Tag Archives: Smithfield Barn

exploring and antiquing

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Today my friend Karen came over and we went exploring. I had wanted to take her to the Smithfield Barn but they weren’t open. So we headed to Spring City and Kimberton instead.

First stop was Samuel G. Hultz Antiques at 820 Pughtown Road in Spring City. They are the big old place on the corner of Route 100 and Pughtown Road. Their phone number is 610-469-9491 and they are open most Saturdays and Sundays noon to 4 p.m.

Like most of the old school country dealers I have come across since moving here, they were friendly and hospitable people. And their pricing was reasonable and fair.

Like my friend Dave told me it would be, their barn was loaded with kind of things I love to go through. They have some beautiful vintage and antique quilts, different odd lots of depression glass and china and furniture and all sorts of things. Old tools, linens, vintage kitchen items, candles, and Christmas ornaments too. Blue glass, milk glass, clear, ruby red, you name it.

Flow through blue plates and teapots and fabulous antique wash stands and an amazing black walnut farm table I wish I had the room for.

They had some neat old advertising pieces, and sort of a bargain basement downstairs where I found the most awesome hand quilted pillows to use on my bed as throw pillows as well as vintage heavy duty aluminum loaf pans to bake with. I also found the cutest handcarved folk art Santa to decorate with for Christmas.

And I also noted that this was a place where I could get antique lamp parts! As in oil lamp parts. Shades, globes, all sorts of things and complete lamps. I have a lot of converted oil lamps which are now electric as well as others which can burn lamp oil that I love the look of, and I never know where I can get parts. I am so happy to have discovered that I can get them here! You see, the only other place I knew to get so many parts before this was in Adamstown, PA.

Where the Hultz Barn is located is so beautiful and picturesque. We took a right out of their driveway, drove past the Agway and headed down Pughtown Road into Kimberton village. This weekend is also the Kimberton Antiques Show at the firehouse/fairgrounds. (The show runs tomorrow, Sunday, November 17 as well from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and admission is $5.00. Don’t eat lunch at the antique show, go right up the road to the Station Bistro. It’s a fabulous little BYOB with a roaring fire in the fireplace and amazing food.)

The Kimberton Antiques Show is still one of my most favorite things to go to in the fall. I have been going for years. It is a show where I find a lot of my favorite antiques and collectible dealers who only do shows.

I bought some more vintage Christmas ornaments from a pair of cute little old ladies who were tough as nails and sharks in cardigans in the bargaining department! Sadly that was pretty much all I purchased, because the show prices this year were higher than ever.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love that show and have been going for years. But the problem is the prices of gotten high enough now that I just don’t really buy there anymore. I mainly look. This used to be a show you could actually buy at . But my late father always said that antique shows existed to educate your eye more than buy.

There was a dealer who had very reasonably priced vintage garden ornaments that I forgot to go back to, and that’s a real shame. His stuff was cool.

The Kimberton show is a great place to wander around for a few hours. It is two buildings on the firehouse/fairgrounds property loaded with dealers of antiques, vintage items, and collectibles. Some of the dealers had some truly amazing vintage and antique Christmas ornaments. I also love tole trays, and there were a lot of dealers with some gorgeous trays.

The lunch didn’t look outstanding one way or the other, so we opted to get lunch after we left the Kimberton Antiques Show. Boy am I glad we did!

We wandered into the center of the village of Kimberton and decided to try the Station Bistro. It is a cute little BYOB that is much larger inside than it looks on the outside.

You walk into Station Bistro and you’re greeted by a large country fireplace with two comfortable when chairs on either side. The dining room is not huge, but the tables are spaced nicely apart and the place is clean and bright and cheerful. As opposed to some places there is a feeling of space. Artwork of local artists adorn the walls. I saw a watercolor landscape of Chester County that I thought was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen.

The prices were moderate, the service exceptional, and the food delicious. Their address is 1300 Hares Hill Rd. Their phone number is 610.933.1147 and they do breakfast Saturday and Sunday too. The rest of the time I think they’re open Monday through Saturday for BYOB bistro dining between 11 AM and 9 PM.

Station Bistro was a completely serendipitous find and I look forward to going back.

Was such a beautiful day to go antiquing through Chester County. We had a great time. Of course it is one of those days I could’ve kicked myself for leaving my camera at home, because the scenery was spectacular.

We also did learn of a business closing today. Friends near Pottstown told us that the place that was the old tea room, and had been known in recent months are about a year or so as Tacie’s Café and Bakery had closed. It was located up on Ridge Road in Pottstown. The business was owned by soon to be former West Vincent Supervisor Clare Quinn.

