My new old Family

The Fired-On Family so far. My only regret is that this pic didn't include my grandmothers light green casserole (in use at the time that the mood struck to take pictures).

The vast majority of this is newly acquired Pyrex. All the refrigerator dishes were bought at an antique mall, all wrapped together with tape (and free surprise bonus diabetes magazine !?). No lids unfortunately, but the bundle was half price, so I was still a happy girl.

Also suspect that I'm one red and a whole lotta lids away from having 2 primary refrigerator sets (!). Completely unintentional, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get, especially when it's a decent price. I'm still unsure though about the blue. It's hard for me to tell. These 3 are all the same shade and seem more like Horizon blue than I ever imaged the primary blue to be, but I've never seen either in person. Hopefully, someone in the know will read this some day and be able to tell me for sure.

Also, I've noticed this: All 3 blue dishes have the Pyrex markings made in different ways. I'm very curious if this would shed more light on when exactly these were made.

The pink round 024 casserole was from Goodwill, same day. Very happy to find anything pink, but especially happy that my first and only piece is this shape. It's my favorite, I'm a bit sad that most all the patterns and promotional items are oval casseroles.

The rest of the family here is Fire King and one lone orange Federal mug. I just love the solid colors and wanted to have at least one picture of them all together as a family :-)

This was truly Pyrex motherlode day. It was my husband who spotted this lovely Empire Scroll (vines) promotional casserole from 1965. 6 bucks. Not too bad, especially since IT actually came with a lid ;-)

I also scored this amazing Hazel Atlas mug at Goodwill. 29 cents *LOVE* I'm also just a little bit smug proud of myself that I could tell it was a Hazel Atlas mug just from the style/looks of it, without having ever seen it before or even flipping it over to confirm. I've yet to buy any resource books (although I desperately need some right now, I'm too interested in spending money actually BUYING the stuff than buying books about the stuff, ha).

Newbies, right? All I need is the internet, a few resource books and an Etsy store ;-) Just kidding! I am in awe of the amazing finds (not to mention creativity and mad photography skills) of most Etsy shops & sellers I've seen. For me, it will be a long time before I've got the skills, knowledge, and not to mention, treasure-trove of goodies that I could actually stand to part with. Right now, I am buying for myself, to learn, to treasure and to replace a lot of the modern crap-ola that I've furnished my home with for the majority of my life.

Before just a couple of months ago, I had no idea the lustrous peach bowl I've eaten out of my entire life is Fire King. Nor did I think much about the green casserole dish or Butterfly Gold Cinderella mixing bowl that continues to this day to be my moms mashed potato serving bowl. (And it's still beautiful. Selfishly, I'm grateful that my mom has never had a dishwasher!)

I also never knew that cute little mug that looked like Tony the Tiger that was hanging around the house when I moved in with my husband wasn't actually Tony. It's the Esso Tiger ("Put a Tiger in your Tank!") that would later become the evil Exxon we know today. But he's the cutest little Fire King mug, you just can't stay mad at him.

So, I'm buying to learn and to fill my home with color, joy and pieces of American history. It's great stuff, plain and simple. And one of these days, when the larder is full, I'm either going to become a seller or a certified hoarder. We'll just see what happens first ;-)

Trendy

There seem to be trends in what has been showing up at Goodwill lately. Even the website appears to confirm this. For instance, one of the random things I've bought lately are some mismatched Homer Laughlin dishes in patterns & shapes that were discontinued in the late 1950's. I bought these locally, only to see the exact pattern going on auction the same day.

One thing seems consistent, the 50's and 70's and 90's seem like the decades people want rid of the most right now. I'm sure there are plenty of of 60's and 80's being stuck in for good measure, but this does not seem like the bulk of what I've personally spotted.

For one thing, good lord at the Avon bottles and Beanie Babies. Resisting the beanies is easy, but the Avon bottles really-really depend on what they are. Especially the ones I caved on. I bought not just one, but two different owls, both filled with forms of Avon Moonwind. I'm not sure if I'm just weird, lucky or my smeller is broken, but the scent is still actually quite pleasant to me. I would go so far as to say I might order a bottle just to have a version of it that is new and less intimidating, if it wasn't one of those scents that has long since been discontinued.

