Here are some videos of the Deco items that we found while out “Freakin’ Tiquen” on May 23rd & 24th.
Starting on Saturday morning, the first group of items were purchased at The Golden Nugget Flea Market in Lambertville, New Jersey. The American Stationery Company of Peru, Indiana, founded in 1919, is still in business today. In the 1930’s they offered this bakelite box when buying engraved letter head. It really is nicely made.
We also picked up a few 1930’s magazines. I like Esquire Magazine, the articles are good, the cartoons are usually very funny and the advertisements are great. I only have a few Esquires, but I hope to get more. We also found a couple of Vogue magazines. For some reason, vintage Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines are nearly impossible to find. The two that we picked up are in pretty bad shape, but the price was low and they are also really well produced.
About 40 minutes northeast of The Golden Nugget is the town of Somerville, NJ where we bought a couple of New York World’s Fair items. I am very happy about getting the American Potter’s Exhibit’s bowl for spring. Now I’m on the hunt for the other three seasons.
Getting an early start on Sunday, the 24th, we headed off to Adamstown, Pennsylvania. Adamstown is about an hour and half from where Chris lives in New Jersey. Chris and I try to get to Adamstown a few times a year. For those of you who have never been there, all I can say is go – it is a town of Antique Malls. We arrived at 10:00 A.M. and were finally done shopping just after 7:00 P.M. Our first stop in Adamstown was The Pinehill Anitque Mall, we picked up several things, but my favorite was the Manning-Bowman Twin-O-Matic waffle iron. I had seen this waffle iron in several books about design in the 1930’s, but this was the first time I had ever come across one and it was very reasonably priced (I’ve seen one on-line selling for over $300.00).
At our next stop, we had the best buy of the weekend – a vintage 10 inch cobalt blue Fiestaware vase. The vintage vases were produced between 1936 and 1942. They are also part of the Fiestaware line currently made and the sellers of this vase thought it was a sapphire blue one. Sapphire was a limited edition color sold exclusively by Bloomingdales for six months in 1997, which makes it rare, but not as rare the vases from the original line. This was a case of “seller beware”.
Old Fiestaware price guide brochures are very collectible and useful. Published anytime a change to the line was made, such as a piece being discontinued or new colors introduced. They offer historic information to a collector. The older ones are quite rare, so I was happy to come across one from 1937 and almost as happy to find the brochure from late 1985 or early 1986 announcing new line of Fiestaware, with pictures of trial pieces that never went into production.
Also from the same place, The Lancaster County Antique Mall of Adamstown, which is the store that stays open the latest, 9:00 on Saturdays and 7:30 on Sundays, is where our friend Nancy picked up these Art Deco penguin bookends. They seem to be from the 1930’s; if any one has information about them please let us know.
But by far the most Art Deco piece bought this weekend, was the Degue glass wall sconce that our friend Amanda bought at Antiques at the Carriage Barn in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania on the 25th. We stopped there on our way down to New Jersey on the Friday of the holiday weekend. Amanda fell in love with the sconce (and if you like Deco, who can blame her) but decided to hold off getting it, just in case something better came along. Well, nothing better did come along and on our way home, we made a stop back at the Carriage Barn and Amanda became the proud owner of a very beautiful piece of French art glass.
Chris and I use these “Freakin’, Tiquen’ Weekend” trips as training for our big summer “Freakin’, Tiquen'” vacation. And we will need to be in good shape when we hit the Brimfield Flea Market this coming July.