If you’ve ever been at a flea market looking at some old glass bottle and wondered if it was something super valuable or just something that would end up in the recycling, then you know exactly how it feels. That’s basically what bottle collecting used to be, with people mostly guessing, remembering little bits of advice from here and there, and sometimes checking out an old guidebook; and even though everyone was really into it, it didn’t really feel like anyone was connected. The majority of collectors just figured things out on their own through trial and error or by getting lucky and talking to someone who knew just a little more than they did.                                                                                                                                                                                                        

The Internet Opened the Attic Door                                                                                  

Then the internet changed everything. Suddenly, collectors who once searched alone could gather in one place. A photo of an unusual embossing or pontil mark could be shared with people across the country—or across the world—within minutes. What used to take months of hunting through books or waiting for the next bottle show could now happen over a cup of coffee at your kitchen table. And if you’re anything like most collectors, you’ve probably had that moment when someone online identifies a bottle you’ve puzzled over for years.                              

Knowledge That Used to Be Locked Away                                           

Before online communities, a great deal of knowledge lived inside the heads of a small circle of experienced collectors. If you didn’t know them personally, that information could be hard to reach. Forums and discussion boards changed that balance as veteran collectors began sharing insights about glass color variations, manufacturing techniques, and regional bottlers. Over time, these conversations formed an informal archive of expertise—one that any curious collector can now explore.

Learning by Looking (and Asking)

One of the most powerful things about an online community is how visual the hobby becomes. You can post a photograph of a base mark, a lip finish, or an unusual mold seam and get thoughtful feedback from people who’ve handled hundreds of similar pieces. Instead of just reading about things in books or guides, you’re actually seeing real examples and figuring it out for yourself. But perhaps the coolest part is that you’re also getting to join in on the conversation and hear what other people think.

A Hobby That Keeps the Mind Sharp                                                     

Interestingly, the benefits of these communities go beyond collecting itself. UK researchers say that if you spend time in activities where you talk, solve puzzles, and swap tips with other people, it can help fight off some of the mental slowdown that comes with getting older. Meaning, when you’re comparing bottle variations, debating manufacturing dates, or tracing the history of a small-town bottler with others, you’re doing exactly the kind of mental work researchers say helps keep the brain engaged and resilient. In other words, that late-night thread about blob-top soda bottles might be doing more good than you realize.

Helping New Collectors Find Their Footing

If you’re new to the hobby, you might feel like you stepped into a new dimension; there are colors, shapes, closures, embossings, and countless regional variations to learn about. But don’t fret, because the good news is, online communities are basically your welcoming front porch where beginners can ask questions without feeling out of place. Experienced collectors often remember exactly what it was like to start out (they were in your shoes at one point, too). Most of them are usually genuinely happy to help someone avoid the same mistakes they once made.

Why the Community Matters                                                                                                                                                                           

Perhaps the most remarkable change is the sense that you’re never really collecting alone anymore. Someone on the other side of the world might recognize the same mold number you’re studying. Another collector might have dug a similar bottle decades earlier and kept careful notes about where it appeared. Through these shared experiences, the hobby has become a collaborative effort rather than a solitary pursuit.

Online communities make bottle collecting easier and they also help keep it alive. Collectors get to connect in ways they were not able to before, they get to share tips and stories, and they also make sure conversations keep going. There’s also the privilege of making sure that the smaller, more specialized parts of the hobby don’t just disappear over time. If you’ve ever stayed up late asking a question and then woke up to see thoughtful replies from other collectors, you probably already get it; the real treasure isn’t just the bottle sitting on your shelf but the people who helped you understand it and get excited about it.

Through the lens of early American furniture and historic infrastructure, this episode considers what it means to be stewards rather than owners, and asks an important question: what will survive of us? Antiques are not about nostalgia — they are about continuity, perspective, and the quiet responsibility of preserving memory across generations.

Martin sits down with author and historian Linda Zimmermann to explore her powerful new book, A Civil War Soldier and Me—the true story of Sgt. Albion Brooks of the 8th Connecticut Volunteers.

Over the course of 30 years, Linda traced Albion’s life through original letters, diaries, and family papers spanning three generations. In this conversation, she and Martin discuss how a single Civil War soldier became a personal obsession, starting with a dusty trunk of documents and leading to thousands of miles of battlefield travel.

You’ll hear about:

• Albion’s journey from Maine and Bridgeport, CT to the front lines

• His experiences at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Suffolk, Burnside’s North Carolina Expedition, Drury’s Bluff, Bermuda Hundred, and Cold Harbor

• What his letters reveal about courage, humor, faith, and the emotional weight of war

• Linda’s immersive battlefield visits that retrace where he marched, fought, and died

• Albion’s final hours at Cold Harbor, as recorded by the chaplain who stood at his bedside

• Martin also shares a brief anecdote about his own Civil War–era family history, adding another personal layer to the discussion

If you’re drawn to personal soldier stories, Civil War history, or the emotional power of original letters and diaries, this episode of The Everything Else Show offers a rare, intimate look at one young man whose words still speak across 160 years.

