Glossary of Antiquing and Collecting Terms

March 26, 2023

When I was in high school, I half-jokingly told people I wanted to be a lexicographer when I grew up. I began reading the dictionary when I bombed the verbal portion of the PSAT as a sophomore. As I studied literature in college, I geeked out over the Oxford English Dictionary’s deep dive into a word’s etymology.

Lexicographers monitor and record developments in the English language and decide if and when a new word should be officially added to our lexicon. “Pawternity leave,” “bodycon” and “sock puppet” all were added to Dictionary.com in 2022 by the persuasion of a lexicographer.

When you are a wordy person, you surround yourself with wordy people, and words are your whacky form of amusement. Over the years, especially on antiquing roadtrips, my friends and I have developed our own glossary of “antiquing terms.”

So, in a sense, I guess I have manifested my lexicographer destiny.

I thought I should do what a lexicographer does: make it official by publishing the terms.

TQITB

Short for “The quest is the best!” A friend offhandedly chanted “TQITB” in the parking lot of Goodwill one day, after admitting she never finds anything. But the searching—the questing—is really the best part. I use it as a mantra when I go antiquing, especially on days I expect to strike out.

Fauxled

A pormanteau for being fooled by something that is faux old. You know—the piece that looks vintage but when you take it home and investigate it, you realize it was likely manufactured in China and sold at Home Goods. You were “fauxled.”

Goodwill at Gunpoint

I coined this morbid phrase in the aisles of Goodwill. It’s a game I play at thrift stores, estate sales, antique malls, and flea markets when I haven’t found anything but imagine being held at gunpoint until I find something that I could resell for a profit. It causes me to look a little longer—and often I find a hidden treasure.

Collection Creep

When a collection grows without intent or explanation. One day it’s not there, and the next day it’s out of control.

Doodadery

The accumulation of doodads that delights a doodadist.

Doodadist

A person who likes and collects all types of useless but beautiful items. (See a picture of Megillicutti.)

Flea Market Smackdown

A scenario at a flea market when there is a threat of a confrontation between a dealer and a shopper or a shopper and another shopper, often over pricing or competition for an item.

Pantiquing

The state of breathless excitement you experience when you’re two miles away from an amazing flea or next in line at an epic estate sale.

Willies

Those crazy people who line up at Goodwill’s doors at 8:30 am to storm the store at 9am. It might also be appropriately used to describe the person who gives you the “willies” in lines at estate sales—the grumpy, territorial type who assumes everyone is going to cut in front of them or take what’s “theirs.”

A Poo-Di

A skanky antiquing location. It originated from an antique mall that my friend and I said smelled like a “poopy diaper.”

Grandnew

The result of taking something from grandma’s era and giving it a fresh spin.

Do the High-Low

This is a metaphor for looking in unexpected places for items. When you’re at a thrift store, you always look up on the tippy top of shelves as well as the bottom shelves for overlooked items. It’s the same with estate sales: start in the attic (the high) and move your way to the basement (the low). Usually, the less prized items are stored there, and are accordingly given a lower price.

Moby Dick

The item that you’ll monomaniacally search for to complete your collection.

You Can Always Paint Over It

February 26, 2023

I doodled my way through dull college lectures. Actually, I doodled my way through every lecture. Also every sermon and mind-numbing meeting.

My doodles don’t dazzle. They’re spontaneous patterns of squigglies, florals, dots and lines with overlays of bubbly and super-swirly font. It’s nonsensical fun.

I can doodle, but I can’t draw. Even stick figures fight for believable form under my pencil.

About eight years ago—the year I started my IG account, Megillicutti—I invited one of my best friends, an artist, to hand paint one side of my hallway. I had pinned an image of an over-scaled, floral pattern for inspiration.

The original inspiration for my wall courtesy of http://www.atelier-wandlungen.de/

Within a few hours, my friend had sketched in pencil a similar pattern; later that week I filled it in with paint that contrasted with the existing base paint.

All I had to do was paint between the lines.

At one point I tried being clever, though, by adding a flourish to a leaf. That leaf grew into a leggy pre-historic amoeba. And because I had long ago lost the color the hallway was originally painted, I couldn’t paint over it. (Fortunately, the amoeba stretched nearly unperceptably across bottom of the wall.)

You would think I’d be dissuaded to try any type of freeform painting. But a year or two later I continued the pattern on the opposing wall—solo.

My mom, Judy Davis, and I completed the hallway believing that if we messed up, we could always paint over it.

