Monday, April 26, 2010

Home Skillet.

I had a lovely weekend celebrating my birthday with friends.  We sailed the high seas with my fav, Sailor Jerry, grilled the yummiest food and my honey made me feel extra special with flowers.  (So far, the lovely flowers have been knocked over...twice.  And I just walked into the kitchen to get some water and found Boris rubbing his head in them, so I don't know how long they'll last.)

On Sunday, Dillon and I went to a huge antiques fair.  I fell in love with so many things, among them an old army sewing kit complete with everything- the thimble, buttons and various kinds of green thread.  It was all sorts of awesome.  However, I walked away with one tiny thing.  And I could not be more in love with it.

Dillon bought me my very own home skillet!
It's a souvenir spoon from the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, a World's Fair Type event, held in Buffalo, New York.  Most people would know about it because that is where President McKinley was assassinated.  He was shot at the Temple of Music and died a week later.  I've done a little bit of researching online and have seen a bunch of spoons from the expo but only one like this one, it belonged to the library at California State University at Fresno.  So I'm going to have to look into it a bit more.

I had seen lots of spoons that day.  I always halfheartedly look through that kind of stuff to see if there is one for a place I've been.  My love of tiny things must have come from all of the hours spent looking at my great-grandma's collection of tiny spoons and thimbles when I was a child.

When I found this, I had been thinking to myself that I need to start actively looking for Niagara Falls stuff.  After so many years as an tourist destination there are a ton of souvenirs and I would love to have a collection to remember my childhood with.  Not just spoons of course, but you get the idea.  I kid you not, the very next spoon I picked up was this one!  It was a sign.  I had to have it but we weren't planning on buying anything so we just kept moving.  However, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that it was meant to be.  So, my honey made it happen.  He's the greatest.

Based on a few other pan shaped souvenirs I saw online that only thing I can figure is they were playing on the whole PAN aspect of the Pan-American Expo.  HA HA, I love it!  Silly pun humor, these were my kind of people.

The front.
I'm going to reach out on a limb and assume the the gentleman at the top represents the Seneca Tribe.

The back.
Apparently, the building depicted here was lit up in with multicolored lights and made for quite an impressive display.

I'm super happy that this little home skillet lives with me now.  It might just be the oldest thing I own.  I don't think my man realizes how much it means to me but it's very special.

Thanks for looking and reading my long, detailed, boring account of my life.

3 comments:

jafabrit said...

yes, was bored out of me brains NOT!!!! lol! Happy Belated Birthday, and sounds like fun. I love the spoon, what an interesting background.

Kira - oopsicraftmypants.com said...

I like it! It seems to be just encrusted with teeny little details... Lol at you calling it a "home skillet." Awesome :)

MafiosaGrrl said...

My friends think I'm crazy for being so enthusiastic about it...oh well :)I'm a huuuuge history person, before switching to art, it was my major, so I just love that there is so much behind it. Everyone else is like, yeah- a spoon, so what? lol.