Tag Archives: antiques

It’s all (Haviland) in the family

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By Cathy Wood

My grandmother smiled as she gently freed the daintily flowered tea cup from its yellowed tissue paper. She set it carefully on the matching saucer, adding it to the china deluge that threatened to take over the white linen-covered dining room table as the corresponding pile of tissue paper grew higher.

“Oh, Mother,” my mom breathed in. “That’s gorgeous. But are you sure it’s Baltimore Rose? That looks more like Trellis to me.”

Welcome to my childhood.

I’m not sure what your mother & grandmother talked about when they got together, but I bet it wasn’t the merits of relish trays versus celery trays or how many oatmeal bowls constitute a complete set, anyway?

My mom & her mother were crazed true Haviland Limoges crazy people collectors. They stalked antique shops & scouted estate sales, looking for that elusive spoon holder or bone dish. They bought price guides & made endless lists that began “4 bread-and-butter plates, 2 meat platters … ” They knew everybody within 100 miles who had a 12-place setting in the coveted Sheraton pattern.

And because I was the lone girl in the family — my mom was an only child & I had only brothers — I was the Haviland heir apparent. No matter that I’d rather be outside playing or curled up somewhere (else) with a Nancy Drew book. Didn’t make a difference that I was clumsy & heavy-handed & desperately afraid of dropping the rare Montreux-pattern tureen lid. Wasn’t a problem that I couldn’t tell the difference between lilies of the valley & lilacs in a garden much less on a dessert plate.

My disinterest was ignored. My aversion to delicate & fragile was disregarded. It was no use — by the time I had my own family, I somehow owned three whole sets of Haviland along with countless spare pieces & a box full of identification guides & newspaper clippings.

I guess the Apple (Blossom gravy boat) doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But all kidding aside, the Haviland Limoges story IS fascinating. A New York importer named David Haviland stumbled across a French porcelain tea service in 1838. Recognizing its superiority to the English imports he’d been selling, he decided to be the first American to introduce the fine china to American society. Haviland ended up moving his family to Limoges, France, home of the clay ingredient called “kaolin” that made the china so unique. The company survived wars, family squabbles & economic downturns and is still selling tableware today. (Learn more here.)

I ‘m not sure why my grandmother — and then my mom — loved Haviland so much. Did my great-grandmother have some when my grandmother was growing up? Was it something my grandmother always wanted when she was little? I don’t know, but I sure wish I’d thought to ask.

And, you know, some of those patterns are pretty. In fact, I’ve got a couple of dinner plates in the Richmond pattern & sure could use the salad plates to go with.

Luckily, YOU can add to — or start — your own Haviland collection at our first Rooted in Memories estate sale, where you can see the china’s elegant beauty for yourself. We’ll have good prices & plenty of sturdy packing materials. Check back often for details as we finalize the sale dates.

China & crystal & linens … oh, my!

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By Cathy Wood

So, see all of those plates & dishes & things in these photos? If you’re like most of my friends & my Younger Daughter, you love this image. You see yourself sitting in front of the open doors, oohing & aahing in delight as you unearth treasures. You’ll carefully pick up each piece, inspect it for nicks, turn it over for identifying marks. You wonder about where it came from & who used it. This is your happy place.

My mom would love you. This was her happy place, too.

Well, one of them. One of approximately 132 million shelves & drawers & boxes & cabinets in her house that look just like this — plates & goblets stacked precariously, tablecloths & napkins packed tightly. All waiting for people to love them.

I am not those people. This is not my happy place. This is my oh-good-lord-what-are-we-going-to-do-with-all-of-this-stuff place.

You see, my mom loved antiques. China, crystal, silverware, tablecloths, quilts — they all found new homes in ours, She knew the layout of every antique mall within a two-hour radius & the name of every antiques dealer within three. Family vacations included negotiations between her & my dad on how many antique shops we’d stop at (although Dad himself was susceptible to glass insulators, Civil War books & farm tools). But it wasn’t the browsing & buying & bringing home that bothered me — it was how freakin’ long the process took. Determined not to miss a single item, my mom could spend hours in antiquing mode. She’d go through every hatbox, every squeaky drawer, every dark musty corner. Time had no meaning when searching for a Towle fish fork or a Heisey relish dish. I took a book with me every time we got in the car because I never knew when I’d have two hours of waiting-for-Mom-to-finish-looking time.

