Antique Shopping in Italy

As you may remember, Miss Mustard Seed’s Marian Parsons and I held a contest in August, just before our trip to Europe.  We thought it would be fun to pick a couple of winners and then SHOP for those winners at the Antique Market in Lucca, Italy; it turned out to be TONS of fun.

We drew two names randomly (I secretly wanted everyone to win) and our winners were Ginger and Teri.  I was dying to know what these two ladies were interested in, so I sent them an email to find out what would excite them!

Ginger, who’s Instagram account name is @have_thimble_will_travel is a quilter and she LOVES  to travel! She collects vintage sewing notions, sewing kits, needle holders, thimbles (of course!) pin cushions etc.  Marian and I knew this was going to be a fun one. We shopped for a while, not wanting to jump at the first thing we saw until we came across these beautiful antique scissors.  They were in the booth of a beautifully dressed older lady who obviously had great taste, Marian also ended up buying something for herself there as well. The scissors have a beautiful patina and lovely detail, we knew Ginger would love them.  After separating from Marian around lunch time, I came across a table of several thimbles and I picked one of those out for Ginger also, I thought the two pieces would make a perfect pair.

Now on to Teri!  Teri let us know that she didn’t collect anything in particular but that her style is a bit eclectic. She likes a variety of things from several styles and likes her house to feel warm and comfortable. Teri also mentioned that since it had to fit in MY suitcase, perhaps a piece of pottery would be good.  She understood that we were going to have a lot of fun hunting for her and that was the best part. We looked around a bit and headed to one of our favorite vendors, Gigi Ventura….yep, that’s his name. Marian IMMEDIATELY gravitated towards a blue and white compote, if you follow her you could just picture this sitting on a shelf in her kitchen. She was in love. She snatched it up without hesitation and we put it in the bag, Teri was covered.  A few booths over, I happened to spy a pretty linen hand towel with Teri’s initials on it so we added that to our stash as well, I-mean-that-is-fate.

The goods were shipped out to the ladies this week and I hope they love them, I can tell you that we loved shopping for them and will definitely do it again next year!!