Hi everyone. Wow, we’ve had some decent luck lately at both thrifts and estates. Well, it’s “decent” compared to what we usually find at least. I’ve also been having success using our “Go 1-2 Hours After Estate Sale Starts” method. It keeps me sane, and I still find things that the earlybird pickers miss or pass over. Knock on wood that lasts, hehe.

I’m actually going to have to split the finds into two thrifting posts – so the rest will either be posted this coming week, or combined in our usual weekend one.

This is the third time I’ve found one of these Jaru Art Products birds, but I hadn’t seen this color combination before. Gold details on white glaze – definitely something Jaru would do though.

I hesitated a bit on this little Takahashi Japan covered box, but for some reason I just really liked the numerals and heart design.

Same goes for these Trend Pacific plastic cruets or pourers. They have a pretty cool interior design, though – the top comes off and there’s a plastic inner part that unscrews from the housing. They had matching shakers but I ended up passing on those.

I couldn’t believe that another Arabia Kaj Franck cow pitcher showed up! We had the green one already – I’d mostly kept it because it had so much wear. The newer small one with the yellow cow is in great shape. Hm.. now that we have two… (famous last words)

Found another nice Bauer bulb bowl, in one of my favorite glaze treatments. Sort of a rust brown and orange glaze color. I used to have about 10 of these bulb bowls… but have sold almost all of them. No room, no room, no room!

A small-ish Kokeshi doll, with white floral design. I’ve actually been passing up quite a few of these at estate sales – mostly because they want too much for them. Also, I think for our own small kokeshi collection, we’re almost “at capacity” LOL.

This is an Edward Winter enamel, but I sure thought it was Hanova when I first picked it up. You can’t see it from this pic, but the interior has some green dots which was a tipoff that it wasn’t Hanova.

I knew that I was going to buy this cool dog letter organizer from the moment I saw it – but I didn’t know who it was by. Our friends over at Bit of Butter knew what it was right away, however. I knew it wasn’t a Richard Galef design, but it turns out it’s by the even more obscure Robert Dietz and was made by the Aeris Manufacturing Company. Copyright date on this is in the 1950s. Thanks Alison and Kevin for the ID!

I have a bad habit of picking up pretty much any studio pottery that looks nice and is cheap enough. This weed vase had a really nice form, and there was green felt securely attached on the bottom so I couldn’t try and ID it. I actually thought initially it might be some sort of Doyle Lane piece. But I probably should’ve known because the top didn’t look right and the glaze itself wasn’t that remarkable.

Here’s the mark on the bottom – just in case anyone has an idea. It sort of looks like the Hiragana character for “Yo” – but I know that’s probably not much help.

Another small Desimone piece from Italy. I didn’t know if it was a cruet, a small pitcher or a vase – but I knew it was coming home with me. Really surprised to find it non-IDed at an estate.

OK, saved our favorites for the end. The other day, my friend Bea from Mid Mod Mom clued me into an estate sale that had a load of Kaoru Kawano prints. Yes I know… THESE aren’t Kawano prints. They’re actually by Shuzo Ikeda – I was actually familiar with his stuff, but for some reason I blanked on the signature initially.

I wasn’t going to go to the estate sale at first, but I decided to try and hit it a little bit later. When I got there, they had all the Kawano prints priced to the moon. But then I came across these two prints by Ikeda… and I guess they hadn’t figured out who they were by. They weren’t even shown in the estate preview pics! We’re pretty happy to have come across them – I think at least one is going to find a place on our walls soon. The larger one is called “Daffodils” and dates from the 1960s. The smaller one, we haven’t been able to find a direct match for, but there was a similar one that was from the late 1960s.

Happy Cinco De Mayo – and happy thrifting!

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Hi everyone. I need to run through some of our thrift finds from a few weeks back. Listing inventory is increasingly taking more time, which leaves little for the blog. Here we go:

Earlier, I’d passed up three different red dala wooden horses because of the price. Also, they’ve been taking much longer to sell, as our friend Bea from Mid Mod Mom has noted But I had to grab this one because the base color is black – I’d never come across one before, only red and blue so far. I’m not sure if this is an Olsson, but it seems similar.

Have also been passing up a lot of the UCTCI and Otagiri pieces. I got this little UCTCI bell though, because I’d been having a slow day at the thrifts.

This is the 2nd time I’ve found this Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends book, with illustrations by Provensen. Definitely worth picking up if you see it.. of course, I would’ve rather found the Golden Book of Biology with the Harper illustrations.

I was extremely pleased to find some Marimekko textiles yesterday – it was the first time I’d spotted them at the thrift. One pattern is by Maija Isola and the other is by Katsuji Wakisaka – the latter is the creator of those “Bo Boo” designs. I think these are newer reprints of 1970s patterns, though I’m not sure how to date them – the edging on back doesn’t have the date, though it has the pattern names: “Villikaali” and “Markkinat“.

