Vintage Fashion and Textile Show

It was a nice day for a drive, gas prices have dropped .03 since last week, so I took a ride.


Everybody knows about the Brimfield Antique Show that takes place 3 times per year in Central Mass.  But I'm not certain many people know about the Vintage Fashion and Textile Show that precedes each one of the Brimfield shows.  It takes place at the Host Hotel in Sturbridge and I finally found the time to go and check it out.

The show is large and takes up several conference rooms on the first floor of the hotel.  It's a maze of fabric and lace vendors but also includes people who deal in vintage and antique clothing, jewelry, shoes, handbags, buttons, trims, ribbons, hats, and lingerie.  The period clothing is exquisite and runs from the 19th century to the 80s -- men's, women's, and children's items.   Prices run from reasonable to high but everything is in great condition.    And people were there to buy; many for themselves, some to resell.

So what did I buy?  I actually went out of curiosity.  I'm cleaning out Mom's house now and it's filled with lots of old things.  I was curious about the prices of lace as I'm selling some of Mom's vintage lace on Etsy in my other shop.  My lace is all selling for about $1 per foot.  Prices for similar lace at the show went from $3 per inch (not a typo) to $25 per yard.  I don't know, should I increase my prices?  Apparently I don't know what I have. The really fancy trim with metal threads was selling for $85 per yard and wide brocade trim for $100-$200.

Well while I would have liked to purchase a vintage jacket, I didn't find one that spoke to me.  I did spend a lot of time with the button vendors.  Old vintage buttons can be made into molds for silver clay pendants or earrings.  And this show had more unique buttons than I could ever find online.  But as usual, the ones I loved were the most expensive ones.  I couldn't justify spending $35 on a button let alone $225 for the nicest one.  But I did find a couple of dealers who had boxes or bowls of less expensive ones and purchased a couple of metal buttons with nice designs for $3 each.

On my way back home I traveled through Brimfield and saw them setting up tents for the fair that won't be open until tomorrow.  People were already browsing but most tents were closed and the fields roped off.
Then as you round the corner on Route 20 in Palmer just after the right turn that takes you to Warren, there was a flea market set up and already doing business.  It was a lot of junk with some vendors just making piles on the  ground or lining up bins with items still wrapped.  But I found a jewelry vendor with a couple of old broken watches who was willing to part with them for a very reasonable price.  And I met a man selling old, rusted tools, just like the ones that are piled up in Mom's cellar.  We talked a bit about the value of some of the tools and he gave me his card if I want him to have a look.

Valuable Antiques or Just Old Junk

So I'm now leading this schizophrenic existence--one foot in So. Deerfield and one foot in Southbridge.  Sometimes I'm a happy artisan, working on jewelry and doing craft shows, and sometimes I'm a cranky old lady cleaning out the cellar of my childhood home.  I'd like to tell you that after 60 years the house is just filled with valuable treasure but so far it just looks like junk.

I've been to the house 3 times now just to work on the cellar and have gifted the garbage man with 8-9 big black bags of trash.  The recycling company has now received 4 boxes of broken down cardboard boxes, 2 bags of newspapers, 8 bags of plastic, and 4 boxes of glass.  Children of The Depression don't purchase top quality products as they're too expensive, but they save every margarine and cool whip container they get because "you don't know when you'll need one."  Well you might need one or even two, but forty?!!  And all the stuff I've now gotten rid of doesn't include those items too big or unfit for recycling.  For that I'll need a dumpster--the large one.

After 37 years of working in a library, I clean by organizing/cataloging.  I have looked inside every box and jar, sorted all the tools as well as nails and screws, and set aside anything still usable that might be worth a quarter at the tag sale I'll eventually have.

The cellar was my dad's domain mostly.  He had 4 work benches buried under mounds of old tools and jars of things.  It was finding some of these jars 3 years ago that started me on the road to making steampunk jewelry.  As he was not a librarian, he was not very organized.  And it seems that it was just easier to go out and buy an new hammer than it was to try to locate the old one.  I found 2 crates of tools and 3 tool boxes.  He owned 14 hammers, 11 saws and countless replacement blades.  I stopped counting wrenches at 35.  He had 2 power drills and 4 old manual ones and over a 100 drill bits to go with them.  You might wonder if he was perhaps a carpenter.  No, he wasn't.  He was a machinist and an avid do-it-yourselfer.  I guess that's where I get it from.

Though I didn't find any valuable antiques, I did come across some interesting tools that I can't identify.  Pictured here is what looks like some kind of clamp or vise.  I took quick pictures of a few things so I could google them to see if they have any value. While several of my items are selling on Ebay for anywhere from $5 to $15, I haven't found the vise thing or the wooden items below as I don't know what to call them.  If anyone out there does, please let me know.

But the best thing I found was a list of names and addresses for some of my father's relatives in Poland and France.  While these people are probably no longer alive, this information will be very useful when I find the time to resume my genealogy research on my father's family.  And where did I find this little treasure?  Inside a Lufkin Precision Tool catalog at the bottom of one of Dad's tool boxes.  The catalog is from 1955 and is ironically the most valuable item I've found so far selling on Ebay for $23.

Brimfield Antique Show & Flea Market

Hubby & I (2 old retired folks) needed something to do yesterday. So off we went to the Brimfield Flea Market. It's called the Brimfield Antique and Collectibles Show but it's become more of a flea market over the years. We saw lots of beautiful old antique trunks and vintage kitchenware but you will also find whole tents full of Chinese imports, office supplies, new packaging and displays, new handmade and imported jewelry, and garden gnomes.Not all the fields were open on Tuesday morning but we managed to browse for 4 hours and didn't see it all. As we parked at the west end of route 20 we saw an area that was new to me. And that's where I was able to find a few things worthy of steampunk jewelry. I started this line of jewelry with items actually found in my parents' basement, so I now find it difficult to spend money on my "found objects". And when someone actually wants me to pay $5 for a rusted, broken, man's watch with the minute hand and wrist band missing, I have to wonder what he's been smoking. But other dealers were a lot more reasonable.



Having realized that just about anything can be reused in some fashion by someone with a little imagination, people are saving and selling everything. Bottle caps were selling 3 for $1. Broken jewelry, rusted hardware, old house numbers, all thrown together loosely into boxes were selling for $1-$3 each.


Fortunately you can still find Roseville pottery, carnival glass, Czech glass from the 1940s, and antique silverware. And the Roseville that I saw was priced very reasonably compared to years past.

So if you get a chance, take a ride to Brimfield this week. The show runs until Sunday.