SHOW NOTES

After years of restoring antique boats, Martin offers some tips on how to.

Marine Wood Refinishing Guide

Achieve a stunning and long-lasting finish on your mahogany marine woodwork by following this detailed refinishing process. Wood must be free of finish

Step 1: Initial Sanding with a high-speed orbital sander (Such as Bosch ROS20VSC Random Orbital Sander) Always attempt sanding following the wood grain, not across it.

• Begin with 80-grit sandpaper.
• Sand through sun-bleached and weathered layers until you reach the natural mahogany.
• For grooves or detailed areas, tear or cut the sandpaper into manageable sizes, fold into quarters, and sand by hand for precision.

Step 2: Progressive Sanding

• Repeat the sanding process using 120-grit, followed by 150-grit sandpaper.
• Ensure a consistent, smooth surface.

Step 3: Hand Sanding (Rubber Sanding Block)

• Hand block-sand following the wood grain, using 100-grit, then 150-grit paper.
• This helps eliminate any orbital sander marks and ensures a level surface.

Step 4: Surface Preparation

• Ensure you’re working in a well-ventilated area.
• Generously soak all wood surfaces—including undersides—with a high-quality red mahogany or walnut stain. (Or if you want to seal the grain, use a color wood filler)
• Let the stain sit for approximately 15 minutes.
• Wipe off the excess using a clean cloth until no more stain transfers to the cloth.

Step 5: Dry Time

• Allow the stained wood to dry for 24 to 48 hours.

Step 6: Cleaning the Surface

• Wipe down the entire surface with a cloth dampened in mineral spirits to remove any residue.

Step 7: Initial Varnish Coat

• Mix Epifanes High Gloss Varnish and brush thinner at a 50/50 ratio.
• Apply a thin, even coat using a quality brush.
• Allow it to dry for at least 24 hours.

Step 8: Light Sanding

• Lightly hand block sand with 220-320-grit finish sandpaper. Make sure not to sand through to bare wood.
• Carefully wipe away sanding dust using a cloth slightly dampened with mineral spirits, or a clean dry cloth. Tack cloths are also available online.

Step 9: Dust Control

• Reduce dust in the workspace as much as possible.
• Lightly wet the floor to minimize airborne particles.

Step 10: Build Varnish Layers

• Second Coat: Mix at 75% varnish / 25% thinner and apply a slightly heavier coat.
• Repeat sanding and dust removal as done in Steps 8–9.
• Let the varnish flow using even strokes following the grain
• Final Coat: Apply a full-strength coat (100% varnish) for a rich, glass-like finish.

Tips for Success

• Work in a controlled environment to avoid dust or insects settling on fresh varnish.
• Always sand lightly between coats for optimal adhesion and smoothness.
• Patience is key—allow proper drying time between each step.

Epifanes high gloss varnish: https://rb.gy/jdecdq

Bosch ROS20VSC Random Orbital Sander :https://rb.gy/eza5sn

Rubber hand block sander: https://rb.gy/t1mcab

Martin grew up near historic Portsmouth, New Hampshire—a treasure trove of Colonial-era antiques and stories. In the 1980s, he uncovered a set of stunning fire buckets and portraits linked to local artist John S. Blunt. With help from his friend, historian Joe Copley, Martin pieced together their history, leading to a record-breaking $32,500 bid at auction. It’s a story about discovery, passion for history, and the thrill of bringing the past to life—dedicated to Joe, who helped preserve Portsmouth’s legacy. Post script: I forgot to mention, the red pigment on the back of the canvases, was a telltale of John S. Blunt’s work! John S. Blunt, Portsmouth (1798-1835)

Related Blog With Images

BIO: Jake Sconyers is the founder and cohost of HUB History, a weekly podcast where we share our favorite stories from Boston’s history. Before starting the podcast, Jake founded and ran a walking tour company called Boston Strolls for a couple of seasons. More recently, he has been a lecturer at Cambridge Center for Adult Education, an organizer of History Camp Boston, and a volunteer docent at the Shirley-Eustis House.In addition to Jake’s obsession with Boston history, he takes the photographs that he shares here, and he enjoys running marathons, kayaking, gardening, making jam and jelly, brewing hard cider, and grilling and barbecuing tasty meats. At work, he helps physicians use their EHR. He is a volunteer with a dog rescue called Shultzs Guest House and he gives platelets to the Red Cross.

Jake’s Websites jacobsconyers.com I like to take pictures. I take pictures of Boston, of my adventures, of breaking news, of animals, and flowers, and sunsets. I post the decent ones on this site. You can consider this the canonical site for Jacob Sconyers. https://www.hubhistory.com/ My wife and I host a weekly podcast. It’s our way of sharing our favorite stories from Boston’s history. https://historycamp.org/ History Camp is an unconference for history, founded in the Boston area and expanding beyond. I built and maintain their website, as well as helping to organize monthly history events for History Camp enthusiasts.

