Decanters, Pitchers & Poppets

People must be doing some serious spring cleaning and decluttering because I’ve been finding lots of good stuff at my neighborhood Goodwill lately.  It was exciting the other day.

Here’s the story: I went in to exchange an item. I had seen a crystal whisky decanter a few days earlier and if it was still there I was going to buy it. (I should have bought it when I bought a crystal wine decanter two days earlier that was in the same pattern, but for some reason I didn’t.) The question was, would it still be there? After a weekend of zillions of Goodwill shoppers I was pretty sure this beauty had been snagged.

I was in a time crunch so I dashed in, went right to the glassware aisle and scanned the top shelf where it had been before. Drat. It was gone. No wait, someone moved it to a lower shelf. Oh, and tried to remove the label to perhaps replace it with a lower-priced label. Sheesh…people! I placed the whisky decanter in my basket, a happy camper.

The whisky decanter, like the wine decanter I bought earlier, are both Altantis Crystal from Portugal in the Jose (or Miguel) pattern. They are hand blown, hand cut and heavy as heck. My photo here does not do them justice.

Then as I was heading up the china/pottery aisle on my way to the cash register to pay for the whisky decanter I was stopped in my tracks by a wild, orange, so-ugly-it’s-good, ’70s ceramic pitcher. Turns out it’s a West German piece of art pottery by Bay Keramik. They produced pieces from 1933 to the 1980s.

This wouldn’t work in my house, but in a mod or boho home this could look fabulous. I put it in my basket.

Then a few feet later I saw these two kooky figurines.

These are Poppets by Poppytrail. Over the years Helen Slater had designed a total of 88 different clay poppets for Metlox Potteries. The monk is St. Francis of Assisi and the nun is “Monica.” Not my kind of thing, but quite collectible.

I added these to my basket and went up to checkout and thought, “Wow, this is weird. Four good things in less than five minutes! This NEVER happens!”

But here’s a dose of reality…while I’ve had good finds the past few weeks, my May sales have been dismal. No rhyme or reason to it. It’s frustrating for sure, particularly after two really good months. But I’m trying not to worry about it and things are picking up. 🙂

Hope all is well in your world!