Sometimes I like to revisit books that may be oldies but are definitely goodies, like Amy and David Butler's
Found Style, published back in 2003. Since it's also prime season for antiquing and garage sales, it seemed only appropriate to introduce you all to a book that offers sensible, inspired advice on integrating "found" objects into your home. Amy Butler, whose
fabric designs I love, brilliantly combines garage sale $1 finds with midcentury furniture, Pottery Barn accessories, and practical, Ikea pieces in this book.
Today marks the launch of the
Jayson Home & Garden European Flea Market online. Thanks to the keen eyes over at Jayson, these rare finds — a mix of timeless European furniture and lighting, antique prints and oil paintings, gilded mirrors, hotel silverware, and more —have made their way from Europe and beyond to Chicago’s Lincoln Park. The market has been running locally there
since April 18th, but that's no fun for non-Illinois folk, so I’m ecstatic to see it all just a click away in my browser.
While
integrating Ikea products into your home may be easy and affordable, they're not the most durable products you can buy, in terms of both style and quality. If you're lucky, you have a mix of high-quality new pieces as well as antiques to balance out and give a more grown-up look to your less expensive pieces. Although some antiques, especially if you've inherited them, may not be the pieces you swoon over while flipping through
your favorite shelter magazine, they're often classics and quite resilient, since they've held up for so long already.
If you live in an older home, you know that matching period-appropriate door knobs, drawer handles, and other important hardware is often a challenge.
Enter the
Charleston Hardware Company , which for the past eight years has specialized in antique hardware sales and restoration. Since their customers requested large numbers of matching pieces, they began collecting original antique patterns and in 2003 even began reproducing them, utilizing the same techniques from over 100 years ago.