We had a great time at the Kimberton Antique Show and found out that a lot of the same dealers will be at the Leesport Holiday Antiques Show in Berks County Saturday, December 7th.

We ran out of time and day so we couldn’t check out some of the other antiques stores in the area. Also on my list to check out are the Olde Knitting Mill in Spring City, and Inslee Antiques in Guthriesville.

I also want to get over to Conebella Farm on Chestnut Tree Road in Elverson. They are a fifth generation dairy farm that have over 15 varieties of cheddar and Colby-based cheeses and also sell milk yogurt and free range eggs.

I had so much fun today and part of it is because this is another one of my friends who also shares my passion for similar things as far as antiques and collectibles go.

My final note is I did feel like I was cheating on the Smithfield Barn today. And thanks to the Smiths who run the barn I actually recognize what a lot of country antiques actually are now!

Thanks for listening to my recounting of my rambling through Chester County today! If you have free time tomorrow, go check out the Kimberton Antiques Show. And definitely stop at Station Bistro in Kimberton!

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ho ho ho…the hunt for vintage ornaments continues

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So the vintage ornament haul continues. Yesterday at AngelFest at St. Paul’s in Exton I scored a vintage tea towel and a professional grade loaf pan…and a Santa nutcracker !!!

Yes, you know about my vintage ornament disease, but if you know me, you know it extends to nutcrackers too! Not just any nutcracker, either. I tend to go for the more traditional nutcracker, leaving the golfing and fishing and nutcrackers like that for other people.

Yesterday, when I got to AngelFest the things the church was selling directly in their cute house on the church property was pretty picked over, but upstairs where they had ornaments and holiday decor, there was this Santa nutcracker with his $5.00 price tag…he was standing in between two nutcrackers priced at $40 or there abouts (and truthfully the other nutcrackers were priced too high). So I snapped him up! He was so cute I could not believe he was still there!

And yes, then yesterday on the way to a friend’s house in Elverson, we stopped at the Smithfield Barn. I had to pick up my vintage Christmas tablecloth…and go through more vintage ornaments!

Apparently some of my friends went out yesterday looking for vintage ornaments and didn’t see enough. LOL I was not the only one buying them on Friday, but ornaments like that do not last— you should see how they fly on eBay! When someone says they’re going to be selling vintage ornaments at a barn sale or a fleamarket, go early. And be prepared to dig through ornaments. (Carefully because if you break it you buy it.)

Anyway there were MORE ornaments out at the barn when I got there…so sigh…I bought a few more.

And no, I do not need a Christmas ornament intervention, there is a method to my madness. In addition to the Christmas tree of a traditional size, I have decided I am going to have small trees in multiple rooms.

So I have been scouring church sales, garage sales, flea markets and the Smithfield Barn for small table top and even smaller sized trees. Most of what I have acquired look like the traditional feather tree. If you can find real goose feather vintage feather trees they are incredibly expensive, so I decided to seek alternatives. And I have not paid much for these trees.

Putting little trees in multiple rooms, means that I will have to be very disciplined with my other decorating or it will look like Walmart burped in my house. And that is not the look I am going for. I have no desire to have people feel like they’re dizzy when I walk in my house at Christmas time. I just want people to feel the magic.

My parents always did the more traditional silver and gold dominated Christmas tree when I was growing up, but my taste sort of evolved in a different direction. I love the look of vintage ornaments, and I also love the look of nutcrackers and folk art Santas.

How do you dress up your home for the holidays? Tell me!

And also, before I forget, the Smithfield barn is open today. You can also often find vintage ornaments at Frazer Antiques and sometimes at Resellers Consignment too. Also worth noting is a store in Ardmore, PA on Lancaster Avenue that always has fabulous vintage reproduction ornaments and unusual new ones that are quite beautiful. The store is Past*Present*Future.

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adaptive reuse

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File under new uses for old stuff. I’ve been hunting around for a container to combine my two houseplant ivy plants into one pot. Found what I needed at my favorite picking site, the Smithfield Barn last weekend.

It’s a vintage piece of crockery/pottery of unknown age and precise origin. By my guesstimate I figure it is anywhere from the 1930s through the 1960s. Also given the folk art people, I expect it’s from Lancaster County. I am thinking it was one of those tourist pieces, like the little cast-iron people I have sitting on a bookshelf.

I did not drill holes in the container, in case I get tired of using it for a planter someday. I did put some sand and rocks on the bottom, pebbles actually and planted.

Voilà! Adaptive reuse, vintage style.

just like in country living magazine!

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As seen at The Smithfield Barn today. A very cool old hall tree in yellow. My guess on age? End of 19th into beginning of 20th century. And yes…sigh…it was sold pending pick-up:

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Do any of you subscribe to Country Living Magazine? Check out page 82 of the October, 2013 issue. That hall tree is a restored relative!

