Photos: Jadis in Santa Monica begins its farewell

The window-cleaning bill at Main Street shop Jadis in Santa Monica must be huge. So many people have leaned against the glass to peer at Parke Meek’s seldom-open, oddity-packed domain. Is that a Tesla coil hulking in the shadows? Do the aged black telephones work? Part old curiosity shop, mainly a prop house, Jadis is a monument to Meek’s lifelong fascination with the improbably possible. Meek, who died in early January at age 86, remains a presence in the darkened store. Take a peek inside the store so many admired but never entered. ...

Click here to read the full story on Jadis. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

March 8, 2014 7:15 PM PT

When its contents go on sale Sunday, as his partner Susan Lieberman plans, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that a glimmer of his delight will travel with them. Meanwhile, in the shop window, a model dirigible and tin-can locomotives still stop passersby. If you’re lucky, someone inside will throw the switch. Wheels will turn, whistle-flaps rise. The window will wake up. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Meek had already led several lives when he and Lieberman opened Jadis in 1976. A skilled carpenter and self-taught engineer, he’d parlayed a grade-school education and a World War II stint in the Marines into jobs with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, geodesic dome creator Buckminster Fuller and Midcentury design legends Charles and Ray Eames. According to Lieberman, the Eameses hired Meek in the 1950s on the strength of the rebuilt Ford woody that Meek drove to the interview. He stayed for nearly three decades, moving from the furniture department to the studio’s film and exhibition projects. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Lieberman inside the store. Accumulation was as important to Meek as invention. As he put it to one interviewer, “The one who dies with the most useless junk wins.” (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

A 1930s “self-test eye machine.” (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

An Italian mannequin, circa 1980, was painted by Jadis owner Parke Meek. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Longtime friend Mel Bloch holds a World War II-era Eames leg splint. Having worked with the Eameses on films, Meek “knew what would look good on camera,” Lieberman says. Prop rentals were “a fabulous little business, because he could collect the stuff, he could build stuff, he could rent it out, make money on it.” Best of all, he got everything back. Film sets that Meek enhanced include “The Prestige,” “Van Helsing,” “Batman and Robin” and the third “Austin Powers” movie. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

An antique school model of the solar system. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

An antique medical teaching device. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Old cameras and oddball antiques line shelves and clutter the floor. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

A Burroughs electric adding machine, circa 1918. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Bloch and Lieberman play with and point out the collection of scientific instruments, including the rare orrery on the shelf at far left. It depicts the relative position and motion of the planets. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Glass slides are part of the collection. This one is titled “Winding Bobbins in Linen Mill -- Linen Industry, Canada.” It’s believed to date to about 1900. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

A leaded crystal ball holds the image of an electric power panel. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

A table of pre-computer-era scientific instruments. Lieberman plans to release the pieces “to the universe” in the upcoming sale. Additional sale days are expected for about the next month. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Vintage globes galore. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

Meek and Lieberman made annual collecting trips to the Midwest. “We used to go to farmhouses where the wife would have a little antique store on the side,” she says. “Parke would normally talk about the crops while I was looking.... If I saw something I wanted but was unsure, he would say, ‘You should trust your judgment. He never said no.’ ” (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

The Tesla coil in Jadis is a scale model, but a real cabinet generator designed by the visionary Nikola Tesla — father of alternating current, inventor of remote radio controlled devices in the 1890s, before anyone had a radio — sits just inside the door. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

The word jadis in French refers to a period that is romantically distant, but in Meek’s crowded aisles, the romance includes the future as well as the past. The result: a timeless piece of Santa Monica.

Click here to read the full story on Jadis. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)