You could tell it was done by a wanna-be artist. It wasn’t as good as the pattern on the other side. But it was good enough.

Good enough to live with for six more years. And good enough for an inspiring IG pic or two.

A New Year. A New Hallway.

For about a year, though, I’ve itched to repaint that hallway. My friend has since moved, so I couldn’t rope her into my dreams. I looked for a muralist on Upwork, but the cost was in the thousands. I even begged my son to help.

I quickly tamped down any “just do it” bravado. And so the wall sat “as is” for months—until my mom came for a visit.

There must be a doodling gene. Because my mom is a doodler, too. I thought two doodlers are better than one. Between the two of us, we might be able to pull off the hallway overhaul.

Perfection Is for Fools

Originally, my idea was to paint the wall like a giant paint-by-number. All the negative space a dark shade of pink; all the foliage another shade of pink.

It didn’t work, for many reasons.

The biggest reason was the original design was too much. We needed to eliminate my overwrought doodles. Simplify it. That meant pretty much starting from scratch.

The mantra for our week (and it was a a full week of painting) was: “You can always paint over it.”

Whenever one of us stepped up on the ladder to try painting a new flower, we’d bolster the other’s courage with, “We can always paint over it.”

Whenever a leaf looked more like a Hatch green chile, we, in unison, would say, “We can paint over it!”

When we decided to add a green accent and then another green accent, we reminded each other, “We can always paint over it.” The green stayed. It made the design pop.

And when we stitched in yellow accent, we immediately painted over it. Because that’s what you do when something doesn’t work: you paint over it, and try again.

“With each flower, squiggle and leaf, we reminded each other that perfection was for fools and that we could always paint over the not-yet-right.”

— Melissa Parks

We doodled and repainted our way through the week to good enough. Maybe even fantastic. We did it.

The Wisdom of You Can Always Paint Over It

For perfectionists like I am, there’s wisdom in embracing a “you can paint over it” mentality. Maybe like me, you fail to fail. You never try. That type of failure is a far worse failure than trying and doing something imperfectly the first time.

Each messy flower we painted over was a lesson to be applied to the next flower. Stroke by stroke our skills improved. Our confidence grew. Our vision came to life.

Today, as I write this blog post, and look through the door at the hallway beyond, I feel proud that my intent found form—that I embraced paint-over-imperfection.

I’ll end with a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who says it better than I do.

Let our defeats—our paint-overs—be victories in disguise.

Loss and Gain

     When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
  Little room do I find for pride.

     I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
  Has fallen short or been turned aside.

     But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
  The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide

How Do You Live with All Those Collections?

February 12, 2023 in Collecting

“How do you live with all those collections?” Every time I’m interviewed, I can’t escape that question. Often it’s followed by, “How do you dust it all?” (I have to tame my tip-of-my-tongue snarky response: Just like you dust your stuff. One section at a time.)

I get it. I have what feels like a museum’s worth of collections. If you’re not a collector, it’s easy to imagine being swallowed up by gallery walls, strangled by doodads, suffocated by dusty stuff.

“For collectors, though, collections are life-giving. Grounding and purposeful. Stories of our past and present. Reflections of our souls. To live without our collections would be to abandon a part of ourselves.”

— Melissa Parks

For collectors, though, collections are life-giving. Grounding and purposeful. Stories of our past and present. Reflections of our souls. To live without our collections would be to abandon a part of ourselves.

But the question ”How do you live with all those collections?” is a good one.

We’ve all been in homes where the collections are the home. They suck up the oxygen of a space. Every surface is topped with stuff. Every cabinet is filled with stuff. And every inch of every wall is covered with stuff.

Some people are comfortable (and comforted!) living with all that stuff. Everyone’s threshold for what a right amount of stuff is is as varied as the stuff in a person’s home. And really a home is for nobody but you and your family. If it works, then it works.

I’ve had to manage my collections. I live in a 900-or-so square-foot home with two other people. Space is limited. We need the extra oxygen that collections can consume. My husband needs space on the sofa side table to put his Bubly and (ugly) tablet. We need a spot to put food on the buffet when we serve dinner. We need space to walk and to sit.

I need white space in my home to create white space for my being: space to escape the crazies of the day and breathe. I’ve found, visual clutter creeps in and steals my peace.

I’ve also discovered that “a collection on every surface” approach in our small home doesn’t serve the overall design of our home. Too much is too much. My home needs a spot for my eye to rest. Editing my collections provides visual relief—and actually highlights the pieces I have on display, so I enjoy them even more.

