Liberty Antiques Festival, Spring 2013

Last weekend was the best time to be had in any cow pasture in the state.  I’m talking about the semi-annual Liberty Flea Market, or properly put, the Liberty Antiques Festival.  Hands down, it is the very best antiques and vintage show in my area, and so I’m happy to get up way before daylight for the drive.

In the past few years I’ve noticed that most flea markets and antique malls have gotten smaller.  In fact, my report last fall on Liberty indicted a smaller show with fewer buyers.  Not so this spring.  It was the most robust show I’ve ever attended there (and I’ve been going since 2005), with more dealers and definitely more buyers.   But best of all, the quality of items was up, but prices seemed to be stable.

I learned a long time ago that good markets are worth attending even if I don’t find anything to buy.  Fortunately, I did make some very nice purchases, but even more valuable is the experience of seeing things that are new to me.  The education at places like this can be priceless.

So here’s what I saw and learned on this trip.  I’ll show purchases later.

This is a very poor photo of a lovely booth.  The seller had some pretty 1920s and Edwardian dresses.

I admired this little collection of miniature hand cranked sewing machines.

I spotted this page from a 1959 McCall’s pattern catalog while looking through a stack of paper.  What caught my attention was how this was a design of a dress that was worn in Tall Story, starring Jane Fonda and Tony Perkins.  The movie was pretty much a flop, but there must have been enough buzz about it for McCall’s to do this tie-in.  What really irritates me about how McCall’s handled this sort of thing is how the fact that is is the same dress Fonda wore in the movie is not indicated in any way on the pattern envelope.  I know that people shopping for patterns in 1959 would have known, because the pattern would have been picked out from the catalog, but today the connection is lost.  They did this with other movie tie-ins, including four designs Givenchy did for Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal a Million in 1966.

I did not buy these fabric samples because they were a bit pricy.  I sort of regret it though, as they are such great examples of vintage North Carolina produced textiles.   The Glenco Mill is long closed, and the former company store is now a museum.

Such a great graphic for an odd product!

I thought this paper dress showing the hanging and folding feature of this suitcase was just charming!

The tag said this little loom was a salesman sample.  It certainly was complicated and detailed if that were the case.

There were a lot of Enid Collins bags, but this hot air balloon was the best.

With all the talk about Diana Vreeland recently, I was interested to see this poster for Dance, one of the last exhibitions she organized for the Costume Institute at the Met, in 1986.

Sylvia gives weight loss advice to the 1935 woman.

I loved this great little travel case for the Skipper doll.

This great advertising poster for work shoes features the cleanest farmer ever.

I wanted this really, really badly.

How about a pair of blow-up boot supports?

And finally, this has to be the most creative hat rack ever.

 

 

 

Henry River Mill Village

Some time ago I posted about the Henry River Mill Village and the fact that the entire village was for sale.  The village was used in the filming of the Hunger Games as the poor District 12 home of the heroine, Katniss.  I was traveling through the area last week, and took the short detour off the Interstate to see Henry River for myself.

The entire tract is privately owned (and still for sale) and due to on-going problems with sightseers, trespassing is forbidden, but the state road runs through the village so it is possible to get a good look from one’s car.  There are about twenty houses still standing, with more outhouses than I’ve seen in a very long time.

Henry River Mill was opened in 1905 as a producer of cotton yarn.  Originally it was water powered, and a dam that was built to concentrate the falling water is still standing.  The mill closed in the 1960s, and the mill building burned in 1977.  Like many mill villages, Henry River was fairly self-sufficient, with a company store, a school and a church.  The mill was even able to produce electricity for the village.

The setting is quite beautiful.  The site starts on the top of a hill and the village winds down the hill to the river.  I just hope that any buyers of the site plan to preserve the village as mill villages are now few and far between.

This building is the old company store.  In the Hunger Games it was a bakery, and you can see the word “cakes” painted beneath the windows.  Note the very white board to the left of the door, under the windows.  The word “Pastries” was painted there, but one day the owner arrived to find that someone had ripped out the boards and taken them as a souvenir.  He replaced the boards and placed the site off limits to the public.  Can’t say that I blame him.

Shopping Heaven – Brevard, NC

A couple of weeks ago I posted about driving over the mountain to Brevard, NC to meet up with Mod Betty from Retro Roadmap.  In the comments, Hollis mentioned that she’s been wanting to get to Brevard, and it reminded me that I really needed to do that myself.  Though the town is close to me, it’s a roundabout trip to get there due to the mountains, so I tend to neglect visiting as often as I should.  But I did make time last week, and I’ve now determined that I must get over there much more often.

