The Vintage Chair
The Vintage Chair
The vintage chair. It’s been interesting watching this old chair be overgrown and draped with vines and flowers, a contrast of youthful exuberance and aged sturdy strength.
Playing around with the filters on my smartphone again, this one is called “vintage”.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
The Old Rocker
The Old Rocker
It’s just that –an old rocker I pulled from someone’s trash because it’s old and solid and comfortable. I set it in the grass to clean off my deck and then the sun started to go down. With the forget-me-nots and violets and young raspberries in bud next to the peeling, faded paint it looks like there’s a story there.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Reis and Zucker Canister
Canisters
They just look like a couple, though I wonder where the rest of the family might be. The stamp on the bottom was unclear, but apparently these two kitchen partners emigrated along with their human family though I’m not sure when. Germans settled in Pennsylvania very early in this country’s history, especially in eastern Pennsylvania where we hear of the “Pennsylvania Dutch” who were not Dutch but German, but along with the Scots and Irish moved west to this area. I’m not sure if Reis and Zucker are that old, and the motifs don’t appear to be so. But it’s nice to see these well-made porcelain and gold plate canisters have survived the years. The little bunny below apparently thinks its great. You just never know what you’ll find in a vintage shop.
Dancing Bunny
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
A Cold Day in April
A Cold April Afternoon
Just a few photos from yesterday’s Civil War Living History event at Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall. I always look for one that works well in sepia, and this group from the 9th Pennsylvania Reserves huddled around the campfire that sputtered in the wind worked well, especially when I got to an angle where no houses could be seen on the hill in the distance.
Below a young re-enactor wears a period dress and crocheted sontag to match and her hair tucked into a light snood with a young lady’s headpiece made by her mother as she gazes out a window of the Capt. Thos. Espy Post on the dim and cold afternoon.
Young Lady
And we had a surprise guest—Andrew Carnegie himself, or so it seemed!
Andrew Carnegie himself came to visit.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Window Into the Past
Window Into the Past
Faded paint, faded wood, faded glass even, dusty with years of grime, so much that this image looks nearly monochromatic, the only coloring offered by the iron oxide from the old nails.
It’s that old carriage house in my neighbor’s back yard again. There’s just something I always find so inspiring in its details and it often becomes the subject or the backdrop of photos; it’s on my walk from my home to Main Street so I see it nearly every day. Here’s a view of the Black and White Barn and in Bird on a Fence.
Vintage Lady
Vintage Lady
Not sure who her features are patterned after, but between her molded and painted features this tiny Baroque lady is a marvel. She’s only about four inches tall, yet the lace trim on her dress and the flower in her hair are extremely detailed. She might need a little skin cream for those cracks though. I just wonder who she’s looking at for all of eternity.
Vintage Pattern
Don’t look at this vintage cast-iron grate for too long, or your eyes will hurt as much as mine. It’s found covering an air duct in the Victorian-era Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall in Carnegie.
Grandmother’s Garden
Grandmother’s Garden
Made by hand with very careful stitches, all those little patches of color are sewn together and carefully bound in yellow, then quilted, all made out of scraps from house dresses and curtains, one woman’s legacy from years ago. I can picture the eras the fabrics came from, and the garments.
1946 Wurlitzer Jukebox, 2011
1946 Wurlitzer “Bubbler” Jukebox 1015
This is an authentic, refurbished, fully-functional 1946 Wurlitzer Bubbler Jukebox 1015, complete with lava-lamp bubbles flowing through the tubes that circle around the front.
I stopped in D&J Records on Main Street in Carnegie where they specialize in vinyl recordings, 45s and LPs, and “oldies” depending on your era (a caller was asking for oldies from the 80s when I was in there, that’s not quite what the shop has in mind), and used recordings on vinyl, cassette and CD in all musical genres. I always find something on CD that I used to have on vinyl or cassette that I can add to my collection. They also have a lot of cool vintage stuff of a musical nature as well as advertising and household items.
Someone had actually purchased this and stopped in to see it and plan on how to move it—it’s heavier than a refrigerator—and to choose the music to go into it. It’s sold with 300 reissued 45s; it was originally meant to play 78s, but when they had it reconditioned it they had it converted to play 45s.
As they had posted with the jukebox:
In 1946, after the end of World War II, Wurlitzer introduced it’s Model 1015 Jukebox. Building supplies had become available again, and it was the “1015- Bubbler” that brought the near- bankrupt Wurlitzer Company great success.The “1015-Bubbler”, is without a doubt the most popular jukebox of all time.
