Researching treasures

I love coming home to find out more about the vintage things I find, almost as much as I love finding them in the first place. 

Today, I stopped by a rummage sale.  It was probably the smallest I've been to and I didn't find any vintage Pyrex so I was disappointed at first.  But since I had already paid for parking (which I was not happy about doing in the first place), I figured I might as well take a look to see if I could find anything to salvage the trip.

I've always been partial to the blues and this square bowl caught my eye:

 Here's the bottom showing a stamp that says "3335 Soholm Bornholm Denmark Stentoj".

Turns out that Soholm was a ceramics factory founded by Herman Sonne Wolffsen and Edvard Christian Sonne in 1835, and was closed down in 1996. First I thought "Stonetoj" was the name of the designer but it actually means stonewear.  This appears to be part of the most well known "blue series" designed by Einar Johansen, who worked for Soholm between 1958 to 1966.  I found this exact piece on a couple of online auction sites and it seems to be worth between $30 and $60.  Pretty good considering I paid only 50 cents  :)

Another piece of blue pottery, that I spotted under a mug, was this pretty pitcher:

Here's the mark on the bottom:

I thought the mark said "Meadowcraft", but it's actually "Meadowcroft".  It was a pottery based in Meadowvale, Ontario, that was started by Sandy Metcalfe in 1966.  He started by making honey pots for his home made honey.  They became so popular he decided to go into the pottery business.  Sadly, it closed down when he started having heart troubles in 1974 and he passed away in 2005.  On the website www.canadiandesignerresouce.ca, his daughter posted comments on his work and mentions how she would love to have some of his pieces.  I thought that was so touching, so I posted a comment for her to get in touch with me if she wants this pitcher.  I would love to reunite her with her father's work, which she helped with as a little girl.  Just writing about this makes me tear up!

On a much lighter note, I forgot to post one of the other freebies that I picked up at the estate sale I went to earlier this week:

It made me chuckle  :)

Oh, and I also forgot to post about this little fridgie that I picked up under the "no fridgie left behind" policy:

The lid and the bottom says "Balkan's Yogurt Maker".  It seems there's some debate whether this is Fire King or Anchor Hocking.  Either way, it's super cute and I'm using it to hold my salt.  Picked it up for 50 cents from a GW on half price day.

Speaking of half price days, I also went to a couple of GWs today.  Found a Pyrex canister:

It was only $1.01 after the discount!

Also found this super cute and very old looking pitcher:

It had a lot of caked on grime but cleaned up beautifully.  Love the pattern and the christmas-y colours.  It is huge and I paid $2.02 for it.  There are no marks indicating the maker and my random google searches are not coming up with anything.  Anyone have any ideas?!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day weekend!!  :)