Brevard is a small town of around 7600 people, though the population is higher in the summer when the summer residents are there.  The town really benefited several years ago when it was named in one of the first surveys of great places to retire, and so today it is thought of as a retirement town.  As any good thrifter will tell you, thrifting is best in affluent communities.  Many of the retirees are affluent, and they have time on their hands, and so there are quite a few privately run thrift stores for local charities.  It makes for a very good shopping experience.

The town has two antique malls, and several other stores with booths, some of which have old stuff.  There are vintage clothes scattered around, mixed in with newer wares.

If I were a knitter, I might have wanted this little charmer as a mascot.

Paris and fashion and the early 1960s.

And while the antique malls are fun, where Brevard really excites is in the thrifts.

Yes, I bought this 1920s Whiting and Davis bag in a thrift store.  I did not get it for $2, or anything crazy like that, but the price was far under what it would have been at an antique store, and the thing is in almost perfect condition, right down to the silk lining.

Another store down the street had this copy of Elsa Schiaparelli’s Shocking Life.  I already had a copy, but mine is rough, and without the dust jacket.  So I bought this one and will be giving the old copy away in January, so stay tuned if you are in need of that book.

I’m always in the market for some Cecil Beaton, so the first volume of his Diaries was a real find.  I also picked up Oleg Cassini’s autobiography, a 1933 copy of Fortune magazine that features the emerging New York fashion design scene, some 1950s sales brochures from an Asheville department store, Bon Marche,  and a 1983 Vogue.

I was so excited that I finally understood the rush that leads to youtube “haul” videos.  Okay, I exaggerate a bit, but I was a very happy shopper.

An Old Cotton Mill and Village, Reused

One of the aspects of textile history that many people (especially if you are not from the textile producing areas of the US) don’t know about, is the mill village.  Mill villages were constructed by the mill owner as housing for the workers.  Because the mills were often constructed miles from the nearest town, or on the outskirts of a city where there was no pool of workers nearby, the mill owners often provided modest, low cost housing to attract workers.  They sometimes even provided a church and a company store.

As our textile industry began its decline in the 1970s, many textile mills were closed, and in many cases, the mill village connected with a closed mill would be abandoned or even demolished.  The South was in danger of losing this part of our historical record.  Fortunately, preservationists and former residents of the villages began seeing the possibilities in these old structures.

The video at the top shows how the  Edenton Cotton Mill has been converted to condos and the surrounding village has been revitalized as a viable community.  The mill closed in 1995, and the owner gave the entire complex to Preservation North Carolina.  The houses were sold and renovated for modern living.  As one woman points out, this is not a museum.  There is however, a small museum in the former cotton mill office building.

To contrast with the community in Edenton, the next video shows an unrestored village, Henry River Mill Village.  You may have seen this village, as it was used in The Hunger Games as the setting of the coal mining region, District 12.  If you are interested in restoring this  little ghost village, it is for sale for $1.4 million.

I have a few villages and village museums on my radar, and will be paying them visits in the not too distant future, so stay tuned for more textile history.

On a bit of a personal note, I grew up in Canton, NC, which was home to Champion Pulp and Paper.  Before the mill was built in 1906, Canton was a small settlement of 230 people.  The building of the mill brought more jobs than there were workers, and soon the influx of new residents led to a housing shortage.  The owners of Champion began construction of a village, modeled on the textile mill villages of the region.  In all, about 60 mill houses were built in a new area of town which was named Fiberville.  On the hill above the company built thirteen larger houses which were to be provided to the mill’s management.

In 1949 many of the smaller houses were destroyed when the Pigeon River flooded.  The company sold the remaining houses, some of which were moved to higher ground.  What was left of the original village was destroyed in 2004 when Hurricanes Frances and Ivan caused more flooding.  Interestingly, all the management houses are still high and dry on the hill above.

Something a Little Different

Regular readers might remember that my husband and I were away last week, off for a few days at the beautiful North Carolina coast.  This is not the usual fashion history post, but I never can resist looking for history wherever we happen to be.

We started out in Oriental, NC, an old fishing village now known more as a sailing town.  My father-in-law grew up here, but I’d never visited.  What an amazing little place!  There are only about 800 residents, and we saw more people getting around town on bikes than in cars.  So when in Rome…

We also visited Atlantic Beach.  It is at the very bottom of the Outer Banks, though it is not actually considered to be in the OB.  It is a place full of history, and great seafood.

