20 March 2010

Cachivaches

Cachivache (it sounds more or less kah-chee-vah-cheh) is a fantastic spanish word that means piece of old junk. Some days ago I took a walk at home drawing some of the cachivaches I have. I love so much many of them but I'm not sure how long some others will last (actually I'm not sure how they arrived and I wonder why they live on my shelves).

In this page there is a pot from IKEA, a devil shaped pen holder, a glass candlestick from my grand mother, an elephant puppet from India, a duck shape badge from Cuba, a wooden methane molecule shaped massage gadget, a mysterious wooden fish nobody remember how arrived home but that I like so much, a wooden woman figure from Kenya bought in Rome by my parents, an old counter bell, a little rolling stone my son gave me when he was 6 years old as if it was a gold nugget, a house shaped anti stress toy, a bilboquet from Paris, a calabrian liquorice box, a french porphyry egg, and a little glass ashtray from Naples.

Cachivaches (spanish), tchotchkes or pishifkes (yiddish), knickknacks (english), ıvır zıvır (turkish). More languages are welcome.

9 comments:

  1. we call these things "Pichifkes" :)

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  3. qué buen post, Miguel - gocé los dibujos también.

    y me identifico 100% con tu nuevo avatar - a mí, cafetero por naturaleza no se me ocurrió antes! :-)

    saludos!

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  4. Gracias Frank, me encanta que te guste el avatar, llevaba mucho tiempo dándole vueltas, y era tan obvio...

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  5. LOL did you infer that Pichifkes is in turkish because of the blog? if so than i will have to correct you... the blog was about our travels in turkey but we originate from israel... and i guess it is also a yiddish word (it ain't hebrew, that's for sure)

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  6. Thank you Anna & Ur! You're right I inferred you were from Turkey :D Thank you so much!

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  7. Andaba leyendo en ingles sobre la mansión del coleccionista Forrest Ackerman y mencionaron que habia muchos "Tchotchkes" y sospeché de algún modo que querían decir cachivaches. Aplicando google, me doy con tu interesante blog. Sospecho que las dos palabras tienen un origen común. Tienes alguna idea al respecto?
    Saludos desde Estocolmo!

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  8. Aunque diferente en lo que concierne a temática, tus sketches me recuerdan un libro que anduve "hojeando" en la web sobre mi queridisimo "Fede" Fellini hace un par de días.Se llama Fellini's BOOK OF DREAMS. Acá te dejo un link para que si quieres le des una mirada (aunque tampoco me sorprendería que lo conocieras)
    http://www.altfg.com/blog/directors/federico-fellini-book-of-dreams/

    Un abrazo desde Suecia,tocayo!

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