Vintage finds - bumper edition!

Today I realised I haven't done one of these posts for ages, I used to do them monthly. So here it is - a whole Summer's worth of vintage rooting. I've probably forgotten a few bits, and I'm going to do separate posts for a few select treasures!


1950s cabinet - £2! This was from a local antique shop, the owner told me he occasionally takes house clearance lots and so buys 'rubbish' in order to get the 'good' pieces - unfortunately he'd also broken one of the glass doors putting it outside, hopefully I'll be able to make a replacement one day. Frankly I think a person can probably make more money nowadays selling 50s furniture than unfashionable Victorian stuff, but obviously his distaste for it is to my benefit!


Sputnik legs! It also has glittery backing paper and curvy glass shelves. My friend Ciana helped me bring it home, and all I can say is that carrying two small children about must make you strong - she heaved it around with ease, I was a sweaty, wheezing heap after pushing it upstairs on my own!


1950s/60s shelving unit - £15. I love this, after getting rid of our massive hefty old CRT TV, I got the small new one and wanted something vintage to put it on, where I could also display some of my immense collection of trinkets. This came from a seller in Failsworth Mill, a large antiques and collectables centre where the prices are reasonable and the many stallholders are amenable to haggling!


1950s amoeba shaped mirrors, £3 each from a vintage jumble sale, held by a friend-of-a-friend who was selling her possessions in preparation for a move to France.



50s clock - £1. this was running when I got it from the same vintage jumble sale, stopped by the time I got home, started working again after I took out and oiled the workings, and promptly stopped again three days later. It's been going for so long that a hole inside that holds a moving part has become slightly oval instead of round, so it keeps going out of alignment.


1930s Lloyd Loom seat/basket - free! I got this by bargaining with the seller from whom I bought the shelving unit above, it was originally priced at £10, which is still fairly reasonable seeing as it is in completely original condition - most Lloyd loom furniture you find has been repainted, but this retains its factory paint job and deco foliage upholstery. It's strong enough to sit on and is currently hiding a small proportion of my laundry mountain.


Lustreware vase - £7, haggled down from £10 from the same seller as the shelves and basket. Another item for my fawn collection!


1920s-30s uranium glass bowl for my collection, £5, car boot sale.


Enormous glass cake dome, £5, car boot sale. Not vintage but still useful!


50s cats - £1.49 each, charity shop.


Vintage style metal memo board from Rose & Co., won in a raffle by my mum and stepdad. Aerospace boyfriend immediately drew a huge penis on it in dry-wipe marker, as he does with most things.


Beautiful 1950s diamanté necklaces - these belonged to my grandmother, were given by her to my sister when we were little, and my sister passed them to me recently as they are too glitzy for her and too likely to attract the small grasping hands of my niece!


Amazing vintage fully fashioned stockings, still in their original packaging and with spectacular pearl and rhinestone adornments at the heel! These will be saved as they are very special and were part of a swap I did with Miss Matilda. I sent her the framed 1920s prints I blogged about here, which came up very nicely with a bit of cleaning!


She was also generous enough to send me this beautiful jewellery as a gift - I squealed with delight when I opened the package, it used to belong to Lana Turner! Her daughter, Cheryl Crane, auctioned some of her belongings a few years after she died, and I remember drooling over the lovely things for sale at the time. Thanks again, Miss M! You are lovely! xxx


After I received the jewellery I spied this book for £1 at a car boot sale written by Crane, and decided to read a little more about Lana Turner's life. I've only just started it, but it is filled with scandal!


Movie monsters book with Christopher Lee on the cover, 20p, local church jumble sale.


Esther Williams biography, £2.99, Oxfam charity shop. I really enjoyed reading this, she's very frank and funny, and I'm glad she is still alive and lending her name to an amazing range of swimsuits! This one and this one are my favourites, they also do a black one with cherries which is beautiful but I can't find it anywhere in the UK. My only criticism of this book is that Esther's co-writer and editor, Digby Diehl, has a tendency to repeat things such as historical details and lists of names which have already been mentioned in previous chapters.


Max Factor biography, £1 from the pound shop in Burnley, a gift from my mum. This was really interesting as it gives a great insight into the man behind the company. I, like many people I expect, wasn't aware that Max Factor was an actual person, I had assumed it was just a brand name. He was a Hollywood makeup artist and cosmetics developer in the golden age of cinema, and this book is a great read for fans of films from the 20s-50s as well as those interested in the history of cosmetology.

