Fresh Twist on Vintage Baby Crib

Several weeks ago I was privileged with an invite to search and "pick" through an old boat house on the Ohio River, just overlooking the northern shores of Kentucky. To say that there were treasures within this compound is not enough. This space truly had sacred objects, all collected over one individual's lifetime of passion for things of rare, and true, value.

Now "value" is a word that I have come to find quite meaningful through the last several years. To me, indeed it is a "double-entendre". Or maybe even a "multiple-entendre".

I, along with most, definitely respond first and foremost to value and what the monetary price is associated with any given object. However, there are layers. And I love when "value" goes deeper. What's the value to a memory? Or an association with a dream, idea or concept? Or a person or event?

The value of objects within this boat house were imbued with wordly travel, life experiences, raising children and grand-children, entertaining, and a rich appreciation for all things of beauty and inspiration.

To this, one of the treasured finds was an early 1900's wrought-iron baby crib in sweet pink tones of peony. In one regard, these cribs are monetarily worth quite a bit of money through their age, materials and nostalgia. Yet sadly, they equally are worth very little - as they cannot be used for their original purpose, in not being up to modern society's safety codes. So they sit. And they are stored. And they age some more. And then...they have little to no value. They have no modern purpose, no modern function, no modern place.

Our idea to re-purpose is not a novel one, but it is a successful one! At Lost & Found, I love to present great bones, good materials and authenticity - with a fresh twist and perspective for present day.

With this baby crib we removed one side of the crib gate, re-purposed a plywood board from our stock supply, secured a cushion to it, and re-upholstered it with a whimisical new fabric and play pillow. It's re-interpretation has people adoring it, admiring it, and re-thinking: what one thing is, it can be another...

And I love that! From a little girl's room, to a cottage bay window, to a summer porch, to an adorable pet bed - an early 1900's piece - is now so very today!

Hidden Jewel in Henderson

I had the privilege of traveling to Henderson to visit with one of our favorite customers Ellie and her designer Kip. We stopped by for the day for a quick chat to see how things had gone with the home tour Ellie's house had been included in last week. Ellie lives in a brand new home along the Ohio River that is pretty similar to her previous home. When Evansville had a horrific ice storm a few years ago, Ellie lost her home due to a tragic fire set off by the power outage. Ellie was able to recreate her previous home's footprint with a few new tweaks to modernize it and better the flow of the house.

Ellie has phenomenal taste and it seems to come easy to her, even with the help of Kip. She loves using neutrals with pops of turquoise and red. Modern yet homey and relaxing! Just the place to be on a rainy day when all you want to do is curl up with a good book and nest with a good cup of coffee. Some people might call Ellie's style not the norm because she might be one of the only people to have a deer head hanging in her brand new chic kitchen! Great style and great company,Ellie and Kip thanks for a wonderful day!! Everyone enjoy the weather!!

Warehouse Surprises

This morning we had a great opportunity to visit the warehouse district of Evansville for some great company and interesting finds. Talk about an interesting place, the warehouse is the home to a dogbone company, but in the back warehouse the owner has hundreds of pallets, a couple boats, random cars, and a few hidden gems. Way in the back, Jack, the owner showed us some Indian iron window covers with a Moroccan flair. They had been sand blasted and primed, ready to be painted. What a great way to add charm to a brick wall. Boy were they heavy! At least 80 lbs each!!

You wouldn't believe what else Jack showed us, 2 Indian safes he had brought back from India. Both were in excellent condition and had ornate details on the front. We were under the impression the window covers were heavy but at least 2 burly men, a wheeled cart, and a trailer will be needed to bring them back to the store. Jack has traveled the world many times and his tastes show it.

Later he took Rachel (the intern) and I to his home on the west side. Jack is a man of all trades. Up front he is a business man but once you peel back the layers he tells you about his real passion, wood working. In his backyard you see a workshop he built himself that houses all his tools, to the right of it there is an large unfinished porch framing the most beautiful forested valley. The sounds of the wildlife is extraordinary, no wood peckers on Virginia!! But the most interesting part are these human sized wood bugs he has made. The bodies are made from porch railings and the wings are made from cornices. What a great idea of reusing and renewing! No teaching required!! Enjoy the weather today, hope to see you out and about!

Spring Blues

This beautiful weather has kept us busy. Sarah Wellmeier stopped by the store to pick up a few great pieces including this vintage 1950's crushed blue-turquoise couch. The couch was meant for her studio where it had been hostage for the past few months, but this past weekend she took it Downtown Evansville for fresh air and some blue skies. The perfect setting for an engagement photo shoot!

This vintage couch went straight to Main Street and isn't looking back. Have you ever thought of taking something expected into an unexpected location? This is the time when the inside goes out. This spring weather is fantastic and the humidity hasn't set in. Stop in the store for chandeliers to hang outside in your family's gazebo or use a chest of drawers as a bar or a sophisticated way of storing your summer party goods. Reuse and recycle, have you ever thought of using an old headboard as a plant trellis?

