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Sunday St. Lawrence Antique Market. Anyone here go? Any tales of great "finds"?

Mustapha

Mustapha

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I go a couple times a month.




The food from the cafe is really good - my fave is this. They always have a special for about $8. which is big enough to share if you order a side of something. The proprietors are real nice.



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I found these old cufflinks and this watch awhile back.

I'm a fire buff so these links are a cool find.

The watch is about 35 years old and runs well. It's an electronic movement - a liitle motor - so the Seiko engineers really created a long lived bit of machinery. The dial is two tones of gray. I really like its seventies look. The case is unbuffed with some nice patina and no deep damage or gouges; the original contours and "brushed" finish are all there. Many vintage watches sold these days are over polished, sharp edges rounded; they look great but only to an untrained eye. The strap is unused, but also old - from Fidea Jewellers on Yonge street just north of College. It's chicken leg skin, nothing endangered. :) The strap is stamped: "Standard Made In Canada"; I don't think the company trades anymore. There was a time in our Dominion of Canada when we created nearly everything "in house". I wonder how the balance of trade is doing nowadays. I don't wanna know.

Fidea Jewellers itself has operated since 1928.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/...eeping-time-on-yonge-street-for-80-years.aspx




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All the merch and food in these pictures came to about $110., a splurge for me nowadays. :)
 
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there is a great place that makes the best potato pancakes in town!.....i forget where there at though :O anyways keep your eyes peeled, good looking food by the way :) i go almost every weekend
 
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sodapop said:
there is a great place that makes the best potato pancakes in town!.....i forget where there at though :O anyways keep your eyes peeled, good looking food by the way :) i go almost every weekend
Click to expand...

Ok sodapop. Watch the sugar intake. :) And see you around the Market.
 
A couple of weeks ago I bought a small framed print by Great Whale River artist Lucy Meeko ( 1929-2004 ) showing three Inuit and a dog in a small hide sail boat on choppy water, signed in Inuktitut syllabics and dated 1972. Perhaps because these Quebec prints, produced by a co-operative, are a little later in date than the more heavily collected colour prints from other parts of the north they're somewhat underestimated in artistic value. The one I picked up, for a very reasonable price, now hangs near my similarly monochromatic Naoko Matsubara woodblocks, which I bought at the Market in 1998.
 
I go semi-regularly, although it's been at least a month since I was last there. It's always fun, however, there's not as much mid-century modern stuff as they used to have, which is my main interest. Notable finds: a sunshine-yellow Lotus chair for the balcony for $35, an enamelware Dansk sauce pot for $15, and a couple of very nice East German porcelain vases for, I can't remember, but not much. The last time I was there I missed out on a complete Letraset stencil set, complete with this great three-tier plastic case for it; I saw it from across the aisle, and by the time I got to it, some other hipster had bought it already. Fair enough.

Mustapha, that's some great photography. The food never looks that appetizing in person (I agree, it's tasty, but it never *looks* that good).
 
You have to get there early - 6 o'clock if possible - when the pickers who sell to the mid-century Modern retailers are there ( as are several of the retailers ).

I used to buy large West German ceramic vases for a few bucks at the Market, church bazaars, and garage sales, and sell them to dealer friends who were stocking up on them, ten or 15 years ago. Some of the volcanic glazes are quite wonderful. Now they're difficult to find. The Blue Mountain red glaze vases don't show up much now either and I have several of them - great simple Modern shapes.

Everything has its day. And thirty years later it reappears - usually at bargain basement prices because it is "unfashionable". Architecture goes through the same highs and lows if you detach it from issues of good design and reduce it to the level of fashionability and the passing whims of "good taste".
 
Always enjoyed browsing the antique market. For a while a few years back I was going about once a week - now not so much. I actually worked on some customer satisfaction / future development study for the whole north market building around 2005. Should check it out again soon.

I've gotten a number of great books there over the years, as well as one of my prized possessions: a vintage Molson Stock Ale bar mirror! It's often hard enough just to find the actual beer these days, let alone any memorabilia.
 
I've been reading and enjoying everyones comments.

I just want to let everyone and EVCco in particular (since he's a old book nut like me) know that in Sep and Oct, these places:

http://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/booksale/
http://www.booksalefinder.com/utuniversity.html
http://www.trinity.utoronto.ca/Library_Archives/Friends_of_the_Library/Book_Sale.htm
http://www.booksalefinder.com/utstmichaels.html

are a GREAT place to find old books at "cheap lunch" prices.

I used to haunt the rare book stores and wonder where the source of all those neat one-of-a-kind books was. It was at these sales.

Last year I scored a magazine published for the launching of the Queen Mary ocean liner (ocean liner buff here) for 6 bucks. This thing was priceless in my opinion. Lots of stuff like that at these sales.
 
Ah, Mustapha! I almost wish you hadn't brought these to my attention...

This is usually the time of year I need to start saving money...not to mention I don't even have enough shelving for my current cache.
Books are piling-up all over my apartment floor - I'm worried its going to cave in soon!

Good to know, though, I'm not the only one around here afflicted by the "gentle madness." Thanks!


PS:
I think Balfour Books in Little Italy is also still having its half-off-eveything sale. I was in there a week or so ago and they were mentioning some delay moving into their new location.
They might run out of books before open up the new store!
 
Last Sunday, one of the dealers was selling coloured photographic postcards of Toronto, circa 1900, for $2 each - a view of the Isolation Hospital overlooking the Don, for instance. And another dealer has had a stereo photo card of the old Board of Trade building at Yonge and Front - asking $10 - for a couple of weeks. I don't collect such things, but for someone who does they're probably a steal.
 
Last Sunday, for $8, I picked up a copy of Mississauga City Hall: A Canadian Competition, the 1984 Rizzoli publication with images of all the entries in the design competition, more detailed renderings and models of the leading designs, and some interesting short essays that put the winning design in the context of the times.

The week before, for the same price, I got an early edition of Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, which I'd been looking for.
 
your yard? clearly this has the potential to be a "breakfast nook" in your kitchen/dining area! Just need to find a suitably worn steel framed restaurant table that you can bolt in the middle!

seriously though, who would want this piece of junk?
 
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