ATTIC SHOPS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20583, 5 December 1928, Page 13

ATTIC SHOPS.

CURIOSITIES OF NEW YORK. Amid the bustle of New York there survives a specieS of tumble-jumble shops which might be classified as modern,"Old Curiosity, Shops.” These .stores-are not the splendid antique salons that flank our most select streets and avenues (says the New York TJimes). Instead, they are the humble, huy-everything-and-sell-every thing stores—the real attics of atticless New York City. Within their far too limited, domains these shops embrace all the varieties of articles which are usually associated with family attics. Bowlegged clocks of tarnished bronze vie for honour -with gaudy prints of speckled aspect; dusty Chinese fans stand upright in noseless., pitchers; battered coins of all ages spill out of fat orange-coloured wallets; : aquariums, doomed to be forever fishless (due to spreading cracks), balance themselves precariously on top of brass -umbrella/stands;' gas lamps that were splendid two decades ago stand tipsily atop piles of-miscellane-ous books; cheap reproductions of Bennington dogs and Wedgwood medallions stare from the depths of yellowish corner cabinets.-

Time and progress appear to have stamped each article as out-of-date and useless; and yet. tile shops do a thriving business. The lure for that which is out of the ordinary, the necessity for some fixture which is not menufaclmred to-day, the desire for cheap imitations of classical objects give the curiosity, shop its excusp for existing; and that fickle New York which refuses to keep, what- is old-fashioned and then is wiUing to purchase What is “ odd,” keeps it in business as well as in stock.