Marsha Fottler goes shopping

What you will find in this neighborhood of golden oldies are small and medium-sized emporiums that deal in secondhand "stuff" and "junque," as well as consignment shops and thrift stores with household items and clothes. But included in the mix are some genuine collectibles and antique shops that carry exotic and beautiful objects and furniture more than 100 years old. The prices and the quality are wide-ranging and you do not have to have a degree in art history to have a good time and perhaps score a bargain.

For the most part, the shop owners in this neighborhood are a reliable resource. They're also genuinely nice people with engaging stories about how objects of desire seduced them into a career. Consider Barbara Roby, who owns The Olde Village Square. Many years ago, her grandmother gave Roby's mother a ceramic pig cookie jar. Barbara always admired it and today she is the third generation in her family to own it. That jar was the inspiration that Roby needed to leave her career in marketing and open an antique store that specializes in, but is not limited to, cookie jars. In her shop there is usually an inventory of about 75 cookie jars that she sells to collectors, nostalgic tourists and dealers from all over the country who think her prices are, well, like stealing cookies from a jar. Price tags range from $50 to $300 and she parts with an average of two per week.

Roby notes that 90 percent of cookie jars are animals and that pigs and bears are the most popular. In the cookie jar world some of the significant manufacturers to look for are Shawnee, American Bisque, Red Wing and McCoy.

How many people who buy vintage cookie jars will ever put cookies in them? "None that I know of and certainly not me," says Roby. The pop artist Andy Warhol was an enthusiastic cookie jar collector. His stash (which numbered in the hundreds and included some really bizarre containers) went for big bucks when it was auctioned after his death. One way to tell a new or reproduction cookie jar from an old one is by weight. The new ones are much lighter and more fragile. Roby unearths cookie jars for her shop at estate sales, through classified ads, even yard sales. Since local people know of her specialty they often bring her jars from their homes up North.

If you ask about vintage jewelry in many of the shops, the owners will invariably say "go see Judy," as they point to Judy's Antiques which is owned by Judy Haar, a chic, thin redhead who always wears interesting jewelry from another era. She's been in the antiques business for 15 years. Haar's store is feminine, not frilly or cluttered, but saturated with subtle womanly glamour. I don't think there's much in the store for a man unless he's looking for an exquisite gift for a lady-love. If so, he's ventured to fertile territory.

Besides an extravagant accumulation of costume and fine jewelry dating from the 1800s and continuing through the 1950s, there are groupings of amazing hat pins, compacts, sewing items, perfume vials, sterling silver home accessories, linens and a stunning collection of evening bags, many of them beaded and all of them works of art. Haar has the little purses hanging on a back wall in an artistic cluster. This is probably the way collectors should enjoy them at home, perhaps on a guest bedroom wall. In decorative evening bags, condition is everything; and Haar's are pristine. Prices range from about $75 up to $300.

Ten years ago Valerie Sanders eased into her career as the owner of her compact, eponymous boutique, which excels in china and glassware from Prussian hand-painted platters up to Fiesta Ware. A decade ago Sanders had a business in repairing glass. In the course of dealing with vintage glass, she became intrigued and taught herself the basics of collecting. Then she started buying and selling. Pretty soon she had her own antique store, where she specializes in sets of luxury china, magnificent crystal and vintage cut glass. Her method of acquiring things for the shop is simple. "I choose a high-end brand name such as Limoges or Wedgwood and I only want drop-dead gorgeous patterns," she says. "I figure if I'm crazy about the china and glass, someone else will be too."

Her theory has proven sound, and she's able to judge the public's tastes pretty astutely. Sanders says most people today are looking for elegance. In vintage china patterns, the majority of buyers like floral patterns and gold trim. Her store also includes sterling silver tea sets, sterling flatware, and linens. If you're obsessed with setting a glorious table with only the best in Old-World luxury, Valerie Sanders could be your one-stop shopping destination. Just add fresh flowers and you're set to impress.

Impressive is the best way to describe the vast array of huge and tiny antiques and collectibles at the College Parkway Antique Mall owned by Richard and Ursula Gannon. The couple rents "case space" to 16 dealers, who display small items such as carved ivory figurines, vintage pocket knives, household utensils, paperweights, fishing lures, toys and the like. But the majority of the 2,500-square-foot space is taken up with the Gannons' finds; and, believe me, their tastes are eclectic.

In one corner is a 17th-century Indonesian sculpture of the god Vishnu slaying a lesser god; it is carved from a single piece of wood ($1,295). On a table sits a bronze lamp depicting an antiquities seller in ancient Egypt ($1,000) and over in another part of the shop is a mahogany "cellarette," from the 1920s. This elegant and useful little cabinet (about four-and-a-half feet high and two-and-a-half feet wide) is a gentleman's bar. It's full of compartments and pull-out trays that make you admire the engineering of the piece as much as its beauty and function. At $1,000, I think it's a bargain. "The only one I ever saw in action was in a period movie that starred Jackie Gleason," says Richard. "He had a cellarette in the film. I was so intrigued by the piece that when I got the chance to buy one, I did." Compact and portable, it's just the thing for a condo or small apartment.