{ the jaunty magpie }

The Bird couldn't help but share this latest antique store find! I came across a cache of vintage Stratton compacts at a little antique store along Monroe's Main Street. Monroe is the small city "as the crow flies" about twenty minutes from Duvall, where I live. I do enjoy browsing the sparkly finds in both cities, as they have their share of small vintage shops dotting their respective Main Streets, but I've probably found my most favorite things along Monroe's Main Street, including my very Jaunty jewelry box, an old tool/fittings storage box that was just made for holding all my sparkly finds. 

I love the look of old compacts. Aside from the fact that they're more sturdily made than the contemporary ones, which are either built for disposal or novelty use, the designs of vintage compacts are a little touch of classic, ladylike glamour. This particular one has a pheasant design that came out around the early to mid 1950s, as best as I could research on the interwebs. Stratton is a British company, and has been making compacts and mirrors since the late 1800s and they have a long history of being favorites for collectibles, since they've had so many different designs over the years. The shop had some of Stratton's signature "Princess" compact shape, which has a floral scalloped edge and had more of a classic-era look to them, but I went with this smaller, more modern round shape with the pheasant design. It had more potential to be used as an elegant pill box, the inset space for where the powder sits could cradle a few aspirin in a very ladylike manner. And it could still be used as a working compact, as this still had its original puff, although I would think one would want to keep that intact.

I loved this, but it wasn't meant to be in my possession for long, as I gave it as a birthday gift for a good friend's birthday. I have a corny birdbrained notion that objects contain a little bit of a past life, and when we can make a connection with that past life with someone's current life, there's a bit of magic that happens. So here's to magic and lost treasures being found. 

Jaunty Fine Print: Photo by Denise Sakaki