Before Strauss's accident we finished our new old cupboard I introduced you to in this post. Waiting five years to find the right piece of furniture was definitely worth the wait! Here is a look...
...I painted the inside of the shelves my standard grey. The cupboard did not have a back, so...
...my husband fixed that. I chose a vintage wall paper I found on ebay to cover the back panel. It has a grey background with little cream colored pagodas and oriental figures which is a good compliment to my oriental collection the cupboard holds.
The wall paper turned out great. I was glad to have my husband's help to keep everything level and square.
We moved the cupboard into the house and attached the back panel.
Before moving the cupboard in I sanded down the patches of brown paint on the drawers to reveal some of the wood underneath. I think I will be doing a bit more sanding over time because I really liked the look of the wood.
I was so happy to have the cupboard ready to fill up! I saved the original hardware and my husband worked on putting the back on while I loaded the cupboard...
...with my collection. The picture above is the old cupboard I was using. I have been seriously collecting oriental things for about five years, I didn't think I had so much, but wait until you see it in the new big cupboard...
...voila! Love it! I had so much fun filling up the new cupboard and displaying my collection! It is so much lighter than the old cupboard I had, so my collection is easier to see.
This is a fuzzy picture, but this section of the cupboard has an extra tall compartment that I was able to hang my lantern from San Francisco's China Town. The figurines of the man and woman on the upper shelf are very special to me. I inherited them almost 20 years ago from my great grandmother Eva. As a small child I remember visiting her home where she had a big collection of these oriental people. They sat on the ledge between her kitchen and dining room and I remember crawling up on her sofa by the ledge to get a closer look. I think it was these figures that inspired me to collect oriental things in the first place. They still have their original price tags on their bottoms, from McLellan's, 69 cents each. She wrote 1954, Alpena Michigan on the bottom. Also the tall porcelain figurine of the man dressed in yellow standing behind them was my great grandmothers. My grandmother gave it to me three years ago and said she remembers it in my great grandmother's home in the 1950's. The lower shelf holds my collection of vintage tea and ginger boxes. They have the most beautiful graphics. I will show them to you in a post I am working on.
Most of my colllection is a bit kitschy. I collect anything with pagodas, lanterns and geishas. I collect oriental tea pots and tea boxes. I collect little oriental people figurines, mostly made in Japan or marked occupied Japan. I also have some cloissone vases and little boxes. I like colorful things that make me smile when I look at them. I have some little oriental screens and geisha ware dishes. The tea set pictured above has such sweet pagodas on it. It is a children's set from the 40's or early 50's. Most of the things in my collection are from that period.
This area of the cupboard has most of my oriental tea pots. The bright blue pot is marked Japan. The brown pot with gold fans on the right was given to me last year by my grandmother. She received it as a wedding gift in Michigan in 1956. I love it! The top shelf has my blue and white pieces. I have a few pieces of blue willow china and also a saucer and tea pot that are vintage souvenirs from the Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco that I found at an estate sale last fall.
I am so very happy with our new old cupboard! It is exactly what I had been looking for, a large cupboard with glass doors to display my collection on the top and storage on the bottom. The drawers are great for holding my candles and also my non-Christmas holiday decorations for Valentines, Chinese New Year, Mardi Gras, Halloween and Fourth of July. My mom suggested finding a beautiful rectangular vintage basket to set on top of the cupboard. My oriental collection is not highly collectible. There isn't a significant value to any of the items. But I love each little piece and grouped together it makes for a lovely collection. Guests in our home always seem to like to look at it.
Here is the before and after. You can see that the size of the new cupboard fits the room much better than the cupboard I had there previously. I moved the old cupboard I had to my husband's study and he loves it for his vintage books. The price of the new cupboard was $225 which I thought was very reasonable, after I purchased the wall paper and back for the cupboard I still have under $300 in it. I would expect to pay about twice that amount for a piece this size in most shops. Plus it is old, which makes it special. You won't find this cupboard in Pottery Barn! If you like this post on my new old cupboard by all means give it a link and share with your friends!
