Hi everyone. I finally got a chance to hit some thrifts today. While the finds have been meager at best lately, it was certainly better than last week. There’s been a serious slowdown for the holidays in terms of finds at the thrift – have heard mixed tales from others though.

I gotta start off with this great Howard Pierce girl with bird figurine. Actually, this wasn’t our own thrift find, but one by our friend Steve. We’re working on a trade currently… but the HP piece is already in our possession. =) Will join the rest of the Pierce menagerie later when we move.

I picked up this Dansk BLT creamer. I always get this line confused with “Blue Mist”. This is another Niels Refsgaard design. And no, BLT does not stand for Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato – it’s Breakfast, Lunch and Tea. I didn’t know that until recently!

This kitschy winking cat vase from Italy was an automatic pickup. I’ve no idea which company it might be, though it does seem to be vintage. It has a quirky “pencil-drawn” look to it.. almost looks Tackett-ish or something. The bottom has a clear Italy mark and what looks like a flower or something. Has anyone seen this before?

I knew these were La Gardo Tackett designs for Schmid, but I probably should’ve left them because the purple demitasse cup had damage. There are also missing saucers with these cups. If you ever find these Tackett items, be sure to check the glaze before buying. It’s extremely fragile.. in this case, there was a little crazing on the purple one and the paint just peeled off with the tape that Goodwill (Yes, I’m looking at YOU Goodwill – stop taping up your housewares!) helpfully wrapped it in.

These Berggren Trayner pieces seem to be following me around lately. I’m certainly not complaining – although I’d definitely prefer to find actual Scandinavian pieces over these Berggren items, they’re fairly popular with the Etsy folks. This one has the phrase “Every Morning’s a Beautiful Morning”.

Lastly, I found this great Arabia of Finland lidded jam jar with an orange motif. This is the Pomona line, and features different fruits (strawberries, oranges, plums, apples) and are extremely popular – I couldn’t believe the lid was still here too, since they’re often missing.

OK folks – it appears we might get a few more thrifting posts in before the New Year. It all depends on how our move goes – we’re getting very close now, so we may just drop everything else including shop/blog related things. If you don’t hear from us, you know what we’re up to!

Happy thrifting!

This post is linked up to ATG’s Thrift Share Monday and HLA’s Flea Market Finds.

Did you find something cool at a thrift or flea market lately?
Please leave a comment here if so…

Hi everyone,

Sorry, no thrifting roundup post this week. I did manage to go on Friday, but came up with pretty much nothing out of eight stores visited. However, it was still nice to get out and do something other than work on the new house.

I know we have readers who are customers and fellow shop owners… this little note is for the former. We’ll be closing down the main shop for the holidays, so that we can have a little break and also because it looks likely that we’ll move in early January. We’ll probably continue blog posts throughout the holidays, though.

The last day to order from the shop (for Xmas orders and any others) will be Wednesday December 14. The shop will likely re-open around sometime near Monday January 16. If you’d like to put a hold on something in the shop, please contact us.

In addition, we likely have some changes in mind for the shop. No major redesign, but we’re considering disabling the “shopping cart” functionality and converting it to an “email us to buy” type of site. While we do get a good number of orders, it’s become difficult to keep up with the back-end programming part of it. From customer feedback, I also believe the shopping cart has actually “missed” orders on occasion. Removing the reliance on the external shop plugin will make it more worthwhile to continue with the main shop. We’ll have to see if it affects the number of orders coming in, however.

Our Etsy outlet will likely remain open – however, the same deadline for Xmas orders will apply. Wednesday December 14 will be the last day to order, and after that we will not ship until after the holidays.

Hope everyone has had a great year, thrifting and otherwise. We’ve met a lot of nice folks this year online through shop-related activities, and hope to continue that next year!

Happy Holiday thrifting!

Hi everyone. Even with the crazy winds, fallen trees and power outages – I decided to hit the thrifts anyhow. I steered clear of some of the harder hit areas, but still got stuck at a few traffic signals that had no power. Nevertheless, still found a few interesting things on thriftbreak.

I came across another Berggren Trayner piece. This one is a wooden plaque or cutting board with the motto on front “Egen hard ar guld vard”. Near as I can tell, that translates to “Self-Hardening is worth gold.” Or at least that’s what Google Translate says…

I’ve seriously tried to cut down on any new Pyrex acquistitions. It has to be a really rare promo pattern, or something smaller I know we can sell like this New Dots yellow #402 mixing bowl. I think this is the 3rd or 4th one we’ve found. We have a complete set of 4 bowls, and part of another one we’re trying to complete.

I didn’t know which company these were from originally, but I knew it was likely a California pottery. From the glaze, I sort of narrowed it to Bauer, Metlox, Gladding or Pacific. It turns out they’re Gladding McBean “El Patio” shakers. Strange that there are two sets of salt pepper shakers, and the glaze seems to be “Golden Glow”, although they look slightly different.

This is a lovely dark navy blue Dansk Kobenstyle baker, that was unusual because it had so few enamel chips. To be honest, I’ve been really careful buying Kobenstyle lately. I’ve probably passed up 10-15 pieces over the past year. The reason is, many thrift stores have “caught on” to their desirability and price them QUITE unreasonably. Boo on them.

The other reason is that they tend to have a lot of damage to the enamel. And lastly, most pieces don’t sell for THAT much. All of that adds up to us being quite picky lately with it. In addition, this is not one of the original “4 ducks” pans. It’s a Dansk International France version, with exposed cast iron base. I still had to pick it up because of the lack of damage.

Lastly, I ended up coming home with this interesting Creative Playthings kid’s chair. This was a New Jersey company that produced a lot of interesting wooden and other toys, some of which are quite in demand. Other than that, I knew nothing about the chair. I know we’ve been trying to cut down on single chairs, and this one had some damage to the plywood, but I just couldn’t pass it up at the thrift store price.

I was wondering if anyone might have information as to what set this chair belongs to, and when it might’ve been produced. I’m guessing from the construction it might be late 60s to early 70s.

Ok, happy thrifting!

This post is linked up to HLA’s Flea Market Finds.

Did you find something cool at a thrift or flea market lately?
Please leave a comment here if so…