stuart and diane's place

stuart likes to have some new shirts on hand for special occasions

 

diane saves everything, like a length of old linen lace and a lone plate

wooden hangers from the 1920s hang in their closet, unburdened

diane still has her mother's childhood sunday dress

on the second floor landing, an old pint milk jar sits on a chenille rug

diane commandeered stuart's old toolbox for her own collection

at night they both dream of oregon, a trip to the coast they'd like to take.

Leonia, 1970s

It wasn't just about Mom and the rhododendrons and the tree.

I had a thing for yellow because we didn't, as a family, wear yellow a lot. Peasant blouse from missfarfalla

We had Dodges. So I thought the coolest cars were Buicks and Fords. Buick station wagon in a color my mother could have tolerated. She had the right idea on that one, I think. That cars should try to blend in with the trees a little more.

Everyone had crazy bedding. It's a wonder we got any sleep. Flower power bedding, raggletaggle

frye boots, what all the cool girls wore, what I dreamed of wearing when I got older and my legs got a little longer.

Everything was patterned. Everything was printed to look like something else. Patchwork patten sewing box, thevintagepepper

There were super bells, elephant bells, fancy bells. Unbelievably amazing jeans, lovefashionmusic

But mostly the clothes seemed strangely unwearable and overcoordinated. Stiff vests over thick dresses, clingy skirts sticking to tights. (via here)

I was more into the free spirit version. Like this fringed vest, another cool girl friday night at the ice cream parlor staple

And then there were girls I knew were just cool. Whatever they did. Skinny and nightgowned and phone calls from cool people and doing cool things and wearing hear in cool braided ways and cool. (via him)

Not a candlestand

Vintage sometimes presents enough of a hint of its original purpose to contradict assumptions; to steer you away from easy conclusions. Or, simply, I am ignorant. So it was with this, and so it was with me.

I found it while going through a box of castoffs at a thrift shop. It's part of the whole vintage discovery process; first, the shop; then, its threshold: hazy with the dust of old videocassettes evaporating into the stale air; sometimes a radio warbling from overhead; sleepy clerks; that strange gray overcast under the dim charity bulbs. Then, the mining begins. For some reason, I was in a box mood. There was a box, by the LPs that were in their own box. When 27, I would have dug into that LP box as if I were the first to discover Pet Sounds on vinyl. That was so then.

This box was marked Misc. Misc. in vintage can mean a lot of things, but it mostly means mystery. Promise. Miscstery. Promisce. In this box, at first, were just discards: cards of discount earring studs, a cloth purse with a rotten corner, a pleather purse riddled with adhesive gunk, a sneaker (a sneaker with another s on the end is a useless object), rubber-banded jumbles of old pharmeceutical logo pens, unloved paperbacks with ragged ears, a cutoff Fame style sweat shirt and some pinned-together sweat socks that smelled of foot powder. Then, for some reason, I thought of my father, who often tucks fragile things like Leica lenses into his socks. And so I — fondled — the socks. Quietly. Discreetly. There is a fine line between vintage treasure hunter and hoarder of things like singular sneakers, I fear, and sometimes I wonder how easy it is to cross it. But sure enough, tucked into one of the socks was this.

The find.

After the find, there is often the — feign. After you find what may be something amazing, you call upon the karmic treasure gods by not really focusing on it — as if somehow, by calling attention to it, you'll magically alter its price, or its something. So instead you avoid investigation. You gloss. You feign disinterest, lest someone notice you.

You deposit your object in the cart, or the basket, or the bag, as casually as you can, projecting disinterest, and you keep moving. I assumed I had just found a candlestick holder and satisfied enough, header for a fake leopardskin hat that turned out to be late 1990s awful. Hours later, got home. That's where you get to check the take. Do the take check.

I spread it all across the kitchen table (a yard sale find, 1950s chrome legs, flecked green and white formica top with a leaf pattern, heart be still). Put away the sweaters, the skirt, the dress, the coat, the cooking with cheese book. And I took a closer look at this candlestick.

Blue speck on the scenic reprint: what's that? It looked like ink. A blot of ink. Scene reprint: it turned out to be Holland Pier, Rockaway Beach. But when? Gilding, cobalt glaze. Old. Man in hat and suspenders. Men don't stand around in hats and suspenders since a long time ago. There was a Boardwalk Empire on a Sunday afternoon look to it. I googled. Found these:

Entrance to Holland Pier, Rockaway Beach, postcard from 1912

Holland Ave. Pier, Rockaway Beach, postcard sent in 1918

Holland Dock Pier, Rockaway Beach, postcard sent in 1908

The first was clearly The Scene on the candlestick thing. The second seemed a bit newer, but was really taken, originally, from slightly further along the pier. The third had a white instead of a green fence. Still, more proof. I could almost hear the gulls, smell the salt, the water, hear the quiet that must have been then.

