A Trip to the Antiques Garage

You know that I love to go to a flea market on a Saturday afternoon. It's fun to look around and offers inspiration. I'm happy when I come home empty-handed actually because honestly I don't need more things. But I'm also happy to discover something wonderful.
Recently I visited the Antiques Garage on 25th Street between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue which offers two floors of vendors in a large space which is used as a parking garage during the week. "Antiques" though is a stretch – it's really a flea market of vintage dealers.
I picked up two discoveries. The first was this metal industrial box in the foreground. It's the perfect size for holding all the tv remote controls, and sits on our metal table which I also found at the Antiques Garage. The box was $8.

At a booth of vintage clothes I saw this colorful wool challis scarf. "It's Perry Ellis," the vendor said. Bingo.

When I first moved to New York I had a temporary job working for Mr. Perry Ellis – I was his chauffeur. Perry then made the most beautiful clothes. He had many talented designers working for him including Isaac Mizrahi and Richard Haines. Liz Kurtzman designed the signature, collectable scarves. I still have handsome scarves that I bought back then.
When I became a freelance writer I interviewed Liz Kurtzman for a publication called Scarves International which was sold in bookstores and department stores. Liz said to me, "Scarves are like little paintings. When you design one, you don't have to worry about shape or fit. Ultimately the goal is to make a beautiful thing that will be perfect on its own." This scarf looks like a Gustav Klimt painting. There are so many gorgeous colors in it – red, orange, green, blue, brown. Liz Kurtzman told me, "Color was very important to Perry. For Perry, if the color was right, it was a good thing."

I think Liz Kurtzman married a movie producer and moved to L.A. Well, I had to have the scarf. It was marked at $25 but I got it for $20. I told the vendor, Susan Bergin, I worked for Perry, and we fell into a conversation. She said she was from Philadelphia and comes up to the Antiques Garage every weekend. As a former criminal defense lawyer, she was much happier selling vintage clothes.
Here I am wearing my purchase. This scarf looks very English Bloomsbury, but it would also be at home in a street-side cafe in the Marais, no?

This scarf makes me happy.

Summer in the City

The sun setting over the Hudson River from the Chelsea Piers on a warm summer night.

Last Saturday morning I walked over to the Union Square Farmer's Market where the bounty of summer is now in full tilt.

I loved the purple flowers in the foreground here and I bought a bunch; I'm not sure what they are called.

After my yoga class at the Chelsea Piers I rode the blue Schwinn over to a flea market on 25th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. It's in a vacant parking lot, and I hadn't been there before. Honestly I wasn't thrilled with the vendors there though I did like these colorful strung beads that look like jelly beans.

Then I stumbled upon a guy with good taste. And that's what the flea market is all about isn't it – the thill of discovery.

I really liked the big iron ornament shaped like a globe with an arrow through it which was standing on the glass case. The vendor said that earlier in the day it was priced at $75 but now it was $40.
Dear reader, it was hard to bicycle home with that heavy iron thing on my handle bars, I'll tell you that.

I put the purple flowers in a pretty green glass vase which I bought at the Salvation Army for $4. I especially like the white flowers which have a purple edge.

They look good at night too.

I put the heavy iron ornament on top of the iron and wood book shelf. I just love it.
It looks good at night as well.


Update: My friend Nannette emails to say that the flowers are lisianthus and my friend Meg suggests that the metal thing is an armillary.

A Trip to the 39th Street Flea Market

A frame purchased at the flea market made out of reclaimed wood from homes in South Africa holds art work by our friend Clover Vail.

Well, I got my broken camera back from Canon! They said they were going to charge $120 to fix it and I happened to mention in passing this blog and voila, it was repaired for free as a courtesy. Thanks Canon.
Since I got it back, I have been using the video function, and so we have something new for Bart Boehlert's Beautiful Things: a video! Let me know what you think. I got my MacBook upgraded, bought the iLife program which has iMovie on it, went to a class at the Apple store for iMovie, downloaded the video and edited it in iMovie, and uploaded it to YouTube. I mean, there is a steep learning curve!
We went on Saturday afternoon to the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market on 39th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues, and recorded the visit. Watch to see what we found:



TD and I are off tomorrow for the sand and surf of sunny Sarasota and Siesta Key, rated one of America's best beaches. Have a great weekend.

For the Love of Old

We got this metal box at the antique store. Its black paint is scratched and chipped to reveal silver metal underneath.


It opens up which is nice. We can store books in it.


I love metal furnishings, and for me the more scratched and rusted the better. I like old things; I'm not a suburban Ethan Allen boy. I picture living in a loft with metal furniture and wood country furniture, overlooking the river. Very nineteenth century industrial. The idea of living with rusty, antique things was validated for me by a book called For the Love of Old by my friend Mary Randolph Carter, who was in charge of advertising and is now the editorial and creative director at Polo Ralph Lauren. Gorgeous book, written and photographed by Carter, as she is called. The subtitle of the book is "living with chipped, frayed, tarnished, faded, tattered, worn and weathered things that bring comfort, character and joy to the places we call home."

Carter had the most fantastic office at Ralph Lauren that I have ever been in – a big modern corner office on Madison Avenue but it was layered in rugs and antique textiles, piles of books everywhere. She had a roll-top desk, but we met at a big country wooden table. Going into that office was like taking a trip to an Adirondack Lake. It was very inspirational to me.

This black box will look nice next to the black leather and silver chrome Mies van der Rohe chair.