At one point, she started what we’d call today a “side hustle.” She became the original 1980s Girl Boss. At her peak, she had at least six booths at various antiques malls, a small open-by-appointment-only antiques shop at my dad’s retirement project/tree farm and a robust series of much-anticipated yard sales. And she loved every minute. After my dad died in 2016, she shifted from active antiques hunting to enjoying her acquisitions at home. She put a comfy chair in the sunroom and filled the bookshelves with price guides and file folders. We’d often find her asleep with an antiques magazine in one hand & a pen in the other. She and her caregivers spent hours cleaning & arranging & rearranging & putting away & taking back out again. She looked forward to visits from my Younger Daughter, Carolyn, who got the antiques gene that had skipped me. She & her Grommy talked hat pins & beaded purses & Bakelite jewelry. I’d go read.

Mom died in 2020 from complications of Parkinson’s. My brothers & I discussed What To Do for more than a year. Turning everything over to an expert for appraisals & sales seemed easiest. But during the quiet times of quarantine, I’d been thinking, too — about the joy Mom got from collecting, her enthusiasm when sharing finds with others, her directives to not break up this collection or split up that china set after she was gone. I remembered the times I rolled my eyes as new old things appeared week after week and my firm refusals every time she offered something she thought I might like but knew I wouldn’t take home. (Had I hurt her feelings? I’m afraid I probably did.) But I also remembered the project we’d started in the last year of her life — we’d pick out a room, she’d sit down & I’d go from object to object, asking questions & taking notes.

I wish I’d asked more questions & taken more notes.

But maybe I can do something similar now, I thought as the time for signing estate-sale contracts got closer. Maybe I could make up for my past impatience, my dismissiveness of china patterns & goblet styles & what does “Made in Japan” really mean? I couldn’t listen to my mom’s stories anymore, but maybe I could help create more. I could do my best to make sure her treasures were honored & celebrated even if I hadn’t done that during her life.

So Carolyn & I decided to manage things ourselves. As we clean out & organize & prep for sales, we’ll show you what we find & tell you what we find out. This is the place to share stories & memories — both ours & yours. Check back frequently for sale dates.

Telling and Selling Memories

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By Carolyn Myers

Growing up, my favorite place was my Grommy’s (and Poppy’s) house. After a quick greeting, I would immediately go exploring for hours. Like all of the other great museums, it could take a lifetime to see everything on display. Every wall, surface, closet and drawer held (too many?) items of interest, and I loved it all.

And Grommy loved me for it.

After hours of hunting, I would show her my finds. Maybe an old Pyrex bowl, or a flour-sack apron, or a collection of postcards from the early 20th century. or her great-grandmother’s hand mirror and hairbrush or a quilt made before the Civil War, or … or… It didn’t matter what I found or the price listed on the item in her beautiful handwriting — she’d let me keep whatever I discovered. After I thanked her profusely, she would usually smile and say, “Most of this will be yours someday anyway; might as well take it now.” No one else in the family shared my love and fascination with her treasures, and she knew I would appreciate them like she did.

So, when Grommy died on Feb. 29, 2020, we thought we knew exactly how to proceed: Each family member would pick out favorite items and then an estate sale would take care of the rest. Mom and I would plan weekend trips to fill a couple boxes each of mementos — we estimated we could have the clearing-up part done in two or three visits and then we’d set the sale for later this summer.

Easy peasy.

Also wrong.

We soon realized the enormity of this task and our reluctance to simply fill a few boxes and be done with it. Honoring Grommy, honoring our family history and the legacy of what she built and left us, was too heavy and too much to tackle in one summer.

In conversations with my mom about our options, we also realized that we weren’t ready to be done with this task. Granted, we couldn’t feasibly keep all of her treasures, but we couldn’t stand the thought of a stranger coming in to sell it all before we learned more about Grommy’s life’s work. We weren’t ready to let go of her treasures, her memory. We needed more time to honor her (and Poppy), what they built and what they left as their legacy.

So here we are. A year and half after Grommy left us, we are picking up the (thousands and thousands of) pieces. My mom and I, with the rest of the family’s blessing, have a plan. She and I are working our way through the rooms full of antiques and collectibles Grommy delighted in finding and displaying for decades. Our idea is to host events at the house where you can explore and find treasures for yourselves (details to come). Along with those events, we’ll share the stories we discover – stories about teapots & crystal, linens & china, books, prints, Hummels, Depression glass and more. This is our work: Understanding more of our family’s history, discovering relics of American history, paying tribute to the beautiful and overwhelming world of collectibles and antiques, all while grieving the loss of a complicated and wonderful woman. We are not professional curators or antique sellers (Mom is a professional writer, thank goodness!), but we are ready to get to work and excited to share our adventures with you all.

Check our Rooted in Memories Facebook page frequently for details.

Yard Sales — and a Mystery!

