Gayware, Art Deco and other wonderful things...

A few months ago I acquired some lovely Art Deco and vintage pieces from my great uncle who passed away. Some of them belonged to my great grandmother. I've had them sitting in my garage for a little bit until I knew where I was going to put them. They were in dire need of cleaning after sitting in a smoky house for years.

First up, was this set of Gayware canisters. I squeed when I saw these in the back of the kitchen cupboard!! I'm really lucky that apart from a crack in the lid of the flour canister, and the fact that they were pretty grubby, they scrubbed up beautifully. I'm so pleased that they all have their letters intact on the fronts, as sadly if you do manage to come across any these days, quite a lot of them have letters missing or partially cracked off.

                                                           Don't they look fantastic?!

Next is this cute little clock. I wasn't sure if it even worked, but after giving it a good polish it started ticking again...and then the alarm went off before and scared the bejesus out of my husband. Oops! Sorry honey ;)

 I also got these beautiful art deco cups and saucers. I'm not sure if they're uranium glass or depression glass? How do you tell the difference? Either way, I love them:)

How awesome is this old Astor "Quality Five" radio?  It too was pretty dirty and sitting in the corner of the kitchen. I wasn't sure if the casing would be stained or if would clean up ok, but it's come up as good as new! It still works but unfortunately the tuner is broken so it doesn't actually play anything :(  I wonder if I could get it fixed?

 This beautiful hand mirror belonged to my great grandmother. It was still sitting on her dressing table in her room which looked like it had remained virtually untouched since she died in 1987.  I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the mirror is made from an unusual peach coloured glass. Apparently great-nanna didn't like looking in it because the colour made her feel ill!

 I have more things to show from that day, but I might leave it for another post.


I will, however, show you some things I've picked up over the past couple of months:

THIS>  omg, I have always wanted an Art Deco mirror shaped exactly like this! I picked it up, along with another scalloped rectangular mirror for $15 each!!

I picked this little beauty up from a garage sale last weekend. Art Deco pink depression glass dish and lidded trinket bowl. It didn't have a price on it, and I was expecting the worst when the lady said, "Well, this one's quite old, so..." until she finished with, "...so it's $5."  Ha!

 And last but not least this absolutely adorable 1930's teapot and sugar bowl set. If it had cheeks I would bloody pinch them!  I got these from a Geelong-based store called "Ittso Retro" you can check out their fb page here :)

 Lastly, I finally got my blog to co-operate  -my sidebar kept appearing down the bottom instead of where it was supposed to be, but it's all fixed now! For some reason though, old posts of mine are springing up as new posts...so..erm..whatever. That'll do for now :D