More Thrift Love - Goodwill Find

I've been looking for a trunk to put at the foot of my bed for years.  I found a wonderful old trunk at my FANTASTIC Portsmouth Goodwill (Hi Angela, Donna, Donna's mother, Rose, etc.  Please log on and comment!) 

The finish on this vintage trunk was a bit beat up.  It was more expensive than what I usually buy at $40.  However, upon investigation on the Internet, I learned that it was made by Klein Brothers of Long Island City, NY, a part of the borough of Queens in New York City. 

The Kleins were Hungarian immigrants who arrived via Ellis Island in the 1890's.  Sadly, this family firm went out of business durin The Depression in 1936.  The trunk's interior is cedar-lined.   I actually remembered to take before and after pictures, too!  I usually get so excited to start my project that I totally forget the before picture. 

The old linen on the top of the trunk in the "after" picture once belonged to my beloved friend (now in heaven) Hester.   She, like many women of her era, had some lovely (what I think they used to call) "bridge cloths."  Well anyway, my grandmother called them that because she played bridge. 

I think Hester used these vintage table linens when she entertained her Pittsburgh Presbyterian church ladies.  I imagine her now reunited with these old friends having a bit of a gossip in heaven over good coffee and some Panera pecan rolls.  

Or  maybe she and her Portsmouth friend Grant Creekmore are up in heaven having liver and onions the way they used to at Mama Jean's, when they'd straighten out all the problems at St. John's during lunch.  I think Grant Creekmore has to be the definitive patrician Old South old lady name, don't you?  Hester Kimpel was also a perfect old lady name, but Hester didn't have an old lady demeanor.  Another wonderful old lady name from my church was "Carter Vermillion."  You can't make this stuff up...it is the South.

I remember Grant's beautiful snowy white hair and the silver necklace with charms of small children on it which she always wore, fitting for a retired teacher.  She had an imperious, high-pitched voice, pronouncing her name as "Grant Creekmo."  Grant didn't invite you over for a drink, but for some "libation."  She could have been another character on The Waltons, an old friend of the bootlegging Baldwin sisters or something. 

Anyway, I have digressed terribly.  I have used two of Hester's tablecoths (one aqua and one in a pink and white dogwood blossom pattern) in window treatments and one white one is folded on my bed.  A certain disreputable dachshund has claimed it when the morning sun sreams in the windows. 

A fourth one is so lovely, a time-worn white with beautiful openwork, that I just decided to leave it on the now-white trunk to enjoy up a little closer than draped over my window molding at 11 feet up in the air.