eBay Find of the Day: Painted Antique Armchair

Sometimes, I'm a thoroughly modern girl -- all about clean lines and sleekness. Sometimes, I like things with a funky, industrial edge -- oohing and aahing over patinaed and battered metal. Sometimes, I'm retro all the way -- give me vintage or give me death. And sometimes (though not very often), I'm kind of girlie -- drawn to things that are fresh, feminine, and fun.

This chair is definitely calling out to my girlie side. The antique, Swedish-style armchair has a bit of baroque flair, but it's been lacquered in pure white, giving it a more modern sensibility -- and maybe even a sense of humor.

Current bid: $295

Mark Your Calendar: The Oakland Museum of California White Elephant Sale

It's the junking event of the year in the Bay Area: The Oakland Museum's legendary White Elephant Sale.

Photo by Virginia Murdoch

Held in a vast, 96,000-square-foot warehouse, the 49-year-old White Elephant is the largest rummage sale in Northern California. Stocked with a year's worth of wares donated to the Museum's fundraising arm, the sale boasts 17 well-organized departments containing millions of items. (Yes, I said millions.)

Goodies include vintage furniture, original art, kitchenware, lighting, and even a renowned selection of Hawaiian shirts. You'll have to do a bit of digging and the kitsch factor is fairly high, but there are treasures galore and prices are extremely reasonable.

The White Elephant Sale is this Saturday, March 1, and Sunday, March 2, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 333 Lancaster Street in Oakland. Parking is a challenge, but regular shuttles will be running between the Fruitvale BART station and the sale. Admission is free.

Hint: Combine a stop at the sale with a visit to the nearby Alameda Point Antiques and Collectibles Faire on Sunday, and you'll pretty much be in treasure-hunting heaven.

My favorite find from last year's sale. $3!

Cool Stuff: One Faire Day

Nick and I had a rare treat on Sunday: Both of us were able to slip out early to the Alameda Antiques & Collectibles Faire while the kids were at friends' houses after Saturday-night sleepovers. Normally only one of us gets to go (that would be me), or the whole family attends together but we can't manage to get everyone out of the house until later -- and then we have to listen to the kids whine the entire time about how we're torturing them by dragging them out to look at a bunch of "old stuff." I'm sure their future therapists will hear all about this abusive behavior someday ...

(Question for you other flea-marketing parents: How do you do it? I see kids there with their parents every month, and they don't look like they're on the brink of mutiny like our kids always do. We've even tried to bribe them with the promise of churros and a small budget to find their own treasures, or attempted to make a game out of spotting things -- but all to no avail. If you have secrets for making flea markets a reasonably enjoyable family affair, I'd love to hear them.)

Anyway, I'm happy to report that the Faire's new location isn't much different from the old location, and that the gorgeous view of SF remains intact. We didn't have an agenda this month -- I'd already blogged the Faire and there was no one thing we were on the hunt for. In fact, we came home with only one $7 ceramic dish in which to toss keys on our entry table. (Sadly, Nick would not let me take home the cement garden deer, below.) But it was so nice to just wander around hand-in-hand, checking out the wares, chatting with the vendors, and enjoying the sunshine.

I snapped some pictures of things that happened to catch my eye, and only realized later that there were a few themes at work: I seemed to be drawn to turquoise (surprise, surprise), patinaed metal and shiny silver objects, old bottles, objects from the ocean, and, um, disembodied heads.

A photographic scrapbook of the day:

Retail Therapy: Loot

There is absolutely nothing minimalist about Loot.

No, Loot is all about abundance. Call it "maximalist," if you will. The shop is a bit cluttered by modern standards, but gorgeously so -- you never know what kind of wonderfulness you’ll find on an artfully jumbled table or shelf in this chock-a-block space.


Located near the lower end of bustling College Avenue in Oakland's Rockridge District**, Loot bills itself as an antiques store -- but its selection is more eclectic than that. (Like the abalone-encrusted Venus, right, $1,500.) And unlike a lot of antiques stores, there's nothing fusty about the place.

The shop is owned by sought-after floral designer, author, and intrepid traveler Ron Morgan, who often brings back treasures from his far-flung journeys. (There's a notable collection of Asian antiques and objets gathered from his trips to the Far East, for instance, including the stone Buddha, $410, and ceramic ginger jar, $175, below.)
Morgan also hosts occasional sellout floral design workshops at the store. The next one, dubbed “Ordinary to Exquisite,” is June 11 -- and there's actually a spot or two left in it. (Call 510-652-3996 quick to grab a reservation.)

