Acquisitions and an Announcement!

At the risk of leading you to think that I spend all my time acquiring things and not enough time creating things (ahem...), I wanted to share some more treasures and findings from the past week or two.

My mother and I made another trip to Clover Market during her visit, and I came away with some great additions to my paper stash:

Last time we went, I saw very few vintage photographs; this time it seemed as though every other vendor had at least a small stack for sale.  They varied in price from $1 to $3, and I came away with quite a few.

Old photographs really bring home to me the realness of history--these were real people living real lives in the times I've only read about in history books.  I mean wouldn't you love to have hung out with these guys (above) in 1920?  (Specifically, February 8, 1920.)

How about Gertrude and Curt here?  They look like a pretty fun couple.

I wonder what became of this little boy, standing bare foot in the bushes in his convict-stripe pajamas.

And who did this lovely lady marry, in her gorgeous velvet and taffeta dress, with an oversized bow to decorate that great poofy hair?

The back of this sweet photo says, "Mande Trout, age 10."  Age 10 is awfully hard to believe!  If so, we clearly grow up way too fast in this day and age.

Finally, I don't purchase nearly as many photos of men, as they don't tend to speak to me in the same way as women, children, and couples, but I kind of liked this well-dressed, jaunty fellow.  That's just a sampling of the interesting personalities I "met" through my vintage photo acquisitions.

I also bought a Water Birds Bird Guide by Chester A. Reed published in 1921.  His preface, written in 1906, extolled the virtues of using a bird guide to identify strange birds observed in the wild, since the ornithologist of yester year "had but one course open to him, that is to shoot the bird, take it home, then pore through pages of descriptions, until one was found to correspond to the specimen."  Well, thank goodness I don't have to shoot any water birds to find out what I'm looking at when I'm at the beach!

I found three different little ledger books:  a book of vintage graph paper that was quickly abandoned by Harry Hill back in 1936, a dock book filled with notes on import invoicing, and a ledger belonging to Mrs. Ed Heltz of Miwaukee, containing some gas records, some scattered notes, and a few blank pages.  (13.1 gallons of gas cost her $4.05, by the way!)

The Pièce de résistance of this particular shopping day, though, is this large ledger filled with accounts from May 16, 1898 to July 20, 1903.  It's not clear what is being tracked, but it's still an interesting piece of history and a wonderful source of vintage papers. 

And if that's not enough, I went to two of my local libraries' used book sales this past Saturday, and came away with both arty and non-arty books to add to my shelves:

In addition to these art books, I also got a series of nine small art books featuring the works of artists including Stael, Klee, Miro, Braque and Mondrian.  I am going to be using their work to inspire my drawing and painting practice; why not draw inspiration from the very best?!

I bought three books of musical scores, which frequently feature in the things I make.

Another great find was The Architectural Plates from Diderot's "Encyclopedie".  Tremendous envelope-making fodder in this large book!

So now I think it's time to stop shopping and hunker down in Studio 791 to play with all my latest treasures and findings, don't you think?

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BIG NEWS:

My next post will feature my very first giveaway on this blog,

 so don't miss it!