From the ridiculous to the sublime

At the front left is the tiny box used by the careless seller of the salt and pepper shakers. Behind it is the huge box and the two smaller ones...yes, three of them...that the seller of the samovar used, along with more than ample peanuts and bubble wrap. Granted, the salt and pepper set is much smaller than the samovar, but it was clearly too large to ship in that tiny box, as the sad picture in an earlier post proved. On the other hand, the seller of the samovar promised to be ultra-cautious and was. 

So, yes, the samovar is here, and after holding my breath till I was sure it arrived safely, I placed it in the preeminent, first-thing-you-see position atop the cabinet that contains the rest of the Iroquois Harvest Time by Ben Seibel and the granite gray Steubenville American Modern by Russel Wright. And if you look behind the glass, you'll see the recently repaired salt shaker, a reminder that these lovely pieces of history are too precious to take for granted.

The beginnings of my collection of Harvest Time and American Modern in granite gray.
I think a larger cabinet may be in order very soon.

Big Love

I've never been one to take things slow and easy, and I'm probably too old to start now. While some people have the patience to scour thrift stores for months to find the pièce de résistance of a new collection, I tend to go for broke from the start.

This usually keeps me from getting a $350 piece for $2, but even so, I sometimes find what I consider a pretty good deal. That's what happened over the weekend.

I started collecting Iroquois Harvest Time a few days ago with an 18-piece score on Craigslist. I fell in love with the Ben Seibel design at first sight and started looking for good deals on dinner plates and saucers. While looking, naturally I found the "oh wow" pieces of the set...the samovar and the lazy susan.

The samovar, which stands a whopping 15 inches tall, usually goes for $240-$350, but Saturday I found one listed as mint on eBay for $99, with a Buy It Now price of $145. I kept an eye on it all that night and the next morning, and it didn't have any bids. I was getting hopeful. Then a few hours before the auction ended, someone bid the minimum. A few minutes later, the same person apparently got worried that the first bid was too low and bid again. And again.

At this point, I was pretty sure she'd run her maximum bid up to the BIN price, but I couldn't be sure. The only thing I could do was wait till the last possible second and try to beat her by a few pennies. With 15 seconds to go, I bid...and won!!!  Her maximum bid had only been $122.77, so I was able to get the samovar for less than the BIN price after all.

$125.27 may not be Salvation Army great, but it sure beats $350.

Iroquois Harvest Time samovar by Ben Seibel--
the eBay photo of my latest purchase

Now I'll be on pins and needles till it arrives all in one piece. When it gets settled in with the rest of my collection, I'll post a new photo.

Update: Here it is with the rest of the pieces in my Harvest Time collection, plus a few Russel Wright pieces in gray.

Harvest Time for Iroquois by Ben Seibel

I can sometimes be fickle. I admit it. Not long ago I posted about my intention to start collecting Metlox Aztec. I was very excited about it and had tons of it on my eBay watch list, but just as quickly as I became interested, my wandering eye found Harvest Time, designed for Iroquois by Ben Seibel.

To be entirely honest, I always had a tiny itch of misgivings about the Metlox. I love the design, but I couldn't quite figure out how a collection of Aztec, paired with the beautiful granite gray Russel Wright American Modern the kids got me for Christmas, was going to look with my larger collection of Russel Wright Iroquois Casual in ripe apricot and avocado yellow, which will be in the same room. The warmth of my existing collection and the cool starkness of the proposed new gray and white collection seemed an incongruous pairing. I am admittedly a decorator first, and then a collector, so how everything looks together is important. No jangling juxtapositions for me! I'm certainly not into matchy-matchy, but I can't be happy if a space isn't cohesive, and I wasn't feeling the flow when I pictured the room with those two collections of china. And then, out of the blue, came the perfect solution.

My SIL sent me a link to a set of china on Craigslist, and the minute I saw it, I knew that Harvest Time, with its gray and rust colored leaves on a white background, along with coordinating Accent pieces in burnt orange were going to look perfect in my dining room. Even better, after researching Harvest Time, I decided it would hold up to daily use as well as my Iroquois Casual, because it was advertised for its durability in the same way the Russel Wright line was.

Here is my latest Craigslist find, along with some of the Russel Wright I already had:

My new Iroquois Informal Harvest Time by Ben Seibel (1958)
with my Russel Wright Iroquois Casual in the background

The new Iroquois Informal Harvest Time
paired with granite gray Russel Wright American Modern

I got a coffee pot with lid, a sugar bowl and creamer, a divided vegetable bowl, a small burnt orange coordinating Accent bowl without the leaf decal design, four plates and seven cups...a great start on a full set in just one stop...and at a great price! The lucky streak continues...

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