Tree or more antiques with cats

Ever since we have cats, we also collected art and antiques with cats. You already seen my oil paintings.
This is one of my very first Ebay buys. It's a teapot from the Wood factory. It is a bad example since the body of the teapot is very pitted but I love the shape.

A small French mustardpot with a white kitten as a handle. Usualy you see the milk can with this kind of design so I thought this mustard pot was kind of special

This little piece is made of metal.I think it may be cold painted bronze. I love the little cat with the tub on its side.It's ideal to put your pins and needles in.

This porcelain figure is so ugle that its becomes lovely.I love this one very much just because he is so ugly.

This are two Artd Deco craquelé pieces. The cat in the middle is very royal. In the front you see two little book stands. Both very lovely pieces and also my absolute favorites.

Three or more Tuesday Art Deco glass

Some 10 years agoo I saw this vase in an antiques fair and I was stuck by its beautiful Art Deco form.I had just enough money to buy it and brought it home. I like the shape with the two wings very much so I went off in surch of more vases with wings.
I found a couple more and on those trips I learned that this vase was called " Romeo" and it was from the famous Belgian Cristal factory of Val st Lambert.
I came from there Luxval range. A range of glass that was made during the depression time when people did not have the money for fancy cut crystal.
A few years later I ommitted my search for vases with "wings" and started collecting only Luxval glass. So I came across the little sister of the vase 'Romeo' and found this shape .It has the same wings and the same pattern.It was the sellers of this " Mais" or corn vase that told me the story of Luxval and gave me some information on shapes to look for.
This 'Footballers' vase is one of the most seached after models.You want believe it but instead of finding this in my own country I detected it on Ebay USA. After thinking a while if I should take the risk I bought it and it was shipped and arrived in a perfect state.
After two years I stopped collecting Luxval.Not because I had everything, no, not at all but because I lack the space to place it in my house.

And I do not want to have a collection and then have to store it in the cellar.

On a later date some more of my collection of about 110 pieces.

Three or more Tuesday favorite paintings

Since I was a child I had an interest in the arts. My father followed painting lessons in the local academy and saw him do his paintings in the evenings and in the weekends. I have one memory of me being a model for him. He took me on his bike to class on a cold february evening. I remember the hot burning coal stove and the fact that I was wearing my hair in a ponytail. That I had it in a ponytail was special since my mom always braided my hair . I hated that and it was very special for me that I could have it in a ponytail. Helas the portrait of me is gone missing in the last 15 years.
The painting above is one of my fathers paintings. He was not a great artist but this painting is double special to me. He made it when I was 9 and it depicts his hometown seen from the little mount there was. It's called "Bilzen seen from the Borreberg". It hangs in my hall and I love the cool winter theme and the understated colors.

This second painting I found in a fleamarket. It costed almost nothing. It's painted on a wood panel and the frame is black with handpainted tiny golden stars. I believe it is at least 100 years old. It only costed about 60 dollars but I am in love with it. It has such charm. I love paintings with black and white cows on it. A reminder of my father being a farmers son??

The third and last painting I found in a second hand shop. It's big, almost 27¨ square.

It stood there in the second hand shop with a very havy gold frame on it. I immediatly say its potential. The painting is very well done and I love the braekfast scene on it. The eggs, the bread and the herings, the jug of milk and the cup and the Sanseveria plant. This plant was once's in every household. I remember my mother having one too. It is very strong and if your lucky it blooms once a year with one big stem of Ammaryllis type flowers. The painted costed about 150 dollars but I think it is worth every cent. It is the perfect picture for our kitchen wall.

Three or more Tuesday Vintage cake stands

That I like cooking and baking is well known to those who follow my blog or know me personally. I also like vintage glass and if you combine the two than you end with the vintage glass cake stands. As you can see I have rather more then three. All together I have 7 stands with foods and a few more without a food. Then they are more cake plates.Once in a while I invite my quiltladies to an afternoon of show and tell and then the cake stands are in full use. Don't the cakes look pretty presented like that?

Here you see a cake stand and a vintage cake plate combined together with a zinc crown on top. I also use them to put on the Christmas table.
This is a bad picture since it is a scan of a traditional picture but it gives you an idea.

The one below is a special one to. I collect Luxval glass of the famous Val saint Lambert Cristal factory here in Belgium and this is an Art Deco cake stand.
Today I made a cake, just because I fancied making one... What better way to present my last glass cake stand.....

3 or more Thusday George Jones cups and saucers...

I noticed recently that there is a theme developing in my latest buys...Birds...
I seem to buy a lot of things with birds...Birdcages, bird statues and now cups and saucers with birds. It's an odd combination if you like and have a lot of cats like me!

Years agoo, I was given these small cups and saucers by a sweet friend after I had been raving about them. She gave them to me as a thank you and goodbye gift after teaching a patchwork course.
They are so very, very sweet with the handpainted birds and butterfly's. I did not want to accept them since they one's belonged to her grandmother but she insisted and I have cared and loved them ever since. The porcelain is so thin that you can look trough them.