Loot’s offerings include a preponderance of pricey mirrored, metal, and upholstered furniture, as well as tableware, lighting (like the mercury glass lamps above, $190 to $275, and gold leaf lamp at right, $125), ceramics, prints and paintings, objects d’art, decorative items such as seashells, candles and candlesticks (the divine blue opaline glass ones, below, are $45 each), and other ephemera.


Many of the accessories seem to be in a woodland vein right now -- including twig nests ($24), concrete mushrooms ($14 to $28), moss balls of varying sizes, and an assortment of statuary bunnies, birds, and other woodland creatures. And, Morgan being a floral designer, there’s always an excellent selection of glass, ceramic, and metal vases, bottles, and other vessels on display -- many of them very reasonably priced.

Don’t miss the back room or the courtyard, either. You’ll find a lovely array of succulents as well as planters and garden accessories there.

Prices at Loot range from super expensive to downright cheap. You'll find everything from vintage chairs for $1,800 to fresh-and-funky striped candles for $6 -- and all of it beautiful and unique. (As I told a friend when I was describing the place to her yesterday, I can't buy the $1,800 circa-1960s Italian faux bois chairs, but I can certainly fondle them -- and I did.)


All things being equal, this is probably my favorite store in the entire East Bay. My husband knows not to drive within a mile of the place, lest I beg him to take a detour so that I can pop in for "just a second." More often than not, I climb back in the car with some new treasure. (On our last visit, it was the huge lantern at left, $45.)

Be sure to pop in yourself the next time you're in the area. Loot is located at 5358 College Avenue, and is open from 11 to 5 Tuesdays through Sundays.

** Update: As of October 2, 2007, Loot can be found at 3598 Mt. Diablo Blvd. in Lafayette.

A bit more Loot booty pictured below: Painting, $150; ceramic birds, $175 for the pair; vintage hatboxes, $20 to $65 each; tufted silk chairs, $750 for the pair; silver crab, $85.

Mark Your Calendar: Alameda Point Antiques and Collectibles Faire

It's shaping up to be a busy weekend for art and antique lovers in the Bay Area ...

After you hit the Oakland Art Murmur on Friday night and the Art Deco & Modernism Sale on Saturday, treat yourself to a visit to the Alameda Point Antiques and Collectibles Faire on Sunday, June 3.

I have to admit that I feel like the super-stylish and talented Victoria Smith (aka sfgirlbybay) sort of owns blogging about the Antiques Faire. (Read her tip-filled write-ups here).

Still, I've been haunting this giant flea market almost every month for years now, and I can't let the weekend pass by without encouraging anyone within reasonable driving distance to check it out.

Held the first Sunday of each month, the Faire boasts more than 800 vendors, many of whom travel hundreds of miles to man their booths. The wares on display range from fun and funky tchochkes for a couple bucks apiece to pristine, sought-after vintage and antique furniture for hundreds of dollars and up.

Among the booty I've snagged there: An antique carved wooden Asian screen ($15), vintage blown-glass wine jugs and green glass seltzer bottles ($10 each), French linens, lab beakers that I use as vases ($5 each), a vintage metal birdcage ($5), barkcloth yardage, silk brocade curtain panels from the 1940s ($50 for the set), McCoy pottery ($10 and up), a rewired French silver-and-glass chandelier ($85), a weathered circular mirror mosaic ($50), a pair of sunbleached deer antlers ($3) ... seriously, I could go on and on.

Most months, though, I don't actually buy much. I just like to wander around people-watching, collecting ideas, and enjoying a churro or a gyro from one of the many food booths while soaking up some sunshine by the water.

If you need any more incentive to go, consider this: Sunday is the very last time that the event is being held at the decommissioned Alameda Point Naval Air Station, which has absolutely breathtaking vistas of San Francisco and the Bay. On clear, sunny day -- which, fingers crossed, this Sunday will turn out to be -- you feel like you can literally reach out and touch the Bay Bridge and the skyscrapers of downtown San Francisco. (My favorite line about the East Bay, stolen from erstwhile Oakland mayor Jerry Brown, is that "It's closer to San Francisco than San Francisco." Take a stroll around Alameda Point and you'll see how true this is.) Next month, the Antiques Faire moves to a nearby spot along the Oakland Inner Harbor.

The gates open at 6 a.m. for serious treasure hunters willing to fork over the $15 "early entrance" fee. The price drops to $10 at 7:30 and to $5 at 9 a.m. I like to get there on the early side -- though I've rarely made it before 8 -- just so I can beat some of the crowds and feel confident that I haven't missed anything really great before someone else snapped it up. But you can arrive at just about any hour before the vendors start packing up at 3 and have a lovely time wandering around, looking for bargains, and gathering inspiration.

See you there!

(Photos from Antiques by the Bay, Inc.)