The 1015 Wurlitzer actually was influenced from more of an art deco style, with its illuminated, color-changing pillars, 8 bubble tubes, shiny chrome and domed top
Even though the Wurlitzer Model 1015 was produced from 1946 to 1947, it was the popularity of this jukebox model that kept many of them still bopping along right into the 50’s. It’s this longevity, that is responsible for the “Bubbler” being associated with the romanticized 1950’s sock-hop era.
45-RPM records were becoming so popular that by 1954 the Wurlitzer factory had to introduce a conversion kit for the 1015- Bubbler, just so they could play 45s.
I truly love the details of things manufactured in those years, the crossover from the decorative details of the Art Deco era to the post-war minimalism of “modern” design, that mix of chrome and sunbursts, wood and glass.
And inside, as if to promote the idea of the fantasy dance band, behind the turntable and “stack” of records is a stage with an imitation cardboard stage curtain.
The Wurlitzer and the shop are both gone now…
Inside the jukebox.
Old Wood
Barn Floor
I visit a shop and have merchandise in an old barn, unheated and uninsulated, the sun streaming in through the occasional windows and the narrowing boards of the walls. Here the sun shines on hand-hewn oak worn to a sheen with age.
Gems: 2011
Gems
It’s just a box of costume jewelry from the 1980s with nothing too valuable, but it’s beautiful when you get it all together.
Window Into the Past
Window Into the Past
Faded paint, faded wood, faded glass even, dusty with years of grime, so much that this image looks nearly monochromatic, the only coloring offered by the iron oxide from the old nails.
It’s that old carriage house in my neighbor’s back yard again. There’s just something I always find so inspiring in its details and it often becomes the subject or the backdrop of photos; it’s on my walk from my home to Main Street so I see it nearly every day. Here’s a view of the Black and White Barn and in Bird on a Fence.
Summer Tea: 2011
Summer Tea
A colorful tea set with a backdrop of colored glass lit by they sun on a bright afternoon. Seen in Carnegie Antiques, it was all just so colorful and gleaming it was hard to resist.
It’s always interesting to see what is collected, what is saved, and what survives to be shared again, sometimes the most unlikely things! If you’re local to Carnegie or the Pittsburgh area, don’t forget to stop in at Carnegie Antiques, and the shop’s owner is also hosting an estate sale this Saturday, July 21 that looks like a collector’s dream.
Main Street, July 4
Main Street, Carnegie, July 4, 2012
Just another in my series of sun-and-heat-drenched photos of my town done in a sort of vintage look.
The Penny Post Card, not certain of the year.
I always associate Independence Day with small towns and parks and such. Carnegie’s Main Street looks much as it did when I was growing up, and that much like it did when my parents were growing up.
Below is a “penny post card” of Main Street from an unknown year and a slightly different angle, but you’ll recognize the image. See other photos of Main Street, Carnegie.
Creekside House
Creekside House
I’ve been enjoying photographing some sites and buildings around town, in the present day though they look quite old, and presenting them in black and white or in a sepia or otherwise aged appearance. Snow works well for this, as well as the excess of midday summer sun.
This house is on the other side of a tiny little creek, but it’s only accessed from an alley and across a footbridge made of railroad ties with no railing, and I’d always wanted to photograph it from the angle at which you can’t see any other buildings so it looks as if it’s out in the middle of nowhere. Someone still lives there, and someone has lived there constantly for decades; the house is very well-kept. This access would seem an imposition today, but people didn’t used to be so particular about such things, a home was a home.
Le génie a pour son domaine L’immortalite: 2010
L & F Moreau Lamp base
How’s your French for translating that?
“The domain of genius is immortality.”
This has been a difficult assignment, though. Usually a collector’s item can be found on the internet, and all related information about artist, manufacturer, tradition, social culture, etc. can also be easily found; collectors tend to be a diligent and detail-oriented lot, and it never ceases to amaze me how much some people know about their subject. And, of course, because these items are bought and sold all the time, it behooves everyone to put it on the internet with as much information as possible.
However, I can’t find much at all about this piece or the artists because it’s locked in one of the foreign-language pages I can’t translate very well.
The sculpture was made by two brothers, Louis Auguste and Hippolyte Francois Moreau, part of the Moreau family of sculptors from Dijon, France (yes, also famous for the mustard). Louis worked in bronze and metal sculpture while Francois was a painter and sculptor. They collaborated on many, many highly ornate and detailed decorative pieces in the Art Nouveau era, mostly lamps and clocks, and signed their pieces “L & F Moreau”.
These ladies are proclaiming the truth, I’m sure, with the long traditional court trumpet, those clingy, flowing dresses and one with a laurel wreath on her head the other wings and holding two laurel wreaths. I didn’t photograph the whole thing because I wanted to be able to see the tablet with the phrase, plus it just gets lost with everything else on the table.
