The church of beautiful useful things: True stories & hot tips from yard sales, trash pickers, and thrift store mavens By Ron Ehmke We asked several area artists whose work often uses recycled materials to share their favorite stories about exciting finds in a city famous for second-hand treasures. Some folks were tight-lipped, but a brave few spoke up with tales of striking pay dirt—along with a white lie or two and a dash of physical violence. Susannah Bartlow, collage artist: The thrift stores I had been to elsewhere weren’t thrifty, just trendy, so moving to Buffalo was like stepping out of a closet onto a football field full of cheap stuff. The Junior League had just opened on Elmwood, behind my Ashland apartment. There was a brief moment in time before they discovered “vintage,” and they stocked gorgeous sixties clothes and jackets. I felt like I was meditating when I was shopping. I learned to pace slowly, to use my eyes and my hands to judge fabric and texture, and to trust my instincts. It was like going to church: the church of beautiful useful things. Buffalo has the best thrift stores by far for a sad reason; I say to out of town friends that it’s as though everyone who left town in the sixties and seventies [simply] left, without taking any of their stuff with them. Tom Holt, painter: Nice frames are some of the best things you can find at tag sales. Last summer I saw a couple of random items outside near the Great Arrow building. A large gilded frame caught my eye. It was a real oil painting signed by Winslow Homer! Now, of course, it wasn’t really a Winslow Homer. If you ever see something like this at a tag sale, here is how you authenticate the piece: look on the back where you can see how the actual canvas is attached to its stretcher. If there are staples involved, it isn’t a real historical artifact. Staples didn’t exist back then. If you see old rusty nails holding the canvas together, you might have something. But I didn’t. I did, however, tell the man working the sale, “I’ll give you twenty bucks for the fake Winslow Homer in the nice frame.” Tony Popielinski, media artist, collector: My best find is probably a set of Roycroft candlesticks purchased for seventy-five cents apiece at a local Salvation Army. I also found a classic British Barbour jacket for about five bucks at [another] Salvation Army. The best places to go vary, but the best advice is to go often and be willing to set aside some time to comb through stuff to find the one gem among the rocks. Meg Knowles, artist: For me, Big Garbage Day was always the highlight of thrift “shopping”—the large-trash pickup day when people empty their attics or basements and the garbage-folk will actually take it away. In the old days, it was concentrated into a single time per year (as opposed to now, when they have it twice a summer for each neighborhood). I once got a beautiful cherry queen bed from the thirties with a huge mirrored headboard and an entire shelving unit built in, and had to move quick to get a truck before the rain destroyed it! Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top