Vintage home finds | No. 1

Tiny lamps, tortoise shell motifs, and amorphous wood objects

Because I can’t responsibly buy all the secondhand home goods I find online, I want to share my secret stash of links. This newsletter will be my vehicle for doing so. Welcome to the very first edition!

How it’ll work:

• Every other week I’ll send out a batch of links to the one-of-a-kind goods I come across while freewheeling around the internet

• Paid subscribers will get the email in their inbox before everyone else (and thus first dibs 😈)

• I won’t be linking anything I wouldn’t buy for my own home and I’ll focus on an under-$100 price point and items that ship to the US (I’ll revisit this if I suddenly gain a large, vocal international contingent).

• Some of the links I share will be affiliate links, which means I earn a percentage of whatever is purchased through them (for example, Etsy links have a 6% affiliate rate. This is paid out by Etsy, not by the individual seller). I think of these earnings as bonus compensation for the work I do sourcing, but they certainly do not affect what I choose to curate!

And without further ado, the goods:

Tiny brass clip lamp — $45

I see these sweet little clip-on lamps listed for $100+ sometimes (which is kind of nuts to me?!) so I made an auditory “ooh!” when I saw this one for a much less alarming price. I love the little finial on top. Often marketed as reading lights you can clip onto a headboard, I actually love these clipped to a book shelf as a little styling detail + a bit of mood light (plugging it into a wifi timer so it goes on and off automatically would be a pro move). There’s also a VERY appealing one in France if you can stomach the shipping costs.

Oak turned wood lamp — $68

To me, this turned wood lamp is the perfect shade of oak and is just the right size and proportion for a kitchen counter.

Baby blue petite lamp — $40

The glossiness of this baby blue number is DOING IT for me. Next to a bud vase of punchy red flowers on a nightstand? It conjures a whole vision.

Funky carved wood objet d’art — $38

I do go bonkers for a folksy, amateur-ish carved wood object. I think things like this look like Art with a capital A (read: *fancy*) but are affordable for those of us who don’t have the budget for a Vince Skelly piece. It’s nice to have art that is tangible/tactile and not just hung on walls!

Carved wood candlestick — $27

Similarly: this marquetry piece. It does have a hole in it to be a candle holder (bonus!), but I would like it standing proud on a stack of books whether it’s got a candle in it or not.

Gunnar Kanevad Sculpture Puzzle — $95

I will stop myself with this last wood item before I niche down too hard into this category (let the record show: I could continue niching down). These MCM sculptural puzzles by Swedish craftsman Gunnar Kanevad always catch my eye. Just searching his name turns up a number of other whimsical, figural items.

Marbled bowl — $28

A lovely bowl from a vintage seller I have followed and shopped from for a few years — Shop Biddy. Stock updates from her are sporadic, but I do have Instagram alerts set up so that anytime she posts about new finds in her shop I can scurry to the nearest internet browser and see what’s what. Shop Biddy also has an amorphous wood object for sale that I have nearly pulled the trigger on multiple times. If no one buys it from this newsletter, is it a sign that it should be mine?!

Acrylic tortoise box — $27

I saw a tortoise patterned glass tray at Target recently and I was like, “surely I could find the vintage version of this?” and that sent me down a tortoise-motif rabbit hole that revealed a bounty of lovely objects. I could see this in a bathroom where you use the two halves of the boxes separately as a pair of trays for a soap dispenser, candle, matches, etc.

4 glass tortoise bowls — $48

Another find from my tortoise pattern investigation: this set of 4 bowls. Would make for the chicest possible chips and dip servers.

Shell serving platter — $52

Speaking of chips and dip! I had this same large shell platter and sold it at a vintage pop-up (huge regret) — it was sensational for serving a towering pile of potato chips.

Pewter stein — $45

I have been hearing (reading) rumblings of pewter making a comeback for a year now — which does seem like a logical follow-on to the stainless/chrome trend that I do think has actually been happening — however I’ve yet to feel conclusively that pewter is “back”, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? What does matter is that I think this vintage Svenskt Tenn stein would make a delightful small vase for a $5 bundle of daffodils from Trader Joes.

Okay that’s it!

Questions or thoughts about how this first send went? Reply to this email or drop a comment. See you in two weeks!