So it was old, this candlestick thing with the ink spot on the scene. And it was a souvenir from Rockaway Beach, back when Rockaway Beach was a real resort. And it has a horseshoe, a kind of lucky horseshoe, and I knew from some old file folder in the back left of my brain that back in the 19-oughts, resorts often sold souvenirs with things like lucky horseshoes on them. And they tended to serve 19-ought type of functions. And also back in those days, there were oil lamps and gas lights. Not too many candles. Someone trips on the edge of her nightgown, the candle lands on the lace curtains, and whoosh goes the pier. So this had to be something else.

It says Germany on the back. I stared at it for a few minutes. The dogs were sleeping, so I could think. I stuck a very standard sized candle in the hole of the well-type part. Candles, amazingly, according to a friend of mine who could be called a wax historian, have not changed that much. Already the idea of it holding a candle was a dimming possibility. And the candle didn't fit. And that blotch in the bowl.

Spot of ink. Horseshoe shape. I googled around and found this.

Souvenir inkwell from early 20th century.

There's the search, the find, the feign, the take, the long think. And then the stumble, the google, the google some more, and finally, the i.d. Germany, it turned out, owned the market for blue porcelain souvenir inkwells with scenes on them. Imagine a guy in shirtsleeves held up with garters, penning his order for 100 porcelain horsehoe inkwells printed with the postcard enclosed, sincerely, Messr. Somebody whose brother posed for the picture in hat and suspenders.

Danke. And you can find the find here.

Luncheonette x Sartorialist

1980s bittersweet boots in the warmth of the studio, luncheonettevintage

same boots photographed freezing outside on the feet of this adorable girl, thesartorialist

Pushing that pesky heritage envelope once again

1950s McCoy flying duck planter

heritage windowsill megabricabrac

1980s bittersweet georgia logger boots

heritage clodhoppers

1980s honeydipper stetson fedora

heritage miami beach

1960s bearclaw and sterling silver pendant

heritage illegal

1970s yam fries sweater vest

heritage acrylic

1940s brass keepsake pocketbook photo album

heritage miss you

Visually functional

There is a euphemism going around the kitchen this morning as I sort through padlocks and hinges and combination locks and things that look like tools. Visually functional. It's not a contradiction to a writer. Is it.

Functional visually

1920s combination lock, luncheonettevintage

That's the other euphemism. It means it works too. Old string, manila tag with industrial reinforced punchhole, ancient, now defunct but venerable maker of locks, handwritten — in fountain pen ink and a careful hand — combination and name. Tidy. Analog. You could call this one a heritage lock.

Department of Since You Asked: A-okay with Jo-o-Kay

The Grits n Ham suede jacket — came through the doors at the luncheonette, made a brief stint on etsy, and wound up in Utah, beloved at last.

Amazing, and amazingly weird at the same time!! It is so retro, but in such GREAT shape!! Was it yours? Thanks for everything ... Do you know anything about it?
—Feedback from the woman who bought the 1970s Grits n Ham suede jacket, from the luncheonette.

My answer: It wasn't mine, though it would have been if it and I had crossed paths in the past.  Especially if I'd come across it in college, when I was a double major, one of those majors being History, which serves pretty well when it comes to researching a jacket like this.

Nearly everything that comes through the luncheonette gets a pretty thorough working over: I start with the label, go through trademarkia, patent archives,  old ads (often found on *bay), legal records.

Letter written from Ardmore Air Force Base, 1943. The writer says, I have been to Ardmore once and I don't think a hell of a lot of it.

From a site on Oklahoma history, I found out that Jo-o-Kay is a trademarked name that isn't in the trademark archives. But it stands for John and Kay (Katherine) Simpler, of Ardmore, Oklahoma. Actually they weren't technically of Ardmore, they were of somewhere else, but they moved to Ardmore in the 1950s, after the owner of the Western Supply Company encouraged them to. Western Supply made leather goods, specifically the hand-tooled kind, and the owner's family and the Simplers would have cookouts every Saturday night once things got going. The suede and leather coat business started, probably, as a discussion over hamburgers on a buggy night. Imagine everyone, filling up on good Okie beef and looking towards fall. Everyone needs a good jacket, after all.

Main Street in Ardmore, 1958.

 John and Katherine wanted to call it Jo-Kay. But Jockey, already making underwear, paid for them to add an extra o into the name. As if someone might confuse a two-tone, snap-close cowhide leather jacket with a snazzy cowboy yoke for a pair of Y-fronts. At any rate that's what the Simplers did, though locals always called it Jo-Kay.

A later 1970s label (which, upon second thought, makes me wonder if the Grits n Ham jacket was actually from the 1960s)

And here's an excerpt straight from "The Year of the Campus Cowboy" in a 1964 Sports Illustrated:

Rough-out leather jackets, cut, stitched and snapped like a wrangler's denim model, are hotly popular in the West and are now turning up in the East as well. One firm, Jo-O-Kay of Ardmore, Okla., has sold 100,000 of them this year in 42 different models. They are made of brushed cowhide, lined in warm Orion fleece. Mike Irving and Justine Purdy wear rough-outs over snug-fitting cowboy shirts in Ivy League stripes.

Can't find the photo, but here's the caption: 

This page, above: Both jackets are by Jo-O-Kay; the man's, in Aztec gold color, is $30, the lady's $29. Both are at Granby's Trading Post; Miller's; Western Ranchmen Outfitters.