No offense to those who rock the older colognes. I just have a suspicion that if I even so much as tried it, I'd break out into chicken pox-looking hives.

The types of dishes I've seen though, well, they sorta break my heart a little bit. The Homer Laughlin ones I mentioned earlier are both shapes and styles that from what I read ran from 1949-1959. One is rhythm, Lotus Hai pattern. The other is duraprint, Highland Plaid pattern. I believe they are both 'charm' shape.

These terms are still confusing to me and I've yet to really research them, so forgive me for mentioning it before I really know what I'm talking about.

At any rate, I just get a bit sad sometimes by the Goodwill fare. Chances are good that these dishes were acquired when they were new, and they were probably relatively inexpensive. Likely, they were used for a good long time before being exiled to a back cabinet. And these are exactly the kinds of things end up in estates sales, yard sales or given for donation.

This much is a good thing. There is a chance for these items to end up in a good home or become someones new, old treasure. *But* there is something kind of animal shelter about the whole thing. I don't know the exact fate of any unsold item going to Goodwill, but I do know that what isn't sold in a normal store can end up being shipped to an Goodwill Outlet Store. This doesn't sound particularly favorable for the more breakable objects. I imagine it's inevitable that some of this is going to end up broken and in a dumpster somewhere.

I don't know what I wish. That breakables end up donated to an Antique Store?

I think I do sometimes. I can't shake the feeling that certain objects - particularly those from my grandparents generation and particularly-particularly those designed for everyday use - are falling off a cliff and shattering on the rocks below.

Collectibles is a very broad category. Even when narrowed down by decade and style, there are still tremendous variances in the popularity of one name over another.

For instance, I've only been familiar with the name "Fire King" for maybe two months now. I now have several 'rescued' Fire King dishes and will probably continue acquiring them for the rest of my life. And there's no shortage of people who are doing the same as we speak.

But very broadly speaking, incredibly similar objects and makers (Glasbake, Federal, Hazel Atlas, etc) can sometimes be quite a bit less valued. For one, these makers lack the advantages of Fire King having Martha Stewart obsessed with their Jadeite and Japanese collectors radically obsessed with their mugs.

Homer Laughlin Co. (and their 20,000+ patterns) is famous for Fiestaware, but Lotus Hai is much more specific and a bit lost in a crowd.

In this respect, I'm grateful for things like Pyrex Love, who make it spectacularly cool to be flagrantly obsessed with a lovely form of kitchenware. And Tupper Diva, who sheds shining light and cool information on a huge company with nifty products who has magically managed to stay remarkably poorly documented in this digital day and informational age!

I will end up with a lot of these things myself. Ugh, I've already got a damn good start! But I'm also looking with a eye out for the next Flambo-ware and every other strange, unfamiliar, and totally rockin' name I come across.

Polyethylene or no, over the cliff it's going. Even if it bounces when it hits.

50 years from now, museums and private collections will contain some of the finest objects we've made. They will be rich with bone china and antique carnival glass. Large corporations, whose names still exist in theory, will have visitors centers with wallpaper pictorial black-and-white blown-up images of their founder, preferably posing with his T-model Ford, under which, encased in glass, will be example pieces of their own early china work, its coloring based on some molecular malfunction that sickened or killed the people who applied it, but darned isn't it pretty?

But it will take private citizens to run the closest-approximation-to-flickr-in-the-future to run an active Flambo Fan Page.

And I'm guessing I'm just one of those folks.

Coffee!

This has got to be one of my favorite finds ever.

The moment I saw it, I adored it. The style of it seemed 1940's or somewhere thereabouts, and I immediately fell in love with the detailing on it.

And at 50 cents, the price was right.

When I got back to the car with my purchase, I proudly pulled it out and declared to the hubs that this was probably my favorite thing I had ever thrifted.

This is the part I got absolutely right.

But it's what I don't know that could fill a book. Or many books. Volumes, even.

The main thing I had absolutely no suspicion whatsoever that this is the pot from a Cory
vacuum coffee maker. And the truth is, before today, I barely had a notion of what a vacuum coffee maker was.

Okay. Scratch that. I'm totally lying. I had no flippin' idea what a vacuum coffee maker was.

