Collecting and Detecting

The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.

Earlier this week I was pondering my collections past and present and thinking about the history of how they came to be. And how I'm so much more paranoid about fakes when looking at "antiques."  I've been on ebay and etsy looking for toys (because I want to buy myself a present) and saw one of my toy horses listed for over $4500.00. I'll show you that in a bit. I don't know about others, but I'll buy a cute thing regardless of it being real or reproduction as long as it's not misrepresented. And that usually sets me off on another collection ..... It starts with that one cute, probably repro thing .....

I overheard a collector calling them "re-dos."

Rocking horses came first. I was nuts over them. Right up until I wasn't. Fickle me had discovered vintage childs' chairs (which are almost all painted and gone now.) For a few years there were little chairs everywhere in my house. People asked when I was going to start hanging them on the walls. I tried to identify the old chairs, but no one was trying to trick anybody.

For some reason I turned my sights to the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Luckily no one is faking knick-knacks. I mean, really. The White Rabbit was followed by white rabbits, lower case. Rabbit clutter started to make me crazy so I sold most of them out of my booth. I kept Bad Rabbit, Spare Rabbit and the White Rabbit (the three on the far right, above).

I stumbled upon Dedham pottery and the Roseville Juvenile Rabbit pattern. Be still, my heart! This was the first hard lesson. I started to collect those ... oh how I love that Roseville rabbit, especially the creamers! Then I learned mine were all fake, every one, and that changed everything. Was collecting going to be no fun anymore? Now when I see an old piece of big name pottery, I ask myself 'How badly do you want this fake?'

 My current passion is German, vintage, pull-toy horses, preferably paper mache, and I am haunting ebay and etsy to see what's there. While searching for The Pull-toy of My Dreams I was sidetracked by vintage ride-on horses. While pull-toys can be alarmingly expensive, the ride-on horses are surprisingly affordable. And they are so darn cute! My house has slowly filled up with the little guys and I still don't have a pull-toy. And before I loose interest (like I do) and move on to Naked Mole Rats or something, I thought I'd show you my little collection of vintage horses. And one honest reproduction.

Presenting: The Horses

It started innocently enough with one tin horse. (I didn't know Mobo horses were a collectors item when I found this one.)

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My reproduction platform horse is fairly new and came from a chain furniture store. Horses like mine are being sold as "vintage" or "antique" on ebay for big whopping amounts of money. Don't buy one!  On a rocking horse forum I read: "If it's on ebay, it's fake." There were 5 of these horses on ebay, all but one claiming to be 100+ years old.

Check out this ebay listing. Yikes! That's a heck of a mark-up on a $150 horse from a bed store. Look at the shipping! Wow.
 

Seriously, how cross would it make you to buy this then go by Big Lots and see about 30 of them?
 ..........

My poor worn plastic horse has had a rough life. But he's authentic!
.........

Couldn't help myself. I know these are a dime a dozen.

 But look at this face!

.......

My super-awesome rubber horse has remarkable detail. He was so dried out when I got him that I treated him with Armour-All which, besides softening the brittle rubber, brought out some of the original color.

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Another Be Still, My Heart moment! A Mobo horse and cart! YAY! Finally! I've waited years!
Happy dance, happy dance.

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 This odd little horse sounds like 300 baby rattles when he rolls.
It's loud and annoying. :-)

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My very rare Davey Crockett glider.
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I can't fit another ride-on toy into the house, but there's room for a vintage German paper mache horse. On ebay and etsy there are three I really like. Then I noticed they had the same head and the bridles was painted on, very poorly. Hmmmm, I thought. Something smells fishy. Okay, another lesson to be learned. Let the research begin!

I found a website that compares real and fake antique toys and GUESS WHAT? Armed with information, it looked like the horses I liked were fakes. When I looked closely they appeared spray painted or airbrushed. And the paint was too shiny. Well, RATS! At least my bigger, ride-on horses aren't worth reproducing. (But beware of rocking horses! They're another story.)

