New York  and New Yorkers have a great appreciation for The Spring!

There is suddenly a different scent to the air……not so much blossom or daffodils but as if the earth itself is breathing a sigh of relief up through the cracks and spaces between the paving stones.

With that said this week I simply wanted to share a slew of images of spring ‘buds’ from The Flea market….. just some colorful  little offerings that I hope you will like.

Sometimes the words just flow. 

Sometimes in order to convey a story or an anecdote a little embroidering upon a truth is permissible. It sets a scene, weaves a little magic into the thread of a tale and can connect the fragments.

And sometimes the story needs no elaboration…..it just is what it is. You can tell it how it was simply told to you.

I have been trying to put down in many ways a little piece about a true character from the lower level of the car park.

And I have come to realize that here I can paint a little picture of her but her own words are all that is needed to tell her tale.

To say that I love Kay’s style would probably make her chortle though in my mind she is definitely up there with Ms. Vreeland, Ms. Donovan and Ms. Edith Head.I don’t know Kay well enough to truly talk about her character so style is what I have to go on…..and yes, I know these are all ladies of fashion and costume but there is thread, if you’ll excuse the awful association, as all had and have a great historic appreciation for what has come before and the good sense to cherish those things that still remain. So perhaps as Kay is as English as crumpets and tea perhaps the lofty associations would be better suited to Lady Ottoline Morrell….and …wait for it Dame Edith Sitwell who often had gowns and shrouds made from yards of antique drapery.

Kay doesn’t just sell fabric and to use the word textile for me, takes everything to either a hotel bedspread or worse still, some by the yard polyester. She is a purveyor of the past.

Scraps of brocade, linens and cottons that have been pressed, starched and folded over and over to the point where, even once opened to the air, the creases and folds are always apparent like a long etched memory.

I see Kay every week. Occasionally I will buy something. I admit to having a tiny problem with yards of fabric..… hence my reticence. I buy with a vague intention to do something wonderful with it but more often than not find I am happiest seeing the pieces piled high in a cupboard…my archive if you will

This archive, rather like Kay’s loose tresses that she throws up into a bun, threatens to topple at anytime.

And whilst the odd strands of Kay’s pale ash and grey hair are often swept back up with a wave of her hand or secured with a myriad of pins, mine is simply a matter of space…….or the lack of it.

And then there are her glasses. Not quite round,large and black they appear as a number 8 that has been knocked to its side. They suit her face and give an air of professorial command and as you can read below her answers need no more words of mine.

Q & A

1. You’re booth has a very specific feel…..  Are there limitations to what you would show or do you buy with your own taste in mind….. If a fabric was some wonderful brocade but from the 1960’s would you sell it?

A - Yes, but rarely and not polyester or nylon, both having no tactile merit.

2.  When you are looking do you almost know when you have come across a great source - if you’re looking at a house sale….. is there an instinctual sense that there are goodies within???

A - Regrettably no.  Good “stuff” often comes from the most unlikely places, e.g. fragments of 18th century lace mixed in with 20th century machine made laces.  Fortuny drapes found on a porch, free if I would just take them.

3. Do you buy purely with your own idea of what is wonderful?

A - Yes

And what is your most wonderful or interesting find, and who buys these wonderful pieces of textile?

A - One of my favorites is the Duke of Warwick’s embroidered, silk  bedcover and valance and a cushion dated late 18th century purchased in England at Christies 20 years ago.  I sold the bedcover to a decorator to reupholster an 18th century wing chair.  The cushion went to a collector and I still have the valance in my collection.  Can you imagine being in that time period when the bed cover was new?

My customers are lovers of great rags.  Some use the textiles to make items e.g. dresses from lace, cushions from fabric or Tibetan skirts. Some buy for theatre costumes, photo shoots, designers to copy patterns, interior designers to decorate.

4.  And now the question that you can tell me as little or as much as you want. 

 How do get from the place you started out to setting up each weekend in a damp garage in NYC.  

