Treasures

I am in love.

I visited an antique store called Behind the Iron Gates, located in an old green house behind titular iron fencing. As soon as I walked in the door, I knew that I had found one of my favorite places in the world. The foyer was filled entirely with shelves and shelves of old medicine bottles, cigar boxes, tiny oil lamps, tea cups, toy cars, and all sorts of other adorable old paraphernalia. I may have started drooling slightly. I don't know, because I was in something of a rapturous trance. It was a beautiful place, and it just kept getting better. It was like exploring in an ancient temple dedicated to the god of hoarding with good taste. The house was filled to the brim with old costume jewelry, paintings, china, old books (did you know Grosset and Dunlap published a Nancy Drew spin off series called the Dana Girls in 1934? It's true!), unwanted photographs and postcards, statuettes, furniture, vintage clothing, old toys, wide-brimmed hats... The list goes on. And on.

The maternal unit and I spent a good hour or so, exploring, examining, and generally feeling like Indiana Jones except minus the hat/whip/dashing good looks, but with the same feeling of awe and reverence as when he comes across the golden idol, right before he almost gets crushed by a large rock. And, rather like Indiana, I left with some treasures of my own: a bottle, some glasses, and a series of photographs I came across by digging through a pile of small pictures from someone's Austrian trip in 1930.

Here is the green glass bottle, with a Valentine's rose:

Excellent glasses:

Tom the stuffed panther wearing the excellent glasses:

And here are some of the beautiful photographs. And I'm sorry they're all sideways. I'm aware of the obnoxiousness of this. It's just, for the life of me, I cannot figure out how to rotate them. I just don't know.

This photograph was taken on Otisco Lake, evidently, a nearby geographical feature. Judging by the age of the pictures around it, it was likely taken in the thirties. Interesting, right?

The below picture is a polar bear. It was interesting to see wildlife photography from as far back as the thirties. Usually you only seem to see portraits...

Here is a portrait of a woman named Dorothy Bird, as was written on the back.

Now, this one is highly interesting. The back reads, "novembre 1939, a Bosse par Hazelrouck. Avion -----." (Maybe - the last word was hard to read blinking indecipherable). If you speak French, you would know this to read "November 1939, to Bosse by Hazelrouck. ----- plane." Now, taking into the account the time period and location (France), it seems likely that this picture was taken during World War II, of a fighter plane. Fascinating, right?!

The back of this one reads: "To dear Dorothy, from your dear friend Evelyn Prest."

The back of this one reads, "July 1934."

I'm sorry you had to tilt your head for these. Just focus on how strong your neck muscles are getting and pretend you're not getting a crick.

I fully intend to go back to this place in the near future, and hopefully acquire some other tasteful tchotchke for my collection of useless but interesting junk.