The Estate Sale Diaries- September 7, 2012- The Sale

Here is a vintage olive oil carafe imagined as a portly French waiter. And he was not the only French waiter at this estate sale. There was a serving tray with five waiters painted on it and a set of four prints featuring more wait staff. There was a cupboard full of Bon Appetit magazines with some Gourmets thrown in- all a quarter apiece, and a kitchen full of cookware and knives and sets of soup bowls. Here is a Limoges soup cup and plate. There were two. I bought them both.

A Waterford crystal canister with bits of coffee still in it.

"You aren't going to buy any more cookbooks are you?', one of my friends asked me. Probably not I said, since I cannot believe there would be anything of interest I don't already have.

How could I resist a book such as "The Cajun Gourmet-Afloat And On the Road". Especially an autographed copy by a man whose other cookbooks are"Cooking Country With Shotgun Red","All I Ever Wanted To Know About Cooking I Learned From Momma", and "The Upper Crud Cookbook".


I also bought The New Orleans Times-Picayune "Creole Cookbook".


The people who left these books behind were bon vivants. The basement was full of luggage, the walls covered with French oil paintings, the signs of good living everywhere. Sequined ball gowns, St. John evening suits, even a man's African safari helmet. A woman I talked to who works for a local police department brought home a seven hundred dollar suit for twenty dollars.


The once owners were readers as well. There were books about the South and Southerners. The coffee table had five or six books about Andrew Jackson. There was a leather bound set of Conrad's novels.


I, and others longed to go into the rooms with locked doors, and outside onto the terrace, but these were blocked. The sale moves there next week.

One last photo of a set of French salad plates I could not pass by-