If it isn’t clear already, we love a theme. Whether a tablescape, an entry table, a party setup, we’re always on board. And while we consider ourselves collectors, we’re not generally proponents of large collections of holiday decor. Cheaply made, mass-produced pieces that follow passing trends can quickly fill your storage space and eventually end up in a landfill.

So consider this an invitation to get a little creative with your Halloween decor. Think vintage, handmade, and outside the box. Perhaps you lean Victorian Gothic with an ornate table setting, or find something playful for a shelf, like a vintage folk art piece. A grouping of dark pottery can work year-round, then say “Halloween” with the right floral arrangement. And don’t underestimate the power of paper bats or a few pumpkins.

You know what works for your home, but one method that has worked for us is to designate a fixed amount of storage for each holiday and stick to it. When space is limited, you’re more likely to think twice before buying another plastic decoration from big-box store that shall not be named. If you do feel the urge to purchase something, try thrifting. There’s something especially satisfying about slowly building a collection of things you truly love.

Of course, with kids, a few gimmicky items are part of the fun. I (Taylor) confess to owning some myself: my son convinced me to buy a spider last year, and we made a yarn web that stretches across our fireplace. But there is power in restraint. One of our favorite design maxims is “creativity loves constraint.” Before buying something new, take a look at what you already own. What could you rearrange, repurpose, or pair with something unexpected to make it feel festive?

For Halloween inspiration, we love John Derian. If you’re in New York and haven’t visited his trio of stores, put them on your list. Visiting is an experience in itself, and you’ll have a hard time leaving empty-handed.

Meanwhile, here is our curated collection of Halloween-inspired antiques from across the internet. Maybe one will speak to you, or perhaps it will inspire you on your own hunt. Either way, here is your gentle reminder that there is never any rush to purchase everything at once. Remember, part of the fun is building a collection gradually over time!

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Inspired by his immense collections, we’re back to sourcing for you - this time, five categories of antiques we’d like to think would be Sleeper endorsed: Pennsylvania redware, pewter, folk art silhouettes, majolica ceramics, and Asian lacquerware. Enjoy these shoppable moodboards below, and let us know if you end up with anything Beauport-inspired!

Majolica
Restraint is not on the menu.

Vintage Green Majolica Faience, $45.

Pair of Green Glazed Majolica Leaf-Form Pieces (c. 1870), $598.

Antique English Majolica Corn (1880’s-1890’s), $349. Hard to pass on this quirky one!

Antique Eichwald Green Majolica Urn Vase (early 1900’s), $175

Antique Leaf-Design Green Majolica Plate (19th century), $49.

Vintage Green Ceramic Woven Bowl, Vallauris (mid 20th century) $980. (Not technically majolica, and pricey, but the color and texture make it a very happy cousin.)

Antique Victorian Green Strawberry Vine & Grape Majolica Plate (1870’s to 1890’s), $58.

Pewter
A moody metal when brass feels like too much.

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Sleeper, one of America’s first professional interior designers, treated interiors like theater sets, building each space around a particular color, period, collection, or eccentric idea, and filling them with salvaged architectural fragments, ceramics, paintings, wallpaper, and other curiosities. Begun in 1907, it was Sleeper’s lifelong decorating experiment, and he kept expanding and redesigning until his death in 1934. It’s packed. We’re not kidding when we say the 3 hour tour wouldn’t be long enough.

Imaginative and diverse, Beauport wasn’t just his home, but a three dimensional portfolio for his design clients. Dramatic shifts lead one room into the next: a floral wallpaper peekaboo-ing from a wood paneled doorway, canopy beds contrasted with low straw mattresses, dark sloped ceilings opening up into expansive views of the ocean, revealed through salvaged paned windows. The home was built new, but as a bit of architectural collage, deliberately meant to look old by salvaging pieces from fragmented houses, and showcasing different styles. Beauport is a stage for Sleeper’s clever design ideas, like hanging paintings from knobs, hiding surprise doors, using windowpane placement to accentuate the ocean horizon, making color as important as architecture.

