Featured Collectible - Dorothy Thorpe Glassware

*Note - Since I published this post a couple of people have left comments saying that some of the items here are not from Dorothy Thorpe - I found one link stating that the faded pieces are not DT, only the banded ones are. What I couldn't find is anything saying who the faded pieces are actually by - if anyone knows leave a comment! :)

I'd never heard the name Dorothy Thorpe until I picked up this, which is currently up at auction on eBay:

 Dorothy Thorpe Silver Fade Roly Poly Glasses & Ice Bucket Set

Luckily a bit of quick research brought her to my attention, and WOW - talk about some great stuff! I guess Dorothy Thorpe items have been seen on the TV show Mad Men, which is, of course, super hot right now.

From Glass Encyclopedia:

"Dorothy Thorpe was an artist who had a decorating studio in the Los Angeles area, and in her heyday (probably 1930's and on into the 1950's) she purchased glass from various companies, decorated it, and sold it. Most of her pieces are signed. She also designed glassware and ceramics.

She used a trademark of a large printed T in the center with a smaller stylised D on one side, and the same image in reverse on the other side. This trademark is often etched onto the side of the piece, near the design.

Many of her pieces have sand-blasted or deeply etched designs, but she also worked with silver overlay. Her designs are found on Heisey glass pieces, Cambridge glass, and many others from that period."

I'm completely smitten - let's have a look at some other Thorpe silver pieces that are up for grabs right now and have a nice drooling session together, shall we?

Dorothy Thorpe Silver Fade 6 Glass Set & Carrying Rack 

 Dorothy Thorpe Silver Band Roly Poly Glasses & Pitcher Set 

 Dorothy Thorpe Eames Era Silver Band Punch Bowl 

  Dorothy Thorpe Silver Fade Tall Glasses, Coasters, & Caddy

 Dorothy Thorpe Silver Band Cream & Sugar Set 

 Hmm, why do I suddenly feel like a drink? ;)

Does anyone Tumblr?

I just set up a page on Tumblr - if you have one too leave the link in the comments so I can follow you! I'm still playing with it, I don't know what all I will be posting there... it seems pretty cool so far though! :)

Update: I just noticed a page on my Tumblr called Ask Me Anything - you can post questions there and I can answer them! How cool is that? So if you want to pick my brain give it a go!

What the heck does Faux Bois mean?

I ran across the term Faux Bois a few months ago, and I had to scratch my head - is that a real thing? What does it mean? Off to Wikipedia I ran:

"Faux Bois (from the French for false wood) refers to the artistic imitation of wood or wood grains in various media."

It's a fancy term for fake wood grain! Who knew? It seems to be a more popular term on Etsy than on eBay, for whatever reason. I meant to write a post about it then, but it slipped my mind until I found this the other day:

Lincoln BeautyWare Wood Grain Bread Box & Canister Set

I would say this set is Faux Bois at it's finest... And it's Lincoln BeautyWare - one of my favorite vintage kitchenware brands!

It's kind of surprising how many vintage items were made with a wood grain design - it all screams 70's to me, though I'm sure some of it was created in other decades. Here's just a few cool things I found with a quick search around:

 Vintage Wood Luxo Desk Lamp

Vintage 70's Vinyl Wood Grain Ice Bucket

1920s Red Underwood Faux Bois Woodgrain Typewriter

Vintage Tin Metal Wood Grain Picnic Basket

 Vintage Faux Bois Silver Serving Tray Mid Century Modern

Vintage Desk Calendar Manual Wood Grain

Vintage NOS Wrap Eyeglasses Wood Grain

Vintage FAUX BOIS Aladdin Beverage Butler

 Vintage Libbey Barware Faux Bois Accent

I could go on and on - the lesson here is fake wood grain isn't just for basement paneling - and if you give something a pretty french name, it immediately ups the cool factor! ;)

My new 16" vintage tabletop globe!

This is by far the largest vintage tabletop globe I've seen - and I somehow managed to come up with enough justifications to keep it. It stands about 20" tall, so finding it a home in my packed full house is going to be a challenge - if I ever figure it out I will try to take a few photos! :)

Vintage Sherwin Williams Decorating Guides

I scored a huge box of vintage decorating magazines from the 60's and 70's at a sale - talk about vintage geek heaven! There is a ton of goodness up at auction right now - click on over to check them all out...

My favorites are the Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore decorating guides - it's all about the color with these paint people, you know. I wish I had time to scan every page, but of course I didn't, I just had to hit the highlights (click to enlarge):

The 1001 Decorating Ideas magazines I got along with these I listed in lots of 10 - there is some good stuff inside them, but mostly in the Early American style - which apparently was super popular, but for whatever reason isn't so popular with us retro lovers today. There is this gem inside one:

With this to go with it:

Some of the magazines I got I kept, with the high hopes of scanning in the best bits and pieces for the blog. Here's hoping I manage it at some point this decade! ;)

Hey, that looks familiar!

I'm working on scanning in and listing some vintage Sherwin Williams decorating guides, and I ran across this:

Which looks very, very similar to this in my eBay store:

 Vintage Red Pink Floral Flowers Full Size Bedspread

How cool is that? :)

Stay tuned, I'll be posting more scans from the guides very soon!

New On eBay - Apple Think Different Posters + Vintage Coloring Books

I meant for this post to be two separate posts, published earlier this week - but obviously things didn't quite worked out like I had hoped, so here I am multi-tasking once again... ;)

Last weekend I went to the estate sale of a former teacher, and in a tub full of classroom posters I discovered three complete sets of 10 Apple "Think Different" posters. I didn't know anything about them but I thought they were cool, and the price was right, so I brought them home. It turns out they are from the late 90's, and this particular series was only distributed to teachers - making them pretty rare.

I listed them all at fixed price - two of them have sold out (one buyer in Italy scooped them all up), the others are still up for grabs!

Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Albert Einstein

Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Jim Henson

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - John Lennon & Yoko Ono

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Pablo Picasso

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Amelia Earhart

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Miles Davis

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Mahatma Gandhi

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Cesar Chavez

And here are the two that are sold out, in case you want to check them out too:

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - Jane Goodall

 Apple Think Different Poster 11x17 - James Watson

Also last weekend at an estate sale I happened upon a box of coloring books from the 70's and 80's - and most of them were never used! That is pretty hard to find, as you can imagine most coloring books were colored in...

 Vintage Rainbow Brite Coloring Activity Maze Book 1985

 Vintage A Smurf For All Seasons Coloring Book 1982

 Vintage Happy House My Little Pony Coloring Book 1984

 Vintage Happy House Care Bears Coloring Book 1983

 Vintage Golden Barbie Trace & Color Coloring Book 1984

 Vintage 1976 Sesame Street Coloring Book Whitman #1361

 Vintage We Love Snoopy Coloring Book 1980

There's more - it was a huge box of coloring books! ;) Click on over if you want to see the rest!