I'm supposed to be saving the pennies to enable a return to Venice some time next year. But I have to do the recycling, and the Antiques Arcade is only two minutes walk from the recycling depot.
So. Ahem. Books, I'm afraid. Seven of them, bought for a pittance, (from the same dealer who sold me the 1906 Ladies Diary and started that ball rolling). Bibliophilia - It's an addiction that I am completely hooked by - and as far as I know, there is no known treatment. Here are the proceeds of my addiction that came home with me today......
A 1911 edition of "The Connoisseur" Arts Magazine - bound volume
"A Viceroy's India" - Leaves from Lord Curzon's Notebooks" - to feed my
fascination with India
"Collecting Kitchenware" - Christina Bishop
"An Album of Curious Houses" - Photographed and Described by an even
more curious - and deeply entertaining woman, Lucinda Lambton
"Angels of Albion - the women of the Indian Mutiny - Jane Robinson
(Who "after graduating in English from Somerville college, Oxford,
joined a firm of antiquarian book dealers specialising in travel" - oh,
bliss!)
Sotheby's catalogue for a "Sale of Venetian Glass, 1910-1960" - from an
"Important collection"
Oakfield Plays" by Margaret Steen, with wonderful stage costume
illustrations by the author
And an illustrated copy of "Venice Observed" by Mary McCarthy
I also purchased a number of delightful costume dolls, picked out from a huge trunk full - the sale of a big collection - most of which were mediocre. But my selection includes a hand carved wooden German doll, and, methinks, possibly a Shallowpool fisherman. A characterful little group, that will add to the array of interesting figures that I already have.
That's enough fun for one day - better get around to housework. Not. :-)
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