We love a theme around here, and on that, Sleeper went all-in. These rooms are densely decorated, but not without control; each room is thematic, bound by a common color, period, recurring material. He didn’t decorate rooms, he invented fantasies of them. There’s a wood paneled English pub inspired room full of rustic redware, a sitting room with hand-painted chinoiserie wallpaper and a pagoda shaped ceiling. One room is entirely red and black, while around the corner immersive seafoam green walls (punctuated by hits of red geraniums) bounce green light around the dining room, with shelves of green majolica standing anywhere that’s not a window.

Henry Davis Sleeper was a collector not for provenance or prestige, but for visual value. Does it repeat a color? Introduce a strange shape? Add age? Create tension? Tell a story? Make another object look better? He amassed a huge collection based on buying diverse things he loved and planning around them, often shopping with his mother at flea markets and auctions. (Familiar tale . . . our mom taught our love for the hunt!) Whether uranium glass or George Washington memorabilia, colonial pewter or toleware, he found a home for it.

In 1935, Sleeper’s brother inherited the mansion, but without the funds to take care of it, sold it to the wealthy McCann family. They remarkably bought the house and all its contents, and left it primarily intact. It passed to Historic New England in 1942, a great acquisition, and the reason we get to enjoy touring it today.

Beauport is a design-lover’s wonderland, and makes the case for trusting your eye, salvaging old things, and buying the strange, beautiful object. As always, we’ve got antique hunting on the mind, and few themes stood out to direct our shopping list. We’ll share those themes with our moodboard of antique links tomorrow, so shoppers stay tuned! Thanks for visiting Beauport with us; we hope you’re inspired and that next time you get to tour in person, shoe booties and all.

Do tell us if you have any of your own house museum recommendations! Happy antiquing.

- Taylor and Veronica

Polka dots feel modern, graphic, playful, a little bit bold, but long before they were printed onto mid-century dresses or made their way into contemporary interiors, dots were present in ancient ceramics, textiles, and decorative arts. Not quite “polka dots” as we know them, but unmistakably “dots.” The perfectly spaced, cheerful repeats came later, but they come from the same instinct: repetition, rhythm, and a bit of delight.

It wasn’t until the mid-1800s, alongside advances in textile printing, that dots became uniform and more widely produced. Around the same time, the polka dance craze swept through Europe, and like any good trend, its name caught on, with various products adopting it. Polka dots were born, and the name stuck.

There’s something endlessly appealing about dots, which is likely why they keep returning in trend cycles. Though the origin of the name is unclear, the world polka in Czech means polish woman. Just like the word, the pattern evokes a certain femininity, along with a striking visual movement that evokes the playfulness of the dance itself. They’re structured but soft, classic but never boring. They can read sweet or sophisticated depending on scale and color. A tiny pin dot feels almost like a texture; an oversized dot becomes a statement. They are equally suitable on a countryside pillowcase as in an abstract painting.

If you doubt their timelessness, check out this book of French textile watercolor samples that stunningly dates from 1863. The patterns feel both historic and completely current, proving that a good motif doesn’t belong to a single era.

Maybe that’s why we keep coming back to them. Dots aren’t just a trend cycle. They’re a pattern we loved then, and love still.

Now for our slightly dotty collection where we think there’s something for everyone, whatever style you may be drawn to.

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Our mother worked as a flight attendant for 35 years, so we were lucky enough to fly for free, traveling broadly and often, appreciating art worldwide. It started our aesthetic interest early, as we collected a visual education, sharpening our eyes for what makes a piece special — whether it’s a flea market find or a museum masterwork. Museums are right next to antiquing at the top of our travel to-do list. But we’ve noticed visitors often give the ceramics rooms just a peek, while beelining toward a painting seen in a textbook. Don’t overlook them, they are incredible!
Here are some photos we’ve texted each other over the years as proof:

Perhaps we’ve taken our inspiration from The Metropolitan Museum of Art a bit too literally, where only about 4% of the objects are on display at any given time, because both of us have burgeoning ceramics collections that have long since outgrown our shelves. (For a real treat, take some time exploring The Met’s visible storage rooms in the American Wing, The Henry R. Luce Center.)

Not everyone can travel frequently — Taylor has two young children, so her international travel is much more limited these days than Veronica’s — but if you want to add to your own collection, you can still find items with a story, whether online or locally, to add depth and character to your home.

