McCoy Pottery and so forth...

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I love the lush details in the pattern, the yummy color.

Every Friday I go to Goodwill.  I know, I'm obsessed.  Believe it or not, I sometimes walk out empty-handed, but not today.  I found a lovely McCoy 1930s basket weave planter for two dollars.  The fun part is researching online when I get home. It's currently selling for $50.  

McCoy is an American company which produced pottery in Roseville, Ohio, from 1910 to the mid-1970s.  I like to keep an eye out for unmarked pieces in garage sales and thrift stores.  My favorites are those I find with dirt still clinging to the sides, maybe even a dead plant.

Click here for a peek at some of my other pieces.

This little crack in the rim is not damage, but a manufacturing flaw.
You can tell by the way it is unglazed around the crack. 

it's about passion

my vintage rosaries
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I'm not sure exactly how I contracted the passion for collecting, but the symptoms were evident at a very early age. Maybe I enjoy collecting because it takes me back to the simple comfort and joy of my childhood Little Golden Book and postage stamp collections.  

It may lie dormant for a while, but once you have caught the virus, it is a life long condition and it often returns with a renewed vigor. It might just be that it is instinctive for humans to collect, just as a magpie is compelled to hunt and gather shiny objects and drag them back to her nest.  I definitely like to have my things about me, like Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man.

McCoy pottery, mercury glass, insulators, tarnished silver
in my retro metal medical cabinet

chalkwork icons
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There is a certain explorer spirit in me. I like to dig in dusty places. One discovery often leads to another, to a fresh search and the start of a new collection. In fact, I would have made a great archaeologist.  

Garage sales, flea markets, Gee-Dub (my local Goodwill store) and various antique shops are my favorite places to forage...the junkier the place, the better.  The rarity or value of a particular piece, is not the objective for me, but the mellow and a little bit worn, the unwanted, the unappreciated and orphaned, are what happens to strike my fancy.

the manor is filled
with the scent of old books

Other people's gatherings are endlessly fascinating, since it reveals an obvious look at the personalities behind the collections.  What objects do you like to hunt and gather? 

I think that interiors need 

a bit of a twist... most have 
no sense of irony or of real life, 

and there is nothing harmonious or soulful.

  

--Hubert Zandberg

What's Hot

I am SO into orange this summer. It's such a warm, pleasant, spicy

color, don't you think? The first photo is the lid of an African hand

carved soapstone box I picked up at HomeGoods, of all places. I also

found a luscious burnt orange silk throw there, last weekend, as well.

.

Clockwise in the collage photo, throw pillow from the sofa in the

family room at Willow Manor, my fave orange handbag, orange

ginger jar (also a HomeGoods find), and a sweet little piece of vintage

McCoy pottery.

.

Orange brings to mind this poem I love, by Janet Frame.

.

.

Summer

.

At midday then the sweltering mother

bedded in wheat and wharves rose

to give food

gold sea and salt bread to the city.

.

Deep from her blue apron pocket

she drew a ripe orange to slice

and squirt light

--your mouth was stained with sun.