My latest find

Remember the post by Teacup Moments on the Brookly Flea market where she showed us a picture of a vintage card catalog? (Read it here) Well, I've been searching for something similar to that for awhile now but haven't found any until....drumroll please...the last brocante I visited about a week ago.  

I spotted the drawers sitting quietly on the floor of one of the last stalls on the street and immediately had a little flutter of excitement.  This metal set of drawers from the 1920s used to sit inside a building receiving mail from the occupants of a particular building. It has since made its way around the city and now sits comfortably in one corner of our salon, just waiting for me to fill it up with loads of little beauties. I was so pleased to have it though it took a royal effort to clean up the years of dust and dirt it had accumulated. It still has its nicks and scratches but it gives it a well-lived in look. Definitely one of my best finds yet!

 Marvelous find aside, I also want to share with you  a couple of pictures I snapped of the other great things I saw. For some reason, the brocante was full of children's things.

Just look at these gorgeous antique dolls all dressed up with their pretty dresses and hats.

 Little wooden toys that have that have that smooth patina of long years of loving use by little hands.

 And just check out these vintage pencil cases, all in solid wood. Cool huh?

 And the most curious thing was this little frame which turned out to be a document holder from the time of Napoleon III.

All in all a great brocante!

La Grande Braderie de Lille

Hello friends, I'm back! I apologize for the long silence but I've plenty of new adventures (including some great Brocante stories) to share with you to make up for it.  Let me start the telling with one of the brocante stories shall we?

What might be the last one for the summer

A glimpse of the Tour Montparnasse

The city is almost empty now. Everyone is away but for a few hardy souls and visitors of course, but a lot of stores and restaurants are shuttered down.  Little wonder then that the brocantes have dwindled in number as well.   The last one I went to was in the 14th arrondissement, literally in front of the Tour Montparnasse.  Now I just have to say that nothing riles Parisians more than the Tour Montparnasse. It is universally decried as the ugliest building in Paris. People are fond of saying that the best view to be had of the city is on top of the Tour as its the only place where you can't see it

That said, the brocante itself was one of the most interesting ones I've been to this year. It was a good mix of individuals selling their wares, antique dealers and professional brocanteurs. There was a wide variety of beautiful, interesting and quirky objects for sale.   I took some pictures of the more memorable items to show you.

The return of the brocante post

 Its been awhile since I did a Brocante post so I thought I would share photos from the last one I visited. Remember the Marche de Place d'Aligre (read post here) I visited a couple of weeks ago? It turns out that on Easter Monday, a big brocante takes place there with about a hundred stands.  As befits the nature of the neighborhood, there was all manner of stuff available for sale. And as it was a bright and scorching hot day, droves of people turned out for the brocante.

Unlike other brocantes, this one had more than its fair share of vintage clothes.  There were a few stands selling what seemed to be the dustiest and raggediest looking clothes I ever did see. Its a measure of how dusty they were that I didn't even attempt to wade through them though it didn't stop a good number of hardy souls. I couldn't even take photos that's how packed they were!

So I left them to it and wondered around looking at other stands and look what I found....

A stand selling someone's collection of pencil sharpeners from the 50s! These were made in Spain and are in metal and came in various shapes and forms.  How neat are these?

Baccarat crystalware...

One stand had stacks and stacks of scarves but her prized piece was an Hermes one, proudly set aside from the rest ......

But my absolute favorite was this antique travel vanity case.  It came complete with a mirror, little tweezers,brushes and perfume bottles in this beautiful leather case. It really must have been something to travel like this before all the size and weight restrictions.

What a difference a day makes

Some pretty spring flowers

I suppose I was still savoring my trip to the park because I had this brillian idea of dragging my little family over to a brocante in Vincennes not too far from the Chateau Vincennes which is in, you guessed it, the Bois de Vincennes. The idea was to hit the brocante and then visit the Chateau. But heaven had other ideas for us so the Chateau will have to be another visit. 

When we arrived, I immediately spied a stand selling what seemed to be miniature lamps. Now I don’t know what it is but lately I’ve had a fascination for old lamps.  This particular stand had old oil lamps dating back from the 50s but in teeny tiny sizes; some of them even fit in the palm of my hand.  I was completely fascinated.  There were old bronze ones (very Aladdin-like),  delicate handpainted porcelain ones and even glass ones.  As we had just arrived I told myself that I better go around first before making a purchase. Alas! It was not to be as it was then that the rain began. After enjoying such beautiful weather, the universe decided to rain on my parade.  Even for a die-hard brocante fan, going around while its pouring cats and dogs makes it virtually impossible.  Stall- holders started putting big plastic sheets over their wares while some just gave up and packed up. It was extremely frustrating.

Mini Lamps 

And yet more lamps

But just as we were about to leave ourselves, I spied one last stalwart stall still open.  In the spirit of never giving up, I hurried over and to my surprise managed to find two things to take back with us.  I found myself two vintage frames! Now I realize this might not send everyone into paroxysms of delight but they were exactly what I was looking for. You see, I was trying to think of creative ways to hang and display jewelry when it occurred to me that an old frame would be a good way to do it.  After all, jewelry can be as pretty as a picture.  