In 2008, after 20 years with the FBI, Robert Wittman retired from the Bureau and brought his expertise to the private sector. He sought to create a Security and Recovery Consulting firm that would draw on his unique investigative experience to protect its clients from losses related to theft, fraud or forgery. Since its inception, Robert Wittman Inc. has grown far beyond its original vision, providing protection and recovery services to more than 100 public and private collections worldwide. Robert Wittman Inc. continues to proudly serve a diverse portfolio of institutions, auction houses, collectors, galleries, insurance companies and Nations committed to protecting their cultural assets.

Martin’s mentioning of the Declaration of Independence almost forgotten when Washington was burning: “Pleasonton acquired several coarse linen bags, and filled them with all the Department’s records. This included the still-unpublished secret journals of Congress, the commission and correspondence of George Washington, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitutionand all the treaties, laws, and correspondence of the department made since 1789. He had all of this placed in coarse linen sacks and carted to a grist mill two miles beyond Georgetown. Before he left, he noticed the Declaration of Independence had been forgotten and was still hanging in its frame on the wall, and took that as well.”

Robert’s Story on Dolly Madison saving the George Washington Portrait 

https://www.dowlingwalsh.com/artists/david-vickery

#Feelthebrim

https://feelthebrim.com/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/BrimfieldOnline/

Check out these related links: http://owlshead.org  http://owlshead.org/collections/category/aircraft http://owlshead.org/collections/category/automobiles http://owlshead.org/collections/category/motorcycles http://owlshead.org/collections/category/carriages http://owlshead.org/collections/category/bicycles

www.skinnerinc.com

https://www.cowanauctions.com

https://clars.com 

https://www.gregwillettantiques.com

Live Stream interview by Martin Willis with a leading world Leonardo da Vinci expert, Martin Kemp on Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi, the most expensive painting ever sold at auction ($450 million). This unknown work was purchased by a New York art collector Robert Simon for $10,000 through an auction house somewhere in Louisiana in 2005. The mystery buyer at auction was prince, Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Farhan al-Saud.

https://www.ragoarts.com/

https://www.wright20.com/

Related Links

George Nakashima;   Nakashima Woodworkers ;   Gustav Stickley;   Paul Evans;   George Ohr Pottery;   James Bearden;   Antiques Are Green

Show Transcript

189. Richard Wright & David Rago

Note: Transcripts are digitally transcribed, we do not deem them as accurate.

Host Martin Willis (19s):

Hello everyone and welcome to the antique auction Forum. We have two great guests. They vote then past guests on the show Richard Wright and David Reagan. And we are going to talk today about their merger that they’re doing pretty excited to speak about that. Welcome to the show guys. Thank you for having us and you we are right now you are down in Lambertville, right? And then at the Lambertville office the auction gallery there in the heart of New Jersey.

Yes, and if I remember right David, you told me last time we spoke here about four miles from the Nakashima shop as a crow flies. Yes. Yeah, and what what great history? That is in in the shop is still going mirrors still running that and you and I’ve had a few conversations over the years about people that have had Nakashima in the area. I got a while aboard just I’m talking about Nakashima. Why when I lived

out in the San Francisco area, why was it so popular out there? I used to see it seemed like everywhere out there and San Francisco.

Richard Wright or David Rago (1m 27s):

I will be given an educated guess but something about the the natural edges of the would seem very harmonious with a lot of the architecture. I saw in San Francisco and Marin County.

Host Martin Willis (1m 40s):

I see hmm free

Richard Wright or David Rago (1m 41s):

edges the use of structural detailing. I’ve been a number of houses in the San Francisco and North of San Francisco area where the modern housing lots of trees specially yapper and it’s He really good fit to

Host Martin Willis (1m 57s):

1. No Mill Valley. I remember I remember when I was out there. There was actually I looked at a table where the the underside of it. The person that owned. It made me crawl underneath and look and he said there’s a civil war bullet right there in the tree that was embedded in the tree and he kept it in. That was really interesting

Richard Wright or David Rago (2m 19s):

that when you seen that pieces of flitch cut wood that had metal in them. Usually a

Host Martin Willis (2m 24s):

bullet. Yeah. Yeah pretty amazing would not too good for the saw. So we’re going to talk about the merger. But first of all, let’s talk separately David you’ve been around this for even long. I’ve say, you know, 45 years. I’ve been at the you know auctions in antiques think you have me beat you just start out very very young. But I want to get into what’s that.

Richard Wright or David Rago (2m 51s):

I was seven when I started.

Host Martin Willis (2m 54s):

Okay, I was 15. Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. And you know, you don’t see a lot of that today, but occasionally you will see kids that are really into it and I love that. You know, I mean hit it we need that we need that coming up. But go ahead if you wouldn’t talk a little bit about your gallery and then Richard your turn after

Richard Wright or David Rago (3m 13s):

that. Sure. Well, we started our Auction Company Navy for I’ve been in the business since 72 actually started the flea market Lambertville, which is about two miles from where we’re sitting two and a half miles and soon discovered porcelain and Ceramics timing was really good. I had it was a college student. I had no money from there. I moved into arts and crafts material just kept changing with it and the early 90s we held our first modern auction. I think was 90 or 91 not long after George Nakashima

died. Gradually made the shift from early 20th century to Mid 20th century contemporary. So it’s been a long and circuitous route.

