May Brimfield, or how to have fun while shopping for antiques!

When in Brimfield you have to have fun. Look at this cool display on hiway 20. Can you see the surfboards in the back of the old car?

And to have fun you have to look around and enjoy the ambiance. Here is a dashing dealer at the Textile Show.

.

People always seem to know where the best food is. Here is the best darn BBQ in New England. Look at the line at noon.

And if you're going shopping, better be looking good too! Here's a gal shopping at the fashion tents at the back of our field, New England Motel.

Here's another good looking booth in the same area.

Here's a piece of my booth near the front of the New England motel.

Here's my neighbor across the way, Stephanie Chiappa, up from PA.

Here's her neighbor, friend Rick Fuller. And look what is behind Rick's booth!

Chickens! Karen and Edd gave Rick two chickens and a rooster to take home to Vermont. The rooster was crowing away all week!

Here's Karen and Edd's booth across. the way.

Here's a hello from Gary Wirth of Gary and Sue Wirth's antiques.

Up the row, who else but Sasha's antiques?

Here's Cyril waving from his booth around the corner.

Last but not least John Melby's nice booth. Don't we have a nice looking group of dealers in our area?

And while we're on the subject, just look at this stuffed sheep in the booth of my friend Derek Poole. Remember my sheep fair blog last month, well here is a stuffed model ready to do his thing!

But at Brimfield you are not limited to country antiques. You can shop for your garden,

 

you can buy a pig,

modern art,

or tacky Chinese imports. But that's Brimfield. From the sublime to the ridiculous, it's all there. I guess my point is that while yes, we spend most of our time pounding the fields searching for the ultimate treasure, and the rest of the time dragging said treasure back to our truck, not to mention worrying about our bank balance, looking frantically for the umbrella we're sure we brought, standing in line at the one tiny indoor bathroom, trying to remember where we bought something, inching through traffic, slapping on the sunblock and rubbing our sore feet, there is more to see and do. Lift up your weary head and look around, its pretty comic out there. Come and see for yourself sometime. Oh, and don't forget to ask me where the Methodist pie ladies set up!

CT Sheep Fair

Hey, you want to have a good sheepy kind of fun, come to the CT Sheep Fair in Tolland, CT next year.

You can see a mama sheep and her lambs.

You can see really amazing sheep dogs and their owner herding sheep from giant open fields into tiny little pens.

OK, this is me being silly.

You can see alpacas, and bunnies, really any animal you can spin and weave from.

You can listen to live music.

You can buy all kinds of stuff. I got some alpaca socks, light and warm.
You can also eat all kinds of lamb and other food.

And here you can watch a sheep getting sheared. He's kind of cute, huh?

Anyhow, we had a good time, maybe we'll see you there next year.

Guilford Antiques Show

Welcome to the spring Guilford Antiques Show down by the coast in scenic Guildford, CT. Cy and I had a good time looking around and visiting with old friends. Everyone was in a good mood due to large crowds. I guess everyone was tired of the snow and wanted to get out the house and look at beautiful antiques. Here is Nancy Fischelson and friend Robert Perry (who is also set up) in Nancy's booth. Nancy loves the old linens.

Here is friend Lew Scranton writing up a sale. Look at all the classic antiques from CT.

Great early smalls in the booth of Axtell Antiques, www.axtellantiques.com

Karen Wenhiser in her booth with a great selection of silver Native American and Mexican jewelry, and look at all the hooked rugs. www.WendhiserAntiques.com

Just the best early iron is always found in the booth of Marvin and Barbara Eliot from Windsor, CT. They are really the experts.

Here is a fun booth from Jeff Puklinski from County Seat Antiques, www.countyseatantiques.com

Another nice booth from Zuna Antiques.
Hope you enjoyed this brief visit to a very pretty show in Southern Connecticut. Come and visit next year.

What is it about Cutting Boards?

