Estate Sale Weekend - Update AND a Literary Note

Christmas Items for Sale (you can find a LOT of these)

Vintage Dolls for Sale

Vintage Fabrics on Sale (a little pricey)

I will be traveling / vacationing for much of the next month so spent the last few days getting a final "fix" with estate sales.  A recent new client gave me information about a site that allows me to register my zip code and automatically get almost daily messages about estate sales in the area - up to 100 miles away - EstateSales.Net.   I attended several yesterday and today.  One sale was amongst the best organized I have recently seen - reminding me of my old friend Annie of Great Finds who moved away - I really miss her sales.  They had taken the time to nicely stage as well as aggregate items for sale.  The only down-side on this sale was their price structure (first day of sale) - way too high for me including some interesting fabrics I might otherwise have purchased.  Many companies, like this one, operate on a commission basis and do want to maximize sale proceeds.  I was sufficiently impressed by them that I passed on the name of the company to a neighbor who is downsizing and looking for an estate sale company to handle the sale of her furnishings.

On a literary note, I am reading a great book about a famous ladies hat maker - working for both Saks 5th Avenue and Henri Bendel during the heyday of women's hats - 30's - late 50's.  Her daughter, Francine du Plessix-Gray, wrote a book called Them which describes a very interesting family of Russian origins who escaped during the pre-world I / Russian Revolution days and eventually ended up in New York City with a lot of their compatriots.  The fashion of and for women's hats is one of the many themes that runs through this book.  I personally love wide-brimmed hats (avoiding the sun) and have several dozen but nothing like these.  The sale I mentioned above had a large collection of hats (most made by Atlanta-based hat makers but some from NYC and Europe).  I was fascinated!

Hat display at Sale

Detail of Hat

Detail of Hat