Now, the phrase—I think it’s Socrates, or inspired by him, because he has a list of other “the domain of…” phrases, but here I’ve lost out again. I just can’t find the origin of this phrase.
You never know what will show up at your local vintage consignment shop, in this case, Carnegie Antiques. It’s always worth a look.
Vintage Lady: 2011
Vintage Lady
Not sure who her features are patterned after, but between her molded and painted features this tiny Baroque lady is a marvel. She’s only about four inches tall, yet the lace trim on her dress and the flower in her hair are extremely detailed. She might need a little skin cream for those cracks though. I just wonder who she’s looking at for all of eternity.
Antique Afghan
Grandmother's Garden
Made by hand with very careful stitches, all those little patches of color are sewn together and carefully bound in yellow, then quilted, all made out of scraps from house dresses and curtains, one woman’s legacy from years ago.
At Carnegie Antiques
Vintage Glass, pastel © B.E. Kazmarski
I spent the afternoon minding the shop at Carnegie Antiques today and decided to paint a little sketch of a table of glassware that has recently arrived at the shop.
Judi, the shop owner, had organized this table of decorative glassware last week; when I was in I was enchanted by all the colors and shapes and patterns. Remembering it, I decided the next time I was in I would paint that table of glass.
Unlike other subjects, glass is translucent, both having a shape and allowing other shapes to be seen through it. It has a color but other colors can be seen through it as well, modified by the color of the glass. And instead of casting a deep shadow, it casts a pool of colored light on a table top.
Detail of painting.
This painting is about 10″ x 12″ in chalk pastel on Wallis sanded pastel paper; you can see the color of the paper in the lower left corner and here and there throughout the painting. I painted it in about 90 minutes, then touched up a few things when I got home with pastel colors I didn’t have in my little traveling box. There are four different shades of blue here, two shades of green and three of the cranberry glass. My traveling box is a cheap set of mostly primaries and secondaries, perhaps an extra shade of some of the like red-orange or apple green, plus black, white and mid-gray. I can capture quite a bit with those pastels by blending in place, but not always the nuances of glass.
I see things I’d like to work on—the background for one, which I like rough and sketchy but I want a little more color in it and can’t decide which. I began with pale yellow, then added blue, then green then pale violet. On the table I may mess around with the glass a little more to define the pieces, but mostly the doily under the blue bowl in the center does not look like a doily. It will come to me.
Detail of painting.
But there is glass from nearly every era there, opalescent milk glass, Depression glass, colored, etched, painted, plus napkins and napkin rings over on the right and two hobnail lamps with cranberry glass, one a nice respectable table lamp and the other a naked lady with a lampshade on her head. Those Victorians knew how to entertain themselves.
When it’s done, I think I’ll buy one of Judi’s highly decorative vintage gold frames and use that to frame it.
Though the shop sells vintage items from the mid-19th century to mid-20th century, I have a room with my artwork in the building. It helps to be friends with the owner, and I’m grateful to have this display space and also enjoy my time there where I am totally unplugged—no cell phone, no computer or wireless, just a radio or a recorded book if I care to bring one. It’s a real break from the usual day. I put out the “open” flag and people stop in to browse, what fun.
Detail of painting.
I usually do a little rearranging and cleaning in my little room, sometimes a lot, but when I don’t have a lot to do I bring a project with me that, again, can be done while unplugged, like writing, which I will often do in pen on a good old-fashioned tablet, or a crochet project, and a take a lunch I can heat up. After the busy-ness of working at home it’s nice to get a quiet spot now and then.
1946 Wurlitzer Jukebox
1946 Wurlitzer "Bubbler" Jukebox 1015
This is an authentic, refurbished, fully-functional 1946 Wurlitzer Bubbler Jukebox 1015, complete with lava-lamp bubbles flowing through the tubes that circle around the front.
I stopped in D&J Records on Main Street in Carnegie where they specialize in vinyl recordings, 45s and LPs, and “oldies” depending on your era (a caller was asking for oldies from the 80s when I was in there, that’s not quite what the shop has in mind), and used recordings on vinyl, cassette and CD in all musical genres. I always find something on CD that I used to have on vinyl or cassette that I can add to my collection. They also have a lot of cool vintage stuff of a musical nature as well as advertising and household items.
Someone had actually purchased this and stopped in to see it and plan on how to move it—it’s heavier than a refrigerator—and to choose the music to go into it. It’s sold with 300 reissued 45s; it was originally meant to play 78s, but when they had it reconditioned it they had it converted to play 45s.
