So imagine: It’s the mid 1800’s in Lusatia and you’re a Wend. You’ve begun to feel quite a bit pinched by the King of Prussia who keeps insisting that you change your religion and your language. What do you do? Yes, you’re exactly right. You gather up your family and friends and hop on a ship to Galveston, Texas.
That is the incomplete but completely true story of how a few hundred Wends found their way to Serbin, just west of Round Top. In a charming museum right in the heart of Serbin, the Texas Wendish Heritage Society has compiled an impressive amount of information and artifacts about the Wends’ life and times. So many, in fact, that a visit there feels a lot like antique shopping, without the option to purchase. The museum facilities also house a kitchen space where volunteers gather twice a week to make traditional Wendish noodles to be sold in stores all over the area.
I’ve learned more than I have room for about the Wends, so I must leave you with just one brief thought for now. Don’t pile up your Wendish noodles with a bunch of stuff like it’s pasta. The noodles are a side dish to be eaten like a bowl of grits, with butter, salt and pepper.
Hey y’all, the Show is just months away and I hope you’ve been taking care of business. Have you… scheduled your vacation days/given after-school a heads up/measured the fireplace wall, twice/counted your secret cash stash/and all that? Proper preparation is key to Show enjoyment!
I couldn’t even imagine what a dealer’s Show Prep To Do list would look like. OK, you’re right. Imagining what a dealer’s Show Prep To Do list looks like is exactly the kind of thing I would do. I’ve asked a couple of dealers to share their lists with me, but somehow sharing their lists of todo’s isn’t on their list of todo’s because they’re so darn busy doing their todo’s. I get it.
Matt White of Recycling The Past is one of the Show’s most well-known, well-liked and well-stocked dealers. A doer extraordinaire. So it’s quite cool that he has a huge warehouse in Warrenton open for shoppers any weekend of the year, provided we kindly email or call ahead. The space is both a gigantical back room for several dealers’ booths and a cozy hangout headquarters. Squooshy sofas and a full kitchen and sleeping spaces are tucked into one corner of the building, completely surrounded by airplane parts and slabs of wood and disco balls and a jeep and just look. UPDATE: Matt’s opened the incredibly cool and popular Flophouze Hotel next to his warehouse. Stay there!
The warehouse is known as The Round Top Ballroom. Obviously it makes for an event space like no other, and word is it’s just waiting for its first wedding. I hope it’s yours! Weddings in unexpected places are a big favorite of mine, just ask anyone who attended ours at Miami’s Monkey Jungle. (Tagline: “Where the Humans are Caged and the Monkeys Run Wild!”) Since I don’t need a wedding, I’m thinking of putting on a big old music party out there one of these Shows. Wanna come?
Randy gets around. And back around. And around again. New Jersey to Texas to California to Alabama to New Jersey and then up and down and around again from there. He’s a true backroads traveler and one of the most enjoyable Instagramsters I follow. During the Antique Show he somehow manages to come to a complete stop for a few weeks to set up shop at the Texas Rose Field. His funky little building is a curiosity cabinet of of carefully picked and plucked travel souvenirs that reflect his idiosyncratic take on the world. What a Wunderkammer!
Have you ever heard of a Flux Kit? Maybe you call it a Fluxus Box. Maybe? I got all worked up a few years ago when I stumbled upon the mazy details of the 1960’s NYC art world’s Fluxus Movement. As you might expect of a 1960’s NYC art movement, it encompassed life’s entire enchilada: art, music, film, architecture, culture, commerce, performance art, publishing, Yoko Ono, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, clear plastic suitcases, and a ‘let’s switch our clothes during the ceremony’ wedding.