July's Vintage Purchases

A couple of weeks ago we ventured out to a car boot sale, I took £20 and bought a few vintage treasures!


Green dressing table set bits, £1. This is missing a tray, a powder dish and a lid from one of the trinket pots, and the little old lady seller told me that the rest of the set had been there but that an earlier customer was going to buy it and dropped half of it, breaking the other pieces! I have no idea why she didn't charge them for breaking her stock.


1950s sunburst wall clock, £4. Unfortunately we got this home and found it to be not working, hopefully Paul can fix it with his soldering and electrics skills.


Vintage Singer manually opeated sewing machine with case and key, £15. A man was trying to haggle the seller down, telling her he only wanted it for an ornament and trying to make her accept £5. He faked disinterest so we swooped in and gave her the £15, you should have seen his face when she then produced the case from under her table. I certainly didn't begrudge paying the asking price seeing as it's worth a lot more, and I didn't appreciate Mr. Cheapskate trying to con the nice girl selling it - there's haggling when something is overpriced, and then there's plain dishonesty.


I looked it up at Singer's serial number registry where you can check the serial number of almost every individual Singer sewing machine and find its year and place of manufacture. My machine was made in 1920 at Clydebank, Scotland, and is in perfect condition apart from the rubber ring on the bobbin winder, which has perished but is easily replaceable.


Amazing sandwich plates, £3 for both. These are missing their teacups, but I got them for a great price, and this is a rare pattern! Unfortunately these plates sparked off a need to collect more pieces in this pattern, and this week these pieces arrived in the post!


They cost considerably more than £3. Tureen and serving platter!

Art Deco Beauties

When I first moved into my flat, there were three framed prints in the hallway waiting to be thrown out. I saved them, of course, and they have languished in a corner ever since. During a cleaning frenzy the other day, I decided to take a closer look at them. One of the frames is coming apart a little, so I managed to take a peek beneath the backing paper.


The pictures are artwork prints given away by the Pompeian Beauty Company, and date from 1924! The glass needs a good clean, I think they'll look considerably brighter once they've had a good polish as I suspect the yellowish cast is nicotine staining on the surface - hopefully the paper itself has been protected by the sealed frames.


One of the prints sold on eBay this week for £34.49 (here), as you can see it has the Pompeian Beauty logo at the bottom with the artist's name, Gene Pressler. This part is cut off on my prints, obviously whoever framed them didn't like the branding on there so cut it off rather than folding it under, which is unfortunate.


Information on the company is fairly scarce online, but I came across this small article on Massage Magazine's website, about the history of Pompeian massage cream which has a little of the company's history. Though much of the available information relates to the brand's Canadian roots, it was in fact an international company, with its British headquarters in Leeds.

"The Pompeian Manufacturing Company began in a small drugstore on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio, in the late 19th century. Among its product line, the Pompeian Massage Cream was a favorite with barbers around the world - even though it was promoted to men and women alike.

Pharmacist Fred W. Stecher, the son of a German immigrant, created the soothing after-shave massage cream in the back room of his small drugstore on the west side of Cleveland. But it was Otto F. Leopold, who after Stecher's death would become president of the company, who led the creation of its famous "Pompeian Beauty of the Year" contest. Film star Mary Pickford was one of the first Pompeian beauties to grace the advertisements of the company, and helped Leopold to become one of America's early cosmetic tycoons.

In 1927 the Pompeian Manufacturing Company was sold to Colgate Palmolive Peet for $1 million. Six months later the entire Pompeian line of products was discontinued and the legacy of Pompeian Massage Cream and its "Pompeian Beauty" ended. But the legacy was the first great advertising campaign using the word massage in its product name. From the examples shown here you can get an idea of the broad approach the company took in marketing its Pompeian Massage Cream product.

Today the Pompeian Massage Cream jars, sample tins, ads and posters are considered collectable antiques."

-Robert Noah Calvert

There is also a more thorough history of the company and its products on the Collecting Vintage Compacts blog, which is full of interesting bits about vintage cosmetics and has some lovely Pompeian advertising pictures.


I had a chuckle at this inscription which is at the top on the back of the panel, hopefully he married her for more reasons than just her 'lasting youth and girlish loveliness'.