Antiques and Ham

Earlier in the week we saw signs for a "Brocante et Jambon" fair: Antiques and... Ham?! No of our friends really knew what this meant, but I thought it was probably some colorful french expression dating back several centuries. You know; back when hams were cured in armoires... that type of thing. It turned out that they were actually selling ham and antiques, and was a pretty big deal -- almost the same scale as Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

Anyway, we passed through the normal market at La Halle (photo above and below)




and on to the Ham and Antiques fair:







And WELL WELL WELL! Look who we have here!




heres an enlargement:



The retiring crazy antique lady #2! Still very much in the game, I'd say. A few moments after I surreptitiously took this photo she produced a huge wad of cash, and started peeling off bills to pay for something or other.


We found some decent chairs which were not too old, but better than our shabby folding chairs: $40 euro for 3, so we werent really that motivated to find chairs. There were some nice brasserie chairs next door:





with cool designs on the seats, and very solid: 800 euro for 8. A few stalls down we saw these:




(the ones on the right). These were in Oak, quite solid, with newly redone seats, 5 for 300 euro. After some hemming and hawing, we bought them! It took two tram rides back and forth to get them home (we had the other three chairs as well), but they provided convenient seating at the tram stop:

although it was a little tight in the elevator:


The big big news for us was that we found an armoire that we both loved, and got a decent deal on it! Okay, I realize furniture purchases might not be exciting to everyone, but after spending so much time looking at them, its exciting to finally find one. They gave us a deal on the delivery too. Here it is:









Original metal hardware and lock, in Walnut with Ash panels in the front and the original Fir back. Mid 1800's from Bresse. WOOHOOOO! Delivery a week from now.