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Okay, all y’all antiques detectives. I need help! As much as I love a good bargain and the thrill of the hunt, I’m not one to get all googly-eyed over yard sales. Some people are. Some people get up on Saturday morning while it’s still dark and gather their yard-sale tools (measuring tape, hand wipes, bottled water, coffee) and then set off to discover treasures. I only do that in extreme circumstances — such as when the bed-and-breakfast in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where Dear Husband and I stayed after our wedding is cleaning out the linen closets and hosting a yard sale with profits benefiting the church next door where Dear Husband and I got married. Now, that is worth it. The folks who owned Byrn-Roberts Inn, a gorgeous 1903 house on Main Street just a block or so away from Murfreesboro’s downtown, had closed the inn several years ago and were simply living in the house as normal people. But apparently they decided they didn’t need dozens of water pitchers and hand towels after all and decided to declutter and help out Central Christian Church at the same time. My mom and Younger Daughter were all up for the adventure, and we planned so well that we got there even before the sale started. And we all scored. My mom, with her usual impeccable eye for gems among junk, made some great buys. And YD and I didn’t do so badly either. For less than $45, I bought a wicker towel rack, a metal wall mirror, a wine carrier I’m going to use for flowers or silverware, three adorable square glass flower vases, a restaurant-style ice bucket with tongs, a fun breads cookbook and some … I don’t know what you call them … cute things on metal stakes that you stick in your garden or landscaping — including an adorable metal ladybug for Capt. Adorable (he calls them “Grouchy B Bugs” from a favorite Eric Carle book). And then I also bought this stainless-steel Mystery Pitcher. It’s about 5 inches tall and 11 inches in diameter, with a brass-colored handle and hinge on the lid. I would guess it was for warm maple syrup or something else breakfast-in-a-quaint-Victorian-inn-like except for the holes in the lid near the spout area. I forgot to ask the inn’s owners what it was when I bought, so now I’m hoping y’all can help. Any ideas?

Shopping

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My friend Susan has a consignment store in Sheffield, Alabama, that’s full of  treasures you just want to take home with you. Susan also has hired a new part-time employee with a wonderful creative eye for display and a stylish flair for vintage fashion. Okay, that employee is my Younger Daughter, but still! Susan and YD make a great team and visiting Upscale Resale is like browsing through a fun and funky antiques shop . I love the way YD has put together these retro looks with coordinating gloves, hats and handbags. Makes me feel all Jackie-O and Audrey Hepburn. I just missed the white-glove era but I (barely) can remember my mother tucking a pair, along with a floral cotton handkerchief, into her purse as she’d get ready for church on Sunday mornings. I think I remember that, anyway. I’ll have to ask her if she ever wore or took gloves to church when I was little or if I have completely and totally made that up — which is entirely possible. What I am sure of, however, is that a pair of white gloves is the perfect accessory for this lovely plum-colored spring suit with the pleated skirt and gorgeously tailored jacket. I can just see this at church on Easter Sunday, can’t you? Upscale Resale is at 2613 North Jackson Highway in Sheffield. Phone number is 256.381.7773. It’s open weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  In addition to vintage clothing and jewelry, there is furniture, art work, home decor, glassware, books, holiday items and all sorts of things. You’ll love it!

Shopping

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If a store can have a personality, then What’s on Second? in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, is geeky with a strong dash of uber-cool chic. It’s an antiques shop and a vintage boutique and a collectors’ paradise all in one … and the place where you’re going to come face to face with your childhood. After “Oh, wow, look at this!” the most commonly heard phrase among browsers  is “Oh, wow, I remember having one of those!” What’s on Second? is at 2306 Second Avenue North just a couple doors down from the Urban Standard coffee shop — the two must-go destinations are part of a downtown growth in art, music, food and style. The wooden floors and tin ceilings of the store’s two floors are as much a part of What’s On Second? as the somehow carefully arranged piles and stacks of … well, anything you can think of. There are postcards, books, posters, china, toys, clothes, lamps, household goods, tools, furniture, art work, jewelry, glassware, local history items — and that’s just your first few steps inside the front door. I asked the person behind the cash register once where all this came from — did the owners go to auctions and estate sales all the time? Turns out that most of the inventory comes from people bringing treasures in to sell. Prices seemed a bit high to me, but then I still can’t get used to spending $3.95 for a non-fat dry cappuccino so what do I know? At least it’s free — and fun — to browse and explore and maybe stumble across your own treasure. There’s no Web site, but you can call What’s On Second? at (205) 322-2688 for details.

