Bama Planter

I've seen no other examples on ebay, google images, or even pinterest. These layer cake pans still have the original paper labels glued inside. The 1980's price tags are still on the back: over $300 each. I am sure the pans are still around, but the paper labels had to be destroyed to use the pan. These were never used and therefore are preserved as they came from the store. I am sure they are quite rare !

Teacher of Latin, French, English, Theater, and Social Studies for 38 years. Trading and Dealing in Antiques since I was 13. Researching genealogy since I was 12. Art and art restoration. Gesso frame restoration. Herb and pass-along plant gardening; Dressing in 1850's clothing. Reading and rereading Dickens novels. Living in my 200 year old family home. Simple life and primitive crafts ( Tasha Tudor hated the term "crafts." ) Making new adult friends. Going to live auctions and bidding on online auctions. Crawling under old houses to look at the architecture. Writing letters with a dip pen. Never willfully hurting other people's feelings.

Step One: I have gathered enough walnuts from the creek bottom to make some stain. The next step will be to get some thick leather gloves and get the husks off of them.

It's been a great eleven year run !!!!!

My friend Deborah calls this my keeping room or buttery, since I have no small room yet to put such things except in the corner of the log room.   My friend Larry made this, the best photograph ever of the front room.  He died of Covid earlier this year.  He loved primitives and we would talk for hours about some piece he had found on Marketplace. He thought nothing of getting his friend Michael and driving 200 miles or more to look at a pie safe or a hunt board.  This shows the egg gourds I planted several years ago. They rest in a colonial trencher. Larry sold me the table and the step back. The rug is a Nichols Chinese Art Deco which brings out the greens in the step back and the table.   This is a more recent photograph of the house after I bought the high back sofa. I needed somewhere comfortable for my ( rare) guests to sit. I will probably recover it in a brown fabric or build another one. The door is soon to loose its mustard color as are the w...

In my life I have attended dozens of estate sales, as many of you have. Some estates really do have spectacular things. Other sales reveal the unusual interests of the people who lived there, and often I discover once-admired collections now priced at a fraction of what they originally cost. Estate sales can be an exciting experience, and a profitable one. I remember the Kroell estate sale.  I was too young to buy anything then, but I recall as a child how the adults were astonished by the heavy Victorian furniture in the house.  Many people in town only wanted a look inside, because stories circulated that one room actually had leather wallpaper that required oiling to keep it from cracking.   My aunt bought some books with the sisters' names inside the front cover.  Did you know someone photographed the entire interior of the house before it was destroyed?  Many reading this have much greater knowledge than I do about the Kroells. I also remember D...

  My love of history began when I was a child.  Maybe it was the arrowheads I would find in our back field along Shoal creek.   Maybe it was the broken pieces of mule chains that would wash up in the red gullies on our farm ( now Orr Park)  after a summer storm.  Or perhaps it was the square nails I would dig out of tin buckets sitting in dark corners of the hay barn.   I became a hunter and gatherer of old things.  My grandmother gave me the blue fruit jars discarded in her basement.   To me , anything old was valuable.  Knowing this about me will help you to understand what led me to experience the most frightening event of my life.  Miss  Dearborn lived in one of Montevallo's  old Victorian homes.    That was not her real name. I'm not telling you her real name.    Some of you may have heard of her.   Some of you might have been friends with her.   I don't want anyone to...

Rev. Joseph Prentice,  who believed in equal education for all. Judge Mitchell T. Porter, son of Dr. Mitchell Askew Porter and wife Mary Margaret Wade. Dr. Mitchell A. Porter 's death on the 10th of October 1825 was one of Montevallo's first great tragedies.  He was spending Sunday at his home near the intersection of Island and Shelby Street when his father in law, Mr. Reuben Wade, wanted him to look at some land for sale. Dr. Porter, being a devout Methodist, did not want to go,  saying that nothing of a business nature should transpire on Sunday.  An argument ensued, and Mr. Wade stabbed his son-in-law with a knife.  Dr.  Porter died the next day, a month before his 28th birthday.   His wife , Mary Margaret Porter, was the only witness to the murder.  Feelings around the town were so intense that the trial was moved to Jefferson County. Mrs. Porter gave such an emotional account of the event, pleading for the life o...

I won my second Highland Cattle painting this week.  I am excited to get it.  It has a small area needing repair but  I can take care of that. 

I won this Hudson River painting from an auction house in South Carolina on December 22nd.   I have just received it today after a two month delay.  They are the worst for delivering things .  I paid for it the day I won it!  I thought I'd never get it but it has finally arrived and I love it.