Tag Archives: antiques

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Seen Better Days

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“Autumn wins you best by this its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.” ― Robert Browning

Last week’s Photo Challenge was all about Autumn color, the beautiful garb of aging, death and decay. How appropriate that Tina chooses for this week’s challenge the idea of how dilapidated, vintage, older things that have “seen better days” capture the photographer’s eye as things of loveliness and interest.

“The love of old things is a way of respecting time.”
― Wu Ming-Yi

 “Of all the footprints, that of the elephant is supreme. Similarly, of all mindfulness meditation, that on death is supreme.” 
― Gautama Buddha

The more I study the beauty of aging and death, the more I am drawn into the transformation of cells and matter. Consider that Life is marked by change, that change is the continuation of Life in new forms. Below is a photo of a petrified tree stump in the Flourissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado, illustrating the change from vegetable into mineral.

Is it any wonder we photographers are fascinated by the visual evidence of the dance of Life and Time? As humans, we are definitely a part of this process. As humans, we take our experience and create Art to celebrate it.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Nostalgic

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“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”
― Amy Bloom

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”
― William Faulkner

Thanks to Tina for her challenge “to look backward for a while” with this theme.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Weathered or Worn

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Ann-Christine shares a bit of the fascinating history of Swedish temperance and photos of an old distillery in her challenge post.

The passage of time lends a special beauty to objects of human craft. It puts us in our place – we are but a part of the march of evolution and the expansion and collapse of the Universe. What we create and what we are in this form will not last forever. And that’s a powerful reality. 

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Creepy!

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I don’t have to look very far to find “creepy” subjects to photograph.  I simply walk downstairs to the living room, dining room and kitchen.  That’s where we house our Museum.  My partner, Steve, has long been in the estate sale and used book business.  We sell a lot of stuff on e-Bay, Amazon, ABE Books and A Libris through our home business, Scholar and Poet Books.  But we also keep a lot of stuff.  Creepy stuff.  Stuff that Steve thinks is somehow “special”.  And he props this stuff in any available nook and corner that he can find.  Which is why I can easily photograph these:

 cha chacreepy 3creepy 2creepy

 
Creepy

Weekly Photo Challenge: Broken is not Finished

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This week’s challenge is perfect for the photos I took yesterday at Hippie Tom’s Serendipity Farm – an antique/junque pickers’ and gleaners’ mecca in Southeastern Wisconsin.  Steve and I were out for a ramble through a wildlife area and stumbled upon the road signs advertizing his sale.  The parking area was bustling, TV cameras were rolling, and Hippie Tom was in full swing for Spring.  It seems that his farm is only open twice a year for the public to browse and discover treasure in his vast complex of old out-buildings.  It’s a jungle of old and semi-new, broken and mostly intact, recyclable and re-purposeable stuff.  And we do create a lot of stuff, us humans.  It makes no sense to simply throw it on a trash heap, polluting the land with it.  Reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse.  Broken is not finished.  There is purpose and life even during brokenness.  If there weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to type with my left pinkie right now.  (Broke it in high school.  It’s distinctly crooked, but usable.  Yup, I play keyboards and sometimes guitar with it…not expertly, but ‘proficiently’.)


Broken

Weekly Photo Challenge: Relic

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Oh, boy.  What a theme for a museum geek!  In case you’re new to this blog, let me tell you that I work at 2 museums, one being a living history museum featuring 60 historic buildings depicting 19th century immigration to Wisconsin.  In addition to that, my partner Steve & I sell books and other items gleaned from estate sales.  We have quite an eclectic collection of various ‘relics’ of the 20th & 21st century in our home.  Currently, the very home that we are renting – a duplex built in 1905 – is undergoing extensive upgrading: electrical system, roof, and paint so far.  I am surrounded by relics, and I’m always looking for more!  So….what to feature?

Perhaps a crumbling lime kiln I found at High Cliff State Park.  It was in operation from 1870 -1956 on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago….

relic 1

Maybe Steve’s hiking boots – they’re not really that old, but they got a lot of wear last year when he worked as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service…

relic 2Or how about this corner of our living room, where we display some of our favorite oddities…

relic 3

Actually, my very favorite photo for this theme isn’t one I took.  It’s one someone else took of me.  Old World Wisconsin runs a photo contest every year, and the first year I worked there, a photo of me won Best In Show.  The featured relic in the photo is the 1839 Cathedral of the Diocese of the Territory of Wisconsin – St. Peter’s Church.  The pump organ/harmonium/reed organ is from 1890.  The stations of the cross are lithographs made in Germany between 1875 and 1900.  The photographer is Jay Filter, and he gave me permission to feature his photo on my blog in 2012.  Here it is again:

St. Peter's Church at Old World Wisconsin. Photo by Jay Filter

St. Peter’s Church at Old World Wisconsin. Photo by Jay Filter

Yup, that photo is a real winner.  Can’t claim it as mine, but it sure fits this theme!  Thanks, Jay!