Monday, July 18, 2011

Shopping and the weather

On Friday, I went to the Brimfield Antiques Market with M and her husband R. WOW.

 There was just SO MUCH STUFF. Everywhere. I thought we'd spend, like, four or five hours looking at tchotchkes and furniture, but we got there at 9am and we didn't leave until after 4pm. And I think we'd seen about half of what there was to see. By that time we'd just sort of run out of steam...
 There were so many tables that I could barely look at because I was overwhelmed from the start. Like the Louvre, there is no way you could take everything in by just going for a day.
 Unlike the Louvre, most everything had a price on it and people were generally quite willing to negotiate.
I saw so many gorgeous (and many affordable) mid century furniture pieces. I told M and R at the beginning that I was expecting to be tired and heart-broken at the end of the day and I think we all were, a bit. I would have liked to get so many different things but with the state of the stuff  (that being that there's too much stuff) at home I couldn't do it. So, I left with a half-empty back pack.
Things I managed to score:
-a small middle eastern rug for the bedroom
-a turquoise bracelet and an amber ring
-a small blue McCoy vase/planter
-a buddha head
-2 fiestaware mugs

For our last stop of the day, M and I went to the fiestaware tent while R got the car. R had a little time to drive around outside of the market grounds and see some of the recent tornado damage from the tornado that passed through Sturbridge a few weeks ago.
 This house had no top, and the backside had been mostly ripped off. When we passed it in the car, I could see all of the bedroom furniture in place exactly as if nothing had happened.
The path of the tornado was far wider than I'd imagined. I thought that it would be a narrow swatch with some downed trees, but there was really widespread devastation to the area. It was so sad to see how many people's homes had been destroyed.

Other than the tour of the tonado damage, we enjoyed the day and I think we all look forward to going back (and having a plan of attack) possibly in September when the Market is back for a week. Personally, I'm hoping that by then I will have a legitimate need to buy some actual beautiful furniture, and also that the area will have been able to restore some of the houses that came down in the tornado.

1 comment:

gilana said...

Oh my god I NEED THAT CASE OF WOOD TYPE! ...breathe, Gilly, breathe... and think of the packing to come...