Vintage

I've always loved walking into antique shops or general stores and seeing old rusted tin signs hanging on the wall. Old-fashioned advertising attracts me. The colors, the fonts, the style, the wholesome but at the same time provocative beauty. I like all of them. From Coca Cola to Moët Chandon to Bovril to the Women's Land Army. All of them are great.
It's not just the image that I like, it's the combination of the advertisement with the tin. I remember going to Cumberland, Maryland as a kid to visit my grandma and going down to a musty smelling room where Sam (an old man she took care of) had his collection of tin lunchboxes. I loved looking through them and making music by tapping my fingernails on them.
Two Christmases ago Jose and I went to the NC mountains with my parents, and one day walking through the town Black Mountain, we stopped in an antique shop and bought two old tins. One was Coca Cola and the other Dr. Pepper. I have them hanging on my wall in front of me. I guess that's where it all began. One of my favorite Christmas presents were some Capiello vintage coasters.

Jose has always loved the artist Alfonse Mucha. So that same Christmas I went to buy him a calendar. At the time I was completely art illiterate, so I walk into the bookshop and say, "I'm looking for a calendar of some 'Mucho' guy." The man knew who I was talking about. After 12 months of seeing Mucha's works on my kitchen wall I fell in love. Like I said before, I studied biology so I'm rather art illiterate and I just found out last night that it's called art Nouveu. Oh well, whatever it's called, I like it.

This past weekend in London we took a stroll through Notting Hill down Portobello Street and came across a shop full of tin signs. We had to stop. We left the shop with 4 tins...two of which were Mucha. I think it's become an addiction.


So the other night I did an Internet search and discovered more of Mucha, Capiello, Lautrec and others.


Through my search, I also discovered that what I really like are the advertisements. More so than their other works of art. The combination of images and words. And the icing on the cake is the tin design.



On our trip to Cordoba, we bought three Andalusian advertisements and have them hung in our bedroom.

Seeing these tins hanging on my walls reminds me of laying in bed as a child at my Uncle Rusty's old farm house in the country with a tin roof and hearing the rain fall loudly yet peacefully down.

I still tap my fingernails on them as I pass by to hear the familiar sound.