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Sunday, July 30, 2017

Remember when banks gave gifts for saving money?

#medals #banks #banking #thrift #antique #collectible #Connecticut #estatesales #urbanarcheology #everypicturetellsastory #reward #premium #swag
Those were the days of toasters and incentives to get the money out of the mattress and into the local economy.  Today I feel as though it's back in the mattress.


Monday, July 24, 2017

Vintage watercolor pencils


I found these ancient watercolor pencils at a tag sale.  I wanted to buy them but decided to just take a still image instead. Self control hmmm. Normally I would consider buying every color pencil or marker I see - but that kind of normality just leads to hoarding.

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Scrapbooks - they can be illustrious

#estatesale #books #oldmagazines #toon #howto #thingsfoundinbooks #nostalgia #cartoons #cartooning #draw #scrapbook #connecticut #picking #1930s #illustration #illustrator #urbanarcheology #cartooning #humour #funny #bookcollection #humor
Scrapbooks often have no context. They may have been busy work for bored children or more possibly a reflection on the fascination of high quality color illustration. How could you just throw away such high quality art when the magazines pile up? They couldn't - so we find scrapbooks like these from the 30's and get a look at images commissioned by advertisers to leap off the page as if real.
from Instagram

Saturday, July 15, 2017

The odds and ends you see... Rocket Chalk.

#estatesale #movingsale #oddity #oddsandends #1960s #rockets #chalk
The odds and ends you see... Rocket Chalk. The age of rockets and the promise of space travel added sleek shapes and fins from cars to Chalk? No fins here, but with rocket Chalk you won't stay long after school writing "I will not drive by an estate sale." 100 times. Seen at my friend's - Windy Cats Estate Sales in Brookfield, CT.

from Instagram

Monday, July 10, 2017

Found at the The annual Friends of the Newtown Library Book sale

#books #bookcover #bookcollecting #booksale #newtown #sciencefiction #imagination #drones #drone #fiction #story #interesting #future #futurology #urbanarcheology #oldbooks
The annual Friends of the Newtown Library Book sale is a Mecca for book collectors, avid readers and me. There is always a selection of ancient tomes of all sizes and old paper to choose from. This pulp science fiction title was strangely prophetic.
from Instagram

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Prismacolor obsession.

#toon #doodle #comic #comicartist #cartoon #illustration #illustrations #artist #art #motivate #motivation #inspiration #draw #drawing #ink #pen #pencils #prisma #prismacolor #weekend #hope
Prismacolor obsession. At the estate sale sneak peak I conducted recently, I found a set of older prismacolor pencils and decided to buy and then display them with the 2 other eras of these magical sticks. Newest at the top oldest at the bottom. I don't know how old. Getting ready to color...with them.
One item I learned is that, no surprise, the older ones are better than the newer ones. If you ask around to fans of the pencils many will tell you that now they are made in Mexico they break more often. I have made no empirical study to verify this - but I will tell that now I have another excuse to buy old pencils when I see them at sales - like I needed an excuse!

Here is a sample of my Prismacolor obsession:
Prismacolor

from Instagram

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Two worlds collide again! Art meets Archeology

 #estatesale #books #oldmagazines #toon #howto #thingsfoundinbooks #nostalgia #cartoons #cartooning #draw #famousartistschool #westport #connecticut #picking #1959 #illustration #illustrator #urbanarcheology #cartooning #humour #funny #bookcollection #humor #learntodraw #bethlehem
Two worlds collide again! While traveling to March Farm in Bethlehem, CT to pick cherries with the family, I happened on another good pick. When you ride through the hills of Connecticut you will eventually come across the make-shift yard sale. Sometimes these are just home goods and toys - the typical we-have-too-much-stuff sale. Every so often you come across an old farm property where the stuff they have too much of is very old.

This day it would be the latter. With a little convincing I was able to bring the family trickster to a rest and assure wife and daughter that I wouldn't be long. This was one of the few times where I could be close to honesty regarding their wait time. While I could have spent half an hour, it really only took a few minutes to take it all in. The grand prize was a table full of farm journals from the 1930's.  I wanted all of these for the ads alone, but managed to hold off and chose just 3.

The Famous Artists School was a Correspondence course in drawing, Cartooning and other skills- the founders were actually famous artists, illustrators, cartoonists in the biz. I have the over sized set of binders that hold the course work and every now and then I find something else from there. Born out of the Artist colony in Westport CT they also published this magazine quarterly. This one is from 1959 and features an illustration of Westport on the cover.  I like it.

from Instagram