estate sale

dabney and i were bad last week and instead of working on wednesday and thursday, we snuck off to kansas city.

why kc? there was word of an estate sale featuring mid-century furniture, our well-known weakness. when the description of the sale read "possessions of a former architecture professor," we knew that good stuff would abound and planned our trip accordingly.

the sale began would begin at 9 am. our tactic: arrive early. it turns out that others, too, shared this plan judging by the six other cars parked near the house at 8:20 am. to ensure a civilized entry, folks marked their place in line in order of arrival with a possession and waited in their car until opening. i threw down my scarf in eighth place.

promptly at ten 'til nine, people assembled at the front door. by then, the line had grown to about thirty people all chatting away about how slow their ebay sales had been going lately. at this point, we knew we were the first of the amateurs. THIS IS IMPORTANT: i turned to dabney and said, "no more chairs. whatever we do, avoid the chairs."

this is where i wish i had pictures, but when the doors swung open dabney and i made a mad dash around the house looking for items that we could use by heading straight to the studio. our camera was the last thing on our minds.

the chairs? boy, were they hard to avoid! there were two wassilys, one orange eames rocker, four mint-condition herman miller purple dcm chairs, etc. but we did it - we managed to walk away without a chair.

honestly, my eyes went straight to two very beautiful herman miller steelcase cabinets - perfect for anywhere.




dabney looked up and saw three big, colorful light fixtures that would look splendid in our workroom.







once we put dibs on the items we knew we wanted, we slowly perused the rest of the home. we could tell that there were two people who had lived there because each of them had differing tastes. one had a penchant for owls and knick knacks, the other (we presume the architect) a love for scandinavian design. they traveled far and wide and had a collection of tea towels to show for it.

having gone to a handful of estate sales, we knew once the excitement of looking for deals wears off, we always feel a little sad looking around us and realizing what happens to people's possessions after a death -- people, like us, picking through closets, rooms, garages, looking for treasures.

mr. architect, i hope you know your stuff is in good hands.