Page 16 - Issue 29 - VE Magazine

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of boxes being unpacked! “That’s it, I can’t sleep any longer, breakfast can wait, let’s get out there.” By 5.30am, we were hotfooting it out onto the street.
This turned out to be one of Flanders’ largest antiques and secondhand markets, attracting hundreds of vendors, and thousands of bargain-hunters just like us. Having walked the entire length of the
fair and back again a number of times, spotting something different each time we passed through, we must have clocked up 10 miles without even noticing! There was everything you could imagine: taxidermy, trumpets, old advertising, dummy heads, clogs, Mid-century furniture... the list goes on and on.
We bought two lovely old jars to hold a collection of broken porcelain doll’s heads we had in stock; a lovely 1930s ‘Buvez les bières de garde’ poster, a couple of 1960s Italian lights and a lovely plaster bust of
a 1930s girl with just the right amount
of wear. I’ve picked up the odd piece of Verceram Ceramique (1930s to 1971) over the years, on the rare occasion I’ve been lucky enough to spot one. But I’ve never seen any lights by them, let alone a pair, so I jumped in and snapped them up, along with other pieces that came as part of the same lot.
If you’re wondering what we do with
all our foreign finds, well, they first come back to our unit – some will adorn the office for a while, others we’ll place in our local Antiques centre. Larger items will get cleaned, polished and, if needs be, restored and researched before being photographed and added to the Molecula site, as well as design portals such as The Hoarde, Design Markt and Pamono.
So if you’re interested in buying any of our recent purchases from Bruges, they’ll be online very shortly – VE and Molecula will keep you posted!
Check out the fairs, markets and everything else Belgium has to offer at www.belgiumtheplaceto.be.ve
Some of our Belgian Booty
16 / August-September 2016 / ve
www.vintagexplorer.co.uk
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