More flea than antique | 11 July 2008

In fact we did visit antique shops along our route to Lake Huron, one to which we went out of our way (we’ve been before) and a couple more we found along the way, the latter with real antiques, labelled with their provenance and correspondingly high prices. After those two, we found a little home decor shop that was a refreshing change from objects too old and valuable to allow even a momentary spark of greed to flare up in me. (One exception was a piano stool with the seat upholstered in a muted chartreuse velvet with tufting. It was missing most of its tag, but I didn’t dare ask about it.) From the little shop, I bought a metal candle wall sconce, in part because it would work perfectly in the condo we’d like to buy next year, and Scott bought some metal bugs. From the messy and dusty store in Cambridge, we found two items more flea than antique:

One of the main characters in Harry Mulisch’s The Discovery of Heaven keeps on his fireplace mantel a small ever-changing selection of his favourite books (one of which is never rotated out — something by Kafka). It’s a romantic idea, and these bookends are suited to the task, and our mantel more or less up to it, but I would be in danger of rotating the books based on their aesthetic rather than literary value, and that would be wrong.

Something that excited me almost more than anything else on the trip was the discovery of a huge outdoor antique flea market on Sundays just down the road from the Pinery. We didn’t stop because our picnic lunch wouldn’t let us, but in any case we’ll be visiting the beach again soon.

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Places to go: bhikku | bookninja | eudaemonist | fine little day | fireland | ftrain | geegaw | girls are pretty | interior stories | ivebeenreadinglately | lena corwin | maud newton | mimi smartypants | oblivio | pliv | poppytalk | rhetorical device | simply breakfast | smosch | the nonist | toastier | whygodwhy | wood s lot | & so