Now, I'm pretty sure they are things of abject and perfect beauty and I really really really want one (or at least the upper part, tube & various other accoutrements that go with mine).

Scratch that, too. I want vacuum coffee makers out the yin-yang.

Santa, if you're listening, I don't even need anything new and fancy (like this). I'd be perfectly happy with a vintage electric Sunbeam Coffeemaster (any model will do).

***
But seriously, it's things like my find yesterday that remind me how grateful I am for the internet. There are an awful lot of passionate folks who have turned their interests, finds, and treasures into invaluable information sources for twerps like me. Because of their generosity, I was able to identify my strange-little-coffee-pot-without-a-hole-in-the-top and discover something completely new to me.

This old Cory brochure was one of the first things I found to help me identify my little coffee pot, and I think it is just the cat's pajamas. Check out the amazing collection here.

Wares

Pop quiz. How many of these objects end in the word "ware"?

If you glanced at the picture, counted 5 objects and made that your guess, you get 3 points.

If you glanced at the picture and suspected that these were 5 different "wares", you get 5 points.

If you glanced at the picture and thought "This girl needs to learn how to use a camera a/o Photoshop" you get all the bonus points you want.

But of course one of these is my much beloved Tupperware. Hint: think orange. But the other "wares" in question I had never even so much as heard of until they hopped into my cart at Goodwill.

(Yes, vintage objects can move about at will. Much like people, getting older has caused them to realize that they can do what they damn well please.)

The green lidded pitcher is Lustro ware. God, I love that name. So far, I haven't been able to ID it on the webs, so I don't know much about its age, but it has the same texture and 'feel' as 50's era polyethylene Tupperware.

These 3 pieces, as best as I can tell, are melmac/melamine. Don't laugh, but the term melmac is a new one on me. As far as I ever knew, that was Alf's home planet.

The red cup is Oneida ware. Yellow cup below it is Boontonware, and finally, the little blue bowl is Mallo ware.

Who knew there were so many wares? Who knows when I'm going to make the next bad joke? Here goes: Am I gonna need a warehouse to start storing all my thrifty wares?

Tales from the Dark Side

This is a tale of going over to the dark side.

It all starts with 70's Tupperware. Avocado green. Harvest Gold. Paprika. Servalier lids.

It's a good story. The kids in it wear their hair in ponytails and wear jumpers. They eat oatmeal for breakfast. (Guess what kind of bowls they eat it out of).

But then something terrible happens. But before I can tell you what happens next, I have to tell you something about myself.

You see, as hard as I try, I never really completely shook all the traces of Goth off from my formative years. ( Would those traces shine like silver I wonder? Black, shiny, evil-midnight silver? )

So anyway, there is a part of me that never wants to eat my oatmeal. No matter what kind of bowl it is served in.

So, also, there aren't any kids anymore now. I tricked you. This whole post is about me. And Tupperware. But also, mostly about me.

My husband just reminded me of something. I said these words to him: "Stop me if I start collecting the pastel."

I told you. Dark Side.

Memories

It started innocently enough.

70's Tupperware from my childhood spotted at the local Goodwill. It was enough to bring back a few memories I hadn't thought about in a couple of decades.

It was just a simple canister. But it was funky and retro and practically made out of titanium.

Memory is a funny thing. I hadn't really thought about Tupperware in years but yet the branding had stayed firm in my mind. This stuff was made to last a lifetime.

But, believe it or not, I didn't buy it. Branding or no, I treated it like almost every other memory-evoking object at the Goodwill. "My mom had this!" is a pretty frequent expression in that there Goodwill.

But the Tupperware stayed in my mind. I decided I had to go back and buy it the next day.

In the meanwhile, out of both boredom and curiosity, I did a search for vintage Tupperware.

That did it. One flickr photoset later, I was hooked.

Alas, the piece of Tupperware I had seen a day earlier had sold. Ebay loomed deep in my mind, taunting me with blue canisters.

But the funny thing was, two blue canisters were waiting on me the next trip I took to Goodwill.

My fate as Crazy Tupperware Lady was sealed, simple as that.

See the picture? Even my tomato hearts Tupperware.