Vintage frames

Under the bridge

This post on last weekend's brocante is late but I just have to share it because it was in a very pretty location. It was held just under the Pont Alexandre III along one of the quais of the Seine.  And as it was a sunny and crisp day, it made for a nice little outing.   The bridge was built in the 19th century and named after Tsar Alexander III.  It connects the Grand Palais on the right bank to the Invalides on the left bank. Many consider this to be the most beautiful of Paris' bridges. It is adorned by beautiful statues of cherubs and nymphs and the celebrated winged Pegasus which you can see from the photo above. 

As for the brocante itself, it was not a very large one as you can see from this photo. But there were a number of interesting stands..

Someone's collection of old lamps and clocks...

A collection of miniatures...

And after all this time of visiting brocantes, I've never seen anyone with as big a collection of stuffed animals,bones and old scientific instruments as this stand....

I was a bit freaked to see the stuffed alligator, sitting up on the shelf...

Just before leaving, I spied this old fashioned camera, the kind you used to put a cloth over to take the photos..

And it came with the last set of photos taken by it...I'm extremely curious about these folks in this photo...

As for my find of the week, it was of the consumable kind...up at the bridge, there was a man roasting chestnuts the old fashioned way. I love roasted chestnuts and I couldn't resist treating myself to a bag. It was deliciously piping hot. A delicious way to end our little jaunt along the Seine.

Over at the Opera

I learned a curious thing recently. Individuals may participate in vide-greniers/brocantes  only twice a year. Otherwise they are considered professional brocanteurs.  I always thought that participating in one was a great way to get rid of your unwanted things though my experience of brocantes have always been on the buyer side and only once on the seller side.  You rent a stand, bring your table and things then spend the whole day trying to sell them.  Most of the people will try to bargain down your already rock bottom prices, but that’s part of the fun. And for the most part, your co-brocanteurs are a friendly lot. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of a professional brocanteurs. I suppose they are the modern equivalent of the itinerant peddlars of yore.  They spend their days buying up people’s old things and then selling them at various parts of the city.  In the really major brocantes, like the Bastille and Chatou, you have brocanteurs coming from all over France, some as far as the South of France.  I don’t think that it’s an easy life, but everyone I’ve talked to seem to enjoy it and can’t imagine being tied down to a store.  That said, there are some brocanteurs who are professional and properly accredited antique dealers whose wares often carry hefty price tags.

On the other side of the river

Going to brocantes is starting to be a real habit (dear friends, do you think it should be a weekly feature of the blog?).  It doesn’t help that there seems to be one every weekend.   Case in point, it was a rainy weekend but there were at least 2 or 3 in the city.  I thus decided to visit one that I’ve never been too. Boulevard Grenelle where this week’s brocante was held is all the way in the 15^th arrondissement, across the river.  The fifteenth is mostly residential and is full of young families.  It is a quiet area with no major sites except for a few museums here and there so perhaps it is less interesting to tourists. But it is full of restaurants and cafes that can be quite good.  I was thus unsure whether the brocante would be worth the trek it took to get there. It didn’t help that there was a constant drip of water from the unrelenting rain. 

Histoire d'une chineuse

When I first wrote about La Bellevilleoise (read post here), I was not totally convinced by its charms.  Since then, there hasn’t been an opportunity to go back till yesterday. But as I write this post, I realize its not quite fair to say that it was a second chance for La Bellevilleoise as it was for entirely another reason that brought me to its premises. Yesterday a special Vintage Brocante event was held at La Bellevilloise.  Sometimes it amazes me to see how much vintage and all things vintage related has become so much a part and parcel of our zeitgest.  When did it become so acceptable, so fashionable, to hunt for and acquire things that have already lived previous lives? Why are we so fascinated by vintage?

For myself, I can’t claim any highbrow reasons. I just simply adore the idea of finding treasure in the middle of what is often the detritus and dross of someone else’s well lived life.  And as treasure is a subjective idea, there’s always something for everyone right?  Someone, I forget who thanks to the sieve that is now my memory, once told me that I had the soul of a chineuse and I had to look up the meaning of the word.  And in fact, one meaning of a chineuer or chineuse is someone who recovers things.  I thought then, as now, that it seemed a lovely way to describe one’s soul.

Well, my chineur of a soul pushed me out of the comforts of home yesterday into the cold and in the special brocante.  As brocantes go, it was a rather large affair with plenty of things to marvel at.   There was no lack of clothing and bags and fur played a starring role in several stands.  It was also packed with people and believe it or not, there was even a queue to get inside?!  There was also a 50s themed band giving a special concert and it really added to the rockabilly spirit of the brocante.  Oddly enough, I learned that there was also a special Burlesque show scheduled just after the brocante.  That explained the number of Dita von Teese wanna be girls walking around. That would have been some photo to take but I’m afraid they didn’t look too receptive to the idea of me taking their photos. I had to content myself with just shamelessly gawking at them. 

Some photos I took...

A nice turntable that still works and that comes with its own luggage

A lovely retro print

Old fashioned weighing scales

Nice bags and jewelry

This lady's stand had a collection of Christian Dior ties

I loved the hand luggage at the back!

Oddly, someone was selling an old post box. 

Fur hats

Fur scarves, though I was pretty scared by them. They looked too animal like even for me!

Someone's bits and bobs, including an old compass and coat hanger in the shape of a gun!

Someone's collection of powder cases but in fine croco...

And finally,my own find of the day! A beautiful 60s era necklace made of brilliantly faceted jet stones! A lovely lovely piece that made my trip out into the cold well worth it.