apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Probably a yellow tin Chinese ladies lunchbox. I keep my X-Files action figures in it. Seriously.

But the lunchbox looks kind of cool. It's on top of the fridge.

Probably the set of tittie mugs that I won at a Christmas gift exchange.

My brother gets me Chinese opera puppets whenever he goes to Taiwan. It's a pretty formidable collection right now.

It used to be my pig collection which I thankfully grew out of

Now its probably a tiny green plastic tractor that I played with as a kid at my aunt's that I just can't seem to part with...

Can someone please rescue me from my husband's Star Wars figurine collection?

My mother keeps giving me stuffed animals, and I don't want to hurt her feelings, so I keep them in the closet and bring them out when she visits. So my stuffed pink elephant would be my weirdest tchochke, followed by a snow globe depicting Times Square on New Year's Eve, which my mother also gave me.

we have a plastic man driving a Zamboni in our freezer. My boyfriend brought it with him when we moved in together. He says that he has to stay in the freezer to keep the frost down!
It's adorable and totally surprising when you open the freezer.

We have a skunk skull floating around somewhere... people always seem to think that is weird.

i'm a bone collector, so i've got tons of things you people would probably hate on! bones get no love on AT! here's a photo of my Shelves of Mystery (Read = CRAP) that i submitted to that NPR "favorite things" piece:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2032/2122983286_7918751070_o.jpg

I have a huge, and I mean huge, collection of brass monkeys.... made of various metals, actually....

Probably my "Lorena is a witch" doll that a friend got me one year for my birthday (it's in October, hence the Halloween-themed toy). I guess it's supposed to be one of Skipper's (aka one of Barbie's little sisters) friends. Since my name's Lorena and it isn't used a lot in pop culture items, I kind of hang onto it, even though it has absolutely no use whatsoever.

OMG I actually have the Russian Presidents nesting dolls!!! I bought them at a store in Port Jefferson New York a few years ago! I just have them on a side coffe table. They collect dust. But people find them interesting.
Its not really a collection because there's nothing cohesive about it but I have all kinds of weird and funny stuff I pick up like those nesting dolls, old glass chemical bottles, and some cool italian cloth bags hung on wrought iron hooks.

kdk, I like your Fisher-Price people.

I collected hand carved wooden bowls. That is a passion that I stopped due to lack of storage. Currently, I collect nothing.

i actually have those "russian leaders" petrushka dolls. i proudly display them on their own little shelf.

Those are HILLARIOUS!!!
I don't think I would be able to have them in my home, but they sure are amusing.

I inherited a ceramic carafe shaped like bowling pin from my dad. On the outside is is a man holding a bowling bowl. He looks like he's sneaking around the bowling pin with the ball since he kind of wraps around the carafe. He's not painted on he is two dimensional and sticks out. I sometimes wonder who gave this to my dad and for what reason since to my knowledge he never bowled a day in his life. I like it. It's kind of quirky and like most of my tchotchkes visitors either love it or hate it.

I have a vintage, used, hand painted lobster buoy that I got in Maine about 35 years ago. It's been with me ever since and sits on a bookshelf.

My wierdest one would probably be the little porcelain elephant sugar pot. At least I think it's a sugar pot. It's from the 1920s or 1930s.

The backstory is that among all of my grandmother's china, etc., I always had my eye on a porcelain elephant teapot. I asked for it as a HS graduation gift and got it. It's absolutely one of my favorite keepsakes ever. It's one of the few things I own that I absolute, positively must keep.

When they were cleaning out grandma's house, my mom found this little elephant sugar pot. At least, it's an elephant, and has a painted saddle. The top of the saddle is a lid big enough to hold a small amount of something like sugar. On each side of the saddle is a little holder, and each holder fits a tiny little spoon. Since I had the elephant teapot my mom thought I'd like to have this thing.

Well -- it sort of coordinates though it doesn't match by any stretch of the imagination. It's definately the same period. The problem is every time I look at it I go nuts wondering if it's really a sugar pot. I don't like it nearly as much as my beloved elephant teapot.

My runner up would be a large 12x18ish vintage painting of the White House on glass that my great-aunt bought when she was working in DC in the 1940s. My mom gave it to me thinking I'd like it after my great-aunt passed away. I have no idea what I want to do with it.

my wifes favorite tchotkie is a little 1 inch plastic devil that she has somehow through all hers and our moves kept with her. My favorite would have to be all the junk that I collect that I "think" that I might use someday. A am always afraid to throw things out because I know that time will come when I wished that I really had it.

