News» News and New Arrivals - Spring and Summer 2014
Another
trip in the Spring fulfilled specific orders for textiles, and topped
up the stock of chests and benches.
It
was cold in the late March mornings but Spring was stirring in the
central plains of Continental Europe.
The
pickers arrived with the pieces they had reserved over the last few
weeks. These were piled up at the loading bay, within days were
loaded onto the truck bound for the UK, and on a wet morning we
unloaded.
You
should be open to try different things when on a buying trip (what
you expect to find might not be there and there is normally something
else you had not thought of) and this time i bought some beautiful
peasant dresses fresh from the mountain villages as well as two old
Hungarian motorbikes.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In our warehouse there was an old Soviet military cap with fur lining hanging from a coat hook, sometime in March a robin decided in spite of the noise and constant moving around of unwieldy objects that it was a safe place to make a nest away from the beady eye of the magpies and other predators. Over the next few weeks two broods were hatched out of the nest, 7 chicks in all and of which only one failed to survive.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The birds must have brought good omens as business was thriving enough to demand another trip out to Europe in June. The wasteland had dooned its fullest greenery and this provided suitable cover for the loud warbling nightingales.
After the buying was done the bills paid the paperwork completed the truck sped to England but this time got held up in Germany, it was a national holiday the driver said, no it was a beer festival, the lorry had broken down, and in the end after several days of waiting for news the driver was taken to hospital in Calais with "alcohol problems", a new driver was sent out and we eventually got stuck into the old routine of unloading and photographing the new arrivals.
Interesting pieces included a carved model of a Church from Bohemia (a betlem) and a very old rustic elm trestle table of 228cm from Romania.
An old bird cage with some nice decorative features in old paint and a painted dovecote with zinc roof might have interested the robins but they had flown the house.