You probably already know that I have a thing for antique thread cabinets. Well, I was hanging out in Aurora yesterday and I found a really beautiful antique thread cabinet in one of the town’s many antique shops. I want to share it with you! Here’s me and the box:
Here’s just the box:
I have never heard of the Richardson Silk Company but my, their box is pretty!
My favorite thing about this box is the inscription on the side:
“Richardson’s Silks were awarded the Grand Prix [Highest Award] and three Gold Medals at the Paris Exposition 1900.”
Oh, WOW. If I’m not wrong, I think the judging for that would have happened in this building, called Le Pavillion Des USA:
I love everything that has to do with the 1900 Paris Exposition (expect the human zoo featuring Africans) but I especially love the Palais de l’Ectricite which showed off the possibilities of this new(ish) invention called electricity. Imagine what that would have been like to people who were unfamiliar with this scientific development!
Here’s the Palais during the day time. It’s sometimes easy to forget that photography has been around this long.
You know what’s even crazier? They had video:
Alright, alright, back to the here and now. I love going to Aurora and looking at antiques. Aurora used to be a utopian Christian colony in the 19th century but they gave up that ghost in 1883 and now it is pretty much an antique mecca for the Portland area. Actually, MSN.com and TravelChannel.com named Aurora one of the top 10 antiquing towns in America. Lucky me – I live 20 minutes away!
While I was there, I also learned that the town is (and was) well known for its German influenced quilting traditions. In fact, there’s a whole beautiful book about it…
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