Host Martin Willis (3m 52s):

I bet now. Did you have to kind of guide your you’re buying audience along to get excited about these type of things? So how did that did that come about now?

Richard Wright or David Rago (3m 60s):

We have many models in our business, but one of my favorites is a desperation is the mother of invention and when the recession hit in the early 90s, we were just looking for things to sell because we were in the Lambertville area who lived in Lambertville at that time. We came across some really interesting modern material. I lucked into some George Nakashima from a realtor in New Jersey who had a hundred pieces of it. He started consigning one of us. So I would say

it was the path of least resistance. I wish it was more intelligent more prescient than that. I cannot take credit for prescience in this

Host Martin Willis (4m 37s):

case. Certainly found your Niche. That’s for sure and Richard. Why don’t you go ahead? Didn’t talk about how you you began and you know, you’re into the 20th century design as well and 21st century designed as well, aren’t you?

Richard Wright or David Rago (4m 55s):

Yeah, so it’s I mean it’s an interesting parallel. I started on the flea markets as well started a dealer in the late 80s having no money at that time instead of doing arts and crafts which was already kind of expensive I did modern so I started right away with all those the most accessible. Market that point which would things from the 50s work my way up worked at another auction house that had Treadway to me auction house or and that from 93 to 99

the left in 2000 open my own and you know sort of built it up for mayor I think like David kept evolving the whole way which is a big Focus really proud of it is something that I think is made this this kind of next chapter actually feel Just feel totally appropriate to what we can do in our whole career.

Host Martin Willis (5m 48s):

Right one of the things I noticed about your your auction gallery right away. Richard is the wonderful photography. It’s almost like the photography in the catalogs are almost like dark artistic and I was getting your catalogs for a long time and they’re just fabulous and doing this work myself. I know what it takes to catalog and put together a catalog. It’s besides of the vast expense. You know, it’s an enormous amount of time.

Richard Wright or David Rago (6m 18s):

We’ve invested a lot and bring catalogs were our original claim to fame and we still do them and I still love Prince but digital is become really our focus and you know trying to to translate that same quality visual quality through the web. It is definitely the future

Host Martin Willis (6m 37s):

right and you know speaking of that the it’s less and less auction houses will do in of Physical catalog and compared to an online catalog. It’s still about the same amount of work a little less money because of the printing issues but still so what made you to decide to to join together? And how do you think that’s going to benefit both of you and and the buyers, you know,

Richard Wright or David Rago (7m 7s):

you know quite honestly, I think the the the pressures within the industry brought us together insomuch as As you know, it’s a very competitive field. It’s you know, Christie’s and Sotheby’s are you know, the two became that’s at the top of the industry that really increasingly are trying to capture total market share with digitization, you know, you have first dibs and you have Christie’s and Sotheby’s mounting more and more digital auctions and just

again trying to take his take as much as they can. David came came to me. We were friendly Years, but we weren’t we were

Host Martin Willis (7m 46s):

respectful and respectful. That’s an idiot. We actually didn’t know each other

Richard Wright or David Rago (7m 50s):

very well. We started talking about a year and a half before we actually final finally legally merged which was only in January of this year and through the process. The process has been really wonderful. I think that we’ve become friends and that this natural Synergy that we saw really has become a parent, you know, just in the brief way with that we’ve Grabbed our weight. We rose up through the business, you know as auction as an

option as I’ve invested a lot in process and in photos and if you know that sort of that sort of back of house. I think David has built an incredibly, you know client facing forward organization where easier and Lambertville tons of people come here. He’s you know, really as great our range, which is a me not so much. And you know, the combination of that is actually proved couldn’t be wonderful. We thought there’d

be as Richard said a Synergy when we agreed to do this and then some of the ways we were right and anticipating there’d be some savings costs and we could make more interesting auctions and we were selling things Richard wasn’t for example. We were holding jewelry sales and estate sales with Asian art and even coin auctions Richard wasn’t doing any of this so we felt that we have that to offer and we also knew that Richard was Approaching auctions from a higher level than we were. I mean our catalogs were really

Host Martin Willis (9m 17s):

good. But as you said the photography that

Richard Wright or David Rago (9m 19s):

Richard was employing was at a different level and we saw that I mean, we’re in the art business we can better it’s better and it’s not it’s not hard to determine but beyond that we’re seeing that the union has really changed the game for both of us in ways. I didn’t see coming. For example, even in the material that we were both selling like we spoke earlier about George Nakashima. Now we have more Nakashima to draw from and we have more auctions to

sell it and I was only selling Nakashima three times a year in my three main modern sales and Richard was holding maybe four or five or six auctions and that was maybe 10 auctions a year or Nakashima would be appropriate and instead of my having to put I mean I had I’ve had auctions with Nakashima with 50 plus lots of Nakashima in one day. Wow. It’s a lot to bring out at one time. You don’t have to do that anymore. Now we can spread those 50 lat. It’s out over three different options and really give a certain amount of focus to each individual to

want rather than jamming all together. So those are that that’s one of the ways we’re definitely seeing a change for the good

