Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes and lives? Every month a group of six bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, thoughts, and more!

Hey, cats & kittens! This month’s theme is one of my favorites – art and collectibles. And, since historically, hoarding collecting has been one of my favorite pasttimes, this will be fun.

I do wish I’d started this one in like 2000 when I had ALL THE ART AND ALL THE COLLECTIBLES. I’ve downsized with each of the six moves I’ve made since then…and the past year I’ve been downsizing with a vengeance. So there’s not a lot of the good stuff left.

But let’s take a look at what there is.

My Number One, Numero Uno, Favorite Piece of Art is this lady. I got her at an estate auction probably 15-20 years ago and always meant to upgrade her frame but that never happened. When I first saw her I was immediately hooked. I thought, THIS is who I want to be. THIS is how I want life to look. She’s just walking along the rocky cliffs above the ocean below, face towards the sun…in her graceful lady dress…greasy hair (ha ha) hidden under the scarf because when there’s a beautiful day like this to be enjoyed, washing hair is just wasting time. It reminds me of the movie Enchanted April (have you seen IT? I highly recommend – it’s charming, set in Southern Italy, all the characters redeem themselves over the course of the movie and you end up loving them all). She’ll go everywhere with me til the end. Sometimes I just need to look at her to be reminded that there’s joy to be found in life.

Another favorite, and a perfect example of “loving the imperfect,” is the orange painting. If you’ve been here long enough you’ve heard the story of the year it wouldn’t stop raining…and people in my neighborhood were dragging their waterlogged goodies from flooded basements out to the curb for trash pick-up. For like weeks, it seems. I got not one, but TWO paintings in the flood era…this one…

It’s BIG with super larger than life oranges…my favorite bit is the water droplet! The bottom of the canvas was soaked through when I adopted it…and over the years it has continued to wear away…but I don’t care. We’re all imperfect…and still worthy of love.

This one also came out of The Great Flood of Islip. I love the smaller size and shape and the blue-green tones.

Here’s one I actually purchased. This was a WIN. I got it during the height of shabby chic and these vintage rose paintings were highly coveted. I spotted it at an in-home auction and waited waited waited for it to come up…I was prepared to go as high as $50 for it – they were selling really well on ebay and I would have made a nice profit on it even at that price…but really wanted it for myself. They somehow overlooked it, so when they were all done, and people were already getting up to leave, I said WHAT ABOUT THAT? The auctioneer grabbed it and hurriedly started bidding…I could tell he was just DONE…and people were already out of their seats not paying attention and…I GOT IT FOR SEVEN DOLLARS!!!! I was So Thrilled! I didn’t think I’d get it at ALL, let alone for such a ridiculous price!!!

It’s the painting on the left.

Moving on from paintings to collectibles…my longest collection has been my beloved transferware. Transferware is pottery (earthenware, ironstone, porcelain, or bone china) that has a pattern that was applied by transferring the print from a copper plate to paper then to the pottery body. Most people are familiar with the blue and white Chinese porcelain dishes (and cups, bowls, etc), but it was also made in other countries and in other colors. I primarily collected English transferware. I started with red…but was obsessed with (the very expensive!) black and also brown. 

Again, if you’ve been here awhile you might know the sad, sad story about my small black transferware collection. It was really pricey, so I had only a few pieces. I think there were 2 platters, a teapot, and a couple small plates. I kept them on a – oh gosh, how to describe this – like a little hutch, but just the top? It was propped up on the stove back, leaning against the kitchen wall. Not afixed to anything. I’m sure you can guess where this is going. One day I was upstairs working and heard a THUDCRASH. Ooh. The cats came racing upstairs…and I ran downstairs…to find the shelf on the floor…and all the broken pieces of my beautiful black transferware scattered on the kitchen floor.

Sadface.

I held onto those shards for years, thinking someday I would do some sort of mosaic project with them. That never happened and now they are long gone. But I sure loved them while I had them.

The red and brown pieces fared better and I accumulated a really large lovely collection of both. But since I sold my house in 2009 there’s really been nowhere to display them so they’ve just been in boxes for the past 14 years…and are currently being sold on ebay.

One pattern in particular holds a special place in my heart: Johnson Brothers English Chippendale. This was a pattern my mother had been collecting from visiting garage sales over the years. I knew nothing about transferware in those days, so when she passed away it was just another thing that got packed up and moved to my basement. Years after her death when I first started seeing transferware pieces and coveting them…I remembered the box of her dishes that was in my basement. I took them out and displayed them…and continued collecting them when I’d see them (it’s not as common a pattern as many others), growing the collection over the years. They’re one of the last things I decided to sell to help grow The Korea Fund.

I love the simplicity and almost homeliness of 1930-1940s American pottery…and collected cream, chartreuse, and aqua/turquoise/green pieces (vases mostly) for many years. Another collection almost completely deaccessioned 🙂

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Let’s not even go into my weakness for chairs and lamps. Or books. Or Breyer model horses. Or vintage rhinestone jewelry. Or vintage post cards. Or vintage suitcases. Or crystal candlesticks. Or vintage watering cans. Or teacups. Or Eiffel Towers. I’m sure I’m leaving out a bunch of things, but…ain’t nobody got time for all THAT.

I feel like my “collecting” days are over…unless I can find joy in something really really small and easily transportable!

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After
Sally at Within a World of My Own