There is no mark, but a small handpainted number, so I know nothing of the factory.

Lately I came across some dinerware of George Jones. George Jones ( 19th century) is well know for his very beautiful and now expensive majolica wares.But I did not know that he also made diner wares.
I saw these bits of a tea set on Ebay and made a far to high bid on it and got them . The pattern is called " Almonds".

Then a week later I came across this very pretty George Jones cup and saucer and I could not let I go. It costed me about 20 $ but I think it is well worth this money.

In the same week I saw these darling George Jones cups and plates, also on Ebay UK...I love swallows and nobody wanted them so I bougth them very cheap. Postage was more expensive then the whole lot of 2 trio's and 1 big plate.

Sadly, as you can see, the cake plates where both broken in transit. I was so sad about it. The vendor say she has some more plates of this design so I am now waiting until she offers them to me for the price of the postage.

This darling, gay, yellow tea set is also George Jones and although it has no birds and yellow is not my colour at all, it is so gay and it was so cheap( about 40$ for the whole set) that it had to come home to me. I still have not found a place to put it ...but what a little sunshine it is!!

It makes you cheerful all day long!

See you next week and thanks for visiting.

Three or more Tuesday cups with or without saucers

Of course we all have cups and saucers in the house. I do too but I also have a few very special ones and these I want to show you today.
The first one is from the famous Irish factory of Belleek. For those who do not know it, this factory is famous for its paper thin porcelain. A lot of their earlier collections are in the form of shell's. So is this delicate cup. You wonder if ever anybody drank tea out of these cups. You can see right trough the porcelain. They also call it eggshell porcelain. That is a very good name for this kind of porcelain.
Sadly I do not have the saucer but I will surch to find one so the set is compleet.

This is I think a very old cup. It is what is called Lustre ware. You see the shiny rosy golden stripe on the rim and on the foot. On the one side there is a landscape with a castle and on the other side is a lady in 1820's dress walking a lurcher.

This is a very,very old cup and saucer. It must date from about 1780! You can tell this by the fact that it has a very deep saucer and there is no rim to hold the cup in place in the saucer. This is something you only see in very old saucers.
The saucers is handpainted with a Chinese scene and is very fresh in colour with all that pink and green and red.

This is a totally different kettle of fish. These cups and plate (it is not a saucer) is made by the for us well know porcelain factory of Maastricht. This is a Dutch company that does not exist anymore. It was situated in the town of Maastricht. This town sits on the border of Belgium and Holland. I had an uncle who worked in that factory in the sixty's.

This is from their childrens range of Little Red Riding Hood. It is such fun. I hope that in a few years my little granddaughter will enjoy it.

For next week I promise some other beautiful cup and saucers.

Three or more candle holders

Despite the fact I hardly ever burn candles, this is because I can't trust the cats around them, it seems I have a lot of candle holders. The ones I show you are not all the ones I have. There is in the house at least another pair of slender wooden ones and a very tall modern single candle holder that I can think of.
The candle holder above is Art Deco in style and was made by a Belgian company called Thulin. I collected some of its ware a while agoo. This range called "Airain " always has the green and black color combination. A very typical Art Deco combination. I like the shape of this piece very much.

This candle holder holds special memory's for me since it was a gift from my late father. He had a friend who was cleaning out his garage and he wanted to trow this candle holder away. My father asked if he could have it because, I think this would be something that my daughter liked, he said. He gave me the candle holder on my next visit and I indeed liked it. I does not do it's job very well. I never have found a candle that would fit the thing so candles always topple over. So this is one never to be used but also never to trow away....

A very cheap wall sconce but I love it. It is modeled on an antique one. You can take the candle away and close the sconce so it will take less place.

Anonther antique Art deco piece. This is from one of my other collections. It is made by the world famous Val saint Lambert crystal factory's in there Luxval depression glass range. It is still a very handsome piece and I love the strong Art deco lines.

This last stately candle holder is one of my price finds in a second hand shop. I was abble to buy it for the equivivalent of 20$. If I wanted I could replate it and it would be very pretty on my table. But I like its shabby chic feel and I will keep it like this.

Thanks for looking. See you next week!

Tree or more Tuesday Bird bronzes

Last week I told you about a beautiful bronze statue of a bird on a wheat ear that was hidden in the last birdcage of that blog.

My husband and I where trilled about this silver wedding anniversary gift from our family.

The bronze is from the well know French artist André Vincent Becquerel.
We came across his bird bronzes by accident. A few years before this gift was made to us, my mother and I where at an antiques fair and all of the sudden we saw a bronze statue of a branch with 4 birds on. Its black base lay beside it. We where both immediatly atracted by it.