Host Martin Willis (10m 26s):

I see now, do you have to get involved in shipping between Chicago and Lambertville? I mean does that is that

Richard Wright or David Rago (10m 34s):

happening? There’s a little bit of that for sure. I mean, you know, the Chicago operation has relatively as I said, we’re less Outward focused we have far fewer pre viewers. We actually sell relatively little material in Chicago. So when we we take in Consignments to be sold in Lambertville, very often will ship things to Lambertville because the preview is very important here on the right platform. We sell a lot to

the east coast to anyway, and then so a lot of a lot of the property will stay right here in Lambertville. So it’s also helped, you know, People that want to consign under the right platform because we’re keeping we’re keeping two Brands going. So so you see if you sort of have two channels that you can choose from we found to have an East Coast destination is actually additive for our buyers and sellers.

Host Martin Willis (11m 33s):

I see I was having an interesting conversation with Jay stenger. Are you familiar with him just a few if you have Days ago, I’m actually praising piece that took him four years to make it home. It’s really an amazing piece and we started talking about the what’s that? Very impressive. Haha. Say we start talking about, you know, how his things fair at auction how you know contemporary work by

certain people fair and he said his not so well, but he did say that there was one Furniture artist and I didn’t catch the name where I didn’t remember the name that he says. So that when the pieces go to auction, they go higher at auction than what that person would commission them for. Have you heard of this

Richard Wright or David Rago (12m 23s):

happening? I was he talking about James Beard and maybe

Host Martin Willis (12m 26s):

possibly like and I did I didn’t catch the name. But I mean

Richard Wright or David Rago (12m 31s):

that was a market we Champion to maybe a decade or so ago is from Jamaica from the Midwest and similar Paul Evans. A lot of welded metal. We were selling pieces for multiples of what he was not able to sell them for in.

– we’ll go on that since

Richard Wright or David Rago (12m 47s):

his pricing structure since changed to adapt to the

Host Martin Willis (12m 50s):

market levels. Yeah, I can see that adjustment.

Richard Wright or David Rago (12m 54s):

Yeah, and certainly the high-level love on furniture, you know the French they no longer living but long live on just a recently passed but the furniture, you know would sell out very quickly and then if it can come up at auction itself or Multiple, so a lot of it has to do with supply and demand sure. Yeah, but in general the secondary Market is below the primary market for most contemporary

craft by quite a bit also. Yeah. Yeah. We’re just seeing I mean mirror Nakashima would be an interesting case in point again to stay with Nakashima. And that’s these pieces are made for miles from where Richard and I are sitting now and her we see her secondary Market involving initially pieces were selling for a third of what they sold for originally. And now especially if they were purchased more than a decade ago. They’re bringing 2/3 sometimes full original sale price. So the definitely is

a move forward in that regard

Host Martin Willis (13m 55s):

would you say this is a lot like an artwork that goes to auction and all of a sudden, you know, the sets a high oxygen record and then on the coattails of that thing seemed to hold, you know an ear that or they seem to rise for that particular artist. Is that is that That similar and when it comes to pieces that you handle for

Richard Wright or David Rago (14m 18s):

contemporary. Yeah, I mean I think you can get in one great, you know result can help them Market but not it doesn’t always permanently move the market it can reset the frame. Yeah, so, you know where you you you think about it relative pricing a little bit differently. It’s always nice when that happens a bit more organically and we’re prices rise over time like with if it was a weird mirror

Nakajima we seem Gee, we just had a really nice group and it did a little bit better than the sum of the material before and you see that that sort of Natural Evolution I think is always healthier for a market then a big spike the absolute sometimes maintains, but sometimes it can also they kind of crash as my poker teacher said to me after I had a good run at cards. He said one Robin does not a spring make and I got to tell you the day said that to me I lost my entire bank will with about a

month. Oh, yes neither. Our spikes. But yeah, she said I prefer to see a more consistent and steady and evening growth.

