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 handle. Bargain!

Salvos in Tuggeranong had a bunch of pretty glassware and ceramics. I got this oval pink ceramic plate, it looks 1950s but could be newer. There’s no “Dishwasher and Microwave safe” label on the underside, in fact there are no markings at all. Mystery!

I also got these very cute space-age themed drinking glasses.

And these 1970s blue glass bits. They’re not really wide enough to be parfait or dessert dishes, so they’re probably brandy or liqueur glasses. They came in a shiny black PVC box with a YSL Parfum label inside (obviously a gift pack of some kind).

I also bought some very deco-looking EPNS bits, but I’ll post photos of those after I remember to buy some Silvo.

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 rest of the magazine featured knitting and crochet patterns, fashion-related DIY and handy hints, short fiction, advice columns, recipes, and plenty of ads for powders and potions to keep you regular, make you slim, and keep your baby quiet. Celebrity news is limited to two pages on the latest film (and later TV) releases and a description of a star like Esther Williams or Hedy Lamarr’s latest outfit. The writing is often quite humorously snippy, a little al0ng the lines of today’s Jezebel.

There are lots of great period fashion hints to be had, including on how to accessorise.

The Australian National Library has a good collection of AHJs, from 1904 through to 1982, however is missing all the 1970s issues. Archive.org has some digitised issues from 1949-1952: Australian Home Journal.

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 Canberra wood-fired stove in the kitchen, and a bathroom that was pink-tastic. The people who bought the house from our landlord extended the house and I’m not sure that piece of the past is there anymore. (And I’m not sure I really appreciated the design of that cottage while I lived there, actually. Hindsight! No bench space in the kitchen was frustrating, however.)

If you look on real estate listings sites you can usually get pictures of the insides of these places when they come up for sale or rent.  The weirdest renovations, to me, are not those that modernise the interior, but those that do a Federation style. Does not compute!

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 in costume jewellery.

My current favourite handbag. It’s probably early mid1950s – early 1960s, and made of vinyl with lizard embossing, and brass fittings. Maker is Stylecraft Miami. It holds a lot more than most vintage bags and one of the inner pockets is just the right size for an iPhone. The bag is all black on the other side, so you can sort of have two looks depending on which way you hold it. Found on eBay Australia. I grabbed it because the two-tone bags are a little unusual; one of the only ones I’ve seen in a fashion plate is this black and white one from The Australian Home Journal (2 January, 1956). The black and white bag also seems unusually large for the era!