Boot Sale Booty!

A couple of weekends ago I attended a local boot sale or 'Vide Grenier' as they say round here. While trawling through the usual jumble of junk I stumbled across an old portfolio, I am always attracted to old folios stuffed full of secondary school life drawings, pastel still life's and the odd watercolour but there is always the promise of so much more so I can't help myself having a quick flick through.

While doing exactly this I came across two woodblock posters. At first glance they were nothing special, just bills printed to advertise house sales but on closer inspection I noticed that they had hand written dates on the reverse placing them both in the 1800s. I found it amazing that such a piece of ephemera had lasted so long, something that shouldn't have lasted long past the day of the sale somehow has worked it's way though almost a 180 years of incidents and accidents, of births and deaths. How many times have they hovered over a bin to be given a last minute reprieve and placed back on top of a wardrobe or into a drawer only to find its way into my hands and to start another chapter in their long history?