Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries--or Strawberries

Buying vintage and antique things to resell usually means a garage full of projects.

It is rare that we buy something to sell on and it is ready to place in the shop without some tweeking.

Tweeking can mean cleaning, dusting, using Howard's Magic Juice, (cures so many issues with old stuff), hosing off, nailing together, fashioning some little bit, or in the case of paintings--cleaning off nicotine or just old age brown yuck.

The photos you see are not just bad cloudy pictures.  They show the process of using Qtips and cotton balls and Another Secret Sauce to clean paintings to looking like they were the day they were painted.  And adding value.  I had no idea that this painting was of Queen Anne or Ranier cherries before I started cleaning it.

And the way this basket of strawberries popped when cleaned was amazing.  Life is a bowl of cherries or strawberries when you can recognize it.

The Fab Four

Sometimes Dear One and I really stumble onto it.

After a recent trip to restock our space at Odana Antiques in Madison Wisconsin, we were driving back home late.  I was the driver and I wanted a pit stop.  Antiquers always try to time "The Call of Nature" to when they are passing an antique shop on the highway.

On the way out the shop door--there they were.  A set of four, one of a kind chairs depicting the Beatles.  There were four 1960s era chairs, with hand painted portraits of the the John, Paul, George and Ringo on the seats and the backs covered in black and white montage of photos from fan magazines. From the looks of some of the photos--I date the handiwork at 1970.

Now if truth be told--I was playing Barbie's during the heyday of Beatlemania.  Dear One was grinding through college and law school "and had no time to pay attention to pop music"  or so he says. 

But these chairs are mighty neato.  You can find them now at the shop.  $775 the set.  One of a kind pieces for the man cave or woman cave.