On our recent shopping trip to Paris and England with The Cheeky Mare, we spent many memorable days at the famous flea markets. In Paris, we shopped at the Les Puces de Saint-Ouen and then two markets in England, the Lincoln Home & Antique Market (former Swinderby Market) and the Newark Market. These days were full of inspiration and wonderful shopping. The following photos are some of the things that we saw . . .
This booth at the Paris flea market was full of industrial antiques mixed with soft upholstered chairs and natural elements. It was beautiful.
This Paris vendor had shelves full of old french books, music sheets, documents, and miscellaneous papers. We spent some time searching through his collection and sent home some of our favorites. We purchased the letter in the picture above which was written in 1620.
We found this chair tucked away into a small corner of the Paris flea market. To me, it had every design detail that I found familiar with french furniture . . .fabulous Royal satin stripped upholstery . . . curves and wood carvings . . . years and years of layered, peeling, gilded paint.
Isn't this stone planter gorgeous? It would have gone home with us, but we were minutes too late! A woman on our trip, June Ainsworth, bought it shortly before we arrived in this booth. She is taking it to her Big Red Barn show in March to sell!
I was excited to find this vendor's collection of Victorian era cold creams and ointment jars. Each one is unique and charming. (A few went home with me, for my personal collection!)
Wished I had bought this! I can't stop thinking about this faded and stained aerial view of Paris from many years ago. The print was very large and would have made a perfect conversational piece of art in any home.
We found these garden tables in one of the flea markets in England. They were already sold when we arrived, but we still loved the simplicity of their design and could easily visualize them lined with fresh green plants.
What an incredible ensemble of Swedish furniture this vendor had! We saw him at the two England flea markets and each time were stunned by his collection.
Would love to see this bench pulled up to a dining room table . . .
These chairs tell a beautiful story. Their faded blue gray color was actually achieved by the color die from the original fabric, which had already been removed, revealing the stained fabric liner beneath. Also notice the backs of the charis were still upholstered in a vintage printed stripe. I wouldn't change a thing about these set of chairs . . .
There were also a pair of these. I loved the subtle writing on the fabric liner, which marked their history and made them one-of-a-kind.
Have you ever seen a concrete "tufted" chair!? Fabulous!
These vintage nightstands caught my eye because of the beautiful finish, many layers of washed white and faded paint.
These were in the same booth, just as beautiful!
Okay, I must add that there was a challenging part of our trip, the weather and the mud, were not on our side! We spent days trudging through the fields set up with "marquees" filled with gorgeous antiques and unique finds. We continued to pull our shopping carts with their thickly coated wheels through the mud in search of our treasures. We wore boots to our knees and still came home each night with mud . . .
Through it all, we still had smiles on our faces and peace in our heart. The weather wasn't going to change our moods as we shopped and shopped. Along the journey, we came across this little dog who seemed to be as happy as we were, as he posed for my photo.
We couldn't have done all of this serious shopping without the help of our friends at The Cheeky Mare and we will continue to have appreciation for our new English friends, Steve, Cliff, and Paul for getting our found treasures to us safely! The container is on the water, and should be here soon . . .
A Preview . . . . Cliff and Steve loading this gorgeous french hutch into our container!
