Retro finds! – Page 3 – Cracked Ice and Chrome

January 5, 2013January 5, 2013

Hello, 2013

Despite all the hype that we’ve had to listen to for the past two years (at least), there was no apocalypse; no massive power outages; no need to buy wind-up radios and generators. Don’t get me wrong — I didn’t do any of those last things. I tended to believe that if people were able to exist before electricity, then we’d figure it out now too. I’m also not a “prepper,” as if there were a major catastrophe on earth and life was absolutely miserable, why in the world would I want to stick around? But hey … we’re all still here and now the History Channel will have to dig up some more experts who will be freely sharing their other theories about how the world will end. Personally, I think there’s a lot of danger in media hyping end-of-the-world scenarios to a young generation of kids who already don’t really believe that they have a lot to live for. But that’s just me.

It’s been a great Christmas break and I am trying hard to ignore the fact that school has started back up. Back to the grind. Back to the chaos. Good-bye, leisurely mornings drinking coffee and puttering around. Goodbye to making lunches for the kids and taking the dog for long walks. Goodbye, sanity.

Ok, so perhaps I’ll hold onto my sanity for a little bit longer. Time will tell.

This Christmas was a good one. Despite being a drought, we received a 6″ snowfall just before break commenced. I packed up the kids, the dog, and all the presents and headed to South Dakota for a week-long stay. I was able to spend quality time with my family, along with time with my boyfriend and a great friend from my high school days. The recent snowstorm made for some pretty walks with the dogs in the morning, and a layer of frost over the landscape on the 29th helped me capture some nice shots.

I did get some great retro treasures for Christmas. The man in my life found the perfect things for my house; it’s evident how well he knows me. The evidence:

A star-adorned magazine rack that looks right at home in my 1953 house …..

… a pink and gray Zenith radio that is so many kinds of awesome that I just love to look at it. Oh, and it works! ….

A Seth Thomas clock! Oh, how beautiful it is ….

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year’s.

November 27, 2012December 14, 2012

Christmas cards for the retro soul

Earlier this fall I had gone to Lincoln, Nebraska, with my love. (Seriously — saying “boyfriend” makes me sound like I’m 12.) We were at his sister’s house and she took us out to the garage where she had boxes and boxes of “stuff” from her dad’s estate. We opened up the boxes and started sifting through it all, and I was having a great time looking at some of the old cards, pictures, relics, awards, stationery, etc. Most people digging through the stuff would pull out something and go, “Meh,” and toss it aside, and I’d snatch it up and marvel at it. Yeah … I’m weird like that. I kept saying over and over, “We need to scan this stuff in!” It kills me to throw away pictures, no matter how obscure they are.

I found a stack of pictures stuffed in an old sock box. There’s something you don’t see anymore — sock boxes from a department store. Anyway, I started leafing through the pictures and I came across an old photo Christmas card. The styling of it was so incredibly retro and unique that I made sure it went into the “scan” pile that my love and I were taking back home with us. I knew just what I would do with it, too. It was going to be scanned in and edited to become this year’s Christmas card.

So I took it home, scanned it in, cut out the original photo on it, and replaced it with a pic I took of my kids earlier this fall. I couldn’t find a photo printer who would allow me to just print the photo card without having an additional design on it (OK, I did see that Apple would allow me to do it, but each card would be 99 cents!). I ended up just printing them as a regular 4×6 picture. I’ll write on the backs for personalization and will stick them in a regular envelope for sending out. I think it all turned out pretty neat, and I can be sure that my cards will not look like anyone else’s cards this year. That’s just the way I like it.

Here’s a copy of the “doctored” photo card — included here for your own use, if you’d like to use it for your own cards. I’ve uploaded the full size here for download.

August 31, 2012September 3, 2012

Atomic flatware: some mysteries solved

A few weeks ago I wrote a post regarding some starburst flatware that I had picked up in various stores and my quest to identify the wide variety of patterns I encountered. Read the original post here. As I described in that post, what I thought would be an easy task turned into a frustrating series of dead-ends as I tried to match up the plethora of patterns to definite names.

Then I received a most helpful email on Etsy from a fellow Etsyer named Wardrobecat. She took the time to correct my futile attempt to identify the pieces and provided oodles of great information. Here is her email here:

Hi,

I just ran across your website that had a post dated 7-18-12 talking about your recent purchase of many different styles of flatware similar to Mar-crest “Citation”.

I happen to own a full service for 24 of this pattern, as well as having many new-in-box samples of it. Yes, I realize that I have gone a bit overboard in buying this stuff, but I just love it. I use one set of 12 for everyday use and keep another set of 12 in storage for when I have guests. Many of my pieces are nearly mint. Many I have found in thrift stores for 10-29 cents a piece, and others I must admit that I have paid a lot on E-Bay and Craig’s List.

So anyway, the true Marcrest Citation piece in your photo is the one on the far left. It should be marked “stainless steel USA” near the base of the blade. It will not show the word Mar-crest. Every other type of utensil made in this pattern will have the words “Mar-crest stainless steel USA”, but for some reason the knife does not have the word Mar-crest.

This pattern was made in the following pieces: dinner knife, dinner fork, dessert spoon, teaspoon, salad fork, round bowl soup spoon, iced drink spoon, grapefruit spoon, serving spoon, cold meat fork, butter knife, sugar spoon, seafood fork, cocktail sauce spoon and pie server.

