With traveling for work and being busy with other stuff, it was a long time since we last made it to our favourite second hand store.
This store always has a great selections of Finnish glassware, which we are quite known for in the world of design. We are big fans of designer Tapio Wirkkala, especially those of his works that are no longer in production, though Iittala does bring back old styles here and there. Wirkkala drew inspiration from the nature and many of his designs look like differents kinds of ice formations.
The Man has childhood memories of a huge Wirkkala ash tray his uncle had for when he smoked a pipe, and we have kind of been on the lookout for one. We browsed through the tableware sections quite carefully this time and lo and behold, Wirkkala’s Aslak ash tray was sitting on a shelf at a very nice 17€ price. This thing is like a weapon, super thick glass and you could definitely bang a pipe against it and not cause damage. The Man swears there is an even bigger version of this but I think this is quite hefty already. I’ll probably use it as a jewellery tray mostly, and for smoking only on a special occasion.
This next find I’m still pining over because I had to leave it for someone else to buy. I wish I had 200€ to spend on this ridiculous, frivolous yet absolutely stunning and interesting piece. It’s basically a calender with some sort of mechanism that spins the sun, moon and earth to show where they are in relation to each other at any given time. What a curiosity and a conversation starter would it be to have this in ones home! Alas, I can’t get everything I want.
As a not-so-bad consellation price, I found this piece of brass and glass that I wasn’t quite sure what it was. I saw it, it looked pretty and was 12€, easy decition to buy it. I thought it’s either a some sort of lanthern, oil lamp or a decorative bottle, to be figuret out at home.
Immediately as we got back home, we started to investigate this pretty piece. I turned it over, Japanese made, something poking out from the bottom and when I jiggled it there was clearly something a bit loose in there. The bottom has some holes and scrapes like there is pieces missing.
We pried the thing open and to our utter delight, it revealed a music box! I don’t think anyone knew about and that is why it was cheap and not prominently displayed.
We cranked the lever and listened to the slow quite melancholic song, the man said it sounded familiar but couldn’t place it. I took a little recording and send it to my mom who plays the clarinette, and my uncles who are musically very talented. Within a few minutes mom had send it to a friend who immediately recognised the song: Dark Eyes, originally Ochi Chernyie,a Russian song from the late 1800, the original lyrics were by an Ukrainian poet, and the melody is borrowed from another song composed by a German-Polish musician. There are a million versions of the song and I don’t know anything about music, I just googled it.
I know for a fact that this bottle with a music box in the bottom was designed by a wife who wanted to control her husbands drinking, because the song starts playing when you lift the bottle, how neat! (No whiskey neat for the gents, hihi)
There is a pin in the bottom that stops the song when it’s pushed in, and it drops when you lift the bottle. All I need is to find the right size wing nut to replace the one that’s missing and make sure it’s always ”loaded.”
Last second hand addition to our home is this lamp my sister gave to us when se last visited. She knows I’ll always take in new little lamps, there can never be too many. It took some searching to find the right size bulbs and I would have preferred them to be a bit less orange and brighter, but they’ll do for now.