We visited Fort Macon, which played a role in The Civil War, and even as late as WWII was used in our coastal defense.  It’s a wonderful old fort with new interpretive exhibits.

This is a denim fatigue uniform from WWII.  Even though the fort had been turned over to the state of North Carolina and was made a state park in 1936, because of German submarine activity in the waters off the east coast the fort was leased by the US Army and was used in the defense of the ports at Morehead City and Beaufort.

We stayed at a super 1960s motel, the Atlantis Lodge.  Even though the rooms have been updated and remodeled, we still got the feeling of being in a vintage motel.  Best of all, it was dog-friendly.  We didn’t take our Spooky, but there were plenty of friendly furry faces.

This is Chance, one of our neighbors.

And as promised some time ago, here is a photo of my Claire McCardell play set.  It was perfect for a day at the beach.

On the way home we stopped in Winston-Salem for a visit to the Old Salem Tavern.  It is located in the Salem part of town, which was established in the 1760s by Moravian settlers from Pennsylvania.  This part of town still has many of the 18th and early 19th century buildings, and many of them form a museum called Old Salem.  But other buildings in the village area are still dwellings and are used for restaurants.  It’s an interesting little time-warp in the shadow of the city of Winston.

This is not Williamsburg and there is no real attempt to make the visitor think he or she is in the 18th century, which makes the costumes of the museum interpreters seem a bit, well, odd.

Liberty, Part 2

This was one of those trips where if I were still selling vintage clothing and patterns, I’d have filled the car.  When you buy only for yourself you tend to be a lot more cautious, especially when you already have so much in the vintage line.  Still, I bought some very nice things, but no actual clothing.

I keep reading accounts of places like Brimfield, and I get really jealous.  I do hope to be able to start fitting in more trips north, and I especially want to go to the Sturbridge vintage show.  But  on the other hand, because I collect North Carolina textile and travel ephemera, I’m always pretty much assured of finding some of these things in a North Carolina show.

I found the 1934 and 1935 issues of the Spinning Wheel, an annual publication of the NC Cotton Industry.  I also found a 1938 publication of the National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers.  These may seem like dry reading, but they are fascinating to someone who is always wanting to know more about this industry.

The fabric on the left is a 1930s rayon, and the floral is a 20s or early 30s chiffon.  They seller had two big bins of this stuff and I sure was tempted.

This is a 1939 sporting goods and clothing catalog from Von Lengerke & Antoine, Chicago’s answer to Abercrombie & Fitch.  I’ll be showing the contents a bit later.

October 1942 Harper’s Bazaar.  What more is there to say?

Seven copies of Fashionable Dress.

Aren’t these something?  I’m always on the lookout for great old sunglasses.

So, how did I do?

 

Shoes to Climb Mountains

I couldn’t resist showing this photo from a 1950s brochure advertising Grandfather Mountain.   Featuring the “Mile High Swinging Bridge,” Grandfather is thought to be made of some of the oldest rock formations in the world.

As a long time admirer of vintage travel photos, I can tell you that historically, travelers have donned some wildly inappropriate clothes and shoes over the years.  Picture Victorian women climbing rocks in skirts that dragged the ground, 1920s families all decked out in Sunday best to picnic on mountain tops, and 1930s men walking the beach in full suit with tie and leather shoes.

But by 1950 our country was going casual.  Would a woman have really worn heels while visiting one of the highest mountains in eastern North America?

Well, she could have, and some probably did.  You see, most of the “climbing” of Grandfather Mountain is done in a car:

But the rest of the brochure shows women more realistically dressed, most wearing shorts and flats.  Personally, I think that is taking the casualness a bit far.  I can remember in the early to mid 1960s that the older women in my family would wear dresses with casual flats on picnic trips up the Blue Ridge Parkway and into the Smokies.     Only the kids got away with shorts.

A few years ago I was in Germany at the famous Neuschwanstein Castle, which sits on a high hill and which involves quite a bit of up and downhill walking.  It was a chilly September day and a woman was walking up the hill teetering on stiletto sandals.  A British tour guide went up to her and chastised, “Silly, silly shoes for such a place as this.”   I’m not sure she even understood him, but it sure stuck with me.  I’ll never be caught wearing silly shoes on a mountain.

UPDATE:

And as if to prove a point, I just got this too-funny-not-to-post photo from reader Lisa:

White heels AND a mink stole!