Some of our best local suggestions for pottery and ceramics are:
Strawberry Mansion, Salt Lake City, UT
Object, Los Angeles, CA
Le Fanion, NYC, NY
Pidgin, Oak Hill, NY
Newburgh Vintage Emporium, Newburgh, NY
Your local antique store is probably full of unique and affordable vintage studio pottery and global pieces! Or, for a curated selection, shop our finds below.

Before we dive in to our shopping list, a few terms you’ll start to notice on your journey through antique/vintage pottery: redware (an early American clay fired to that classic warm terracotta hue), spongeware (dabbed with a sponge for a mottled, folk-art look), agateware (marbled clays swirled together, like agate stone), yellowware (utilitarian and buttery-toned, a farmhouse staple), stoneware (dense, durable, often salt-glazed), and delftware (the iconic blue-and-white Dutch tin-glazed pottery). Each has its own history, and its own charm.

Today’s list is a trove of 50+ unique, internationally sourced, shelf-stealing ceramics — grouped in price tiers, under $75 (many under $45, even!), under $175, and under $275. Let us know if you end up with anything!

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This combination has roots in some of our favorite design eras: the cheerful optimism of 1950s kitchens, the graphic glazes of mid-century Scandinavian ceramics, and the hand-painted folk traditions where saturated colors brought everyday objects to life. It works well in spaces traditional or modern. Mint feels fresh while the red brings the energy. It just feels right, no?

Veronica styled this Boston living room for designer Sarah Deane, who expertly combined the two with Robert Kime fabric and smart trim. (Also, would you look at that fringe!) Veronica tends to use one or the other in any project somewhere, whether a vase, decorative bowl, or throw, but bonus points for both at once.

Onto the list:

Red and Blue Ceramic Vase, $135. The happiest primary-color pairing. Equally good with one wild bloom or left empty on a shelf.

Uppsala Ekeby Glazed Pottery Vase (1920s), $279. Swedish pottery with that distinctive kind of rich, earthy glaze.

Vintage Scandinavian Ceramic Vase, $345. A small, sculptural ceramic that plays well with others.

Mid-Century French Dark Green Urn Vase, $70.47. We love an urn, especially as a chic mantlepiece object.

Gmundner Ceramic Wall Plate (1960s), $124.26. Red, green, and just enough folk-art energy to make a plate wall feel less predictable.

Carstens Mid-Century Vase, $53.77. West German pottery at its most successful: bold glaze, strong form, and enough presence to hold its own on a crowded shelf.

Ephraim Faience Two-Handled Pottery Jug, $210. A handsome Arts and Crafts-style jug.

Jasba Red and Green Ceramic Vase (1960), $66. Buy this before we do!

Vintage Vallauris Ceramic Display Bowl (1950s), $500. Abask antiques are pricey, but for good reason. This ceramic bowl with a sunny South-of-France feeling is versatile, perfect for fruit, keys and mail, or nothing at all.

Studio Ceramic Serving Bowl, $54. Studio pottery tells such a story, we can’t help but imagine the person who created each piece. This bowl has serious character for less than the price of a big box store.

Vintage Mid-Century Swedish Original Interior Oil Painting (1950), $859.95. Embrace a mint and red interior in more ways than one with this charming little scene.

Mid-Century Scandinavian Mixed-Media Artwork, $216.73. Add this to any interior vignette for some instant layered style.

Antique Hand-Painted Polychrome Folk-Art Piece, $1314.33. The piece de resistance, how stunning is this hand painted French chest? Patina galore.

Art Deco Red and Clear Ikora Glass Bowl, $149.99. Picture this on a coffee table or console, making a statement enough for the whole room.

Thanks for reading! Let us know if you end up incorporating mint and scarlet in any rooms, or even your wardrobe. Happy antiquing.

Below, you can shop our curated selection from around the internet of delectable antiques and vintage items inspired by a picturesque summer farm stand. Part French country pantry, part Central European folk interior, part 1960s American textile exuberance, this list is a shortcut to summer, straight from a roadside stall with hand-painted signs, brimming with ripe rainbows of produce and fresh flowers by the bunch. We’re drawn to food as ornament, turning everyday domestic objects into a playful celebration of garden and table.

