An Etsy Store

I've decided to try to support my fetish for junk shops, flea markets, and thrifts by flipping some items in my collection on Etsy. Let's see if there are people who prefer me to do the dirty work of digging, digging, digging to find the gems. I love to do it, but really, what do I need all this stuff for? I live alone half the time.

So I've started an Etsy store and populated it with the low-hanging fruit around the house. I got a sale within a few days, but since then, nothing. I think this will be a good crucible to learn a little about keyword manipulation, product photography, and even marketing and pricing.

I'm sure to make reference to this store in future posts, but some thoughts off the top of my head right now:

I don't want to just throw everything on the shop. I want the shop to have a focus.

That focus will emphasize my own interest in the decorative arts, housewares, and other furnishings of the middle of the 20th Century. Basically 1945-1975, with an emphasis on 1955ish-1965ish. These items will have a masculine elegance or appeal. 

I want the shop name to reflect this focus.

With the first few items photographed, inventoried, and ready to list, I needed a store name. I chose something dull, but never felt enthusiastic about it. An old friend visited my house for the first time and said as she was perusing that everything seems so "curated" here. I laughed that it was kind of a man-cave, so the next day, I made a sort of portmanteau of the two concepts and conceived the name, "The Curated Cave." 

I have a buyer in mind. 

Well, if it's stuff for a man-cave, then the buyer I am trying to attract is a man. Not just any guy, but a guy who likes to have a story with the stuff he has. His stuff is special for one reason or another--it's unique, it's made of unusual materials, or it has some historical patina on it that makes people want to touch it like all the others before. In other words, I'm not planning to sell old flannel shirts (yuck), but if I find an unusual item like an old fisherman's tackle box, I'll list the tackle box, because it's an item with some gravitas. Something that can be displayed, handled, and discussed. He's probably an urban man, with a little more money than time to dig through the junk shops himself. He'll pay me to find the cool stuff and part with it.

Gutted

I still haven't found the words. 

Homage to Alexander Rodchenko

Russian Constructivism meets a basketball tournament T-shirt. I think I should have gotten into another line of work. I think I missed my calling.

The poor man must be rolling over in his grave.

MCM kitchen

Did you see this kitchen? Never used and untouched for sixty years!

Rehabbing a MCM light fixture

I rehabbed a birdcage light fixture this past week which I had bought this past summer at a garage sale. I was immediately drawn to the black metal and walnut veneer slats, the simple shapes of the white globe contrasting with the unadorned straight lines of the rest of the piece. Without any manufacturing marks at all, I'm guessing just by look that this is probably from the end of what we'd normally call MCM and into the "Mod" period: the latter half of the 1960s or maybe the 1970s. The wires are just spot welded to the metal rings, and the slats bolt to the rings with simple knurled thumbscrews and nuts. I'm sure this was never considered high design or made by a premier manufacturer. Let's call it a good example of "Midcentury Modest" which someone might buy at a department store or catalog. 

I was thinking I'd hang it over my kitchen sink when I bought it, but it didn't fit: the fixture is too wide to hang free from the electrical box in the ceiling, which is too close to the exterior wall. So I hung it from a nail in the garage and thought about it.

My house is old, and the windows are small. Not a lot of natural light enters most rooms, thanks to the shade of the large trees and the large eaves on the house. My bedroom sitting area has a tiny Ikea ceiling fixture, which doesn't put out a lot of light, especially when I'm trying to cue up a record and want to examine the surface. So I thought I'd hang this fixture near the turntable. Well, the slope of the roof/ceiling there didn't give me a good spot for it, so I wound up moving a lamp for the time being next to the turntable, and decided I'd hang this pendant near the chair. 

First thing to do was to clean it up. It was dusty when I bought it, and it surely didn't get any cleaner  while in the garage.

Here it is with the globe removed (left edge of photo).

Disassembled.

Wooden slats removed and ready for sanding.

The inside faces of the slats

I sanded them with 400 grit paper, then oiled them with Watco Danish Oil. The three on the left in this photo haven't been oiled yet, and the ones on the right have been. The wood really sprung back to life.

All the slats, showing the color that emerged when they were oiled.

Reassembled.

Hung over my Lane "First Edition" nightstand, which I uses as a little side table in my sitting area. The mirror is one of two that came with the set that I bought. That's the subject of another post.

Welcome

Thanks for visiting.

The title is ironic--I went on a few dates with a woman who described me as a "Suburban Hipster." I laugh at the title, but it's funny because it's true. I'm not a suburban version of a Portlandia episode, but yes, I do get fussy and prissy about a few things. This is the blog to see just what.

A short list of what I'm into currently: MCM furniture and housewares, my Victorian-era house, Alphonse Mucha, vinyl, vintage audio (1970's two-channel), Pyrex, FireKing, Glasbake, thrifting, flipping, and being a single dad. While not an exhaustive list, these are things that I put my energy into, where learning about these topics hits me in the soul. If that makes me a hipster, then I'll take the label proudly.