The base was signed by the letters AV Becquerel. We never heard of this artist before but since the bronze was not too expensive I advised my mother to buy it. Since that day it stands proudly on her coffee table and everybody loves it.
My younger brother, the man he is, wanted to know more about that Becquerel.
He surched and surched the internet but there is not much to be found. We see his work regulary at auctions and on Ebay and so, but he seems not to be a major artist.

There are two versions of his day of birth. Sometimes you see the date 1880 to 1940. On other websites you see 1893 t0 1981. Much of his work has influences of the Art Deco period so I would personaly rather go for the latter date. He has exhibited in Paris in the period between 1914 and 1922. That then again suggests rather the earlyer birthday since he only would have been 21 years old when he exhibited in 1914... I stays a mystery.

We have discoverd some other beautiful other sculptures of him, like leaping fish, deer, lioness and his famous panthers. He also made some bird booksupports and some radiator caps depictings dogs and hares. All these sculptures are much more Art Deco in style then the birds. But we mainly love his bird sculptures.

My brother was so fasinated by the bird bronze of my mother that he looked out for them and managed to find and buy some more. He knew I loved the one my mom bought and one day he found the one with the bird on the wheat ear in a small antique shop. First he offered me to buy it from him and I accepted that offer. Then when I wanted to give him the money he refused to sell it to me. I was very disappointed in him but afterwords of cause we found out that in the mean time the family had decided to gift it to us for our silver wedding anniversary.

So this one became the first I owned.

Of course I wanted some more... Trough Ebay I found the other once. The second one in the house where the seagulls on the waves...It is a common subject for Becquerel since I know of at least two other sculptures with gulls.

After a few years I saw this small one on the French Ebay site and bought it after asking my brother if he was also going to bid on it. We tell each other if there is another Becquerel on Ebay and we decide amoung us who is going to bid for it. We never bid against each other. Last september I found this big one with the whole flock of birds on a branch and managed to buy it. I weights a ton. But I love it so much.
A month agoo I found the last one. This is a sweety too. Look how graceful the grass bows and see the little snail that is crawling up the stem?

The birdies are just fledgelings.They look so young with hardly any feathers, huddled together looking at the snail that is crawling up to them. This bronze is more Art Deco in style than the other ones.
After I maneged to buy this one I said, now I have enough sculptures.I have no more place to put them...but I know I at least have my eye on two more. My mothers sculpture and the one with the birds picking cherry's that I managed to lose on Ebay. So I am saving up again for the next upportunity....

3 or more tabacco jars

Why I have 3 jars or boxes related to smoking I don't know. Nobody smoke's in the house.
But my father and brothers and my grandfather where smokers.
This first box was an Ebay find. I stumbled on it and it was almost to be sold but nobody seemed to want it. I was struck by it from the moment I layed eyes on this battered old thing.
It has so much charm. I guess it must be from the early Victorian times maybe 1840 or so?? Don't ask me why but it has that feeling over it. It is a dog kennel with a little copper dog in front of it. The box is made of wood and decorated with metal studs.As you can see,it is really battered and brused. On the inside you can see remnants of the foil that traditionally covered the inside of sigar boxes and it also has the dividers for the sigars.

Don't you find this box as charming as I did when I first saw it???
The second tabacco jar my daughter and I found it at an antiques fair. My daughter absolutely wanted it but she could not afford it, since it costed almost 150 dollars. But I also was charmed by it and so it went home with us. I know why my daugther wanted it. As always it was because there was a cat on it.
Once again it is a dogkennel and two little dogs lay at the door of there kennel that is overgrown with ivy.

But aldo it is a dogs kennel the cat is master of the roost by proudly sitting on top of the kennel. The back of this box is plain but at the side you see two ivy bushes.

Are'nt they sweet little puppies?

My third tabacco jar is once again a dog kennel. In our country I olden days you often saw dogs who had an old beer or wine barrel for a kennen.
This ceramic jar comes from a little ceramic factory that once existed in the town where I was born.My grandfather, who's father worked as a blacksmith in that factory had a tabacco jar like this. These jars come in two sizes and in two colors, green and golden brown.

We never knew a lot about that factory, even the city had little or no interest. After my grandparents dyed and the house was cleared we found several things from that factory but nobody wanted these object because they where oldfashioned. I took home a pair of candlesticks because I found them very charming and an old flowerpot. My mother took home three majolica plates with grapes. How ever took home the tabacco jar I do not know.
But the fact of the matter is that after a while my joungest brother began to have an interest in this factory and started collecting the stuff. I found this tabacco jar in Antwerp in a tiny antique store and my brother was very jalous of it but he took revange and now is an authority on the subject. He has a major collection, hase founded a collecters group and is staging exebitions on the subject of this majolica factory.

You now can understand why this little bulldog in his barrel means so much to mee. Want to see more of this factory ? Here is the link http://www.hasseltskeramiek.be/

Hope you enjoyed my stuff and....sorry for the dust!