Mary and I visited a 2-day antique fair at Newark last week. Very disappointing, almost all outdoor stalls and a good proportion were not antiques. Saw one brass Pipe Tamper, which I did like but at £75 I went no further.
Also of news, the residue of the auction lot I bought the
other week, is, together with the elephant shaped opium pipe I told you about
some time ago, back in the next Bamford Auction. Sounds like a lot of wheeling and dealing,
but I’ll let you know how it goes. (It did sell but at the minimum bid of £20, but this brought down my cost for the scribe.)
This is blog post number 20, so I think it’s time to tell you about one aspect of my legs which I have not discussed before and which are way out of the norm! They are only in the collection because they ARE legs, but they will never make antiques (well not for 98 years anyway). I know when I bought a large multi coloured plastic shoe horn in my starting days, I did not think it was the sort of thing to include, but it was a leg and it was unusual and having bought it at the NEC it was an antique. But these four legs are even more naffer(?).
These first two are golf tees! The white one is plastic and was found by my Father-in-Law, on a golf course in Surrey, probably in the 1970’s. He popped it in his wallet and there it stayed until he died in 2002. At least as it is about 50 years old, it qualifies as Vintage!!
The larger pink golf tee arrived in the post in a plain
envelope!!
Following my Daily Telegraph published letter asking for
suggestions for a name for my leg collecting hobby, a telegraph reader tracked
me down and sent a small package/envelope to my home. On opening the envelope I
found this pink tee with a note saying “I thought this may fit in with your
collection. Picked it up on the golf course – too embarrassed to use it”.
The next two legs have a modern concept! They are both lever-type bottle openers.
The one on the right is light brown, made of alabaster(?), and is a holiday souvenir bought in Majorca, for £2. You can see the country on one leg, an the bottle opener is sturdy and works well.
I bought one of these openers in 2016, not for my collection, but because a West Country cousin of mine was looking to collect the most naff fridge magnet, and when we saw this one in Majorca we thought it may qualify, so we purchased one and sent to him to fill HIS collection. (It did not qualify as the best, so during a later holiday we bought an alabaster turtle, with 5 baby turtles on chains - still failed the challenge!)
It was only on reflection at a later Majorca holiday in
2017, that I decided this bottle opener could be included in my leg collection, so I bought a naff one for myself.
The bottle opener on the left is made of steel and was bought for £4 in 2017 from a souvenir stall in Covent Garden Market.
(When searching for legs at antique fairs, some stalls will never have anything of interest for my collection (Paintings; ceramics; clothes, etc). My modus operandi is to look for glass topped display boxes, but legs can turn up anywhere... this tourist souvenir stall is a good example, as will be the leg I found on a jewellery stall I will come to in due course.)
In my leg catalogue, these 4 legs are included in what I call
the “X” section!!
Obviously these “legs”, and a few others, do qualify with
my specification rules (Human and extending to the knee or higher) to be
included, and not all of them can be valuable, antique and highly collectable!!
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