Prunes, Iron, Albums

It's summer, and that means a family reunion trip into Wisconsin, and — as in most years — a stop at School House Antiques in Hixton.

This year, I only bought one small thing, but I took a few additional photos.

First, a set of kitchen canisters. It's not the design that got my attention, particularly...

...it was the third canister from the left. I don't think I've seen a canister labeled for prunes before. Is that something you've seen before?

Then there was this fancy ironwork at the base of a sewing machine:

The machine itself was very different looking from other early sewing machines I've seen, and I now understand that Bradbury was a British sewing machine company.

Finally, my eye caught on this mid-century album cover:

The designer's name is at lower left —Steinweiss. Alex Steinweiss, it turns out, is the person who is credited with inventing the concept of the record album cover. He was the first art director at Columbia Records, where he also developed the paper sleeves used on 33 1/3 rpm records after that format was introduced. 

He designed more than 2,500 album covers. Born in 1917, he lived to be 94 years old.