Like the zamboni! Mine would be a tourist item I picked up on the Caribbean island of Dominica in high school. I was told it was a "man trap" or "boyfriend trap," but it's basically a fancy Chinese fingertrap with a handle on one side so the other person gets stuck, not you. It has really pretty basket weaving, so I keep it out.

kdk - your photo sent me back to college, where I read that BERLIN book. Also Middle School, where my 7th grade Biology teacher used a horse femur as a lavatory pass to discourage needless bathroom usage.

I have a complete set of the Fraggle Rock McDonald's Happy Meal cars (until we had a child those were the only toys in our house that our friends' kids could play with) and my husband has an extensive "Homie" collection.

Salt and pepper shakers - a dog with a leg up, and a hydrant - collected by a farmer's wife in rural N.H. and given to me by a friend who bought their house and found the collection.

She thought of me immediately when she saw this. That's why we're friends.

It sits on the kitchen counter, along with my collection of anthropomorphic kitchen utensils (Think Alessi, 1990s).

I wish the nesting dolls were all shaped like the people, or vice versa [a few are]. That would be more in keeping with the traditional ones. Anyhoodle, for me, if an object isn't functional, it has to have a story, so I nominate the taxidermy fish above the fireplace in our living room, caught by my BF's grandfather in the 1960s.

Taxidermied baby alligator head....nuff said there.

my parents gave me a similar russian leader nesting set. I display them on a book shelf. somewhat ironically they are in front of all my french history books. even in winter...

I've got bones, too - love bones. My favorite knick-knack is definitely a small wooden toy I bought in Penzance, UK about ten years ago. It's the royal box at Wimbleton - three heads with crowns and enormous noses sticking out of a theatrical-looking box, with a wooden handle that lets you make them look back and forth, back and forth. Handmade, and so charming. I would love to buy some more toys from that company, but their website has been "under construction" for about three years.

Mine is a tin lunchbox with prints of old '20s propaganda posters about syphilis. I got it on State Street in Madison, WI. One side has a man with a gas mask and a group of soldiers. The slogan says, "THE ENEMY IS SYPHILIS: ENLIST AN ARMY IN A CAMPAIGN AGAINST IT." On the other side is a man pointing that asks, "WHOM HAVE *YOU* EXPOSED TO SYPHILIS?"

A syphilis lunchbox... how could I pass that up?

Mine's a taxidermy fish, too: found in a thrift shop sale, along with a taxidermy deer head that I did NOT buy and have regretted ever since.

No, I don't fish. But it's kind of cool.

well tip me over with a tail feather. i collect the same damn tchotchkes and am very jealous of your sets.

see here.

You should blow these photos up and display the resulting artwork if you don't want to display the dust collecting tchotchkes! They are really funny, almost like awkward family portraits of political figure matrushka(sp?)dolls, which means grandmothers! Maybe its from recently finishing one too many art critiques but i love them!

glow in the dark zombie figurines on a shelf in the bathroom.

i have this ceramic vase consisting of a pregnant torso, and one of the arms is bent with hand on hip (so maybe it's a mug?). i bought it at a flea market for my friend who is obsessed with pregnant bellies, then decided it was too cute to part with.

i have a plastic model of a jaw with pink gums and teeth from a dentist's office from the 60s. i also have a carved wooden hippo named "stuart."

I had to ask the BF to pick something. I gots lotsa stuff. We agreed on the bong, er um, water pipe I bought a fews yrs ago at SF Pride from a street vender. It 's in the shape of a person's head made of fimo clay, & embellished with beads & earrings. It's complete with Real teeth, apparantly from a donkey. I think it's from S. America.

I have a Pervert. In 8th grade we were supposed to make those little pinched bowls out of clay. But I thought that was boring, so I turned my bowl upside down and made a head from the nostrils up. He has a nose with a wart, sunken beady eyes, flippy looking ears.

The idea is that he's supposed to look like a creep spying on you, lol

Still have it....27 years later, lol

Does my collection of fake mustaches count as tchotchkes? No? Okay then, here's my groovy black cat bottle opener - you open the bottles with his rockin' guitar - he's weird and wonderful:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apartmentlife/379987871/

Beatles nesting dolls I just picked up at a little vintage shop in town today. : )

We created a set of nesting dolls for an out-doing art director, each painted in the likeness of his staff.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/somethingtosee/2697097/

Of all of my little obsessions, my largest collection is a miniature chair collection. Just one chair.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/somethingtosee/sets/673599/

My weirdest knickknack is a fake player-piano jewelry/music box that is, frankly, awesome. I have some nesting dolls of the more traditional variety as well.