In my humble opinion, very cool!

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vintage linens

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I love most things vintage. Which is of course one reason I love open barn weekends at the Smithfield Barn on Little Conestoga Road in Downingtown.

So I went wandering out this afternoon to pick up a garden bell on hold for me and ended up scoring a couple of kitchen items – fabulous old and handmade wooden spoons, a Corningware covered medium casserole ( which was just perfect for my peach blueberry crisp I baked later), and a couple of hand embroidered kitchen towels that were kicky in a kitschy sort of way.

I laundered by hand the towels and dried and ironed them. It was at that point I thought I would put them in my powder room instead. They would get too beat up in the kitchen.

I have been collecting linen and cotton vintage hand towels for years. I pick them up where they are inexpensive – thrift stores, church sales, flea markets, the Smithfield Barn. I buy what catches my eye and I buy them to be used.

What you see in the photo above are the towels I scored today with others I already had.

Yes I know, a very Martha moment – only I still do my own ironing!

But seriously? Look how easy it is to dress up a fairly utilitarian powder room or half bath with some vintage linens?

Remember, freshening up the decorating takes neither a large budget or a decorator.

a barning we will go!

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hall treeMy favorite picking barn is chock full of treasures and open this weekend ALL weekend!

Yes, the Smithfield Barn is open through Sunday – 425 Little Conestoga Road, Downingtown, Pennsylvania 19335

photo1I picked up a couple of fun things today – a pair of copper candy molds to hang on my kitchen wall and a little bit of Pennsylvania Lancaster County Tourist kitsch.

The kitsch are little cast iron Amish kids in a little wagon.  I started collecting these figures over 15 years ago when I picked up my first four photo3at the treasures tables of Historic Harriton House’s annual fair for either $8 or $10.  How I found out what they were was at a benefit that had some photo2Antiques Roadshow appraisers at it – you could bring something you could carry to be explained or appraised and I chose the Amish figures – so these little cast iron figurines were big for the tourists the first half of the 20th century – a lot in the 1930’s in particular. They aren’t worth a ton of money but they make me smile.

The Smithfield Barn is PACKED to the gills so if you have the time go check out the treasures to be had over the weekend.  If you like copper molds, she still has a bunch as of this afternoon.  But my favorite thing out there this weekend is something that came in while I was there – it is a fabulous hall tree. Could be late Victorian, but I am thinking more Arts & Crafts.  It needs a little TLC – someone painted it yellow, but if I had the room I would have put that on the roof of the car today!

 

 

fun with primitives (again)

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People often operate under the misperception that collecting has to be stuffy, expensive, is for hoarders.  That is not true.  You can collect a restrained number of things that you can actually use in your home.  That is what I aim for now: can I use it and do I have room without looking like grandma’s attic.

Primitive candlesticks are a relatively new thing for me.  I recently sort of developed a candlestick crush on them.  I think they are cool in their plainness. And they make for cool groupings. Cast iron, tole painted, and so on.

I will caution you that they can be pricey….unless you do what I do and look for them at White Elephants, garage sales and picking barns….like my favorite barn The Smithfield Barn.

And oh I also discovered something else recently – I can find terrific lots of hand dipped and beeswax candles on eBay that are a heck of a lot more reasonable than buying them in stores around here.

forgotten farmhouse

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Yesterday we stopped at the Smithfield Barn for a little treasure hunting and then wound our way back through Chester Springs to do other stuff.  We decided to take some twisty windy country roads for the heck of it and ended up on one of the many dirt roads in Chester County after going by a barn I had photographed in 2009 but had not been able to back track and rediscover since!4046706748_c3c86eaa15_n

The irony is yesterday I still did not know where exactly I was, or in what municipality (I should have written down roads!), but as we came out of the dirt part of this particular road we happened upon a forgotten farmhouse. It also had crumbling ruins of barns and outbuildings.

Can anyone tell me where I was and what the deal is with this boarded up farmhouse? I would love to know the history here. I have been told that I was at “Eagle Farms” and it all used to be working farms back there.  I was also told just today that open space beauty killer Toll Brothers bought back there and other entities like Pulte and Jack Lowe and wow really?  Is it that I got a photo of what might not exist much longer and be replaced by more plastic houses?

Oh ok let me know what else I need to know or what fellow readers might find interesting.

collecting

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DSC_0651It’s so funny. I have never intentionally set out to collect anything, I have just found things I like I want in my home.  Yes for me, collecting is pretty much that simple.

This year I have purged a lot of stuff that no longer interests me.  For example when I was barely out of my teens I had a fascination with certain kinds of old glasses – sherry and cordial sized.  But realistically, I am not the generation who sips sherry by the fire, so I jettisoned them.  They were pretty, I loved them once upon a time, but now I want things I can also use.