Drawing inspiration from pastoral scenes, kitschy ceramics, simple patterns, and heirloom family goods, we embrace the everyday abundance of a fictional farmhouse: the cutting garden, a full pantry, morning egg collection, a colorful table set for company.

Now for the fresh picks:

Vera Neumann Tea Towel (1960s), $50. Search more by this artist to reveal a treasure trove of painted fruit and vegetable linens.

Austrian Folk Art Rush Chair (1970s), $946 plus international shipping. A rush chair with postmodern flare.

Cast Iron Pig Figurine, $24. Door stop? Paper weight? Shelf styler? Joy inducer?

French Wicker Baskets (1930s), $72 plus international shipping. Live out your french countryside fantasies when you fill these with flowers, produce, wood, or whatever other treasures need a home

Folk Art Rabbit Wagon (1940s-50s), $55. One of those items you’re not sure if you want for your children or for yourself. Save it for Easter or enjoy year round.

French Embroidered Cherry Trim (1930s), $55.03. The perfect little trim for a kitchen shelf, curtain, pillow, or upholstery project.

French Majolica Strawberry Plate (1860-1910), $50. The domestic playfulness of French Majolica’s saturated glazes and raised motifs create a plate as decorative as the food placed on it.

Vintage Danish Fruit & Vegetable Ceramic Tiles in Silver Frames (Set of Two), $62. A playful addition to any kitchen.

Antique Ironstone Tureen (Late 1800s), $48.

Antique Painting of Hens (19th century), $458. Low maintenance chickens, just as cute without the coop.

Antique Green Hand Painted Crock with Floral Motif, $207.

Fraises 1938 Oil Painting, $1,127. A generous bowl of summer strawberries to last all year long.

Antique German Rooster Bank, $120.

Vintage Majolica Lettuce plates (set of 4), $68. A plate that turns Tuesday dinner into something slightly theatrical.

Transalvanian Floral Wall Plate, $350.08.

French Antique Bowl with Jaspe Glaze, $143.55. Perfect landing spot for those fresh market finds.

Here are a few charming farmstands/markets we’ve visited and loved. Any places you’d recommend? Eyeing this CA list and this NY list, but would love to compile more must-tries.

Earthbound Farm Stand - Carmel Valley, CA

Kinderhook Farm - Kinderhook, NY

Ballerina Farm Store - Midway, UT

LA Original Farmers Market - Los Angeles

Thanks for reading, happy antiquing!

Thanks for joining us at For Keeps. We are sisters Veronica and Taylor (an interior stylist and an interior designer, with businesses on the East Coast and West) who are constantly on the antique hunt for clients, ourselves, and each other-–and now you! We know how it goes, scrolling the never ending pages of Etsy, eBay, Google to find something worthwhile, and then second guess yourself. “Can I can imagine this in my own home? Is it kitschy or cool? Is it just past 10pm and time to stop shopping?”

We hope to make it easier, and we welcome all antique lovers, shopaholics, designers, and curious collectors to this virtual antiquing trip, where we share curated links to online finds, our latest objects of obsession, and how to integrate them into a home. We’ll do the legwork, you do the shopping. You’ll also hear about whatever we’ve been researching for our projects, historical tidbits about design, and the diverse interiors that inspire our collections.

Veronica styles for interior designers and sells antiques through her brand @finding_keeping, and Taylor has several simultaneous projects in the works with her design firm @ClassRoomLA, but because we and our clients only have so much room to fill, we can’t possibly purchase all the one-of-a-kind finds we are constantly saving! We want to share the joy of antiquing, and intend the semi-monthly shoppable moodboards to provide just the item or inspiration your own home has been waiting for. One week may be a curation of folk art decor, a themed color combo like chartreuse and red, sculptural objects inspired by a recent trip to the California coast, a charming collection of mid-century Swedish oil paintings, or the best trinket boxes we could track down. We hope you feel right at home!

Because these items are specially curated and one-of-a-kind, and we are offering expertise we’d normally charge clients for, most of these posts will live behind the paywall. If you aren’t ready to hire a decorator or personal sourcing services, this is an affordable way to get access to our advice and rare finds, to put those finishing touches on your home, with objects with history that feel layered, enduring, and intentional.

Thanks for joining us on our sourcing trip!