The knife that you thought was the real one, second from the right in your photo, I am fairly sure is a pattern called “Starette”, made by the National Stainless Company in Japan, which is often marked as “NSCo”. If it has the word Japan, it definitely is not Marcrest (Marcrest will always show “USA”).

I hope this helps you weed out the many variations of similar styles made by different companies. Good luck finding pieces to add to your collection!

and a later email …..

Here is some more info, just to add to the multitude of starburst designs!

The Mar-Crest pattern that you like is called “Citation Futuristic”. There are two additional patterns made by Mar-Crest that are called simply “Citation”. All three feature different starburst designs. The Futuristic pattern has three stars on a wavy handle; Citation variation 1 (often called MCF-1 by online consumers) has five large stars on a tapered handle with a rounded tip; Citation variation 2 (often called MCF-2) has three small stars and four swirling lines on a relatively straight handle that has a slightly square/round tip. I have included a photo showing all three together.

Sorry it is not a better photo, I tried several times and kept getting glare spots. This is my original photo taken on 8-26-12, and you may use it if you wish.

Cheers!

Needless to say, I am eternally grateful to Wardrobecat for the helpful information! I look forward to adding more pieces to my collection and seeing which one is truly my favorite, as it seems to vary each time I set a table with them.

August 2, 2012

Stuff you just won’t see in today’s magazines

My dad (who always has a bead on some old bound magazine collections on eBay) recently snagged a bound collection of 1950 House Beautiful magazines. Oh, it is so much fun to go through these — not only to see all the style elements that I love about the architecture and design from this time period — but it is also fun to see some old products and ads that just don’t exist anymore. Some of the products are funny because they were considered rather taboo and the carefully-worded text is designed not to offend the most delicate sensibilities. Some of the ads are just downright inappropriate because it’s not even trying to hide the racism behind them.

Case in point:

There’s just no way that you can call something “Sonny Boy” and make a “bank” like this without it being totally racist. I do, however, wonder how scary the clown bank looked. Hello, nightmares!

What the …. ? What IS this? How is it a good luck charm? How will I be able to sleep without those scary jeweled eyes invading my dreams? Egads!

Over time copywriters have learned that there are just certain words and terms that you don’t put into a headline together unless you want people to look twice. Back in 1950, however, this made perfect sense:

When they weren’t coaxing readers to find “gay pick-up gifts for men,” the 1957 Sears catalog was then anxious to make women feel shameful about their natural body functions. Be dainty! Get one of these!

Sears catalogs are quite a hoot, mainly for the vast array of things that they offered via their catalog that you just don’t see anymore.

More to come as I continue to peruse these catalogs and magazines. Summer’s almost over and I’m working on getting all my traveling in so that I can pretend that school isn’t starting back up again.

(It’s not working very well.)

June 25, 2012July 9, 2012

Is there such a thing as too much starburst?

While on my Nebraska trip, I stopped by some antique stores that were very interesting, and there was one store called Uncle Sam’s in Fremont, Nebraska, that I threatened to never leave. It was as if the store was full of stuff I would buy if I trolled around estate sales. If I would have had a pickup there, I could have hauled off a lot of that guy’s inventory. Continue reading “Is there such a thing as too much starburst?”

June 20, 2012July 9, 2012

Signs of the times

One of my favorite things to do on a driving trip is to swing through small towns — particularly ones that are off the main highways — and see if there are any retro signs hanging around. I long for the days of metal and neon, of arrows and boomerangs, of flashy lights and unique signs. Now it seems that all signage is just plain boring — cheap and boring. Boring fonts, boring colors, boring overall design. After all, what uniqueness is there in a Wal-mart sign? It’d look a lot better lit up in neon with a bright blue flashing arrow pointing to the store. My opinion, of course. Take a look at some of the gems I ran across on the backroads of Nebraska … Continue reading “Signs of the times”

March 18, 2012July 9, 2012

A retro trip to Mankato, Minnesota

I was a bit of a late bloomer in the Craigslist department, for the few times I had gone there before, I never found anything that I really wanted. A couple of months ago, however, I started getting into a record player phase, and Craiglist delivered like Domino’s in that department. I picked up a nice little hand-cranked unit in Sioux Falls, and then I discovered a 1962 console record player in Mankato, Minnesota. It had the lighter wood that I desired and was more compact than the monstrous ones of the ’70s, so I was sold on it immediately … and it was sold to me. Behold the beautiful machine:

Continue reading “A retro trip to Mankato, Minnesota”

February 5, 2012December 29, 2021

A couple of finds … and another birthday

This weekend brought some lucky finds on Craigslist as well as my local antique store, and I also happened to turn another year older. Perhaps the purchases were a way to offset the agony of getting older? I dunno.

Anyway …

I’ve been on the hunt for a vintage radio lately, preferably one that had a record player built in. Yesterday I was at the local antique store when I ran across this beauty. Continue reading “A couple of finds … and another birthday”

January 28, 2012July 9, 2012

Tea Cart Love

This is a love story, really.

It all started in the local antique shop, where I spotted a tea cart with gold starbursts on both shelves. Anyone who knows me and my vintage tastes knows that this is not a good combination because it will take every ounce of willpower to hold me back from purchasing something like this. Continue reading “Tea Cart Love”

January 26, 2012June 19, 2020

A long hiatus

One year and two months (to the day!). That is how long of a break I have taken from blogging, and now I’m ready to get back in the game.

Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that the hiatus was needed. Life took a sudden, rather violent turn and I’ve been hanging onto the steering wheel with white knuckles ever since, trying desperately to stay on all four wheels. Continue reading “A long hiatus”