Exquisite Mid 19th C. Watercolor Valentine with Flip Up Handwritten Fortunes folk art buildings I've got a weakness for

I've got a weakness for vintage art supplies

and seeing it painted over and over and in lush red paint against white on this great old box is to my eye about as satisfying as it gets

Of a nice scale -- more like tabletop sculpture than a little carving

And on the underside of the box

Jones’s philosophy since 1967 when he turned to his youthful hobby of whittling after his first wife’s death and his retirement from forty-five years with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad

Exquisite Mid 19th C. Watercolor Valentine with Flip Up Handwritten Fortunes folk art buildings I've got a weakness forA rare and special thing this one, a fortune telling valentine of sorts, which I purchased from a great paper dealer in Pennsylvania, who had kept it in his personal collection for some years. A gorgeous watercolor taken at face value, but under most every leaf and bloom is a hidden message, revealed when one flips that bit up (and so a pretty intricate work of cut paper, too.) I especially love the fact that many of those messages are the opposite of