Archive for January, 2010

Found at Bargain Hunter (Anglicare) in Queanbeyan. A white cotton tablecloth with cross stitch embroidery, and six matching napkins. Very pretty! Probably from the 1950s?  I think it was either my grandfather or grandmother who told me that these tablecloth sets were actually made in China, and the ladies who did the embroidery would stitch [...]

Salvos Fyshwick had all handbags for $2, and what did I spy amongst the 90s vinyl? This! A vintage brown lizardskin handbag. Est. 1950s. The lining is leather with two elasticated pockets. After I get some reptile leather conditioner and tidy it up, the only flaw is a little crack in the underside of the [...]

The Australian Home Journal was a magazine mostly about fashion for the average woman. Each cover featured 3-5 outfits and inside were full-size paper tissue patterns and instructions on how to make them up. There were also more outfits illustrated inside, amd you could buy them by mail order from the AHJ pattern service. The [...]

Does your house have a pink pre-1960s bathroom? Don’t sucumb to the lure of flat-pack-tastic bathrooms spruiked on weekend renovation TV shows and rip it out. Restore it! This site, Save the Pink Bathrooms, explains why.
I used to live in a little 1927 cottage in Barton that hadn’t been renovated. It still had the old [...]

Here is a matching set I got recently. Lovely glossy black glass (AKA “French jet”) and a kind of stylised crown shape for the clip on earrings, and a big leaf-shaped brooch. They always get plenty of compliments. 1950s, judging from the design and also the clips – it’s unsigned. Navette-shaped stones were quite popular [...]