Charity Shop Charleston: Victorian Easter

I like nothing more than a good rummage around a charity shop. (I reckon my childhood love of jumble sales is to blame for this. Which reminds me-I really must apologise to my mum for all those hideous ornaments I bought her between the ages of five and ten..)

There is something ridiculously exciting about hunting through the rails and baskets in the pursuit of "hidden treasure"- I mean, who knows when you might find that perfect vintage swimsuit or a set of Babycham glasses? (and yes, this has happened to me..all on the same day. It was wonderful.)

I am lucky enough to live near a town that hosts no less than five good-quality shops so charity shopping is a bit of a regular occurrence as you can imagine! My fiance and I are getting married in a few months time, though, so I've been under a shopping ban for a while now. But last weekend, I broke...and this is why:

I basically bought the shop's entire collection of vintage stockings - the colours were just irresistible. Silver (seems to have been a particular favourite in this town - I found no less than four pairs in two different shops!), pink, blue and a very unusual burnt orange colour. With Easter just around the corner, I couldn't pass up this little Easter postcard:

The stamps were intact and the postcard even had a manfucturer name "Tuck's Postcard". After a bit of research, I was able to date the postcard to the early 1900s and also discovered that Raphael Tuck and Sons was a very famous postcard distributer from the mid 1800s to the middle of last century. 

A history of the company and a database of their postcards can be found here: http://tuckdb.org I could browse this archive for hours - the "Tennis Tournament" set in particular is just lovely: http://tuckdb.org/sets/11602

Another interesting find was this old French postcard, dating from around about the same time:

Both postcards have messages on the back - I love finding old postcards that have actually been used. It's such a personal reminder of the past and I often find myself wondering who the people were and where the rest of their family is now..

I wanted to find a way of displaying these postcards, rather than resigning them to a drawer somewhere, so they have become part of the Easter basket on our fireplace. The basket also contains a handmade bird cushion that I finished a few weeks ago. It was part of a cushion set my Mum bought me for Christmas last yea, a very welcome and unexpected gift!

The snow has put paid to any charity shop hunts for this weekend but then again....there's always next weekend (or the weekend after!)