 Western Ranchmen outfitters is still in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Members of the Simpler family are still in Ardmore, having cookouts. At some point, the Tandy Company bought Corral Sportswear, which carried — or oversaw some aspect of (and this is where the research gets spotty) Jo-o-Kay. At some point Jo-O-Kay began making coats and jackets for Corral. And someone named Simpler — and it might have been John Simpler himself — was interviewed during a National Labor Relations Board Hearing on whether or not the Ardmore plant had conspired against AFL-CIO members who wanted to organize. That was in 1966-1967, when Corral Sportswear's Ardmore Oklahoma plant — at least this is how it's described in the NLRB transcripts — was found guilty of conspiring against union members by the National Labor Relations Board. The union had petitioned to hold an election at the plant, and among the winners were union members then contested, said the NLRB, by management. Managment being a Mr. Simpler. The plant had 96 employees, but there were only 76 voters:

76 voters-- 1 janitor, 1 patternmaker, 11 cutters, 3 set-up department employees, 3 finishing department employees, 2 shipping department employees, 6 linegirls, and 49 employees performing other work. All voted, as earlier indicated, with 5 challenges made. The Company challenged Pat Wilson, a set-up department employee, as a supervisor; the Union challenged Velma Trent, a finishing department employee, as a supervisor; the Union challenged Myrtha Heartsill and Gladys Roberts,⁶ linegirls, as supervisors; and the Union challenged Ruth Wills, the patternmaker.

The details of the case are a bit sad: you can imagine the group of employees hoping to do some good, imagine Mr. Simpler hoping to stave off changes that might lose him money, imagine the Union lawyers interviewing him, cross-examining him, when all he wants to do is go home and have a good steak. And it gives you a glimpse into how coats like this were made, by patternmakers, and cutters, and finishers, and linegirls, and a tiny shipping department, and by women with names like Myrtha Heartsill and Velma Trent.

And that's what I found out about the Grits n Ham jacket.

Vintage as a black and white cookie

Glaser's Bake Shop black and white cookies

This week, like nearly all of them, has not gone as planned. The chicks are doing marvelously but the camera makes them panic, so pictures are forthcoming once they are more used to the giant black spectre of a digital SLR in their midst. The chicken coop has arrived, brought on a Ford F350 and a pneumatic hydraulic superflexible trailer, driven by a man wearing an FD hat and sweatshirt and ghillie-toed logger boots. And levi's. It made me think, the sight of those big macho boots (he had big feet) with the frou-frou, snaz-ola touch of the kiltie toe. A functional part of the boot's design with a purpose: to block embers, protect the upper from chafing from laces. But they look fancy, regardless. They do.

The toe in question, called a Kiltie, looks fussy but has a purpose.

Same toes, not the same purpose. Vintage Italian Bruno Magli loafers.

Why do people wear what they wear? Why do they pick what they pick? Which me straight to the revelation of the black and white cookie.

Glaser's Bake Shop. 87th Street, First Avenue, NYC.

The point is, the black and white cookie is a flexible entity that can be savored and considered in many ways (Seinfeld, etc). 27 people might have one and noone will eat it the same way. And, incidentally, it started as a way to use up leftover cake dough — waste not in ye olden days. It is at least 108 years old: Glaser's, a famed old world bakery that happens to be in my sister's neighborhood, has been making them since the opened in 1902. Which makes it bona fide vintage.

Manning the ovens at Glaser's, some years ago.

And that fondant icing, made of simple ingredients, adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Like great outfits. Like a great piece of vintage, that emanates something far more than a piece of cloth with seams. We all know the phrase: a Peggy dress,

A Joan dress.

Means a world. Come to think of it, how many times do we see Joan in a black and white dress? Doesn't suit her. There's nothing really black and white on her surface, though there is,
I think, on the inside. Her curves have their own morality.

All from Simply Vintage treasury by cabinwindows

The thing about black and white cookies, which belong to the honored category of Food That is Vintage, is that they are stark and yet they are delicious. They are geometrically divided, they are round, and yet they have that warm, crumbly potential you can taste before you start eating. Vintage is that way, or can be. In black and white, it can look even more luscious. The forms come out, the lines, the retro, old-school, antique mechanics. You can nearly see the drafter's pencil at work, the giant shears at the tailor's. Cabinwindows is the etsy moniker for a biologist and anthropologist who made the treasury excerpted above. Black and white. She grew up watching biology filmstrips, lives in a haunted cabin, and she gets the black and white cookie of it all.

Apropos of white

Simply didn't realize there were so many white things in the luncheonette. It's a tricky shade — very nostalgic, a bit of a blank slate for your past-decade imaginings. But so hard to keep clean. As to wearing it after labor day, that's in the matching bag and shoes category. If you're really dressing the part (in vintage drag), sure. Mom knew all those rules. All those great ladies knew those rules.

vintage 1950s crumpet blouse with lace bib

vintage 1970s snowcone pumps by Nina

unworn vintage kid gloves

vintage meringue wool pocket skirt

vintage diner cups, set of 5 (not 4)

vintage cabin mirror, dated 1928 on the back