So what clues am I going to look for?

This was the one horse listed that I would bet is real, but it's fairly

new - 1940s. See all the cracking and chipping? This was the only horse with aging paint that I saw online. His accents appear to be sprayed but I think they were doing that by the 40s.

This is the real deal, found in Denmark.
No mistaking this is old. I want it, but the owner wants it, too.

 Here are the 3 "German" horses on the US ebay that I was thinking about. Any one might be real, but it's those heads! Plus the shine doesn't look like old paper. Where's the peeling? At least the bridle isn't painted on the left-hand horse.

What do I do when I can't find what I want? I go to the source, in this case Germany and I open ebay.de with Google Translate.
........

It's the real thing....

One from Germany and one from Denmark.

Germany. I just gotta think this one is old. :-) Notice the harness was pretty detailed and the paper mache is tearing. On the fakes the paper mache is made from pulp so it hardens to feel like ceramic. And, oh yeah,
its face is missing.

Denmark. Paint is cracking, harness is detailed and the eyes are glass. This is the one to buy. The seller took it off ebay early for whatever reason and broke my heart. If there was an honest copy of this horse,
I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

Eternal optimist that I am, I found two horses in England I want to bid on, as soon as the sellers send me shipping quotes.

Looks real (enough) to me judging from the crackled paint and
chewed off ears.

Swoon. I could make room for this even if I had to carry it under my
arm all the time.

Wish me luck on my bidding!

See bunny at 

this etsy store.

Linking to:

pjh designs

miss mustard seed

'Tis the Season! Move fast or get out of the way.

The rain is gone and yard sale season has finally hit Southern Oregon. My eyeballs roll up in my head before I can make it through all the postings on Craigslist. Prioritize, prioritize. I look at Estate Sales first. Probably everybody does, right? And I look for 'old tools' in the listing because that might mean there are casters and other nifty hardware things to be had. I especially love the farm and barn sales, along with about 100 other serious pickers around here. I've seen men RUN when the ribbon is cut. Actually run to get that unknown prize before someone else does. I once saw two men tackle a dress form.

I move at a slower pace but I still do just fine at the sales. This past week was especially fun. Take a peek!

A vintage milk shake blender

 Cool old kitchen tools

A nice kitchen scale

 Really pointy shoe forms, cowboy boots, maybe?

 Cute and little. What can I say? Yes, I know I'm missing one.

I've not seen a perfume atomizer like this before. It looks so masculine.

Another trunk. This one has beautiful leather. My plan is to make it into a coffee table but I have no idea how, yet. I don't want to damage the trunk by drilling through it to attach legs. Probably I'll have to get Mr. Bad to help me make a platform.

Any ideas?

Inside of trunk

 An unheard of free door and $1 windows

Another box. And awesome cream cans.

Old hardware. I love the casters and Victorian picture hangers.

Picture hangers. Who knew? I had to ask what they were.

Plus 3 chairs. And 5 more windows. Some screen doors.

FUN! And there's still tomorrow and Sunday!

Linking up with
miss mustard seed
pjh designs

Oh, how I hate to whine, but .........

 I've been feeling sorta blue and anxious lately. 
I'm pretty sure the cause is The Insurance Company of My Nightmares. Mr. Bad Rabbit has been working to fix the coverage problem, and he thinks he has it solved. Unfortunately the insurance company tossed a couple more hoops my way.

Now they're telling me they will only cover one of two prescriptions I get, one for chemo nausea and one for anxiety, because they are of the same drug family. Well, third-cousins thirty-seven times removed, maybe. Grrrrrrr. 

Oh lordy, I'd rather eat a bag of hair than call the insurance company again.

So, as I was distracting myself by surfing through link parties, I ran across this:

 I read the post and had to smile. It's good to be reminded everyone has their share of frustrations. You can find the printable and the story at Pink Polka Dot Creations. 

Just to make sure I get no peace whatsoever the Dread Insurance Company sent me an email saying I had a prescription that needed renewed. So I clicked through all the links and they were invalid. I tried to go straight to the website but they didn't recognize me as a member. 

