bowling trophy

The Art of Eleanor Chambers

I bought the two ladies above and the gentleman below.

They have such a lovely old-fashioned look to them, like old family photos. I have no idea when they were painted but the styles look to be from the 1940s (?). I can tell you nothing about the artist beyond her name.

Details:

Some features, such as hair and jewels, were applied very thickly, giving a relief effect.

Plaster Shriner

Restaurant China

This restaurant serving plate was my best garage sale find of the weekend - just 50¢. Mr. Mike’s was a steakhouse chain that had 69 locations in Western Canada at the height of its success. It fell on hard times in the 1980s and was sold in 1995. Today there are only 9 locations left in Alberta and B.C. with a few more announced. The new owners “rebranded” the restaurants and they have a different, less exuberant logo. My interest in the plate is not nostalgia but vanity - my name is Mike and some of my friends do indeed call me “Mr. Mike”.

Boozy Booklets

Last weekend I got these four vintage cocktail recipe pamphlets at a garage sale for a quarter (20¢ really, but I’m such a big spender I didn’t want the change). Price is one of the things that makes collecting these charming little booklets attractive, another is that they hardly take up any space at all - a very important consideration as my cookbook cabinet fills to bursting.

Another charming aspect to recipe pamphlets is that they’re created to push the company’s products and so you get some really, um… creative recipes. For instance, Let’s Serve Cocktails published by Taylor’s New York State Wines and Champagnes features booze in most of its hors d’oeuvre recipes including tuna salad and chip dip. As a friend pointed out, you know you have a drinking problem when you put sherry in your chip dip.

Two of these pamphlets are the latest addition to my thrift store cookbook website Mock Duck. Let’s Serve Cocktails is in the Hors D’oeuvres menu, and Beachcomber’s Barguide is in the Beverages section.

Party Girls

Made from psuedo-ivory (sic).

“How to Draw” Books

I’m not a visual artist, but I’m really drawn (sorry) to the Walter Foster “How to Draw” books. They’re large and beautiful and the pages are crammed with luscious color illustrations, black and white sketches…

…and a bare minimum of helpful instructional text to make me believe that with a few lines and circles and a little bit of shading, I too can draw a horse/leaping buck/tastefully disrobed woman.

I’m not sure when they were published because they’re not dated, but my guess would be late 50s or early 60s. The earlier ones (I presume) have a cover price of $1.00 (”Not more than $1.25 in any foreign country”) and later ones are priced $2.00. I bought How to Draw Horses last week for 69¢.

My sentimental favourite is Animation by Preston Blair. I loved it as a lad and was delighted to find it again recently. My career as a “cartoonist” never happened, but I wonder how many animators were spawned by this book.

Plaster Wall Fish

Just bought this lovely set at Goodwill. I’m inspired by a picture in the book Kitsch Deluxe of a wall covered with 300 sets of plaster flying ducks to do the same in my bathroom with fish. Here’s the rest of my fledgling collection: