Baubles, Bangles, and Cats

I was shocked to realize that I haven't blogged on my own blogalicious blog since Syrie's and my "Austen Assizes" was put on in Brooklyn (excerpts are on YouTube), and that was last October! Mostly I've been blogging at www.AustenAuthors.com, where my "Lady Catherine de Bourgh" stories reach a wider audience and I get to write in company with other Austen obsessives.

 

  Marshy and an Aurora Borealis rhinestone brooch

 

But there are other things in life than Jane Austen, and two of them are Cats and what my Alaskan friend Denise calls "the sparkly things" - as in, "Never forget the sparkly things."  Since October, of course, there have been many cat-related incidents (code for things like: Pindy unhooked the cable router) and my sparkly pile has grown so hoardishly huge it is almost ready to have a dragon atop it instead of a cat.  So I will now catch you up, with a photo gallery of not only the new sparkles but our four-year-old treasures, Pindar, Martial and Catullus.

Aurora Borealis Brooches

 

My latest obsession is with Aurora Borealis brooches.  I'm still learning, but what I've learned so far is that "aurora borealis" is a coating given to crystals to make them sparkle and twinkle amazingly.  Jewelry made with these crystals and rhinestones was very popular in the mid-20th century, and so far my favorite "name" designer is Albert Weiss.  People nowadays may think of such jewelry as glitzy, cheap, costume stuff, but I assure you it is not so!  In my opinion, just one Aurora Borealis brooch on your sweater, and you are golden.  Or crystal, anyway.  Here is the current reigning prize of my collection:

 

"Melrose Weiss"

 

I call this baby "Melrose" because the person who sold it to me originally bought it on Melrose Blvd. in Hollywood years ago.  I actually bought Melrose and several others on Etsy, not in my usual Salvation Army venue.  Nice aurora borealis brooches can be found for as little as $10, though of course "Mel Weiss" (and she is indeed a vintage Weiss) was dearer than that!

 

As for how they look when worn, well, here I am with three friends who are this year celebrating the 50th anniversary of our Hunter College High School class of 1963.  (I didn't graduate from Hunter but after junior high at Hunter went to the High School of Music and Art - which means I'll be attending two golden reunions in New York this June!)  Joanne, Ruth and I all live in California now, while Joan, on the right, is visiting from Boston.  Anyway, you remember what Mr. and Mrs. Bennet said:

 

She:  "When a woman has five grown-up daughters she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty."

He:  "In such cases a woman has not often much beauty to think of."

Therefore I do not boast of my own beauty in showing this picture, but only want to illustrate that an Aurora Borealis Brooch does add a spot of sparkle to the ensemble!

 

Hunter friends after half a century, in La Jolla.  Joanne, me, Ruth, and Joan

A few more shopping days, a few more Auroras...

Melrose, a small Weiss, and a swoony pink-and-blue swirl

 

Four Auroras

A Turkish plate, a Pirkenhammer reticulated plate - and Four Auroras: from lower left, the pink-and-blue; Salvation Army purple and red brooches Paul gave me for my birthday; and Marshy's Triangle Sparkle (also seen in first picture).

 

 

Three beauties on a box.  The middle Emerald Star is divine!

 

 

Ice blue Aurora on an ice blue Barbini Venetian glass bowl.  Both are mid-century.

 

Close up of the Emerald Star.

 

 



A nameless brooch from the Salvation Army, $10, and priceless.  You have an eye, and then you buy...

 

Now for some new acquisitions of the non-brooch variety...



 

Salvation Army what-not, quickly filled with pretties

 

 My new favorite is a beautiful Victorian glass vase Paul found at the Star antiques store in Hermosa Beach, next door to the library where he's working.

 





Hand-painted Victorian vase

 

Some pretty plates. 

Clockwise from left:  a golden reticulated Rosenthal; a blue and white Pirkenhammer; multicolored reticulated Pirkenhammer; dark red and white pedestaled Limoges.

 

A needlepoint folding Eastlake chair, from Hermosa Beach. Celebrated by me, Paul, and Pindy.

 

Spiffy new Salvation Army rug in the bedroom...and Marshy owns it!

 

Peter reading in comfort, with Marshy and Tully curled up together nearby

 

And now, the cats...

 

Tully, in possession of an important Feather

 

Pindar, ever queenly, on her new satin blanket (S.A., $3)

 

 

And a final shot of Marshy as Glamour Puss.  Aurora Marshyalis...



A Thrift Extravaganza

Here is my semi-annual report on my Salvation Army, eBay and thrift shop finds.  Intervention not quite necessary yet (in my opinion; perhaps not in yours).  There's nothing on our beds but cats, and nothing on our chairs but books.  When the piles of Victorian Chinoiserie become threatening, then you can call Dr. Zasio from the Hoarders TV show. 

