Family’s four generations take stage at flea market

For many years, wood carver H.E. “Bill” Taylor reserved a booth on the lawn at the Old Court House Museum and peddled his hand-carved birds, ducks and other figures to those seeking a bit of treasure among the trinkets and trifles for sale at the annual flea market.

One day Taylor’s daughter, Eula Stanley, a Vicksburg native who now lives in Jackson, was attending a meeting at a home in Madison when she realized that a carved bird she saw among the home’s decorations was one of her father’s. So when her daughter, Susan Hoxie, began thinking about a use for the many craft items she makes, Stanley suggested they get together and rent a booth at the flea market where her father had sold his works for so many years.

On Saturday, when the Old Court House Museum sponsors its 26th annual flea market, Stanley, Hoxie and Hoxie’s daughter, Taylor, — named for her great-grandfather — will take up the tradition and bring to four the number of family generations selling wares at the market that circles the historic building. They will be offering handmade, hand-painted and restored items in the booth they’re calling Rosehill Cottage Collectibles. This is their first year participating.

“It’s a good family thing to keep going,” Taylor Hoxie, 16, said Wednesday as she and her mother and grandmother showed off items they’ll offer. “I think more people should do it. It’s a good way to have family time together.”

Taylor Hoxie was only 10 months old when her great-grandfather died in 1992. He managed the Blakely Plantation in Warren County for decades and carved in his spare time, often with just a pocket knife. A few of the items he carved and sold at the flea market are still in the family — life-sized, hand-painted ducks or delicate hummingbirds, wrens and butterflies he made from cypress, balsa and other woods.

If you go

The Old Court House Museum flea market will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Sales of booth space benefit the museum. To reserve a space, call museum curator Bubba Bolm at 601-636-0741.

Vicksburg historian and former Old Court House Museum curator Gordon Cotton wrote about Taylor more than once, he said Friday. In one column, he quoted Taylor as saying he often used cypress “knees” because “you can work the grain most any way you want to. Just use your imagination as you go along. I might start out with a cow and end up with a rabbit.”

His granddaughter has a similar ability. Susan Hoxie has been the driving force behind the family’s preparations this year, and where her grandfather turned shapeless pieces of wood into birds, Susan Hoxie has rescued other people’s trash on roadsides and turned it into useful decorative items for the home.

“Reuse it, recycle it, just don’t throw it out,” she said. She frequents garage sales, flea markets, the Salvation Army thrift store, River City Rescue Mission and any other place where she can find items to “re-purpose,” as she terms it. She brings them home and stacks them up until she figures out what she wants to make.

For example, there is a stack of old window screens she’s planning to turn into folding room dividers, a wardrobe awaiting refinishing and a pile of discarded, splintered, weathered boards, some with old hooks attached. “That just adds to the charm of it,” Susan Hoxie said. “Why throw it away?”

Her backyard lawn bears haloes of dried spray paint from her turning discarded cork circles into decorative bulletin boards. Nearby, homemade bird feeders and bird baths sprout like tall flowers, fashioned from old china plates mounted on decoratively painted staircase spindles. It’s a fun use for a plate that no longer matches anything else in the cupboard, she said.

Hoxie’s mother, Stanley, has a different method.

She, too, paints and makes floral arrangements, but aims to clean out her own closets and attics and find uses for things she no longer needs. She enjoys making things over to restore their usefulness. She’s restored furniture items and such pieces as tiered plant stands and old end tables, and she’s made silk flower wreaths and other floral arrangements.

Susan Hoxie said the pieces her mother has painted and prepared for sale are harder to let go of than her own crafted items, but she hopes the lagging economy will prompt shoppers to purchase Christmas gifts and for other practical uses.

“We’re not looking to make a lot of money,” Hoxie said. “We’re just doing it for the fun of it and to meet people.”