Learn with Us!
In this section, you will find resources, ideas and musings from industry experts, collectors, and the team at ReclaimingMia. We hope you find these posts enlightening, entertaining, and perhaps even inspiring. Please scroll down to read more and feel free to email us with any comments or suggestions for future posts.
The Hands That First Held: A Photo Essay
Zack Ruggiero, Sales and Cleanout Manager
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Every book has a story beyond the words within it. Somewhere between the narrative and time lies the love story of the first hands to ever cradle its binding, the first gaze to ever meet the tattooed wonders within. Somewhere, hidden in its history, lies a scene of thoughtfulness and loving intent. A parent in a bookstore who saved their pennies to buy their child the gift of a story to open Christmas morning. Or a teacher buying an underprivileged student the gift of reprieve from their difficult life with a little paper window to a new world. Both unknowingly created a unique story that transcends time. Usually, the story of how a book got to be in your hands is left to the fog of mystery and time, but on rare occasions, the forebearer leaves a sign, unknowingly casting into the future the name of the book's first loving hands. Like initials carved in a tree forever, that love still exists just within reach.
What Estate Sales Teach Us
Maria Ruggiero Powell, Founder and President
Every home. Every sale. There are objects - simple, quotidian, ubiquitous - that have a story to tell if we stop to listen. Regardless of the size, style or location of a house, or the income, ethnicity or beliefs of the people who lived there, these objects appear, time-travelers from the past, anxious to teach a lesson about our modern lives.
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Throughout the years, at every estate sale, we invariably find multiple decks of cards, and dozens of board games. We find everything from simple folding poker tables to inlaid, Victorian, mahogany game tables. We find formal silver tea sets for 6, and casual snack sets meant to be balanced on a knee while sitting around a coffee table. There are always porcelain dinner services for 8, or 12 or even 16. We find punch bowls for every season with dozens of cups. When was the last time you even saw punch at a party? There are books on hosting, on game rules, and on etiquette. Every home had them once. And we find them, unsold, forgotten and left behind at every sale. Why is this? Are we really so different from those who came before us? Have we forgotten something they once knew?
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All these items share a goal: to create opportunities for connection between people, to form communities, strengthen families and bond individuals to each other. The people who originally owned these items were investing time and energy in friendships, unity, and shared enjoyment. Creating interaction and engagement with others was not just a pastime, it was a priority. Things have changed, for better and for worse, but perhaps we, as a society, need to look back in order to move forward.
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We are more connected to technology than to each other. Social media has taken the place of a social life. Our conversations are digital and our relationships virtual. In these difficult and contentious times, these once-prized objects remind us of what unites us as human beings. Laughter, joy, sharing with childlike innocence the pleasures of being human. Playing out our differences and conflicts on a chessboard rather than a keyboard. We need interaction without an electronic intermediary. We need punch bowl socials and neighborhood block parties. We need to know our neighbor’s name before we know their political affiliation. Maybe, if we shared some time, we might find that what bonds us outweighs what divides us. Maybe.
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So, the next time you’re at an estate sale, pick up that vintage velvet smoking jacket, try on that chiffon hostess dress. Buy a punchbowl and invite your neighbors over for some sherbet.
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We’re not suggesting that we go back in time. We have to learn to live as humans in our current world. For good and for bad. But the best thing about estate sales is that they give us an opportunity to try on another way of thinking or living or seeing the world. They also show us what really lasts, and what is truly disposable. Old cards and games are as functional today as ever they were. We can’t say that for old technology. And that may be the best lesson of all: that what makes us human is timeless and immutable and that simple pleasures bring complex rewards.