I knew immediately what this JIE Gantofta Swedish bird bowl was, even though the mark has been obscurred. That JIE mark is very often hard to read – so keep an eye out for these pieces. There’s a bit of damage on the one we found, but I couldn’t resist it.

Several years back I passed up a big lot of Russel Wright Residential plastic dinnerware. I know it’s not like it’s super valuable, but I still regretted it later. So I was happy to find this divided vegetable, in the “velvet black” color.

And speaking of Russel Wright, I think I forgot to show a pic of the Iroquois Casual China teapot/coffee pot I picked up at an estate awhile back. I’d seen the photo in an estate listing, and when I got there it was (amazingly) still there. So I asked #thriftbreak what they got, and got some general encouragement even at the slightly higher price it was going for.

I believe this is the full size teapot/coffeepot, and not the After Dinner (AD coffee pot). I’ve been confused on the color – the lid is slightly different in shade than the body. I’d thought the whole thing was Ice Blue glaze and that the lid might’ve been different color because of manufacturing differences. A nice person on Etsy let me know that likely the coffee pot base is Powder Blue glaze, and was sold separately from the lid as a “pitcher”. Later on, someone likely bought the lid (which is likely Ice Blue glaze), and turned it into a coffee pot.

Last up – Cathrineholm! Funny, this is from another sighting in an estate sale ad. I’ve sorta learned not to trust anything when it comes to estate photos, especially if the listing is in one of the major estate aggregator sites. Generally, there’s just too many people looking and noticing things in the photos. So if you see something, you can bet others have. Also, I’m REALLY not into waking up at the crack of dawn and lining up, or putting my name down on one of those “lists”. As I’ve mentioned before, I just think that whole game is stupid – so I was really surprised that the Cathrineholm bowl was still there after the estate had been open for an hour already. Three probable reasons why – high price, damage and green is probably one of the least popular colors. I wasn’t about to pass on it though!

Hope you all have great thrifting this week!

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Hi everyone. I just got back from the flea market, so I’m going to wait to post up those finds and a few other ones. I’m just going to lead off with Friday’s finds. I had a decent thrift/estate outing which has been rather rare lately on Fridays.

Starting from the left, two Taylor and Ng mugs came home with me again. Yes, I know – more mugs! The Escargot French one is a really nice find, as it’s a little more uncommon. The four sunny yellow-orange mugs are Midwinter Stonehenge from England. Really like the colors on these, and have been tempted to start collecting it to use (famous last words indeed).

I think the aqua glass vase in back is another Gullaskruf from Sweden, but this one seems to have thicker glass and is a bit taller. Need to check into it to see. The book next to it is probably for us to keep – Adventures in Stitches by Mariska Karasz with really cool illustrations and pictures from the 1950s.

For some reason there was a lot of enamel floating around. That’s another red Emalox of Norway bowl, identical to one found a little while ago. I thought the yellow enamel bowl with the green dots in it might be a Hanova piece at first, but it turns out it’s by Edward Winter. I couldn’t resist the little Cathrineholm blue Strek Cathedral coaster plate even though there was only one of them and it was a little pricey.

The Tonala cat is actually a Jorge Wilmot and Salvador Vazquez collaboration. It has the conjoined “WV” on bottom. We often see people say that one of these cats is Wilmot or Wilmot-Vazquez when there’s no mark at all, and the design is obviously not by them – and they’re selling it for hundreds! It makes me a little #salty..

Finding any marked Bauer Pottery has become a little bit of a rarity for us at thrifts. Well, you can find it but it’s usually priced pretty high. This is a green “pillow vase”, I’ve found them in pink and gray speckle previously.

I’m certain the metal dog and cat ring holders aren’t Walter Bosse pieces, but they were a fun pickup from one of the estates. These have rhinestone eyes – I think they might be imitations from Japan, but still probably have age to them.

I got a whole mess of Vera Neumann napkins and a tablecloth at another estate. Later on I found out that the black and white table cloth and 6 napkins did have quite a few stains – so maybe I should’ve passed. In fact, I’m not sure yet but we might be passing on more Vera – since Target is going to release a collection of scarves very soon. Not sure how that will affect the value of older ones – but the market on Vera scarves already seems to be oversaturated. I just hope they are going to mark the new ones in a way that’ll enable us to easily tell the difference from the vintage ones..

Lastly – a bit of news to report from A La Modern headquarters. Linda has begun offering her Calligraphy services through Etsy. She’s already taking various jobs, such as addressing envelopes for weddings and baby shower invites.

Please note – this is REAL hand-lettered calligraphy, not the font tracing or laser printing you see being offered everywhere. She’s studied Calligraphy with some fairly famous folks, and right now she specializes in Copperplate and Casual Pointed Pen.

If you have any need of this type of work, please contact us as soon as you can, as we expect things to get more busy as wedding season approaches.

OK – Happy Thrifting!!

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