling my mother that he would always be there for her if she needed him. I’ve never seen the letter (she destroyed it), but the locket and now threadbare bear top my list of things.
Ah! Romance . . . What a lovely man. I wonder if he’s still alive, what it would be like to meet him.
I pored over those pictures, my dear–thank you for that reprieve. I may just have to escape into those interiors again soon. I think the measure of what we value of our possessions is always the burning building scenario–what would we take out if we had time? Just before Katrina I had time so I know I would say the same things I took then–the box of my childhood xmas ornaments and the box of my photographs. The rest really falls away. But now I have the treasure of the cherry table my husband made for us where I type this now and where I spend so much of my day.
Your husband made you a cherry table? Be still my heart! What IS it about a man who works with his hands . . .
I’m with you on the burning building scenario. A treasure doesn’t mean as much if it can be replaced. I would grab up all our family photographs, my dad’s set of three wooden cars, and Piggy, my oldest son’s stuffed animal.
My poor mom would probably get singed trying to rescue all the things she loves.
This is right spooky. I’ve been paring down yet again, preparing for the next move. I was delighted with how few things we have but then I came across some old photos of a few houses we’d had. I cannot believe how much cool shit I sold and gave away. It was completely unnerving how badly I wanted it all back. I even found a magazine layout of one of our houses and poof! I was trolling on all my old design sites. Today I miss my stuff.
Wait, one of your houses was in a magazine layout? Holy moly, that’s SO cool. I think I’d miss my stuff too, if I’d ever had anything really great to begin with. On the bright side, you’ve got a clean slate and you can build something new, and it’s not like your part of the world is plain-Jane boring, like some city in the desert I could mention.
Oh wow. Don’t get me started. Pluheese! I am the queen of kitsch, Santa Caterina Di Lovolo is my name. When you pop over to book blurb you’ll see – my Fante horsemen collection, the Ashanti stools, the cloth, my nana’s wedding dinner set, and the Pastis jug I’m nicking from the bar table in front of me!
All hail the Queen of Kitsch. Don’t tell my mother, but I have a sneaky respect for your thievery. So bold, so intrepid, so baaaad!
I’ve found some of my best pieces in my mother-in-law’s basement, yard sales and garbage picking.
From my MIL’s estate, I received two pieces of sheet music circa 1904, featuring the same model in the same dress and same setting, in different poses. They come from two different publishing houses. I had them framed side by side and when I look at them, they make me feel happy.
Oh, that is a find. I adore old photography. Yesterday we were out shopping at a secondhand store and I found a whole box of black and white snapshots, all these little moments in someone else’s life. Individually, the photos were ordinary, but there was a poignancy in seeing them en mass, scattered across the table.