Saturday, October 07, 2006

917 Antiques Fair

Saturday, October 8, 2006

Went to the antiques fair today. There were 181 booths, and this year there seemed to be a lot more business conducted than last year - every aisle I went up or down had someone trundling out a huge piece of furniture.

I bought a marquisite ring, sterling silver intertwining leaves, for $15, and a amethyst ring, a large pinkish cabuchon surrounded by darker purple cut stones, for $10. Neither antique, but very pretty. I also bought a 150-year-old round crochet/netting tablecloth with gathered fine linen inserts. Very unusual and very beautiful, and perfect for the big table in my living room. It had only one broken thread, in a spot where it's barely noticeable, and one spot where there are three very small brown stains. Otherwise it looked like it had never been out of the cedar chest.

There was a lot of Triffari jewelry in the cases, with pretty hefty prices. (Triffari is "good" costume jewelry from about the 50s and 60s. Not exactly antique, but apparently collectible.) I have a lot of Triffari. Wow. An accidental investment.

I bought my ticket for the historic house tours tomorrow. The newspaper blurb led me to think that I could visit whatever houses I wanted on either Saturday or Sunday. There were two houses I wanted to visit on this side of the river, and three on the other side. But it turns out that today was the six or eight houses open on this side, and tomorrow is the houses on the other side. Ouch. I guess I'll have to wait until next year to get to the houses on this side. Worse, the tickets were $50 a day! So it would have cost $100 and two days to visit all the houses. I had thought that for my $50 I could pick and choose.

Gotta remember to set the alarm tonight ...

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