No more antlers, said the NY Times. So, no antlers.

I put this together after reading the NYT article on a still "moony" couple who bought a 1.7 million dollar loft in Williamsburg and wanted to avoid that "Brooklyn" look. Meaning antlers, for one thing, which is — I am sure — a not so subtle dig at the flea market/instant heritage/vintage taxidermy aesthetic that can be satisfied so easily on etsy.

 If you have $13,000 to spend on a couch (as this couple does), maybe you're above all that. If not, there are plenty of amazing pieces being made and curated by shops on the e'sphere that have nothing to do with antlers. I don't even think too many of these are in Brooklyn. But if they are, they're not in a 1.7 million smackeroo loftette. And I happen to love antlers anyway.

Not all twee 

Silent movie treasury by coolranchstudio

The treasury that was on etsy's front page from 9 to 10 am had nary a blossom or a teacup or a whimsical fairy digi-card to be found. Nothing against blossoms or teacups. And here's the row that got left out of the FP. It includes more essentials: old photo, brush, fantastic collar, great ring. Worth clocking on for the terrific sellers represented, too. And confirms my endless affection for grey and midtone neutrals.

Curator: coolranchstudio. I'll say. Big piece of pie coming your way.

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.

Everyone's asking about you


Sarah over at GoodTwinBadTwin featured an amazing message written in some vintage notebooks. She's also the purveyor of MouseTrapVintage, and has great stuff, a great eye, all that. But these notebooks do something else. They are so heartfelt. What's written:

Everyone's asking / about you / and counting / the days / while you're ill / please / speed up / that happy / recovery and / hurry hurry

One doesn't know if the receiver of the message actually got better or not. That's the big question in my mind. And did more than one person write the message? The handwriting for most of the message is round and blue inked; the handwriting for hurry hurry is black and more slanted. Friends?

Just when I have decided there really is no connection between my obsession with vintage and my fervid workings in fiction, one appears. The notebooks, having been clearly used and touched, become more than little vintage objects. They're domestic artifacts; treasures of an intimate archeology — if only I knew more. I can roll my brain around that writer's habitrail for hours. And there was another connection today as well: a treasury by Alyssa of BrooklynRehab (another super shop on etsy) that did another wammy on me. And I'm sure I scare everyone away, since when I'm inspired, the prose just literally flies like shit off a fan, and the etsy-quette on treasuries is that you say something about them if you can. So I did. The words, they have a life of their own. I wrote something about mist and sepiatone. But that's a good thing, my friends, since it mean's the blood is flowing, which means I get the book done sooner, before the guillotine of I can't comes down. BrooklynRehab's treasury below:



And since the other news I follow, the fate of wolves in the world, is neither as inspiring or as rosy, and I seem to be perpetually throwing donations towards the wolf savers, as if I am actually helping, which perhaps I earnestly am. No offense to earnestness. And certainly no offense to wolves.