As they had posted with the jukebox:
In 1946, after the end of World War II, Wurlitzer introduced it’s Model 1015 Jukebox. Building supplies had become available again, and it was the “1015- Bubbler” that brought the near- bankrupt Wurlitzer Company great success.The “1015-Bubbler”, is without a doubt the most popular jukebox of all time.
The 1015 Wurlitzer actually was influenced from more of an art deco style, with its illuminated, color-changing pillars, 8 bubble tubes, shiny chrome and domed top
Even though the Wurlitzer Model 1015 was produced from 1946 to 1947, it was the popularity of this jukebox model that kept many of them still bopping along right into the 50’s. It’s this longevity, that is responsible for the “Bubbler” being associated with the romanticized 1950’s sock-hop era.
45-RPM records were becoming so popular that by 1954 the Wurlitzer factory had to introduce a conversion kit for the 1015- Bubbler, just so they could play 45s.
I truly love the details of things manufactured in those years, the crossover from the decorative details of the Art Deco era to the post-war minimalism of “modern” design, that mix of chrome and sunbursts, wood and glass.
And inside, as if to promote the idea of the fantasy dance band, behind the turntable and “stack” of records is a stage with an imitation cardboard stage curtain.
Inside the jukebox.
Summer Tea
Summer Tea
A colorful tea set with a backdrop of colored glass lit by they sun on a bright afternoon. Seen in Carnegie Antiques, tt was all just so colorful and gleaming it was hard to resist.
Things From Yesterday
Things From Yesterday
Sometimes I look at the things people used in the past and am amazed at what we expect of our “stuff” today. These are three totally manual, non-electronic things, and yet they worked okay.
The icebox was made of solid oak with thick doors that closed tightly, very well engineered to do the job of keeping food cold, a huge innovation for the time and probably saving lives by keeping food from spoiling and saving time by enabling people to stock up a little bit and keeping foods fresh or frozen.
And those toys—a scooter that has to be pushed! And whatever that other thing is supposed to be…actually, it’s not supposed to do anything, just supposed to be visually entertaining for a young child who can experiment directly with seeing the results of their actions: push, things turn around, machine moves forward, it plays a little tune or just makes plinky noises.
I’m glad I live with many of today’s conveniences and even electronic gadgets and such; even though I don’t use most of them, it’s nice to know they are there. It wasn’t so long ago, my childhood, in fact, that toys like this were modern and innovative, and my parents’ childhoods when iceboxes were new. Amazing.
Two Little Deer Go Home
Two Little Deer
These two ceramic planters with deer figures have long been my favorites at Carnegie Antiques, and today they finally went home to live with two little girls.
A man was looking for birthday gifts for his granddaughters who are 9 and 10, and whose birthdays are close enough together that they celebrate at the same time. He has always found “two” of an item, not exactly alike, but enough that they feel equal. We had had other neat things girls that age would enjoy from what he described—a Victorian vanity set with a brush, comb and hand mirror, little decorative boxes, hats, dolls—but of these there was only one thing left. We looked at animal jewelry and ceramic figures, but even the owl necklaces were all too different to be paired together.
As we walked around and talked I saw the yellow deer standing on the burgundy planter and asked if they might like this. I knew there was another just like it around somewhere, though it was a different color combination. They could use it as a pencil cup or just toss stuff into it, or actually put a plant in it.
Yes, they would, he said. So off I went through six rooms, looked in the first spot I remembered having seen it, and the second spot, remembering a friend of mine had purchased a deer planter and began to lose hope, looked in the third spot and also began considering other figures, but there it was, the yellow deer with the green planter.
These animal-themed planters, along with other themes, were very popular gifts for hospital patients beginning just after WWII when people actually began to visit the hospital on a regular basis. This included plenty of women who gave birth in a hospital instead of at home, as had always been the standard practice. They were intended to brighten a person’s spirits as they recovered, and give them something happy to take home. I believe the plants were usually those hardy heart-leaf philodendrons; I also remember every home with older relatives had at least one philodendron and I presume this was the reason why.
I wrapped them imagining two little girls with their colorful deer pencil cups, which decades ago had brightened the day for someone, and possibly more than one someone through the years, and they are still capable of bringing happiness to another generation.
Teddy Bear’s Tea
Teddy Bear's Tea
Two Victorian teddy bears made from retired quilts repose and converse on the Victorian settee leaning against pillows made from antique draperies at Carnegie Antiques.
I’m not big on teddy bears, but these ingeniously made from patterned, worn quilts have less cuteness and more art. Note the shape of the teddy bear’s nose, more pointed than fleshy and round—this is the Victorian pattern for a teddy bear, the “original” teddy bear, named for Teddy Roosevelt. I just learned that today from the proprietor, Judi Stadler, and a few other people who were discussing the bears.
Today 