If The Jersey Picker’s slightly subversive, terrifically exuberant art-is-what-is assemblages tickle your fancy you might want to take a little Google Voyage yourself through the absolutely fascinating and inspirational Fluxus landscape. It’s a long and deep road that’ll take some time to travel and I know you may be kind of busy right now, so just so I don’t leave you hanging, distracted all day wondering what the heck a Flux Kit is, here’s just a snippet of the Wikipedia description:
The second flux-anthology, the Fluxkit (late 1964), collected together early 3D work made by the collective in a businessman’s case, an idea borrowed directly from Duchamp’s Boite en Valise. Within a year, plans for a new anthology, Fluxus 2, were in full swing to contain Flux films (with hand held projectors provided), disrupted matchboxes and postcards by Ben Vautier, plastic food by Claes Oldenburg, FluxMedicine by Shigeko Kubota, and artworks made of rocks, ink stamps, outdated travel tickets, undoable puzzles and a machine to facilitate humming.
Mead. You probably don’t say that word very often. Unless of course you’re an Assassin’s Creed gamer. Or a Harry Potterhead. Or a Renaissance Faire performer. Or a Ringer. Or one of those folks with a particular interest in the life and times of Pliny the Elder.
Now I’m in trouble. With every intention to write about mead, I’ve once again spun myself all off on a research tangent. Pliny the Elder is fascinating! Did you know that he died trying to save people from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius? And that he basically invented the encyclopedia? Heck, he kind of invented the whole Internet if you really think about it. But who even knows this? Perhaps if his parents had named him Leonardo Da Vinci instead of Pliny he’d be getting the recognition he very clearly deserves.
For all of us who love our interior design, here’s an interesting nugget: Pliny the Younger (the Elder’s nephew) was a wealthy lawyer who amassed a collection of elaborate villas during his lifetime, including two on George Clooney’s Lake Como. If you need any inspiration for the design of a hippodrome or a cryptoporticus, or if your client just saw Foxcatcher and has asked you to build her a duPontian xystus, you’re going to want to get your hands on the Garden Letters of P the Y.
Now back to mead. Next time you’re out in the Round Top neighborhood, please take the side road over to the Rohan Meadery. Even better, like them on FB and when they post a live music event mark it on your calendar. Bring the kids. And the camera. Wear costumes. Or not. Skol!
Antiquing is pretty much the same as museuming, except you get to buy the exhibits. During my history walks through the fields and tents of Round Top I’m struck by the plethora of smoking memorabilia; tobacco silks and ashtrays and lighters and cigar boxes and pipes and such. It’s all a reminder of how successfully we’ve reduced the once stylish habit of smoking to a rather sorry process of dragging through the stick as quickly as possible while hunkered outside the service entrance in a stale winter coat trying to avoid small talk with Carl from Receivables. Heck, even our NO SMOKING signage has lost its mojo.
And while we’re on the topic, may I say that I’ve driven through most of the United States and one thing I’ve observed is this: There are still a lot of smokers in the state of Oklahoma. Now it’s true that most of my time in OK has been spent on its interstate highways, and it very well may be that I haven’t been seeing a lot of smokers, just a lot of places to buy tax free cigarettes. So how ’bout a look at the actual numbers? It turns out that there are a lot of smokers in OK (it comes in fourth behind KY, WV & MS). So I’m going to go further out on my limb and say that I bet it’s no coincidence that the National Lighter Museum was located right there in the town of Guthrie, OK. It looks to be a fun little stop… but heads up. I don’t see any updates on their website after 2008 so if you’re ready for that kind of museuming you should probably give them a call to make sure they’re still in business.
The good news? You've discovered The Crush List. The not so good? I haven't been actively posting here for a few years now, which means the never terribly reliable details about my crushes are even more unreliable. Antique vendors have switched venues, shops in town have moved or passed on, donkeys may or may not be in the same front yards... In spite of the risks of massive misdirection I've left the site up in hopes that it still achieves its goal - to inspire you to visit Round Top for the Antiques Show or any time you have the time.
With that said, I leave you to explore this random list of my very favorite things about my very favorite place. I’ve tried to capture the area’s special pieces and parts. Some are big deal, some are small gestures, some are legendary and some are just tiny pip and squeak.
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