Host Martin Willis (15m 26s):

Wow, one of the podcasts I have done and the last part of the podcast of a while back was on Bellamy Eagles. I don’t even know if either one of you are familiar with Bellamy carved eagles there. They they’re very popular in the and the east coast and it was a Carver that would generally sell for well when I was a kid, it was 500 bucks and I was a big deal and then You know, they’re right now they’re in the five to ten thousand dollar range, but there was a spike. I mean talk

about a spike Northeast auctions. Ron boards row had one that went for 660,000 with a flat tire scream. And then so after that they were selling for six figures for for I think six months and then they dropped all the way back down to where they they were. I mean, it would have been wonderful to cash in but you’d see you know, what happens in that particular case was is all of a sudden everyone had a Bellamy Eagle putting in an auction and flooded the market they came out of the

woodwork. So yeah, I think the important thing to

Richard Wright or David Rago (16m 28s):

remember it really is supply and demand. Yes in many of these markets are driven ultimately by a small number of people at the top and when they’re active in buying the market can be very strong if too many examples, once they have, you know, very few people going to buy multiples of the same once they have right. If they keeps coming then just in this the law of Economics the price will drop in David seen this in many, you know Ceramics

markets with the NAD slurries mostly seen it in Furniture because as a friend of mine once said you can talk about arts and crafts market you can buy Gustav Stickley bookcase where you can buy 40 pieces of pottery to put in it. You have that bookcase and once you have that dining table and that Maurice here, you’re pretty much done with that

Host Martin Willis (17m 15s):

form. Yeah, but if

Richard Wright or David Rago (17m 17s):

you’re a small select if you’re buying Venetian glass or America and George or American Ceramics, there’s always room for another pot or a piece of glass. Yeah, and so which I think a lot of people don’t consider is that if you want to get rid of that Gustav Stickley bookcase or that Paul Evans dining table, what’s a pain in the neck? I mean, you’ve got to first of all find the one you want more than you have to find out how to sell the one you’ve got and find people to come and take it and carry and then bring the new one in and it’s a lot of work you want to change a piece of pottery

or a piece of glasses on that dining table or in that bookcase. Pick it up. You put it in a box and send it to someone. Yeah, it’s very easy to change these things around so I could be fine Less in the way of fluctuations in Smalls than we do in

Host Martin Willis (17m 59s):

Furniture. Yeah. Yeah, very good point. I’ve Loved dealing with Smalls when I’m when I’m cataloguing and bringing things into auction is just seems like it’s so much better luck than the hit-or-miss of Furnitures and you just brought up a arts and crafts. What is that market? Like, I haven’t really been following what is a gust of Stickley pieces, are they hanging in there in the market or is it is it soft these days?

Richard Wright or David Rago (18m 25s):

Well, it’s a difficult subject because it’s very close to my heart. I mean this this rhino was made its revolutionary. It was made for philosophical spiritual purpose. It’s not just something to sit in. It was meant to transform Society from the inside of the home. I can wax about this for a long time. It’s very very powerful and its furniture that makes a statement and was effective in what it is and what it chose to do for a while and then when the After Woodstock hippie started buying it. That’s what I got in the market in the early

70s and it found its purpose all over again. It was a very revolutionary at to society even Furniture fit. But the problem is that that demographic is aged and this is a group of people that are either not adding or they’re downsizing and the kids haven’t really discovered it yet our last day. I had some very good Roycroft Furniture, which is pretty rare and also highly spiritualized material and I was on the phone with a new bidder. He was 22 years old and I said why Wow, so we’re going to hold a parade for you. If you come out here what happened Freight to show people to somebody your age is buying

this stuff is very

Host Martin Willis (19m 26s):

exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would love I love the arts and crafts that whole that whole era of such beautiful pieces. And you know, I never thought about it spiritually, but yeah, well a lot of it I could see why you’re going that with that and I was just in a home recently where they had a table they didn’t know about and then they also had on the Third floor they had hanging lamps and you just don’t see that. It doesn’t

seem like that comes up as often, you know in a place where they don’t know what they have seems like everyone seems to know what they have and but as far as you know talking to people that are you just talked about the 22 year old and one of the reasons I do this podcast I try to get, you know people interested in this market, you know, I got an email from I’m an appraiser 20 years ago. He said the baby boomer effect is going to leave us

all surrounded by beautiful things worth noting and well, how was that who said that it was an appraiser he set from connected to him on LinkedIn and he sent it to me and I’ve been looking for it. I can’t I can’t find it. But that was that was I want to say that was in 2004 or something like that when he wrote me that and I didn’t believe it. I kind of like, you know. Rebut it against it, but I think it makes a lot of sense and it’s true does.

Yeah and and all this material will be coming. You just mentioned the Baby Boomers the you know, the older Market. What do you think’s going to happen? Do you think that people young people may start appreciating this Like This Bitter you were talking about and if not we in

Richard Wright or David Rago (21m 16s):

trouble. I mean, I’m more optimistic view that I think that that tastes change across generations and there will be things that that were everybody wanted and we’re in Vogue like, you know Bakelite radios and Bakelite jewelry that just go by the wayside salt and peppers collectors and all that stuff. Just you know, it’s on eBay. It just kind of went down down down the great material of any era translates

and I think that they’ll be they’ll be Things that are being discovered by Future Generations. David’s handled the work of George or four

Host Martin Willis (21m 55s):

decades the Potter

Richard Wright or David Rago (21m 57s):

the Potter. Yeah and recently and he can he should speak more about this but that but in my outside view the market went up the market went down and now a whole new generation of buyers is coming in in the markets going back up and to me that you know 19th century and many cases what serve to early 20th century were. Work looks really radical and fresh at the 20 in this 21st century era and I think that that you people are discovering. So to me

that’s going to make the leap.

