Vintage Unscripted hopes you this finds you on this Labor Day weekend having a respite from your labors. We have posts about what you might not know about Labor Day and ideas about throwing a Labor Day cookout with vintage flair. It’s a great American holiday, even if we got the idea from Canada.
From the outside, being a vintage seller looks like it’s all rainbows and treasure hunting. And it does have a nice slice of that. But it also involves cleaning, removing stains, mending, researching and pricing. If you sell in person, you’ve also got to pack it up, display it and store it. That’s a lot of schlepping. If you sell online, you’re writing descriptions, taking photos, retaking photos because you don’t like the ones you took, packing and shipping.
So if you’re a vintage seller like us, we hope you take the day off from soaking stains out of tablecloths and gently cleaning pottery and tearing up when you research an artist to have some you time. And if you’re a vintage lover, we hope you have some time to prowl about looking for new things to add to your collection.
Speaking of new things to add to your collection, here’s this week’s offerings.
Spring Flowers Tablecloth
Labor Day is often considered as the last vestige of summer. So why not take advantage of the long weekend and have a picnic. While this tablecloth was designed to fit a bridge table, it works equally well spread out on the grass and strewn with summer fruits, chips, and hot dogs hot off the grill. The bright cotton print features tulips alongside a plethora of bright colored flowers.
Spring Flower Tablecloth, $44.95
Pam, Vintage Renude
Vintage Gesetzlich Geshutzt German Beer Stein
Offering a mid-sized embossed German beer stein that sports an embossed pewter lid. Deep green body with cream trim. The raised pictorial scene features a man and two women happily dancing with steins of beer. Stamped “Germany” and marked 1902E on the bottom with “GESETZLICH GESCHUTZT” below.
Interestingly, the origin of covered steins can be traced back to the bubonic plague and fly invasions in Europe during the 14th century. Seriously!
Read more about the history of German beer steins on the German Culture site.
Vintage German Beer Stein with Pewter Lid, $45
Linda, Selective Salvage
Graham Davidson 3-D Art “A Beautiful Garden”
Finding this piece full of wit, workmanship and exuberance was exciting. But finding out that the young Vermont artist and her husband were killed in a traffic accident coming home from an art show in Pennsylvania was devastating. All the works she never made. All the ideas she carried in her head that never became art.
Titled “A Beautiful Garden,” this piece shows a Victorian house with a lush garden and the proud proprietors, doing yard work au naturale, as Adam and Eve would have done before that meddling snake got them thrown out of Eden. It’s done in 3-D, with layers and spacers between the layers to give dimension. The method could be called paper tole or layered paper art, but what you call it doesn’t matter as long as you preface it with “fabulous.”
Best of all, it’s encased in a shadow box to keep it safe and beautiful.
Graham Davidson “A Beautiful Garden” Original Art, $425.
Laurie, NextStage Vintage
Antique US and Canada Labor/Labour Day Postcards
In 1894, Labor/Labour Day was enacted into law in both Canada and the US, but Canada had the first labor-oriented parade in years before in 1872. Ten thousand workers marched through Toronto in solidarity with the Toronto Typographical Union, which was striking for a 9 hour instead of 12 hour workday. The protest led to the Trade Unions Act, which legalized union activity. US labor leader Peter J. McGuire saw the Canadian parades and celebrations in 1882, and put together America’s first labor parade later that year in New York City.
The founding mission of Labor Day is to honor the worker, celebrate their achievements and give a day of leisure. The originators thought there should be two parts to the day: a parade and post-parade event with speeches and amusements.
Labor Day was a relatively new holiday when the postcards above were printed. The top one shows three views of Labor Day in Woodville, WI in 1909. The lower shows the 1913 Labour Day celebration in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
1909 Woodville, WI Postcard, $9.74; 1913 Winnipeg Postcard, $6.47.
Available from this week’s guest Aaron, Eternal Loot Postcards
Where oh where does the time go? How is it Labor Day weekend already? What happened to July? What happened to August? And seriously, how did June slip away so quickly?
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