Brimfield 2011

Three times a year, Brimfield, MA is host to thousands of antique dealers in one of the largest shows in the country. You'll usually see a lot of corporate buyers in the first two days, browsing the booths at or before dawn to get the most unique things. Around Friday and Saturday (when, many say, "all the good stuff is gone") the prices drop to almost normal flea market prices, and the retail shoppers come through to find cool stuff for their houses. 

This year I went both Wednesday and Saturday. With 5000 dealers and about 150-200 football fields worth of area to cover, it's easy to spend this much time and never see the same booth twice. I never really buy much, so my haul this year was a bit unusual because I got a lot of cool stuff. Most of it was shop stuff- wooden boxes, overbuilt from a sewing factory, are cheap and sturdy and last forever. I got a few tools, and a couple old lisence plates for my 1916 plate collection. However, my favorite things are usually those from the selvedge booths, because while they're not super old you can make them into cool unique (inexpensive) things for your home. 

First up was this industrial outdoor wall light. It started out pretty rusty, so I took it apart and cleaned/painted it last night, then got baseplate supplies and wired it up today. 

the second was just a simple old mason jar. Drilled a hole in the zinc top, and got one of the simple kits to turn it into a lamp. Super easy, looks pretty neat on the workbench.

I grabbed a few other things that need cleaning, etc, so I'll probably post about them in the upcoming week!