I think it’s high time to resume making Magic Windows posts again as well, don’t you? Magic Windows is a peek into my world and adventures, via the tiny eye of the camera on my telephone. Earlier this week, I went on a little day trip with my darling Miss Amelia Foxtrot to procure two gorgeous new phonographs for her new business, The Austin Phonograph Company. Amelia DJs antique 78s on her vintage phonographs at events like weddings and the like – it’s really wonderful to see and hear. A dealer in this equipment was set up out at Marburger Farm, one of the many markets for antique dealers that pop up in the fields of rural Round Top, Texas twice a year. I always love to go comb for deals, and this time I did come away with bags full of treasures to fill my booth at Uncommon Objects. Even if you’re not an antique dealer, just going out to the country and taking in the country fair atmosphere, and the energy that suffuses these odd temporary junk villages is so much fun. Dealers in curiosities come from all over the country, and set up in barns and tents – many of them create elaborate and beautiful displays of their merchandise, and you can be guaranteed to see every kind of taxidermied animal, vintage clothing from every era, and all sorts of amazing and bizarre treasures. Of course, much of it is meant for serious collectors and designers with serious money, but you can find bargains if you know how to hunt. Even if you don’t buy a thing, it’s a lot of fun to wander and gape at marvelous things you often don’t see outside of showrooms or museums, especially in the middle of a pasture that normally only hosts cow-patties and old twisty oaks.
Check out Amelia’s account of our adventure, as well as more about her phonographic/photographic endeavors:
Uncouth Documents
Phonograph Portraits, or, how I climbed into a bell

MOIN VITE / PLUS VITE – this old French beauty actually resonates not through a speaker or a horn, but through a violin, which is ingeniously attached. I didn’t get a good picture of that, alas – so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

We got to hear the Angel’s Serenade, played on this fabulous contraption. It was heavenly.

Beastly angels in a very peculiar Sunday School mural.
This reminded me of one of my favorite lines from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, The First Elegy:
“Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?
und gesetzt selbst, es nähme einer mich plötzlich ans Herz:
ich verginge von seinem stärkeren Dasein.
Denn das Schöne ist nichts als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht, uns zu zerstören.
Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.”
“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?
and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart:
I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Every angel is terrifying.”

Aren’t these carousel faces sweet?

Animal festival masks from Sonnenberg, Germany – circa 1880. These are worn for Fasching, which Germany’s carnival season – their own answer to Mardi Gras. It starts on the 11th day of November at exactly 11minutes after 11am and ends at the stroke of midnight on Shroud Tuesday – often referred to as Fat Tuesday (the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday).

Crazy giant clown mug – made by Elsmore + Forster. E + F were manufacturers of earthenware at Tunstall – c.1853 – 71.

Bunny nipples! This jar is available for sale at my booth at Uncommon.
It was hard to give up, but I have a feeling someone out there needs it more than me.

Remember Me. Oh, I will – but I’m finally letting this one go. I’ve held on to this photo of a handsome man in a hat and glasses for so long now. Who did he give this to? Who was he beseeching to remember him? I was happy to pretend to be her for awhile, but it’s time to pass him on. Hopefully the person who’s meant to remember him will find him in the shop and take him home and gaze at him every night. I’m reading How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti right now, and yesterday this line jumped out at me:
“It has long been known to me that certain objects want you as much as you want them. These are the ones that become important, the objects you hold most dear. The others fade from your life entirely. You wanted them, but they did not want you in return.”