Filled to the “Brim”

We spent Saturday tromping through the fields of The Brimfield Antiques Show, “The world’s largest outdoor antique show”. One mile in length, scattered over 23 fields, with over 3000 dealers and 130,000 visitors that shop during the four show days, Brimfield is an adventure, to be sure. After spending the better part of 8 hours sorting through tents of refurbished furniture, industrial re-makes, textiles, bric-a-brac and other assorted “junktiques”, I can honestly say that I have had more than my fill of “treasure hunting”- at least for a while.  So many vendors, so little time…so I am just going to show you a few highlights here.

Color was the name of the game, like this row of pretty vintage dresses hanging in the sunshine. The landscape was littered with painted pots, buckets, stools, signs- anything you could paint got a splash of color- sometimes with good results, sometimes not so much.

Late in the afternoon I stumbled upon (literally, I was sunburned, sick, hungry and about to call it quits) this lovely tent from Windham, Maine, by the girls from My Sister’s Garage. Beautifully decorated, it had more the appearance of a lovely shabby chic showroom than the random piles of goods many dealers had laying around on the ground. Rejuvinated, I moved on to Beth Hylan Designs, another pretty booth featuring vintage creations by Beth, next to her partners from Nesting on Main, another lovely tent at the show.  The next stop was at Painted Pretty– and boy was it ever! The show-tent pulled me in with the color palette- teals and grays and black- so country pretty! I had seen badly re-painted furniture all day long, so I was so impressed with the quality and the beauty of their work. (By the way, they sell at the SoWa Vintage Market in Boston- definitely worth the trip if you are in the market for a vintage painted piece).

And the winner is..Industrial Chic! This table from Vintage Studios is an example of what you can do with some old factory parts, ingenuity and a lot of heavy lifting.

The biggest presence at the fair (other than those blue glazed jugs that seemed to be on every single table!) – was Industrial. If it came from an old warehouse, factory, barn or henhouse, someone up-cycled and re-purposed it into a bed, desk, sign, table, lamp, bench or light fixture. The more rustic and rustier the better. AMAZING. Got some great ideas for the Barn Workshop Project (details soon)

So with that I will leave you with a few more images of the best of the day, like these fabulous woven bags by Ahinsa Lifetime Weavers or these colorfully painted stools…and if you were wishing you had gone to “The Show”which I guess you could call the Big Leagues of Antiquing, don’t fret, they’ll be back in July! Signing off to put more sunburn cream on my face… Susan