 What is it about cutting boards, pastry boards, dough boards, bread boards? The everyday homey boards we all use in our kitchens, and our ancestors did the same. Cut the same bread, kneaded the same dough. Maybe that's the appeal, we use pretty much the same boards to do pretty much the same things. OK, I don't guess they served brie and crackers, but maybe they did!

 I'm showing a few groups of antique boards we've had over the years.  Look at the two taller boards at the back here, they have pencil writing on them and looked to be used as a carpenter's tally sheet.

Here's another big group from last year.





How old are these boards? What are they made of? How are they made? How can you collect them?

Most of the boards you will run across at shows, online etc. date from the late 18th C. (1780 or so) to the 1940s or so. You can pretty much tell from the color of the wood, the shapes, etc.

Here are 2 18th C. ones from my collection. The larger one, a pastry board only has 2 edges. Very unusual. The smaller one is an 18th C. door panel converted to use as a cutting board. Look at the deeper colors and the wear to the soft pine wood.

Here are a group we had from MN, probably late 19th early 20th C.
How are they made? Most boards are simply cut out of a piece of wood. A little later they started adding "breadboard" ends. This prevented splitting of the board. Remember wood always shrinks across the grain, and with all the washing they endure, you can see boards often shrink and get cracks. Cracks in a simple board will cause the board to split in two, bad idea. If you have breadboard ends, you might get a crack in the center of the board, but you can still use it.

Here's a bread board with "breadboard ends" added on. This demonstrates what they look like, and you can also see that the grain on the ends goes the other way, so it will not split like the larger part of the board. Problem solved. The breadboard ends are sometimes held on with dowels, like this example. Often they're held on with square nails, and also the later round nails. It's one way to tell the age of the board, as the round nails were made mostly after the Civil War. It's also a nice example of an oak board, which is not common, for some reason. About half the boards you see are pine, because its cheap and easy to cut.

 Here's a nice pine one, with bread board ends all the way around, that's an unusual touch.

The other half are hard wood, such as maple and birch, because it will last a lot longer. Here's a beauty in maple, an elongated octagon.

Here's another one, this time a piece of left over wood used as a cutting board, look at all the cut marks. This one is a rare walnut example.

Here's a good example of a form called a "pastry board", or "noodle board". It has strips of wood added around the edges which keeps the flour from flying around. This one is pine, and has a nice hanging hole. These are also popular as the larger size is convenient for hiding your sink or stove or?

Sometimes you can find the boards in paint, whether original or added later to brighten up a kitchen. This blue one is pine.

Here's a nice musard one, with breadboard ends.

The boards come in many pleasing shapes. This tombstone form is one of the most popular right now, the name comes from the form at the top of the old tombstones. This example is pine, and not too old.

 Here are a couple with nice age on them.

This one has nice age and a great coat of old green paint.

Another popular form is the octagon. This one has nice age.

This one was pine, and a bit larger.

Here's a nice round one, a form you don't see too often.

Another favorite form is this thin style. You see these once in a while, and they're usually only about 1/4" thick.

Here's sort of a make-do cutting board, the top of a barrel used as a cutting board. Hey, make do with what you got!

Look at the round cutting board with a slight domed top surface, and lathe turned rings around the edge. These were used for cutting meat, and the juices could run down the dome and be caught at the edge.

Here's my collection of fishy cutting boards. (My husband loves to fish!) There are many charming forms for cutting boards. There's the ever popular piggy, they're pretty common, as are state forms. I have also seen strawberries, dogs, cats, rabbits, flowers, flower pots and sprinklers, mice, pine trees, apples and probably more I can't remember. These make a fun collection.So there are many collections you could make with cutting boards. You can collect all tiny ones, or all huge ones( I've seen them up to 6' long!). You can collect paint or treen. You can collect different woods or different areas of the country. Think about a group of different octagonal ones. And of course different shapes. Maybe all Scotties? What is nice is that they are still reasonable affordable, and are available all over the country. And I think its safe to say they are all American, so far no icky imports and repros. So have fun and let me know if you come up with some creative ideas.