Turning History's Bric-a-Brac Into Art

To walk through Melissa Abercrombie’s home is to peek into the past. An artist who makes sculptures from repurposed objects, and necklaces out of antique medals, the owner of Blue Ribbon Salvage says everything she and her husband own is old.

That includes a fortune telling napkin dispenser, a cigarette machine, and several arcade games. But it’s the medals from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s that fascinate her most.

“I’m always collecting little odds and ends,” says Abercrombie, 36, who sells these small treasures for $100-$250 online or at local craft fairs such as Crafterino, a benefit for COTS, which she helps coordinate.

“I have an eye for finding tiny things that go under the radar.”

Many of the exotic medals, memorabilia collected from all over the world, come with an interesting history. Orphan medals from Europe were sold to raise money for them during World War I. A prohibition medal was awarded to the abstinent. A mid-1800s coffee token came from a roaster in New York. South American marriage medals were given out as wedding favors. Among the most popular are motherhood medals, given to those who had five children surviving past the age of five.

Indeed, Abercrombie has medals to commemorate just about anything—bicyclists, dog kennel clubs, musicians, police officers, hairstylists, cooking, and even locally prized agriculture. She’s as drawn to the images as to the stories behind them, she says, pointing to a Belgian impression of two women exchanging letters for 50 years of postal service.

“I identify with the imagery having a sort of secret power, like a talisman,” she says.

The collector claims she’s not a mystical person, but believes there are reasons why she finds what she does. She says that it’s uncanny how the medals lead her to certain people, like the woman whose daughter was going away to college and purchased a small compass that had the inscription
“Always in the right direction.”

Raised in Cambria, the artist had “an old-world upbringing,” studying sculpture in high school in an outdoor marble studio at the San Luis Obispo mission. With a background in painting and printmaking, she was attracted to Petaluma for its historical context she craved.

“When you’re someone who wants to use the past in a lot of meaningful or creative ways, this is an inspirational kind of town.”

Abercrombie has been collecting medals for almost twenty years. Raised Catholic, her grandmother gave her religious medals at significant points in her life. Then, during world travels in her 20’s, medals were something small, lightweight and at that time affordable to bring home. Now she finds them at flea markets and estate sales.

She looks for chains that are characteristically distressed or textured, and finds vendors that remake older looking clasps. She also uses men’s medals that would have been attached to a pocket watch—what her husband, Fred, labels ‘mendallions.’

Most come attached to ribbons, which she removes if they aren’t intact and saves for her sons, ages five and eight, to use in collages.

“I’m training them for the Antiques Roadshow,” she jokes. “Collecting is a whole lifestyle—a connection to a lost art form. The kids learn to look at things differently.”

Among Abercrombie’s favorite old-time objects is a print she restored from the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of the Palace of Fine Arts, where she took her husband the night they met. A beer blogger and author of the upcoming book Beerds (a history of facial hair in beer advertising), he recently incorporated his new advertising firm, Abercrombie and Alchemy. She plans to use some of the medal imagery for the website.

“It’s important that we give things a second, third and fourth life,” says Abercrombie. “It’s so wasteful to not see the value in such beautiful and well-crafted little things.”