Continuing my Treasure Hunting series on what sparked a life-long love of vintage in local collectors and dealers, this week’s profile features Hollie Jantz Eastman.
Eastman is one of the co-owners of Funky Junk Antique Show.




    Like so many of us, Hollie Jantz Eastman’s love of old things was a habit that started at home when she was allowed to select several of her grandmother’s Christmas ornaments.

    “At the time it didn’t matter at all. “I just picked up the six different colored ornaments and put them in a box,” she says. “They didn’t go on my tree that year, but the next year I was glad that I had them.”

    Eastman had no idea just how much the ornaments would come to mean to her. Almost a decade ago, Eastman’s grandparents were killed in an accident just 10 days before Christmas and the ornaments gained deeper significance.


    “Those ornaments are just Styrofoam bells, fancied up with thread and glitter and paint, but they have come to represent the era that I love so much,” she says.  “The same in which my grandma started her life a wife and mother.”

    Now, Eastman finds inspiration and comfort each time she places one of the handmade pieces on her tree.


    “They have graced and glittered my Christmas tree every year and reminded me of my lovely grandma,”  Eastman says. “Since that bleak holiday ten years ago, Christmas has since begun to be joyful again for my family and me.”

    As a successful entrepreneur, Eastman spends her time searching for vintage items to sell at her own shows and other venues, and she has discovered an affinity for mid-century modern finds.

    “When I started junking for real, and made it into a life’s occupation, it was the vintage 1940’s and 50’s that I was drawn too,” she says. “And it is those vintage items that still speak most vividly to me.”

   Eastman finds personal inspiration, as well.

    “As I navigate the journey of being a wife and a mother,” she says, “all it takes is bringing out those ornaments on a December day to bring it all back into focus.”

Click here to learn more about Funky Junk Antique Show.

Cheryl-Anne Millsap is a freelance columnist for The Spokesman-Review. Her essays can be heard on Spokane Public Radio and on public radio stations across the country. She is the author of “Home Planet: A Life in Four Seasons” and can be reached at catmillsap@gmail.com

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