You hadn't planned on it, but before you know it the afternoon has become one long stroll through your favorite antique store.
You get lost on the embroidered handkerchiefs and bits of lace loving washed, ironed and displayed. The tea cups and tin flour sifters seduce you with images of afternoon tea and freshly made scones. The old books beg you to touch their spines, allowing your fingers to caress the ridges on the tooled leather of their binding. As if that weren't enough, you marvel at the old bottles and jars--clear and green and blue mason jars, old apothecary bottles, even crystal perfume bottles. Each one holds its contents like a distilled piece of history; here the jar of buttons in every shape and size, there bits of dust from another lifetime ago, in another German glass glitter so shiny it makes your eyes hurt.
It is the writing desks and vanity tables that then call to you, throwbacks to elegance and the slow mediation on simple tasks like writing a letter or readying yourself for the day. You luxuriate in the spools of ribbons on display, too and the piles of ancient typesetting and the retro paintings of fruits and vegetables growing in your garden at this very moment. Each object makes up a piece of this extravagant tableau, this impression of life as art, of life as beauty, of life as enjoyment.
When it is time to go--after you have wandered from room to room and around again--you leave the shop feeling refreshed, vibrant, as if the world suddenly has just a little more magic in it.
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