A - I absolutely love the damp Garage in NYC.  It’s the people that turn it into a palace!  Amazing diversity.  Many artists, some performers, designers, etc.  Most are creative dynamic and enthusiastic.  Likewise the fellow dealers.  We offer each other solace on a slow financial day and celebrate together on a super day.  We watch each others booths when leaving for coffee etc.  Also pass the word if there is an item of interest to a fellow dealer.

I started 45 years ago handling small furniture and table top items at modest quality shows, worked up to better quality shows but did not love what I sold.  Gradually I found myself buying more textiles and shortly became totally textile.  I still do 6 major shows, 3 in Massachusetts and 3 in NYC.   Otherwise I am at the Garage and love it.

Old textiles are fragile and part of their appeal is their impermanence.  It’s amazing that something like that can survive for sometimes hundreds of years.  I love the signs of use and wear attesting to earlier lives and uses.  During the 17/18th century silk and lace were as valuable as gold and jewels with many people involved in their manufacture.  

5.  Unless of course you are a master of voice control and are actually from Long Island…..how does an English lady end up in NY?

A - My husband and I wanted to travel and “see the world”.  That was 43 years ago.  We loved this part of the world and did not get any further………

As you can probably already tell…..I love hands……not all hands mind you…..I love hands that can ’ do ‘.

The limp and the useless I can do without…..they are usually attached to the passionless and hang lifeless and flabby at the sides of their owners.

Hands I think can tell you so much about a person. If the eyes are the windows of the soul then the hands probably cut the wood , tied the sash cord and added some great molding  just to finish off the job nicely…..oh and anyone got any putty for the glass?

Edith Sitwell( whose wonderful white hands would not be out of place a top a Plantagenet  tomb and  appear on a previous entry) said that her hands…..were her face. Given that she had been the victim of parents who publicly showed dismay over her wonderfully odd appearance I can fully understand that she would see their skeletal beauty as some divine payback!

I personally  feel that most people I meet who display wonder and glee at everything  life offers them, get the the good hands!

I am including in this entry my friend Chris’s hands. They are always brown as a berry, never manicured in any way and often as not are either gripping the handle bars of his bike, a surfboard or as of late, making…… Things! Simple, poetic and amazing things from scraps, found or bartered: the spines from a long dead sea urchin are married with a splint of wood to create an elaborate comb suitable only for a mermaid.

Hands are incredible things, capable of feeling the difference between a single strand of hair and a piece of thread. They can build a cathedral or knock down a wall.

Usually if I really like someone, I love their hands also.

Which brings me oddly I suppose to Wabi Sabi? 

Not to get too philosophical on all of you but Wabi Sabi is a Japanese principal of aesthetics that basically boils down to the notion that there is  something beautiful in the worn, the not so perfect  and the irregular.

Or more poetically it nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. Amen to that!

I like to think that this also applies to all of us over the age of a chrysalis and I for one will be sticking to this principal as my wrinkles lengthen and my eyesight shortens.

When I started to think about what FLEA would be about it made complete sense to me that it would be all about the pictures. It is after all what I do. I collect and find, rent and purchase props for photo shoots here in NYC. But as I began to wander the booths with a fresh eye I realized that there would have to be a much needed dialogue  to truly capture the nature of this Aladdin’s cave and so each entry has become a little rambling tale of mine own! I was actually surprised that that is what they were! Little stories, anecdotes of everyday things and objects that have been cherished, washed and worn by hand after hand or customized and made anew.

I could in all seriousness make a book simply of images that evoke all that I have written above. But where’s the fun in that? I like pretty, I do pretty…but I like my pretty with some content.

So this week is simply a celebration of all the hands that have touched, handled,sorted, pieced together, picked up, put down, sewn, repaired,polished, cleaned, packed and unpacked so tirelessly weekend after weekend so that more hands can pick over, unfold, try on, caress and sometimes even…..buy!