Host Martin Willis (22m 29s):

I think also

Richard Wright or David Rago (22m 31s):

if you wanted to buy a nice Gustav Stickley a really good Gustav Stickley two-door bookcase at the height of the market say 2007 that bookcase a good basic one was going to be seven to ten thousand dollars that price a lot of people out of the market now that the case might be half that Be a little less than half that is these prices come down but it’s qualitative Furniture if people understand how intelligent it is what it says about the society from which it from which its

sprung you got to put your books in something. I keep quoting a friend of mine from the Arts and Crafts stays at Harvey Kaplan is grandmother used to say that there’s a took us for every chair and you got to sit in something as that you’re going to go out and put to Mikey and buy a brand-new piece of garbage and put it together yourself. Or you want to buy a really nice chair and the chair that was $5,000 might be twelve hundred dollars. Now at that point. I think at some level people recognize the quality and value quotient is hard to

ignore and I think that the younger generation is also going to have to Grapple much more with climate change and the idea of reusing read apnea adapting and reusing things from the past is going to make more and more

Host Martin Willis (23m 46s):

sense. I hope so because We’ll look at the new furniture. First of all, there’s such an environmental impact of from it and not only that, you know, why would a moving company not move Ikea furniture because it it doesn’t stay together. It’s disposable and we’re in a disposable Society. But you know, I’m hoping to see that the trend will go back to you know, the

green part of people. Interested in Furniture. I have seen a it seems to me that I have seen a little bit of a rise of that and the last year or two that more young people are getting involved.

Richard Wright or David Rago (24m 32s):

I’ve seen some good interest in American classic American 50s, you know, I’ve dealt Charles Eames my entire career high watermark for that price wise it probably two thousand two three, and then it went down I’ve continued to sell it, you know part of Our investment in our websites and in digitization allows us to reach this younger audience and you know, I’ve seen a lot of young people now one even original Eames chair

one in that patina wanting to feel the real thing and and I think a lot, you know, I think you could spend a lot of time say Millennials are going to collect. I think the natural demographic for people to collect are older and they’re in their 40s and 50s and they start to have them or more permanent sense. I think that it’s just that the appeal of you seed in the Art Market, you know, the the desire to live a beautiful things is deeply human and I’m not done. I’m not so worried

about that. You know what those beautiful things are might change and we will change with it or we had to work. Yeah, we’re changing. Yeah.

Host Martin Willis (25m 44s):

Yeah one of the things you know My opinion and like to hear yours is you know, I’ve met a lot of you know collectors over the years and had conversations and one of the things they enjoyed the most was the hunt, you know, boots-on-the-ground hunt and now we have the internet and you know eBay has certainly changed a lot of things. You know, I wouldn’t want to be in the Hummel Market, you know

prior to eBay or Roosevelt Pottery or something like that, but Do you think that losing the chase the physical Chase has affected value and the other the other side of that coin is a lot of people see something now because of the internet they would have never seen it before I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Either one of you I think the chase is

Richard Wright or David Rago (26m 34s):

still the same. I mean, I think you can Pine for the past and think about it, you know, you know, I used to pick in Brimfield and those early mornings watching the sun come up and they Eternal optimism and finding a great piece that out of Review and and more often than not that happening before the end of the day, you know, that was an amazing time. But you know, it’s fun. I can geek out looking at you know auctions in Germany now and look at him weird stuff going I look at

1. I look at Japanese art from the 70s that you can buy in Japan that is really not very expensive, you know, so the whole world is available to you and if you know, if you give you get into collecting, you know, then you can you can Can it actually you kind of have to raise the bar if we just if you want huh moans? Yeah, they’re going to visit a see a hump but you know it I think it gets you to focus if you’re into like obscure weird stuff. You can find it now the Chase and I went to Brimfield this wouldn’t say
2. I spent three days of room filled and I’m not exaggerating. I filled a Chevy cargo van with about a hundred eighty five pieces of American art Pottery in three days. I went back four years later. I bought four pieces. We’re talking we’re talking by 80 that that ship has sailed. So the chase with the chase didn’t and then it just changed

Host Martin Willis (27m 57s):

and as Richard

Richard Wright or David Rago (27m 58s):

said now it can shop at an auction in Germany if you want, but what I think is also the case and I’ll tie Antiques Roadshow into this when we first started doing anything throat show in the late 90s, and we’re about to start our 25th year doing Roadshow. They would those send us now an appraisal. We did 20 22 years ago to edit it because going to use it right and it comes it’s that long there’s two paragraphs. That’s what the appraisal was because people didn’t know what they had so that it could be more groovy Pottery. They

