An Auction Surprise

Recently I attended an estate auction where I bought a little display case for the shop (coming soon to downtown Charleston!), a set of antique apothecary glass jars and some old victorian silver pieces. I love to buy "surprise" lots or boxes sometimes, because you never know quite what you're going to get.


This time I bid on a box of what was described as "paper ephemera," which appeared at first glance to be a pile of Victorian calling cards and old receipts. I was bidding for the calling cards, and ended up getting the box for $8, two dollars less than the $10 limit I had set for myself (score! now I could use my $2 buy a root beer from the creepy guy selling hot dogs in the parking lot!).

I'm very impatient, so I began digging through my box as soon as I got back to the car. I picked out those calling cards, some old receipts, tags & greeting cards, nothing I was too thrilled with; and then I found this sign! Underneath this sign was another one that read "60 cents each or 2 for $1," and under that the greatest treasure of all...

...nearly 100 original, unmounted cut paper silhouettes and about a dozen mounted silhouettes that had been signed by the artist & dated!

That $8 box turned into my favorite find of the entire antiquing trip. I've been playing with these silhouettes for the past two weeks, scanning them in so I can use them as inspiration for Curiosity's new logo, and in the shop signage and on the new website (also coming soon).

Once I'm done scanning all of these, I'm going to mount them and put each one in a vintage frame. I'll be keeping a bunch of them myself so I can put a big grouping of silhouettes above my bedroom mantle, but there will also be many silhouettes added to the shop in the coming weeks and available in my Charleston shop when it opens this summer!