Limoges plates

I thought it would be fun to arrange this blog post in order of my top ten finds of the year. Of course there are more than ten...but these are the best! Oddly enough, there are no duds. (Another thing you may disagree on, as one person's treasure is another's trash.) Herewith, the List:



1.  Hammersley and Roses...and Tiles

All right, that's at least two items.  But if we're going to make this top ten thing work efficiently, I'll have to stuff them in.  Also, I can't decide which I love most, my flowery chintz Hammersley pieces, or my beautiful hand-painted Italian tiles.  Certainly, the lot together makes our pathetic closet of a 1960s kitchenette look Paradisal to me.

 Got these on eBay, from a man in Pennsylvania who brought them back from Naples in the 1970s.  The two together were $15.  Below, a Delft tile, after the Gerard Dou painting, of an old woman reading, and a hand painted Wheeling tile from the 1950s.

Hm, I packed rather a lot into #1.  Let's move on, then, to Plates.

2.  Big plates.  Turkish plate, found in Salvation Army.  I'm told it shows scenes of the comic Turkish folklore figure Nasruddin.

But as long as we're looking at large plates, I also love this one from Portugal (another Sally Ann find), and that also gives me a chance to show a pair of dear little Murano glass red birds.

And here's the plate with a piece of Parian ware on it.  Do you know Parian ware?  I first read of it in Little Women, when Laurie gave a piece to Meg for her wedding:  "I don't think the Parian Psyche Laurie gave lost any of its beauty because John put up the bracket it stood upon."  This reproduction is from the Met, and the price at Sally Ann was about a tenth of retail at the Met.

One more plate.  A Bavarian pretty, which is now home to several of my little animals.

And that brings us to:

3.  Favorite Animal.  Green Murano glass duck bowl with gold flecks is my favorite among the new beasts.

Moving on to another category...Boxes!

4. Blue Dresden Box.

(Paraphrasing Pete Seeger)  Little boxes, on a desktop, little boxes made of porcelain. There's a pink one (lots of pink ones) and a green one and a yellow one.  And they're all made out of porcelain, and Paul thinks they all look just the same. 

Haven't heard the song in awhile?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=La21jYGIQ8k

Though actually Malvina Reynolds, the original songwriter, sings it better.

Blue box seen above with Hammersley "Queen Anne" pattern leaf dish. 

Now, just one more box for you.  The square box on the right is new. It's from India, and is made out of hundreds of cut-up pieces of bangle bracelets!   A very intricately made, sturdy little jewelry box.   $10 at Salvation Army...

And now...

5.  The Best Vase

Too wonderful. Cobalt blue Venetian glass with Bacchus scenes hand painted all over it!  And I'm pleased with its surreal setting, with Prince Albert and the naif Japanese cat.

6.  An Interval for Cats

Tully's Blanket.

All the cats love this old-fashioned afghan which I bought on Etsy, but it is most peculiarly Tully's.  She looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, or she wouldn't piss on my shoes, which she most certainly has done.  She has expressed her opinion more than once upon a pair of bright yellow Michael Kors loafers.  (I'm afraid she's right actually.  A cat of good taste, if poor manners.)

Pindy's Footstool

Sorry no pictures of Marshy this time.  She is not a materialistic cat.

Paul Saves the Glassware

Paul narrowly saves a free-form Murano glass modern snake sculpture from almost certain destruction in the neverending war between the Great Enemies, Tully and Pindy. 

People are always asking, "Don't the cats break things?"  Amazingly, no.  Pindy in particular loves to tiptoe across that tinkling sea of flowered china on my computer table, and she places her little paws just so, with extreme delicacy, sometimes inside a dish, sometimes between.  Never breaks anything.  However, when they do break something it's spectacular - like the time Pindy and Marshy flew over Paul's living room with one bound for leverage on the coffee table, and their dual bellyflop strike took out five prized Venetian glass goblets like so many bowling pins. 

7.  Department of Teacups

Let's get this out of the way.  Here is my solution to keeping all the teacups off our tiny kitchen counter or higher in shelves than I can reach:

And here are some pretties.

Venetian Latticino

The most golden one of all. 

Antique Hammersley, sitting on top of the Limoges plates.

8.  A little bouquet of Carnival glass

9.  Starting to move on to the end quickly...Small French Limoges plates.

The pictures are Chamonix, Napoleon and Montreaux respectively.

And speaking of small collections, here are my Eggs:

I can sense you calling Dr. Zasio.  Hoarders!  Well, I'm almost done, so before she gets here...

10.  To finish with a flourish - Paul's Peacock!  Murano glass.

Oh, dear, Marshy (Martial the Epigrammatist Marsh-wiggle Marshmallow) is feeling left out.  She is far more beautiful than a gaudy glass peacock, so I will close with a picture of her instead.  As I said, her sin (if cats can sin, which I doubt) is not Materialism but, alas, Gluttony...

