Want to buy or sell something? Check the classifieds
  • The Fedora Lounge is supported in part by commission earning affiliate links sitewide. Please support us by using them. You may learn more here.

Search results

  1. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Yes, indeed it does. Asbestos, and lead, is in many household goods and materials dating from not so long ago.
  2. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    I recently replaced the bathroom flooring in my short-term rental with marble tile. (It’s only 45 square feet, so the high-end stuff wasn’t such an extravagance.) Two layers of flooring had to come up first: some peel-and-stick junk the previous owners had installed in their typically amateurish...
  3. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Is it glued down, as were most I’ve ever seen?
  4. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Most of my rugs were used when they came my way. On my coffee table (an old Hartmann “Gibraltarized” travel trunk) is a section of a late 19th-century rug, a gift from a friend in the business. This friend, the fellow who buys rugs by the container load, invariably gets some with moth damage or...
  5. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Most knockoffs are of lesser quality, but not all. And then there are licensed versions that are perhaps themselves inferior to the unlicensed copies. At a McDonald’s (yes, McDonald’s) I patronized some time back the seating was Eames shell chairs, but made of plastic rather than fiberglass. I...
  7. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    9:21 pm MDT and the nightly amateur fireworks barrage commences.
  8. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^^ That’s quite the score, even if the rugs are machine made. All the better, of course, if they’re hand-knotted. Another vintage thing that has (almost) disappeared is the linoleum “rug,” although a quick search shows that similar things are still being made. I recall seeing sheet linoleum...
  9. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^^ That’s a pretty darned big rug (10’6” by 18’) and there are Karastan aficionados, even though the rugs are machine made. (Add one more item to John Huston’s list of things that get respectable if they last long enough.) But even so, more than a couple G’s is getting to be more than anyone...
  10. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^^ I’ve never been to Iran, nor Turkey, nor North Africa, nor Pakistan, nor … A friend — a fellow of Iranian descent (he was born in Iran but his parents hustled him and themselves out of there right after the revolution, when he was kid) who lived in Germany for a few years before getting...
  11. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^^ That’s nuts. I’ll keep an eye on that, just to see if someone is foolish enough to pay anything approaching that kinda scratch. Real hand-knotted wool tribal rugs from “the orient” can be had for less than the prices of those new synthetic fiber rugs carrying the Karastan name. I don’t...
  13. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^^^ I looked at the recent offerings carrying the Karastan name. Jayzus, that kinda money for a rug made from recycled soda pop bottles? It really ain’t the same product as the wool rugs made on the Axminster looms in Eden, NC. Not even close.
  14. tonyb

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    ^^^^^ That’s one fine piece of journalism. (It was behind a paywall at the NYT [I must’ve hit my monthly limit], but was picked up by the Chicago Tribune, where I read it.) The writer’s personal connection to the story brought home what such a plant closing does to a small community. In the...
  15. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    I appreciate Antiques Roadshow for occasionally showing fakes for what they are, and for their “vintage” shows, wherein they pull up footage from shows 15 or 20 years ago and compare the appraised values then vs. now. Very often values have gone down. Many (most) “collectible” items have...
  16. tonyb

    You know you are getting old when:

    I can’t recall when I last saw a copy of Playboy. The ready availability of online porn pretty well doomed the print porn industry. But, you know, people read Playboy “for the articles.” (Credit where it is due, some good writing did appear in its pages. But the T&A was its bread and butter...
  17. tonyb

    You know you are getting old when:

    … you remember when in certain circles cigarettes were called “squares,” and you know why.
  19. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    At base it’s another manifestation of the human desire to cheat mortality. I’m presently dealing with the meager worldly effects of a person whose condition will likely be deemed terminal before long. I can’t very well just leave it all at the Arc thrift store donation station. Not yet, anyway...
  20. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    ^^^^^^ We (the nuts who find great value in old crap) sometimes lose sight of the impermanence of this stuff. While it’s true that furniture and household appliances and whatnot can be (and were) made to last much longer than the next hot new style, nothing that gets used for its intended...
  21. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    Not always, maybe, but often if not most of the time. That’s where the reliable revenue is, after all. It was common in my early years for working-class people to carpool (my dear old ma did) and take in sewing (ditto) and for kids to wear patched hand-me-downs and do any number of other...
  22. tonyb

    So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

    That pretty well sums it up. People wanna believe. Even those who know it’s mostly BS get something out of the fantasy, I think. After all, they have hundreds — thousands — of other viewing options these days. They’re like kids with imaginary friends. EDIT: I’m not a mind reader so I can’t say...
  23. tonyb

    You know you are getting old when:

    I reserve a particular disdain for people whose pets may as well be pieces of furniture — things to be changed out when fashions change, or when they get bored with it. The law regards my pets as property. But we — the missus and I — have a different take on the matter. We don’t own these...
View older results

Latest posts

Members online

... and 1 more.
Total: 3,461 (members: 51, guests: 3,410)

Forum statistics

Threads
109,269
Messages
3,077,656
Members
54,221
Latest member
magyara
Top