Treasures from the Past: Thrifting Today

Today's we have a guest post from Sue at Fifty Plus Travel. She's also my mum! Please make her welcome.

***

Every now and then while thrifting you come across something so precious it makes you pause and wonder how much it meant to the original owner. Last Saturday, I brought home the most beautiful Meakin soup tureen, a beautiful bowl edged with royal red and reminiscent of my mother's perfectly appointed table.

We would sit down for dinner with knives, forks and soup or sweets spoons lined up in order, napkins in their old worn silver holders, salt and pepper cellars and tablecloth freshly starched. I thought of the time when this tureen had been cherished and placed on the table filled with soup and ladled out to each family member sitting around the table! It speaks of love and long lost table manners!

I also collect gloves, handbags and oddments like my magnificent old trunk which has a mystery to it to be solved! I love the see through spotted voile wrist styled gloves I own and the long evening gold gloves like those my older sister used to wear to balls! I have some of my mother's worn gloves and also own another precious pair, carefully preserved in their original Dents plastic covering! Most of my handbags are from the 60's like Glomesh and Oroton - some being mine, some with a locked history from the past.

 

But my prized possession is bound for the curator at the Cobb & Co Museum in Toowoomba. I found this at an auction centre a few years ago. Nothing I have ever bought has been so evocative of the past and so mysterious as to its origin. I found it underneath a bench with many other vintage items, just waiting for me it seemed! It has hessian laid over timber and rusted steel bands over that. it is a traveling trunk of the type you would see atop an old stage coach....just the kind of trunk you can imagine a lady would take laden with her possessions - on her way to a distant destination in the 1890's!

Maybe I can hear the echo of the young boys rushing out to unharness the horse team ready for a fresh one, as she stepped down from the coach with the help of an outstretched arm of a gentleman traveller! This trunk was used by the photographers at my daughter's wedding on the farm to display her wedding dress.....those memories will overlay the history of yester year.

Layer upon layer, that's how thrifting builds upon the previous person's usage, what a wonderful legacy we leave when things are passed on and lovingly cared for by their new owner!

Have you ever been absolutely overcome by the history of an item you have thrifted like me?