Antiques malls are my Gothic cathedrals, my Metropolitan Museum.
I go there to stare in awe at the relics of lost lives of those who might not have been saints or great sinners, but who, nonetheless, lived gorgeously.
I really need several hours (if not all day) when I get in a larger Church of Lost Whispers like that.
Yesterday, I visited one I hadn't revisited for some six months or more.
There was a new booth dedicated to old photographs. I fell into a swoon, then a trance. I had to look at all of the thousands of photographs, which were only a dollar apiece, even the larger ones.
After a while, I started doing vertical yoga, because I had been standing there so long that my skeleton started to suggest he and I might have different agendas for the day.
I found numerous unusual photographs for my own personal collection. I was so happy to find these lost moments.
Then I noticed some larger portraits of posh personages, children posing alone and with their families. It was instantly apparent that the photographer had exceptional skill. As I removed this set of photos from their display box, I saw the pencil signature at the bottom of the lovely portraits: Marcus Adams.
Adams photographed the Windsors and many other notables. His photograph of the young Elizabeth later appeared on a Canadian banknote.
I haven't yet identified the people in the photographs, but that's for another day, I suppose.
There were a number of interesting paintings by probably unknown artists, many of them in the naive style, and I usually make a purchase along those lines, but nothing quite made me jump yesterday. There was a pair of paintings on boards by an artist working in the seventies that I almost snagged, but there was some slight damage to each painting which turned me off the purchase. It's a shame, because they were both Matisse-inspired and colorful to the psychedelic max. But I didn't feel confident enough to color match and do the restorations myself.
When I go through more than a thousand photographs, I like to do "themes," where I create groupings of photos which seem to go together. Yesterday, I was able to assemble a nice set of early to mid-century photos of kittens and cats alongside a grouping of photos of soldiers (mostly WW II) with the rough theme "Disport Yourself."
I don't just look at the old photos. I invariably get fiction ideas as I drift through each vanished world. I found myself coming up with quite grim stories for some of the odder photos.
One small cabinet photo I bought simply because the woman looked more like an Edward Gorey drawing of a questionable governess than any other living human ever did to my eyes.
I go there to stare in awe at the relics of lost lives of those who might not have been saints or great sinners, but who, nonetheless, lived gorgeously.
I really need several hours (if not all day) when I get in a larger Church of Lost Whispers like that.
Yesterday, I visited one I hadn't revisited for some six months or more.
There was a new booth dedicated to old photographs. I fell into a swoon, then a trance. I had to look at all of the thousands of photographs, which were only a dollar apiece, even the larger ones.
After a while, I started doing vertical yoga, because I had been standing there so long that my skeleton started to suggest he and I might have different agendas for the day.
I found numerous unusual photographs for my own personal collection. I was so happy to find these lost moments.
Then I noticed some larger portraits of posh personages, children posing alone and with their families. It was instantly apparent that the photographer had exceptional skill. As I removed this set of photos from their display box, I saw the pencil signature at the bottom of the lovely portraits: Marcus Adams.
Adams photographed the Windsors and many other notables. His photograph of the young Elizabeth later appeared on a Canadian banknote.
I haven't yet identified the people in the photographs, but that's for another day, I suppose.
There were a number of interesting paintings by probably unknown artists, many of them in the naive style, and I usually make a purchase along those lines, but nothing quite made me jump yesterday. There was a pair of paintings on boards by an artist working in the seventies that I almost snagged, but there was some slight damage to each painting which turned me off the purchase. It's a shame, because they were both Matisse-inspired and colorful to the psychedelic max. But I didn't feel confident enough to color match and do the restorations myself.
When I go through more than a thousand photographs, I like to do "themes," where I create groupings of photos which seem to go together. Yesterday, I was able to assemble a nice set of early to mid-century photos of kittens and cats alongside a grouping of photos of soldiers (mostly WW II) with the rough theme "Disport Yourself."
I don't just look at the old photos. I invariably get fiction ideas as I drift through each vanished world. I found myself coming up with quite grim stories for some of the odder photos.
One small cabinet photo I bought simply because the woman looked more like an Edward Gorey drawing of a questionable governess than any other living human ever did to my eyes.