I want every piece on display to serve the purpose and feel of the room. Once I began being more thoughtful in how I displayed my collections, I actually enjoyed my home more.

I’ll never answer to the sobriquet “Miss Minimalist.” My inner collector clamors for more collections. Just one more mirror, pleeeeeease! And nobody ever would walk in my home and think, “What a beautifully executed minimalist home.” I’m a maximalist. But as a maximalist I’ve learned how to control my collections so they don’t control me and my home.

“If our homes are our stories, and our collections are our exhibits, it is our delightful role as collectors to curate an experience that supports the way we live.”

— Melissa Parks

So my answer to “How do you live with all those collections?” is this:

Don’t listen to me. If you like having all your collections out all of the time and on every surface, to thine own collector’s self be true. Your home is for you: not me, not IG, not an Anti-Tchochki-ist. Be proud of your collections and enjoy them.
Rotate your collections. My attic and basement are packed with bins of collections that I put away for a period. When I fancy a new look, I head to the bins. Like it’s Christmas morning, I claw through the bubble wrap to delight in a collection I had forgotten and promptly “play” with it like a new toy.
Don’t be afraid to put away your collections for a period; it can actually heighten your appreciation of it when you re-discover it. Absence of of a collection makes your collector’s heart grow fonder.
And your home gets a fresh look without buying a new piece of furniture or fresh paint.
Display with storytelling in mind. This is a little more abstract principle. But it has helped me think through how I want my collections to relate to the room in which they are displayed. Collections on display should enhance the room and speak to the other items—including the other collections—that are in the room.
Sometimes this means being aware of texture and colors. The collecting adage “group similar items together” is only part of the solution. I have a hefty collection of white McCoy pottery on display in my living room. I also have a similarly hefty collection of turquoise McCoy pottery. But I don’t display it in the same room as the white McCoy, even though it’s McCoy. It’s displayed in the kitchen.
If I displayed both in the same room on or in different cabinets, it would feel like a McCoy convention. Not to mention, the white works better with the living room’s color story; and the green works better with the kitchen’s color story.
When you think of collections as part of the room’s story, then you think about how the color and the shapes within a collection relate to the room’s color, furniture, art and purpose.
My antique lily paintings are another example. I have many floral paintings, but I only display the lily paintings in the dining room. The coloring of the oils makes sense with the coloring of the room—and they perfectly fit the awkward corner.
So as you think about what collections to display, think about the space, the color, and the surroundings of a room. Often, you’ll know which will shine.
Deconstruct your collections. This is antithetical to the timeless advice of “group all like items together.” And it takes a bit more artistry to execute.
My vintage shell art collection, my beaded flower collection, my alabaster collection, my seascape collection—all of these are broken up and spread throughout my home and grouped with other items. A gallery wall in my living room, for instance, is home to a few pieces of my shell art collection, mixed in with a few seascapes, landscapes, and taxidermy butterflies.
I know people who have impressive shell art collections that fill a singular wall. I know others who have impressive gallery walls of only taxidermy butterflies. Even I break this rule by having a bedroom wall covered with seascapes. A grouping of one item is undeniably spectacular and visually arresting.
But a few pieces of shell art on this wall makes sense. The texture creates interest, and the material speaks to the seascapes that share the same space. And the shell art and seascapes on that wall speak to the items atop a cabinet at the opposite end of the room.
Similarly, the seascapes on that wall relate to the seascapes in my bedroom just around the corner.
Think like a museum curator. I know the word “curate” is frought with debate and distate because of its overuse (we curate experiences; we curate a menu; we curate a group of friends). But collecting is curating. The word works.
How we display our collections is akin to what a museum curator does when creating an exhibit. She tells a narrative from display to display, room to room. She decides what is displayed, where it’s displayed, and how it’s displayed so that the story has a flow.
The “how” is critical. Think of museum displays. Glass cases for small objects. Pedestals to elevate an impressive statuary. And lots of white space to draw the eye in to the artifact. A story is told from artifact to artifact. There is a flow from piece to piece.
Similar principles can be applied to our collections. In my home, I’m a fan of vitrines to showcase special items. Pedestals to elevate items. I also think about the visual path of my home, and what people see (what I see) when they move from corner to corner, and space to space.
Maybe we want to be reminded of our history or our passions. Maybe we want to feel something that a certain color of a collection provokes. Maybe we want to remind ourselves of what we hope for, and a collection can be a signpost of our dreams.
If our homes are our stories, and our collections are our exhibits, it is our delightful role as collectors to curate an experience that supports the way we live.