Need some patio art? Why not take some old art frames with some charm to fill that empty space, economical, chic, and sustainable!

Check out Sarah's great talent at her blog: http://sarahwellmeier.blogspot.com/

Creative and Easy Ideas with Summer Garden Sale!

We are excited to share some creative uses for the great prices we have on garden sale items!

Please visit our site http://www.explorelostandfound.com/ and proceed to "Garden"

for details such as dimensions and many more items in the garden with reduced pricing!!

Please note that most items are pick-up or delivery only.

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While this double shelf of antique wrought iron is perfect for any garden, sun porch or patio - what a great addition to a kitchen as a whimsical "baker's rack"! Gather some apothecary jars and fill with different dried pastas for a great display of textures and colors. Or get multi-sized canning jars and fill with various dried beans, corn kernels ready to pop - and throw in a couple jars of dog biscuits for your puppy, of course!

Utilize a can of spray paint and instantly transform the rack into a novel antique green, a sophisticated black for contrast, a soft yellow for the lighter side of color and tones, or a great cherry red for wonderful pop!


Was: $162.00
Sale: $114.00 ___________________________________________________________

Wonderful double pot antique wrought iron planters are perfect for any home entrance, garden entrance or pool entrance. They have beautiful character and presence.

So how about bringing this character and presence indoors? Use the double pot planter in the baby's nursery for a fun and out of the ordinary diaper, towel and stuffed animal haven. Escape the drab nursery elements which end up becoming disposable over time. When nursery time is over, then the planter becomes perfect to move outdoors! Quick spray paint can also transform the piece easily and affordably!


Was: $88.00 each
Sale: $62.00 each
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First, these mid-height antique iron planters are gorgeous for the outdoors. The basket form has a beautiful iron twist that makes it quite unique and special. Plus, the size makes them easily movable to so many locations around your home, porch, patio and pool.

What I love about these two "basket" planters is that they would be show-stopping on a great Harvest Table for a special event or stylish dinner with friends. As centerpieces, start with some hanging spanish moss and generously fill the base of the basket. Incorporate aged, weathered terra cot pots with your favorite floral or greenery and surround with more draping spanish moss. Viola, table centerpieces!

Was: $48.00 each
Sale: $34.00 each
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This short antique green trellis is as sweet as can be and ideal for the smaller, more delicate vines.

Yet, this trellis could be great indoors in a couple of ways. Have a blank wall? Even garden wall or side of a garage? Hang this trellis as a wall accent. Grab little butterfly and bee embellishments from the local craft store and it comes to life!

Or, place in a child's playroom. Use wooden clothes pins and the trellis becomes a great tool to hang and display precious drawings for the emerging artists!

Was: $45.00
Sale: $ 32.00
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These antique green wrought iron standing garden planters are beautiful in their soft petal design.

Do you have a guest bathroom - or child's bath - that you would like to add some whimsy? Roll fresh towels and abundantly place them in the pot area on top. On the petal shelf below, place an antique bowl and fill with found shells, artisan made soaps or a couple of old books.





Was: $48.00 each
Sale: $34.00 each
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These wrought iron shelves, circa 1950's, have glass shelves which make then ideal for outdoor and indoor use. They have nice height with ideal depth for a varying size of pots.

Use them in a sun room year round, in a laundry room, mud room or kitchen. Equally, the glass shelves lend them to perfect use for a child's room or bath.

Transform the character with color and any room is brighter with the presence of these shelves. Again, just a single can of spray paint makes it easy and affordable.

Was: $110.00 for pair
Sale: $77.00 for pair
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This handmade rooster of scrap metals can go anywhere!

Fun in a garden...yet bring it indoors to a Great Room, a kitchen or anywhere within your home that needs to be brightened!








Was: $110.00
Sale: $ 77.00
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The graceful mermaid of solid iron in a reclining pose.

Ideally, she is anywhere water is!

Place her beyond a pool, pond or river setting and bring her indoors. In a lake home or Great room, let her perch on stone next to a fireplace or picture window overlooking the outdoors.




Was: $245.00
Sale: $229.00
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The mermaid in the seated pose! She's on sale, too!











Was: $245.00
Sale: $229.00

Summer Lovin'

Summer Lovin'! And by that, I mean summer lovin' what you already live with!

This is the best time of the year to be creative with old furniture and larger-scale objects in and around your home. Working outside or in the garage is as good as it gets. The ventilation of fresh air and summer breezes is ideal for painting and re-finishing. It reduces the toxicidity of any possible fumes and also helps projects dry much quicker.