Journalism — and Jewelry

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Antique mallsYounger Daughter and I recently were browsing through an antiques mall in Florence, Alabama, when she called me over to where she was standing. “Isn’t this your story?” she asked, pointing to a framed story from the local newspaper — the TimesDaily — about pins that was next to a display of wonderful vintage pins. And YD was right — there was my byline from my former days as a staff writer for the TimesDaily life section, before I retired almost two years ago to become a financially challenged but incredibly happy columnist and freelance writer. I have to say that it was sort of a strange feeling to see such care taken with a story I didn’t even remember doing — one of several hundred, probably, I don’t remember doing throughout the 10 years I worked in the TimesDaily newsroom. Yet there was my story, years later still stuck in black and white (well, sort of faded beige) and still influencing folks to think about buying a vintage pin because “brooches update fall wardrobes.” I have to admit it was a strange sensation to see this — a kind of out-of-body, did-I-really-write-that experience. Sort of makes you think. Sort of makes you hope you did a good job. Sort of makes you wonder how many other things you wrote are floating around influencing people to do things. Sort of makes you promise yourself to Write Only Good Things From Now On … beginning, maybe … tomorrow.

Family

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Ponderosa Tree Farm AntiquesHappy 75th birthday to my mom, Susan Wood, of Antiques Manchester, Tennessee, today! She is practically the most awesome person I know, and my goal is to grow up to be just like her. And since she hates having her picture taken, I’ve done the next best thing and put pictures here of just one of her claims to fame: her antique shop, Ponderosa Tree Farm Antiques. She is known far and wide as an antiques and auction expert and she’s gathered some of the results Tennessee antiquesof her sharp eyes and buying skills here in her antiques shop. She also has three booths at an antiques mall, but my favorite is her shop. I love wandering through and discovering new finds she’s rescued from folks Manchester, Tennesseewho don’t appreciate the value of a vintage flour-sack apron or a chunky retro beaded bracelet. She’s got dishes, books, kitchen ware, dolls, toys, clothes, linens and almost any other thing you might want to collect. And, listen, she does all this herself — and with help from my dad. She loads and totes and prices and organizes and cleans and presses — it’s exhausting just to think about, but she loves it. I cannot keep up with her. In fact, I can’t keep up with either of my parents — they pretty much put me to shame. Read more in my weekly newspaper column, http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20091030/ARTICLES/910305000, and have a happy birthday, Mom! Love you!!!

Food and Drink

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Is the glass half empty or half full … or broken? My mom gave me four of these wine glasses for Christmas after I admired them at Henhouse Antiques in Birmingham, Alabama (http://www.shophenhouseantiques.com/). I loved their style and also the fact that I couldn’t knock them over and break them, the way I do with stemmed wineglasses. But, of course, in the 10 months I’ve had them, I’ve broken every single one of them. The fourth and last one  developed a crack on Wednesday night, probably in sympathy with its lost three companions, and so I put it out of its misery.

And in other random thoughts, friends and family always are tickled at my love for Fresh Market and Whole Foods and places like Tria Market in Birmingham — since they all know that I don’t actually cook. Much, that is. My husband’s sports-editor schedule means that we eat out a lot. And when I’m on my own, I’m a low-maintenance grazer. But I love good food, so you gotta go to the source. Besides, it’s the promise of possibilities that I love in good grocery stores. With all that inspiration, it’s possible that I might get motivated to grill some cedar-plank salmon or whip up a fresh risotto. It’s possible!

Yard Sales

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My mom and dad recently had their Super Incredible Mega Yard Sale in Manchester, Tenn. They do a massive cleanout every year or so and sell the results at the Ponderosa, their farm on nearby Old Tullahoma Highway where my dad grows nursery stock and my mom has her antique “shed” — it’s smaller than a shop.”  They did most of the toting and packing and moving things around, but I helped a little bit — mainly by telling customers, “I’m not sure what that is. Let’s ask my mom!” Anyway, the weather was perfect and we had so much fun, especially when my daughter and son-in-law brought Cutest Baby Ever up from Huntsville, Ala., for a visit. And I loved watching my parents in action! My mom knows her antiques, and she arranges things so creatively: Linens in an old suitcase, plates in a dish drainer. Everything in the sale had a story, from the wooden lobster trap they brought back from Maine (“They don’t make them like this anymore,” my mom said. “They’re all plastic now.”) to my grandmother’s decades-old mixer — which my mom sold to a young woman who seemed to appreciate it. But it wasn’t all selling. My dad met a couple tractor collectors, which led to deep conversations about … well, tractor stuff. And he also ended up giving away some bed railings that weren’t even in the sale to a woman who was helping a disabled friend of hers set up housekeeping. Profits from the two-day sale were only about $250, but I took away much more than the $15 I got for some pots and pans.

This is where I was when I found out my younger daughter had mono — and I had shared her soup and sandwich at lunch earlier that week. Yikes! She already was feeling better by the time she got her diagnosis but of course I convinced myself that I was feeling worse. Read about the happy ending at http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20081010/ARTICLES/810100302