Page 33 - The Collector's Companion: Issue CC103

Flea-bitten I will say from the outset, you should read this book. It * It is important to point out
isn’t overly long and its available in paperback, Kindle
that while the Chelsea Flea
did close in 2019, it re-
and audio book editions.
opened in the same parking
A story of obsession and collecting The Golden Flea is a curious book, as curious as the lot (29 West 25th Street)
objects it describes. It is part memoir, part historical
in 2020, under the same
record, both anecdotal and philosophical. It begins at management who run the
I was already many years an adult when I first visited It wasn’t a big market that day. a time when the flea was flourishing across a number Brooklyn Flea. Go visit!
Portobello Road. Bedknobs and Broomsticks had given The NY wind was bitter and it of outdoor car parks and a cold and oily multi-story,
me false expectations, it should have been obvious may also have been spitting ending with its near demise as the developers moved Large quotes are all from The
Golden Flea. Photos on this
really that I wasn’t going to stumble into a dingy with rain, but what was there in.* The actual time we are visiting isn’t entirely clear, page are all courtesy of the
wartime alleyway with an air of Victorian underworld was wonderful. I wish I had but Googling a few of the anecdotes places it as being Chelsea Flea and (where
about it. To be fair, it was winter, very cold and I’d taken photos but I recall thinking the traders didn’t look late 1990s to 2014, not that it really matters. It has indicated) Sam Hollenshead.
turned up quite late in the day with the primary aim of like the types to put up with tourist nuisance-making. a timeless, almost other-worldly feel, much like the
visiting a vintage clothes shop and I still managed to Portobello of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
come across two nice picture frames sat on a blanket
in the road for only a few pounds each. But I longed, in Rips is constantly questioning what it means to be a
vain, for that wistful waltz by the Sherman Brothers to collector, what is the line between that and hoarding,
accompany a real place, the “street where the riches of and which is he. That is part what makes The Golden
ages are stowed, anything and everything a chap can Flea curious, that the author is obsessively enamoured
unload, is sold off the barrow in Portobello Road.” with the flea but so clearly uncomfortable with what
he becomes as a result of his weekly visits there. On
one hand he treats it with such reverence, on the other
he acts out against it one more than one occasion,
showing what I found to
be an irritating disrespect With its deracinated objects and their
for his adopted home.
Me trying to look cool but really just looking cold, loitering at the There’s a host of ideas unexpected juxtapositions, the flea awakened
Chelsea Flea Market, 2016.
and ponderings around the mind to new impressions of the world.
Thirty dollars. the curation of objects,
the importance of context (or lack of), the assignment
Could you give me a of value and the snobbery of experts. It’s all food
for thought and elevates the book from being just
Angela Lansbury as Eglantine Price, rummaging under the barrows in better price? a collection of enjoyable anecdotes about mostly
Bedknobs and Broomsticks © Disney 1971 eccentric New Yorkers. Enjoyable they are, with their
Sure. Fifty. nicknames – the Prophet, the Cowboy, the Dane – and
On a sub-zero morning in January 2016 I was on the their back stories. These traders are a group of people
other side of the Atlantic on holiday. My husband and That’s a better price? as rich and varied as the objects they deal in.
I had sought out the NY Chelsea Flea Market without
really knowing how much to expect from it. Within For me. I’m aware that I haven’t really shared any specifics
seconds of stepping across the threshold, from paving about The Golden Flea at all. There’s definitely a few
stone to asphalt, I had my Portobello moment. The I meant a lower price. narratives that are threaded through the book, but I
stall was a higglety pigglety mountain of everything will leave it to you to discover them. After all, that’s
and nothing. Balanced on a cardboard fruit crate, in How about this, get the what a good flea market is all about – discovering the
turn balanced on several other cardboard fruit crates, unexpected.
**
was a battered pair of 18th century ladies shoes. I f k out of here.
imagined they must have some value, their age, the For anyone who reads The Golden Flea
and would like to know more about the
patterned silk, but there they were, unceremoniously In a roundabout kind of way, this brings me to The ‘characters’ in the book (surely they can’t
dumped in a pile with old magazines and the like. It Golden Flea, a book by Michael Rips. It describes itself be real?!), we’ve included a number of
was thrilling. as a memoir, yet by the end I find I still don’t know a links on our website to interviews and
articles we found about them.
Here the objects were great deal about the author. Rips acts as a tour guide The Golden Flea / Michael Rips
of sorts, introducing us to the traders at the Chelsea
Published by Daunt Books, 2021
naked, and effulgently so. Flea Market and weaving their lives together to tell a Paperback, 224 pages
story of objects, collecting and obsession.
ISBN: 9781911547761, RRP £9.99
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