I mentioned before that there was an auction house in my neighborhood that does monthly estate auctions. Last time I had my eye on a lovely rug that I was quickly outbid on. Afterward, I mentioned it to some friends, who were immediately interested.

So last night WH, Tori, Jennie and I wandered over to see what there was to see.

We started with some free barbecue and veggies (yum baked sweet potato and smoked chicken wings), and then watched the auction proceedings. We were early on, so the slower, bid-gathering auctioneer was on duty. While we waited for him to get to things we wanted, we looked through a lot of books (mostly in Russian) and discovered an angsty college diary, complete with random naked photo tucked in the middle. I bid on a small lot of lamps and things, which had been there last month but which apparently nobody wanted. I got it for $10. The lamp is kind of weird:

It is the brightest lamp known to man. We’re going to change out the bulb and possibly the dome (which appears to be a standard display dome). It’s cool, but would be cooler with an Edison bulb.

Also in the lot was a hideous, broken faux silver jewelry box and the thing I was actually hoping to get, a brass cutwork candle lantern:

This is going to be my SCA lantern. It’s so lovely! And when you light the candle, it makes pretty patterns through the lattice:

And then they switched auctioneers, to the guy who says that all furniture is mid-century modern or Victorian, all glassware is Depression glass and all things taller than they are wide are phallic (at one point he auctioned off a vase that we joked was a phallic mid-century modern Depression glass piece). To his credit, he did auction off a mid-century freestanding bar and an Eames-style lounger, plus a decanter that looked like it might actually be Depression glass. Anyway, he was the auctioneer for the rugs, which worked out in my favor. See, if you are a lady, that works in your favor, because he likes ladies. There were several Persian runners hanging on one wall, and I had my eye on two of them. One I bid on but the bidding went $100 over what I wanted to spend, so I gave up on that. Then the next one came up, and there was a brief little bidding battle, and I bid $150, expecting to be immediately outbid. Nobody moved, and he looked around the room, a little surprised, closing the bidding at my $150. And the rug is mine! It’s really very lovely:

It’s long enough to cover half of our hallway without getting in the way of the attic ladder. This photo is fuzzy, but good for scale:

The cats think that it’s great. One is either lying on it, or scrabbling around on it like a nut. We learned pretty quickly that we’ll need to get a non-slip pad to go under it, because I’ve had to reposition it seven or eight times since we brought it home.

Tori bid on and won a framed print that she liked, and Jennie got a whole mess of Russian books for $7.50 (but not the lot with the crazy journal). We spent a little while watching people find the naked photo in the journal; Jennie would get up and tell people they needed to read the journal and we’d peek over the backs of the chairs we were sitting in and giggle.

I think I’m set for auction things for the time being. I’m at my rug limit, which is probably good.