A rumble in a flea market

So yesterday me and the parents went for a look see around Pickering [North Yorks]. Its a cute little market town with lots of wonderful [although some rather expensive] antique shops and a flea market - which is always great for those of us who are thrifty/vintage at heart.

Anyway, this weeks treats ended up being;

Finds from left to right - vintage cut glass with tin lid trinket box [£6], Mary Ann and The Scapegoat both republished by Penguin Classics in 1962 [£1 each], unstamped 1950s red and gold powder compact [£8].

I could have brought oh so very much more!!

Sat in a cabinet stuffed with random finds, this glass cut trinket box was labelled "very old trinket box". With that subjective kinda label its hard to date it really, apparently there is the thought that the sharper the glass, the older it is. Well this glass is sharp so it matches somewhat. Whether this assumption is true or not i'm not sure?

The top is rather dinted, yet rather then seeing it as a distraction I tend to see it as something that adds charcter to it, as some part of its hsitory. You can't always expect old things to perfect.

Of course being a magpie to compacts how was I not going to treat myself to another. It was rather weird actually seeing loads of them in one place, and being able to see them before it was purchased seeing I'm so use to buying them blind on ebay. In a way having the background and the knowledge from Ebay it helped a lot in knowing what to look for and the prices.

Compacts aren't that rare, some names are, some shapes are [ie Stratnoid, Bakelite, half moon] and in the wider scheme of things the market is full, full, full of Straton compacts. At least 70% of the compacts at the flea market were Stratton's - they are great if your just collecting them for the fun of it, not so great if they want to charge you £9 or more for one. - its often questionable if they are worth it when you see how cheap they can go on Ebay. You just have to careful of what your buying and to a point I stay away from them.

Saying that I often get attracted to some of the lesser none or even nameless compacts that I find, ones that although might not be branded offer something eye catching. Red itself is a colour rarely found in compact design and I was even more so attracted to this compact because of its size - one typically smaller then the norm, its amazingly good clasp and its "tap flap" influenced stiffer.

It's got an amazing gorgeous shape to its mirror it has a design that I can't even try and explain. The stiffer itself is edged in the metal of the compact, which makes me come to think its influenced by the 1930s design of tapping the stiffer to get a fresh and light dusting of the powder to then be used upon the face using your puff. I may be wrong. Either way its a refreshing and different inside to a compact.

The two Daphne du Maurier books were from the little Pickering bookshop just opposite the North Yorkshire Moors Railway [which if you ever get the chance is a must to go on-board a working stream train!]. du Maurier is one of my all time favourite authors and i'm working on collecting them all if I can in the older either Penguin or Pan editions.

Do you have any vintage finds you recently stumbled across? Any bargains to speak of?