As a rescuer of tiny things I've had to come up with creative ways to both store and display my finds. This vintage letterpress tray hangs on the wall of our entrance hallway (I've shared bits of our home earlier) and this is the first place where I try to stick new old things that have no designated place of their own. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't. Most everything here has a story and I'm hoping to list those stories in the following weeks (I've spread this over three weeks as I don't imagine anyone being interested in reading about everything at once.)
I think I'm going to go for a very freeform left to right - top to bottom approach here.
- The folding wooden rulers come from my father's tool stash. There's actually four of them here, one is hidden behind the others. My favourite is the brown one.
- All the wooden spools here come from either of my grandmothers, who may or may not be their first owners. The orange thread is super silky whereas the blue is just plain cotton.
- The green domino tiles come from V's childhood home. I've never seen domino tiles this small before.
- Measuring tapes! I sense a theme here. There's one soft fabric measuring tape (below the peacock) I've bought from London in 2008, the other's are more or less plastic-y - the pink is from an Etsy vintage sewing supply lot, the bright yellow (top row) and black used to belong to my paternal grandmother, and the final one, a light yellow above the pink is one my maternal grandmother gave me along with some other sewing supplies when I was still a little girl, maybe 12 at most.
- The tiny bottle of olive oil was a gift from a dear friend, who also appreciates cute things. This is one of the few, if not the only, new things I have stored in my letterpress trays (yes, there's another one, and it's fabulous!).
- The peacock is a part of a set of animals my maternal grandmother played with as a child. The other animals are farm animals like pigs, and I'm not quite sure how the peacock fits in. Maybe peacocks are farm animals in more exotic countries, I don't know. The animals are made of thick cardstock and there's a block of unfinished wood stapled to the bottom edge so the animals stay in upright position.
- The old skeleton keys and tin toy winders and the sort are from my paternal side of hoarders.
- The tiny funnel was used for gunpowder. It's something I got from my father and he's not one to waste words, so I don't know how old it is.
- The damaged bit of cogwheel is something either I or my ex found somewhere on the ground - can't remember where, but this is something I save for a special artwork I've yet to come up with.
- The random found bit of totally uninteresting concrete was found by me, don't remember where or when, but for some reason I picked it up and brought home. What a great story, this one...
- The PM Champion decals (bottom row) were used for bicycles my paternal side's business made way back in time.
Here's the entire tray again, without the title text. What bit intrigues you the most now that you've heard the maybe-not-so-interesting stories behind the top third?