The Sinking Canoe Antiques

08/11/2026

Tons of old cups and saucers and figurines that nobody wants...now up in the sky of the Sinking Canoe antiques...

08/10/2026

Today we’re going to see The Odyssey.
But sometimes you don’t need a big screen to rediscover a classical story. Sometimes it is hiding on a shelf in an antique shop, telling the same tale much more quietly — waiting for someone who recognizes it and doesn’t need subtitles or google.
This late-Victorian F. & R. Pratt “Old Greek” earthenware vase, made in Fenton, Staffordshire, around 1890–1910, carries one of those stories.
The scene appears to represent Demodocus, the blind singer at the court of the Phaeacians, performing before Odysseus and King Alcinous.
Odysseus has arrived among the Phaeacians as a stranger. During a banquet, Demodocus begins to sing about the Trojan War. Everyone else is listening to a heroic story. For Odysseus, however, it is not a story at all.
He remembers his dead companions, the atrocities of war, the terrible silence of the gods through it all. And while the singer continues, Odysseus quietly begins to cry.
King Alcinous notices his tears and asks the stranger the obvious question: Who are you?
Only then does Odysseus reveal his name and begin to tell his own story.
So, in a way, much of The Odyssey begins because somebody sings an old song at dinner and makes a guest cry.
I’m curious to see how they handle this pivotal moment in the movie.
And all this time, we had the same story sitting quietly on a shelf in the shop.

08/10/2026

Fighting at home… me and the new necklace. 😄
A rather improbable mixture, which of course is exactly why I like it: lava beads, antique Whitby jet, vintage Himalayan carnelian agate beads, sterling silver, and a traditional handmade pendant from the northern Ethiopian highlands, associated with the Amhara and Tigray regions.

Whitby jet, for those who don’t know it, is actually fossilized wood, found around Whitby in northern England. It became enormously fashionable during the Victorian period, especially for mourning jewellery.
So we have Victorian England, the Himalayas and northern Ethiopia all meeting in one necklace.
Grant says perhaps it is too much.

08/09/2026

open Thursday -Sunday
11 am 5 pm
Indian Head - Saskatchewan

08/09/2026

Bedroom perspective in our house in Naples .... :-)

08/09/2026

The beautiful coat has been SOLD...
Enjoy it!!!!!!

08/08/2026

Pair of antique opaline glass vases, hand painted, likely Bohemian or Central European, dating from approximately 1890–1910.

08/07/2026

Vintage fashion at The Sinking Canoe. Some pieces have more personality than others.
A group of vintage white blouses, mostly from around the 1940s–50s—rayon, nylon, perhaps some silk, all with those lovely small details they used to bother making: covered buttons, embroidery, pintucks, little collars…

Very proper ladies’ blouses.

08/07/2026

We do not have only antique paintings or vintage china. We also have these little objects made for very specific collectors—the sort of things that perhaps most people would pass without looking twice. But when we choose them, we always try to find something a little unusual, or at least something that carries the weight of time and has a story to tell.

These two corkscrews are a good example.

The earlier one is wonderfully simple: a turned animal-bone handle with fine incised rings, a substantial iron shank and a broad, irregular Archimedean-style worm. . It is probably British or Continental European and we would date it to circa 1800–1850, although the hand-forged worm make a late-18th-century date entirely possible.
The second is quite different with a decorative cast-iron finger-pull handle, curled grips and a pointed central crest. Probably French or Continental European, it dates to around 1870–1900.
So, not grand objects, perhaps—but very tactile pieces of everyday history.used for more than a century ago, and in the case of the bone-handled one, perhaps closer to two centuries ago. Is not enough?

08/07/2026