What will be for tea at Chief Trading Post

"Buns" is what.

Bamboozlery

You don't see many of these, do you? But Chief Trading Post has one. Not sure there's much bamboo in it, mind.

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, part 7

A bloody great stork!

The Infinite Sadness of Chief Trading Post

Everything in the above box, or boat, is 50p (that everything consisting of a couple of crumbling candles, an egg thing, some dust and pebbles).

I'm reminded of Tom Waits' melancholy classic Soldier's Things.

Davenports and kettle drums
and swallow tail coats
Table cloths and patent leather shoes
Bathing suits and bowling balls
And clarinets and rings
And all this radio really
needs is a fuse

A tinker, a tailor
A soldier's things
His rifle, his boots full of rocks
And this one is for bravery
And this one is for me
And everything's a dollar
in this box...

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, part 6

A No Smoking Gorilla.

A Sailor (Chef?) Teddy Bear Rocking-Chair (one Sailor/Chef Teddy Bear Arm missing), a Rocking-Aeroplane.

An Obscene CD-Rack (carved).

Chief Trading Post: Bronze tart update

In an earlier post I erroneously stated that the price of the full size tart in bronze, reclining was "just under £1,900". Not sure where I got that from -low-res image and faulty memory - as I was miles out.

Having been back to Chief Trading Post, I can confirm that the price is in fact an eye-watering (and oddly specific) £12,312.86.



Chief Trading Post also claims, rather dubiously in my opinion, that the bronze is a "Lady Coffee Table, Lyling (sic) Sexy". I don't doubt the Lyling Sexy bit, but it's far from clear where you'd balance your coffee.

While we were there I purchased a tropical fishy mobile/windchime thing (£2) for Brit Jnr's room. I asked the assistant how often people bought the large, sexy bronzes. "Not that often," she admitted. "It's always a bit of a surprise when someone wants one, to be honest."

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, Part 5

A 5-foot winking boy statue, in a sort of Manga/Jeff Koons style; a golden eagle.

A nude bronze, well-endowed.

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, part 4

A lifesize Elvis (Vegas era), with guitar.

A ceramic hare/kangaroo? A big, hellish crab.

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, part 3

Various ornamental animals including pugs and storks; a large bronze mounted warrior, possibly Genghis Khan?

Two lifesize wooden horse skeletons in crates; a classical statue, possibly Atlas (right, supporting Overflow Car Park sign); plant pots; a 20 ft sculpture of elephants supporting other elephants (left); house for a very wide dog.

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, part 2

A ten-foot tall 'Cement Spirit House' (sic).

Easter Island Moai heads, stone mushrooms, an elephant, a large shoe house.

A full-size tart in bronze, reclining (price just under £1,900)

Things you can buy at Chief Trading Post, part 1

A cabinet, some dusty glass bottles and bowls, cartwheels, a large Hindu frieze, some windchimes.




A variety of rocking horses.




A frightening statue.

Chief Trading Post

The best shop in the Bristol area, and probably the world, is Chief Trading Post, in Oldland Common. It is, I suppose, a Garden Centre; but Chief Trading Post is a ‘Garden Centre’ in the sense that Salvador Dali is a ‘landscape painter’.

It consists of a series of vast greenhouses, some which contain heaped junk, rejects and broken things; and some of which (and the boundaries are fuzzy) contain many hundreds of items for sale, grouped into categories all of which seem to be ‘Misc’.

There is also a very good café. The food and drink is relatively normal but the seating is not. For example, inside the main building we have The Satanic Table:



And then just outside in the greenhouse is a bewildering range of themed seating, such as the giant clay pot containing circular benches and a table, and guarded by this sort of African warrior…

…or this one, below, which we call the ‘Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Table’, for the very good reason that next to it is a model of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a big wobbly head. Above the table is a big blue glass ball, a birdy thing and a heater with the sign: “Touch Button Every Twenty Minutes For Continuous Heat.”

You can buy many things at Chief Trading Post. I will illustrate some of these in future postings, but here is a foretaste: