Vintage Smoking Jacket

Also for tomorrow at the Sunday Antique Market, this beautiful grey wool smoking jacket with shawl collar and red accented piping. Size 44 approx.

Boot Trees

I'm just putting stuff together to bring to this week's Sunday Antique Market and one of the items (actually three pairs ) will be these antique boot trees. We often have shoe trees as well as tall boot trees but these shorter one are increasingly difficult to find. Meant for Wellingtons or paddock boots they often end up just being used as pieces of sculpture or retrofitted by interior decorators as book ends or lamp bases.

Nevermind.

If you own shoes and care about them, trees of some sort are a must: they absorb perspiration and help keep your boots in the best condition.

Find o' the Day

Find o' the day: it's a sterling silver boutonnière. For those gentlemen not satisfied with merely popping a flower through the buttonhole, there is an alternative. Water goes in the well, stem goes in the well, hook goes through the button hole. Wear in front on the lapel or behind the lapel so that just the flower pokes through and shows in front. We've had a few of these before in different configurations but never one quite like this. Very nice indeed.

Bally Crocodile Shoes

We'll have these wonderful Bally men's shoes for sale tomorrow at the Sunday Antique Market. They're marked "genuine Caiman" model Dino III. Sadly, they're a little edge rubbed, which could be hidden with a generous application of polish, but we've left them just as we found them. The size is 7½. Priced to sell.

Manly Underwear

From the genuinevintage collection of period packaging.

Stanfield's became famous for supplying warm and comfortable longjohns to the gold miners during the Yukon gold rush of 1898.

This box dates from about 1939 and show strong manly graphics. Two handsome lads, wrestling in their underwear in a manly way. Love the shadows.

Stanfield's, a Canadian icon.

Jane Russell Tie

While cleaning out the old tie vaults, I came across this gem; I forgot that I had it tucked away.

An homage to Jane Russell? I suppose that it's the kind of thing once found in joke or novelty shops and worn to smokers or stags.

Res ipsa loquitor.

Screen printed on rayon, with fiberglass flocking on an applied high relief flexible rubber form.


Not for sale, back into the vaults it goes.

Ladies Kangol Hats

In addition to the men's hats, we also picked up a bag-o-kangols ladies hat.

From wikipedia: In the 1960s, designers Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin worked with the company, whose products graced the heads of the rich and famous, including the Beatles and Arnold Palmer, and later Princess Diana.

We'll have them available, priced very, very reasonably, this Sunday at the Sunday Antique Market.

Victorian/Edwardian Vest

The interest in vests or waistcoasts seems to come and go. Well, it's back again. Golden Globe Award nominee Simon Baker stars as Patrick Jane in The Mentalist and he wears vests.

We just shipped two period vests to Texas but have a few left; have a look at: our online shop.

Top to Bottom Estate Sale Purchases

And since today's a Holiday, there's an antique show at the Bayview Mall. Didn't buy anything, didn't take any pix, but did have a delish brunch.

However after that, we were invited to preview a couple of Estate Sales. And by preview I mean only a few people had been through to cherry pick these two estates, both in fine neighborhoods, before they're thrown open to the public for a contents' sale. The houses have both been sold and have to be cleared.

We didn't get very much there but there was some vintage clothing we did buy. The vintage I'm talking about is recent vintage, non-designer, but fun and sale-able. A great stack-o-hats which will be sold cheaply, pictured above, and another stack-o-ladies-hats.

I also scored some wearable-for-me clothing, mostly '70s but in great condition.
The best, for me, (and it is always about me, me, me) was a pair of 10 or 20 year old Church's monk strap shoes, never worn. As Rachel Ray would say: Dee-Lish.

Birch Bark Frame

Today's find: a sweet little birch bark frame with dyed porcupine quill decoration and sweetgrass borders. We're not sure where this is from but they traditionally are made by the Chippewas , an Anishinaabe (Ojibwa) First Nation in Southern Ontario and upper New York State and were often sold in tourist areas, cottage country and the Niagara Falls area.