To an extent I like  a LITTLE BIT of what would be classified as “country things”.  I am not however the gal with Holly Hobby Country wallpaper borders complete with hex signs and sun bonnets.  Nor will you find little gingham anything around my home.

The things I like are to an extent things of my childhood that I grew up around or admired in the homes of others.  I love gorgeous period antiques but for me to live with furniture pieces, I need things I can use, and use every day if I so choose.  So I love things like furniture with simple and elegant lines – I love wood.  Not deep heavy burdensome Victorian  finishes but beautiful woods with simple, clean lines, and their more natural hues and stains.

I abhor the current trends with regard to painting furniture because I feel good antique and vintage pieces are being ruined and sent to chalkboard and pastel paint furniture purgatory.  I am also sick of people calling themselves vintage and antiques dealers because they cover rickety furniture that is not necessarily worth saving with pastel paints and chalkboard paint.

Some people I know who are real dealers do a little of this with style, but not every piece in their inventory looks like it vomited pastel paint or *must* have a chalkboard.  I am a grown up I don’t personally want to live with little girl doll house furniture or people to mistake my furniture for particle board garbage from WalMart and Ikea. Sorry to sound snobby but,   I like the real wood.  Let that oak, cherry, poplar, walnut, whatever shine through.  Love the natural beauty.  Besides, wood pieces with normal wood finishes shining through will transition with you through whatever personal style evolution.  Chalkboard paint and too much pastel paint is as bad as houses that are so beige nothing stands out. And when you are tired of that stuff, you will find yourself leaving half of it on the curb for trash day.

I like a mix of old and new, and I have learned to trust my eye.  And I look at stuff – antiques stores, thrift shops, consignment stores, picking barns, garage sales – even if I am not buying  I look.  I look at how professional stylists are putting together rooms in magazine layouts.  You never know where a good idea might come from. But at the end of the day, what I do reflects my personal style and what makes a house a home to me.

I want every room to be able to be used.  Now granted I prefer to keep the teenagers out of my living room, but that is self-preservation as much as anything else LOL!

Since moving out to Chester County I have become fascinated once again with some primitives.  Candlesticks in particular. (Yes I know some of you are wondering if I have fallen out of love with plain milk glass nesting chickens, and the answer is no of course not.  But everything in moderation and my better half already thinks I have chicken issues….)

So anyway, for years I have had a black tin painted Toleware chamber candlestick that I picked up many years ago for $5 or $10 at the white elephant tables at Historic Harriton House on their annual September fair day, and between there and at St. David’s Fair and thrift shops for equally low sums over the years a few other chamber candle sticks.  They are just a little touch I like.  They look friendly and homey to me.

Recently out at Smithfield Barn I have come across a few primitive cast iron candlesticks.  They are very Pennsylvania and New England.  I thought they were fun so I bought them.  All were $10 or less each, incidentally.  I just liked their look.

So now I have researched them, and one is a primitive chamber stick (it has a finger or thumb hold and looks like it is in a little bowl), one is a “courting” candlestick (it looks like it is a spring in shape with a little wooden knob that can move the candle up as it burns), and one is a “hog scraper” “wedding band” candlestick ( it has a little screw to push up the candle like a lot of the cast iron ones do and it has a little metal band, maybe of brass that looks like a “wedding band”.)

Now I know mine aren’t fine antiques, they were used in a house in the country somewhere but I like them.  If these were the fine antique versions of themselves, they would be hundreds of dollars each. Mine will be used and enjoyed.  As a matter of fact you will still see cast iron candlesticks even in modern decor – Pottery Barn, Anthropologie, and other places.  And they are found a lot in European countries as well. But for my taste, nothing beats the American primitive form of cast iron and tin candlesticks.  Some are painted, some are not.

Cast Iron Vintage Shave Ice Tool

Cast Iron Vintage Shave Ice Tool – found for $2. Just a random display piece but is in full working order that I actually could use it!

If candlesticks like this interest you, check your more country antiques and vintage shops  and picking barns- I saw a few at Frazer Antiques last week, but they were a tad tasty in price for me – I admit it I am a bargain hunter.  You will also find country primitives like this throughout New England in places like Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.  I think some of the most fine antique and vintage shopping you can do is in Maine and Vermont in particular.

Anyway, what bargains and cool vintage things have you found recently that you love?

smithfield barn open this weekend!

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Yes, yes, yes!  My favorite picking barn has hours this weekend – 425 Little Conestoga Road, Downingtown, Pennsylvania 19335 – they open Friday at 10 a.m. and will have daylight hours through the weekend!