Where's that doggone bag of hair? 

So, I was forced to do a little looking around at Joss and Main to distract myself, and I found this:

You can see it here. The artist is Jen Renninger and she has other wonderful posters. I love this poster but there are others that tempt me. They are all very pretty, she has a great style. 

Just as the poster says, Hubby said he has jumped through all the hoops and my insurance coverage should start in a few weeks. (After they do their mountain
of paperwork.) 

Yay! Yahoo! Yippee! 

But I'm still getting the poster because there's that matter of trying to get both those meds I need .....  

What. Ever. 

Just give me a laptop, a cup of coffee and a bag of hair and I am ready to take on the world. Here's to Bad Days and beating the crap out of them! 

Cheers!

Sharing the encouragement at:

pjh designs

the shabby creek cottage

Well, it's not without a certain charm.

The most bizarre thing happened at an estate sale I went to on Thursday. The house was situated on a very steep hill off of an extremely narrow, one lane road. We all had to park as best we could, avoiding the ditch. 10 minutes after the sale began, the police were out ticketing all the cars for illegal parking.

A herd of people had run into the house; ten minutes later the same herd of people (including me) ran out of the house. 

It was pretty amusing.


However, that is not what I wanted to post about - but maybe someone should do a link party for posts about weird sales.
I know I've some stuff to share.


 .......................


So. Back to furniture.

My taste is eclectic to say the least. I like things that are so different it's hard to imagine they belong to the same person. I often don't know why I like something I just do and I've always thought there must be some commonality that I don't see on a conscious level. 

As I was contemplating this post and rewriting the drafts I started
to see the pattern ....


Which is good because now I understand why I came home
last week, with .....

this.

I mean, I don't even LIKE mid-century modern. It goes with NOTHING in my house. This thing is a total orphan. There's not even a spot for it. It's in the way! Yet, I had to have it and home with me it came.

It IS kinda cute.

It has a certain charm.

But dreadful knobs.

 However, maybe the pulls can be salvaged.

The cutest little feet EVER!

It has personality.

 It looks like a cartoon character and probably sneaks around in the night.

And the other little tables I love probably sneak around, too ...

My first pet table.

This one auditioned for Sponge Bob.

Can't play outside.

So it's not a table, it's still sneaky.

Well, I guess that's what it is then. The mystery is solved.

I own a mid-century modern table because it looks like a
Wee Little Creature.

Huh. Just like those sneaky architect desk lamps. Maybe Pixar should do a movie with cute little tables as the protagonists.

Right?

 

Linking up with

mod vintage life
my uncommon slice of suburbia
coastal charm
the dedicated house
miss mustard seed
redoux interiors
the shabby creek cottage

Well, since I was painting it anyway ........

The rest of the story of my little ladies desk.

I took my little desk home (story here) to repair and ran into the frustration of being no longer able to purchase ASCP around here. So I dealt with that and ended up repainting the entire olive green part of the desk.

And since I was doing that, I decided to paint the top. I'd had 2 customers comment that they liked the tops of furniture painted. So what the heck, I was painting it anyway ...

So then what happened? I needed Annie Sloan CoCo in order to match the desk top to the drawer, especially the little vine thingies.
Well, ain't that just grand?

I wanted to kick a small object, but instead I mixed a little CeCe Caldwell Virginia Chestnut with three craft paint browns and got a pretty good match. And then I got to thinking: I used to exclusively use craft paint. It was great.

It cost $1.29 a bottle. Just sayin'.

As it was:

And how it is now:

The glazing photographs darker than it actually is.

I don't know that I like the top better painted. I like the desk both ways, but now, I have to admit, it has more pizazz.

UPDATE

Mr. Bad Rabbit was able to straighten out the insurance mess, but I tell ya - no one needs that kind of grief!
 

Linking to:
mod vintage life
the dedicated house
miss mustard seed
between naps on the porch
pjh designs
coastal charm