drawing | second hand

objects that have shone in other people's lives, turning up on our doorstep... looking back, i realize i've been buying second hand and brocante (before it desperately and masterfully got labeled vintage) for over thirty years, kick starting it, when i lived just round the corner from the brussels' daily flea market on place du jeu de balle - vossenplein, in the early eighties. the flea market survived the years {images left = collection STADSARCHIEF - right = "voddemet" - bastin & evrard}. it was all about richly printed, silken pj's back then.

all these beautiful, wonderful, mysterious, filthy, hard and soft, fragile goods. some things you give away again, because the object doesn't ring with you in the end. some beauties get broken (glass breakage an average of one a week, easily, in our house...). sixties and seventies curtains dying on you (but not before you make a postcard from the impressive design). cashier ladies carefully wrapping up tiny objects; others showing you the door. ... {farmer girls above will make a reapparence here, over the coming months.}

books, second hand books! we have so many books, sitting round waiting to be read. we can make books from second hand matter!... here's my first ever home and hand made notebook. it does look clever, don't it? do take a closer look. the endpaper, although a little wrinkled, sits well in the front of my notebook, does it not? okay. 

turning a few pages.... uh-hoh... upside down, is it? yes, we did it : gone and glued the whole she-bang in topsy-turvy... ☻

but ha. i'll turn a blind eye, put on me sunglasses and give my own personal second hand the exit role. joke's drawing challenge theme this weekend is just lovely, lovely. it made me rush off to the thrift shop yesterday morning to still my craving and not having my camera on hand, i just drank in the scenery. for future reference. {image above and not thrifted at all: celine's necklace. "how're you celine, and don't you come up with more found objects, hear! ☻" & that hand!}. off to sniff around yours now. & RIVER UPDATE