Here she is saying what she thinks of me going on about all these thrift shop baubles, instead of keeping to the proper topic, which is Cats. 

Quarterly Report: Thrift Shop Finds

Seems to me as if I haven't submitted a summary of my Salvation Army Boutique finds lately, liberally admixed with cats, and with few words (unless a Jane Austen quote or two should occur to me).  So let's get down to brass tacks. 

First up:  the mock Tiffany cat night light, here examined by Marsh-wiggle

Pindar takes a look

A Scottish water-colour, showing the village of Pittenweem.  The little green vase (Royal Winton Grimwades) is new too.  The picture makes me think of the song:

Oh, Pittenweem, Pittenweem,

She's every fisher laddie's dream.

She guts the herrin' doon by the quay,

And saves her kisses just for me.

I have them in my study on the Chinese chest I found last summer at the Salvation Army.

Now I must confess to you a slightly embarrassing problem.  Because the Salvation Army Boutique is so rich in treasures, new ones coming in every day, and I've been haunting the place for over a year now, my crystalline antiquities have...accumulated.  In fact, my dining table was becoming so cluttered that Paul started intoning warningly that he would get Dr. Zazio (the psychologist on the reality show Hoarders) after me!  Here's an unsparing view of my table.  But aren't the blue Bohemian decanter and glasses delicious?  How could I ever resist them? 

Note Catullus sitting amongst the bibelots. The cats often walk delicately around, over, and through the objects, and never break a one!  That's not to say things haven't been broken (there was the time Marshy and Tully took a belly flop onto five Venetian glass goblets of Paul's and did a Full Strike...and Tully has deliberately thrown my watch in the trash and buried my glasses in the litterbox), but not one thing has ever been smashed on my table. Yet. 

"To the Great House accordingly they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves seemed to be staring in astonishment." - Jane Austen, Persuasion

Just as the old rabbi painting, which used to belong to Peter's grandmother, gazes down at my treasure table!

Speaking of which...well, actually, I've only shown you half the table. Here's the other half. The red (or Quadling) half. Aren't the red decanter and glasses pretty, too? The whole set was only $15!  My other favorite new treasure on the Red half is this wonderful red lamp, Victoria china from Czechoslovakia.



About the clutter problem:  We addressed it by acquiring three pieces of furniture and filling them up with the excess bibelots. 

"Mrs. Grant, having by this time run through the usual resources of ladies residing in the country without a family of children—having more than filled her favourite sitting–room with pretty furniture, and made a choice collection of plants and poultry—was very much in want of some variety at home" - Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

Here is the first piece, an antique wooden desk:

It holds many things (she said darkly), but even more of anti-clutter breakthrough was this mahogany glass-fronted chest:



It made a huge difference to the Hoard on the table!  Why, you can even see the table's surface now: 

An improvement, do admit!

You can see my little animal collection more clearly (if you should care to). The Japanese Zebra perhaps my favorite, but I love the little white running weasel from Carcassonne too.  But perhaps my favorite piece of furniture ever acquired at the Salvation Army is this amazing antique Chinese hand painted red chest.  It cost $75 and I've seen similar pieces online for ten times as much.  (It holds a lot, too.)



Here it is from the side:

"How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open..."  - Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey.

Now, here are some more pretty things, and cats, from around the house.



Tully and Marshy try to look fierce.  The blue Chinese cushion is Salvation Army ($2)



A pretty dish from Italy.

Red and blue Czech crystal earrings ($4)

"Having now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters" - John Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility

The lady shows what she thinks about being asked to wear a Halloween hat.

"I am to be Count Cassel, and am to come in first with a blue dress and a pink satin cloak, and afterwards am to have another fine fancy suit, by way of a shooting–dress. I do not know how I shall like it.” - Mr. Rushworth in Mansfield Park

A black Chinese shawl

"Fanny, William must not forget my shawl if he goes to the East Indies; and I shall give him a commission for anything else that is worth having. I wish he may go to the East Indies, that I may have my shawl. I think I will have two shawls, Fanny.” - Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park

Three pretty dishes (I love blue and white). Left, Derby Lily; right, Tettau from Bavaria; and French "Amitie" from Quimperle.

The English Wedgewood egg cups ($5) are new

"Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else -- but you need not be afraid -- they are very small, you see -- one of our small eggs will not hurt you." - Mr. Woodhouse, Mansfield Park



My little vintage pins - enamel animals, sparkly cats

"You see what a collection I have,” said she; “more by half than I ever use or think of. I do not offer them as new. I offer nothing but an old necklace." - Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park

  

A jewel of a cat