Baribocraft Salt & pepper Mill

We use this badboy every day. It's got better action than the Quistgaard mill we scored at the same Pembroke Value Village. This was cheaper ($1 vs. $2), and it's Canadian, so it's much cooler. That's that.

Baribocraft Slate Cheese Cutting Board Tray - Baribocraft The Leading Name in Woodenware

You'll see old hammered dryed-out wooden Baribocraft bowls in pretty much every Salvation Army housewares section across Canada. Rarely, if ever, does it make the cut. Here's my exception: this awesome slate cheese tray cutting board that came out of a westside Ottawa thrift. $5. The best part was the original tags were lying on top. 

There's a good link to the back story on Baribocraft here.

Midcentury Steel & Teak Tea Set

 

Another tea set! This was a $19.99 eBay purchase. I think it's actually meant for coffee rather than tea.

Teak bent wood vintage Canadian magazine holder

Here's a nice Canadian-made teak bent wood magazine rack holder. It reminds me of Alvar Aalto. It has cutaway holes on either side. It's a bit chipped & scratched, but it holds records well.

Moveis Corazza Brazil Teak Leather Couch & Chair set

Here is a teak couch & chair set we scored early in the spring this year for $40, at one of our favorite secret thrifts in Nepean. Sonya (sharp as ever, of course) spotted this as it was sitting in pieces outside in 2 feet of snow. We had to dig through the snow to find all the screws (and we're still missing one). But it was well worth the effort  - it took two separate trips to get it all back home with us - it looks great out on the back porch. This set is a monster, it's solid teak, with a great teak frame panel for the leatherette cushions. It's made by this 70's Brazilian department store company, Moveis Corazza.

Digsmed Danish teak candle sticks

I keep seeing these Digsmed teak candle sticks in various backgrounds in all the same boring style magazines (how hard is it to be stylish when you're rich? I want to see a magazine on cool looks with no budgets). I believe they come in at least 2 sizes, large and small. These are the small ones, approx. 3 1/2" high. We scored these for a $1 at the once-a-week thrift store in Deep River. Since then we've managed to pick up a few Canadian-made copies, but they're slightly chunkier and haven't been as elegant as these ones. Some Digsmed and Dansk stuff always seem to sell cheap on eBay (particularly their candlesticks & candelabras). Candlesticks (and teak) are one of those things we always buy when we see them in the field. They're beautiful, but somewhat useless, we don't seem to ever burn too many candles in htem. These ones are relegated to the basement graveyard for the moment.

Jan Kuypers / Donald Strindley for Imperial Furniture chair set

Whoohoo, 1st post! Since Sonya and I moved to Ontario three & 1/2 years ago we been impressed with the vintage picking our new locale allows. We live in the far outskirts of cottage country west of Ottawa.

This chair set was acquired at one of our favorite west end Ottawa Salvation Army's for $10 for the set. Sonya spotted them with her sharp eyes (like always), and we liked the danish lines on them (especially the matching pair). Cheap and cool, they're ours! The upholstery looked redone, and the fabric was a new striped cottom velvet. Overall, a great score, we figured we might use the dining chairs and maybe we'd store the lounge chair in our basement graveyard.

It was once we got them home that we noticed the Imperial Furniture sticker on the base of one of the matching chairs.

Then I took a look in our trusted copy of Design in Canada: Fifty Years from Tea Kettles to Task Chairs and there was a picture of one of the chairs saying it was designed by Jan Kuypers for Imperial in 1953.

The book also indicted that the armed chair was likely designed by Donald Strindley, first head of the National Industrial Design Council, and son of the owner of Imperial.

We ended up selling these to a nice real estate agent from Ottawa this summer through Craigslist. He and his wife had acquired the full 1953 dining set for $500 and wanted another couple of extra dining chairs. 


We've managed to find a few more Imperial/Kuypers pieces this summer, 2 more lounge chairs, and a really cool metal task chair that I'm pretty sure Kuypers designed for Harter Metal Furniture. I will post pictures and stories of those chairs soon.