When I worked I was, at various times, a typist, a teacher and an antiques and collectibles dealer. The typing paid enough to feed us; the teaching paid much better and the holidays were great; the one I loved, though, was the antique dealer though all it seemed to buy was more antiques! This last was my favourite job.

(When I use the word ‘antiques’ I am referring to items dating from the 18th and 19th centuries and ‘collectibles’ are small items from the first half of the 20th century.)

A dealer in antiques and/or collectibles does a whole range of things in any one week. I think my favourite bit of my favourite job was going to auctions and finding something that I loved – buttons, linens, small boxes, old games and jigsaw puzzles of the late 19th and early 20th century.

When I first started, it was the linens, small sewing tools and buttons. I had a one room ‘shop’ in a craft centre where I displayed the wares that I had found, usually in auctions but sometimes privately. I had a little advert, which was a picture of a little girl sitting on a cushion doing embroidery and the name “In My Lady’s Chamber” which I put in local publications. I remember that my large mother of pearl buttons were very popular as well as the tablecloths with crocheted lace edges and pulled thread work. One time, at an auction, I bought a large quantity of lace edgings, many of which were hand-made. I sold almost every one of those wonderful pieces of art in the first few weeks!

Something else I bought (and wish I had never sold) was a ‘hussif’. Hussif is a form of the word ‘housewife’ and was a basic sewing kit and the one I’m remembering was so gorgeous! Sadly I don’t have a photo of it, having sold it the week after I bought it but I remember that it was about 30 cms across and maybe 60 cms long. When it was rolled up, it ended up being 30 cms long. It was a beautiful blue colour and had spaces for needles and scissors, ribbons and hooks. (If you read my past post about Aphantasia, you will see that I can’t ‘see’ pictures in my head so cannot describe things accurately if they’re not in front of me. But I can remember details like colour and, more importantly, how I felt about an item).

As time went by I discovered more and more items I wanted to buy and sell and Julian and I opened a shop where he worked at re upholstery and furniture restoration and sold chairs, chaise longues, cabinets, tables etc and I sold ‘smalls’ (antiques and collectibles that aren’t big pieces of furniture.)

We worked hard in that shop but after seven years we realised that people weren’t bothering about reupholstering a sad settee or fixing a damaged table; they were getting rid of their tired furniture and buying modern. The same thing was happening with smalls. Minimalism was the keyword. So we sold our shop, had a quick sale of anything we didn’t want and moved to the seaside – but not before I discovered old wooden jigsaw puzzles and Victorian wooden games and toys.

Without a shop, I couldn’t carry on buying without a way to sell. So, I opened my very own web shop and, for the next nine years I bought at auction (mostly via the internet) and sold games and old wooden jigsaws. You will find several old posts about the jigsaws with lots of photos; there are also a couple about buttons and other small items.

I think that one of the biggest reasons I loved my work was because I learned something new every day : how to tell a Mauchlineware box from a German box; how to do an old jigsaw whose edges aren’t straight or which don’t have ‘pegs’ and ‘slots’ or which are colour-cut which means that you won’t be able to find adjoining pieces because of colour; or the difference between ‘pottery’ and ‘porcelain’.