Time For A Good Rummage

This isn’t the post I meant to do but, the two I have in the wings need a bit of explanation and I haven’t got time today.  So, as I haven’t been around for a while and I didn’t want you to think I’d perhaps had a fainting fit and been crushed by cats and kittens and then eaten by dogs, I thought I’d reassure you I’m still alive and kicking with a bit of a quickie, picture heavy post.

By the way, don’t you just love the word ‘rummage’ – it sounds so English somehow, although somebody will probably tell me it derives from some far flung corner of the world but that won’t change my mind.  I also like ‘cribbage’ and ‘pillage’ but wasn’t doing either of those on Sunday morning, it was definitely a ‘rummage’.

 

There have been few chances this year to fouiller (the French version of rummaging which is also a good word but devilishly hard to pronounce properly).  If the vide greniers (empty attics/yard sales/boot sales) so far this year have not been too far away they have been rained off or ill attended by sellers or by me as I have woken up on several Sunday mornings the worse for wear.   Nothing to do with the wine.

Anyway, last Sunday, there was a vide grenier within half an hour’s drive which also had the benefit of being in the village where some good friends of ours have a holiday house and they are ‘in residence’ at the moment, so I knew there would be a cup of coffee and a loo should desperation set in.  Which it did.  Twice.

These are some of the things I found amongst the used bath mats, second hand baby clothes and inexplicably popular albums full of bottle caps.

Who doesn’t need a sturdy set of hand forged butcher’s hooks?  I did read somewhere that these are often mistaken for something called a ‘cherche’ which was used to lower down a well to retrieve buckets lost by previous water gatherers.  I’m not entirely convinced.  What do you think?

A beautiful turquoise soda syphon with the glass encased in a metal grid – this one copper coloured.  Very art deco.  The pewter top is marked as being from a Brasserie in Amiens which is in the Somme department of France.

A nice example of an Art Nouveau pewter vase signed L. Houzeaux.

Because everyone needs at least one French cutting board.

 When I was in the U.K. recently I found I was rarely given a plate to eat from in restaurants – always an oversized rectangular piece of white ceramica, a slate tile, a wooden board or a conch shell.  (I lied about the last one)

You won’t be surprised, especially as I had already bought the red transferware bowl in the top photograph – who could resist those birds? – if I tell you that Mr. Tialys , who usually accompanies me in the vain hope of finding leather working tools at these things, had to go back to the car at this point in order to make room in our bags and arms for more.

Which was just as well…….

this bowl weighs about 3kg.

I couldn’t resist this foxy piece which also weighs a ton but then it is supposed to be a doorstop

I’m pretty sure this is English though being that it represents a fox and a whip.

No leather working tools were to be found but Mr. T. did buy a bayonet knife which also serves as a belt knife.  I do worry sometimes but ask no questions because if,  in some dystopian future, we have to retreat into the mountains and live on our wits, at least we’ll have something with which to both defend and feed ourselves.  That, and the machéte he bought on a previous outing.

Should I be worried?

 

 

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