Every person has one item. Yes, at least one item. I hear it all the time. Something of your Grandmother's; something in the attic from your Aunt Helen; something from your childhood. It has sentimental value yet it's outright character just doesn't seem to be current with your everyday lifestyle. Things are only old if you see them that way. That's why I choose to see things in the nature of their character and substance. It's much more enjoyable!!

My background in art is a clear advantage in being so attuned to color. I truly see in color -especially the antique pieces. While most antique pieces are exquisite, many more are simply exhausted. Color is easy, especially with the less-is-more approach of black or soft whites. One thing I love to do is to actually do layers of tone on tone for more depth in color. For example, I may do a coat of White Corn followed by a coat of Angel Food Cake followed by another coat of White Corn. It makes color much richer. Most pieces can be done with one quart of paint which can range from $8 to $12. How great is that?!

I love to browse the fire-sale paint table for great colors at great prices. At Lowe's in particular, if a color is blended incorrectly it goes on a table where the cost for a quart is as little as $3. You need to keep in mind however, that this color is a mistake so if you go with it, all that is in that quart is all you have, so make sure you size the scale of your project. You also need to read the paint's details as this table will have a mix of outdoor, indoor, latex, flat finish, etc. Make sure you get an appropriate type of paint for your project. Having said that, it can also be much more fun to break the rules! I know an artist who sells fantastic paintings for collectors around the country and her paints are house paints. You would never know if you saw her work! Make it all your own, however that may be!

The other fun way to personalize and modernize a piece of furniture, or a mirror, or a chair - is decoupage it! Decoupage is great because you can be designer-like and get papers that are in character of fine fabrics and cover pieces for a fraction of the cost, or in fact, cover pieces which couldn't be covered in a fabric at all, such as a desk. Or...and this is great for kids, decoupage with old wrapping paper from birthday parties, party invitations, and tickets from last summer's visit to Holiday World...add some pictures and its even better! Mod-podge is an easily accessible decoupage formula at most craft stores and the art supply store, Dick Blick.

The best part of lovin' and livin' with what you already have is that it is as eco-friendly as it gets. You are re-using and re-newing something which already exists and in other instances would become something disposable, which means, it woud have been added to a landfill which in a round-about scenario contributes to global warming. It's much easier, to me, to think: What color? than to think: How I am going to get rid of this?

It's summer! Live and Love!

Brown with Envy

Today I find myself in an amazing log home on a private lake in Brown County, Indiana wondering how it all came to be. Indoors I am surrounded by profound pieces of original artwork by a pair of the country's best-selling artists and outdoors, I am feeding foxes and raccoons and chipmunks. I begin each morning here by sitting on a calm lake under a canopy of lush maples thinking about very little. I find myself anxious by the evening to return to the same spot to do the very same thing, even though by day's end I justly consider it my day's "reflection". What absolute bliss to consider that my mind is simply "airing" out after way too long of a time. I have expressed to the home's owners, who are currently in Sante Fe, that they will need a crowbar to wedge me out of here when they return! I am not going anywhere. (Seriously, I am not!!)

So what is it about this place, Brown County? Coming from the great urban landscape of Chicago as my hometown I wonder how rolling hills and pastoral meadows make me feel more at home and in my element than anywhere else I can currently think of. One thing I realize is that this place allows me to be one with myself; at peace with myself. The "pieces" around me right now contribute to a greater sense of "peace".

I love the faded barns and side-of-the-road quick stops selling everything from rusty tractor parts to fresh strawberries in season. As I relate it to my effort with the Lost and Found shop, it makes me think of a little seed of an idea I had several years ago. At that time I had considered opening my own fine art gallery in Chicago's River North Gallery District. I had toyed with calling it "Peace by Piece". Clearly it would have had some upgraded graphic design associated with it, as to not be confused with an upscale bakery purveying fine pieces of chocolate cake (ahhh, peace by "piece"...of cake)!

Anyway, as I have explored the local venues of Brown County into Bloomington and all of the other way nearly out to Seymour (well truthfully, in that direction I was looking for a sighting of John Mellencamp, but even seeing a little pink house in a rural Indiana landscape would have been pretty nifty!) - what I love is that this area promotes stories. The scenery, the activities, the people and culture, and the collectibles. The distressed tables, weathered architectural elements, vintage clothing items, aged mirrors that are crackled and unclear - they are all so real. They are real. Things here are created, not produced...not mass-produced to be specific. I see wonderful items and I immediately find myself wondering where they have been: what's been their passage of time and their course of events. It's such a pleasant experience as opposed to simply coming upon something and being stuck in thought: where's this going to go?

So my hope is that the Lost & Found shop is seeding itself to be such a place rich in inspiration and story and vision. It's a twist on my urban inspiration from years ago: peace by "piece". I know this is quite a lofty ambition and I am not the pioneer of the movement in re-claiming, re-using and re-newing. Yet we all have our part in going green, and my visit to a county called Brown has only deepened and expanded my passion for this mission. For some time to come, when I think green, I will remember Brown....