Own a Piece of Julia Child - Sort of

by Sara Bonisteel, Posted Apr 17th 2009 @ 12:00PM

julie and julia sale metal molds Photo: Sara Bonisteel

While you may never be able to own an actual kitchen gadget from Julia Child's kitchen (the Smithsonian has the complete contents of her Cambridge, Mass., kitchen on display here), you might be able to grab a set piece from the new Julia Child movie "Julie and Julia" -- if you happen to be anywhere near the New York metropolitan area this weekend.

The movie is Nora Ephron's melding of Julia Child's memoirs with those of Julie Powell, a Queens, N.Y., woman who blogged through "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" over the course of a year.

The prop masters for Columbia Pictures are liquidating the set for the film -- starring Amy Adams (as Powell) and Meryl Streep (as Child) -- from a warehouse in northern Brooklyn, N.Y. this weekend. Slashfood popped in this morning to peruse the gadgetry used to fill seven kitchen movie sets, including the famed cooking school Le Cordon Bleu.

wire egg baskets Photo: Sara Bonisteel

Many of the items, including these egg baskets and the rack of copper pots behind it, had been claimed by the time Slashfood arrived at the sale, five minutes before it was scheduled to begin. But there were still copious amounts of kitchen stuff -- ancient spice grinders, barware and pots so worn one young shopper wondered "Can you actually cook with this stuff?"

We suppose you can provided you give them a thorough washing and polishing, though for $3 we picked up a really beat up Le Creuset flame pan -- set for retirement to that scullery in the sky -- just cause we liked the way it looked.

pans Photo: Sara Bonisteel

Bonnie Slotnick, an antiquarian cookbook seller, was among the few picking through the kitchen ephemera like the cookbooks shown below. She said she'd never had so much fun, so expect to see a few of those gems at her New York bookstore.

cookbooks Photo: Sara Bonisteel

The movie doesn't come out until August -- so we'll have to wait till then to see if any of our finds actually got a close-up.

The Julie and Julia Sale runs through Sunday (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) at 33 Dobbin St. in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, N.Y. If you can't make the sale, you can see pictures of the items here.

This Hollywood Julia Child garage sale got us wondering, if you could own something from a famous chef, what would it be?

Filed Under: Stores & Shopping, Food News, Celebrities
Tags: brooklyn, garage sale, GarageSale, julia child, JuliaChild, julie and julia, JulieAndJulia, mastering the art of french cooking, MasteringTheArtOfFrenchCooking, sale, stores-and-shopping