Flohmarkt Roundup - Even More Old Paper
I hadn’t planned to stop into this particular junk shop, Trödelmarkt in German, but walking back from buying some new art markers I realised I was in the neighborhood.
This is one of the least-organised Trödelmärtkte that I’ve found, which is saying a lot. It’s old suitcases stacked on top of cardboard boxes, crammed up against some car parts, an old turntable, and maybe part of a bed frame. Like most Trödelmärkte, it’s chock-a-block full of old LPs. Maybe they sell well, I don’t know, but old Berlin seems to have had more LPs per-capita than anywhere else I’ve lived.
Postcards are also easy-to-find, but not that interesting to me. I’m most interested in old papers, letters, contracts. Basic Papierkram, basically. This time I pulled in quite a haul. Look carefully at the letters in the first image. Postmarked 1943, those stamps are as creepy as they get. I’ve never before thought about WW2-era German postage, but of course they would have Hitler on them. To be honest, I’m not sure that these stamps will wind up in a collage, but the rest of the envelope is still beautiful and the handwriting on the pages inside is lovely, if hard to read nearly 80 years later.
The Flohmärkte in Berlin have lots of old photographs, but if you’re not careful you’re going to be asked for one Euro per photo. I’ve bought a few from these vendors, and passed on many more, until I found the shops that are happy to sell whole albums, or random handfuls of photos.
I’ve not used these much in my collages yet but I’m slowly bringing them in, especially now that I have more than 4 or 5, but an album or two full. I also use them slowly because I want to understand their context, or stories, at least a little bit before I use them.