Off-task shopping

We had a surprising bit of history pop up this week. As mentioned in the last post, we have started gathering up the stuff we need to get for the new place. One of the places we will be going to this weekend is the Modernism Auction at Ivey-Selkirk. We’ve been going to this auction for the past couple years, mostly to see, and touch, the iconic pieces in person that we admire in museums. We’ve come home with a few interesting objects (nothing iconic, though) and enjoyed the excitement of the bidding. We missed out on a twenty-foot diameter half circle red couch last year that we thought would be perfect for our future living space. We didn’t expect to find another couple that were in the market for an enormous couch, but that’s how auctions go.

This time, we went

to the preview with more of a sense of purpose. Of course, in a room layered with artifacts, it can be difficult to stay on task. Tom spent about 15 minutes examining something that was labeled as “Rosewood Shelves”, but looked like a pile of boards in a corner. If there is a puzzle to be figured out, especially one that involves wood or bits of steel that allegedly fit together into something useful, Tom finds it hard to pass it up. I think he decided that there were parts missing.

A framed poster from my area of interest, the history of the B.A.B., caught my eye. It was an advertisement from the Hadley-Dean Glass Company of St. Louis, showing the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company Building in Kansas City.

Kansas City Southwestern Bell poster

This was one of the Bell buildings designed under the supervision of I.R. Timlin, the architect of our B.A.B.. The picture is a reproduction of the original rendering of the building, with some copy at the bottom marketing the window supplier.

It isn’t the kind of thing we NEED to be buying right now, but we’ll see where the bidding goes. It might be an interesting addition to our collection of historical artifacts. Either way, it was fun to stumble upon it in an unexpected place.

Here’s a photo of one of the cool, though not iconic, things we came home with from a past auction:

Tom in a box