wouldn’t know that to be screwby. Well starting in 2003 2004 the people come in and they knew of this is peace for your Pottery is made in 1905 and this with Ericsson signature and the last one sulfur that all this information. Well, you should see the appraisal lengths now from the early 2000s on there this long because we couldn’t just say oh that’s a piece of groovy pottery made in Boston, Massachusetts. Worth $2,000. Now we had to tell them what groovy Pottery was. Why was groovy Pottery in Boston, Massachusetts? What happened there that causes Pottery to be

created and how does this piece relate to the other pottery made in Boston at that time. Now, you’re really telling the story and what we’re seeing is that people are becoming more intelligent who really the ones who are interested are drilling down and understanding the nuances of the material as never before because this information is on the Internet. It’s out there you can you want to see what group Pottery looks like if you were to spend about three hours. You can probably look at about 2,000 pieces of groovy Pottery by searching auction websites, seeing what they look like what their

estimated for and how much they sold for that information wasn’t available generation ago. So that’s a long answer your question. But I think as Richard says the Hunt is changed and it has favored the people have changed with

Host Martin Willis (29m 39s):

1. Wow. Wow, that’s really that’s really interesting. And as far as you know, the new Collector someone that is just Getting started. What advice would be the one of you give them to get started?

Richard Wright or David Rago (29m 55s):

Okay, David’s point. I think what’s great is all the information out there actually gives more confidence to new collectors so I could give you can if you want to start collecting groovy Pottery. It’s pretty easy to understand whether you’re buying an APS VPS or CPS and approximately what you should be paying and that, you know transparency and information actually build markets. So in that sense, it’s a it’s a real positive makes it hard for Pickers because people do know that

information is out there. Yeah, but you know auction houses have played a huge role in educating the market in building the market, you know, that’s true. So as far as being harder for Pickers and then select I bought 180 pieces of pottery in Brimfield the three days, right and I made X dollars. I can buy one piece of pottery now, we’ll make the same amount of money those hundred and eighty would have brought me his profit because the information Is that much more nuanced in the markets that much more evolved? So I think that the I think

it doesn’t favor the lazy if you’re willing to do the work and if you’re really good at this this information explosion that we see. Yes, that’s the qualitative dealers from qualitative auction houses.

Host Martin Willis (31m 6s):

Yeah, you know, the only double edged sword of that is what when someone thinks they have something in front of them that is similar, you know or reproduction, you know, I mean that they have their you know, they have to learn the heart the School of Hard Knocks that way. Oh,

Richard Wright or David Rago (31m 22s):

yeah. Yeah, we’ve all done it we’re offering those things in letters that are all caps and gowns and happened whether this is the best piece of tissue will ever see in capital letters. That’s why I know immediately that’s going to be

Host Martin Willis (31m 32s):

difficult. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. All right. So why don’t you give out your information how people can get no one last question. You’re still running running and dependent auctions separately or how does that work?

Richard Wright or David Rago (31m 49s):

We are one we are one company when they shared back end and we’re operating two separate brands with Selective covariance. That isn’t confusing enough. So, you know the history that each of us have built up and it’s a quirky business. There are people that love doing business with ranko. They want to go to Lambertville. This is you know, it feel really proud of this place and they personally Love David he’s been doing it so long. Yeah, you know know right has a different if you know sort of

OC ation, so we’re able to draw the best of both of our individual Brands and then tomorrow we’re doing it one of our nachshon together, which is a co-branded sale, which I think really shows how we can collaborate in a public way. We’re publicly merge. We talked, you know Rego right all the time. But you know, it’s a two separate channels selective co-branding. You can reach us email either either.

Our website you’re going to it all goes to the back end. So that will will find you

Host Martin Willis (32m 54s):

the right as we’re speaking here your Rego right structure and ornament notice came across my screen and you know, it’s

Richard Wright or David Rago (33m 3s):

a great example because Mark McDonald is is the curator of that auction a good friend of both of ours. David knows them, you know better than I do, but I’ve hired Mark for many decades we’ve both worked with Mark. But Mark came to us to do this project because of the synergies of the merger, you know, he wanted a high production value you wanted to have the jewelry’s previewing here in Lambert Billy. One of these ghosts didn’t want to be in the midwest

well and its really worked. So our teams have worked together David has a jewelry team. We don’t have it you OT we have a design team. So we it was a perfect collaboration and a really high style auction that’s gotten a lot of attention.

Host Martin Willis (33m 48s):

Wow. David I heard I’ve read a quote you were quoting from someone that said something about competitors. Do you remember that quote instead of competing cooperate? Oh,

Richard Wright or David Rago (34m 1s):

that’s Elbert Hubbard Elbert Hubbard

Host Martin Willis (34m 3s):

said, right. Yeah,

Richard Wright or David Rago (34m 5s):

ideally in business as cooperation not competition, right

Host Martin Willis (34m 9s):

excellent more profitable and a lot more fun. Yes, and it

Richard Wright or David Rago (34m 12s):

is not something many people ascribe to but it’s something I believe in for a long long time and that was certainly was one of the driving. Being factors behind my one and emerge

Host Martin Willis (34m 20s):

excellent. All right you to thank you so much, and I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. This is great to talk to you. Thanks a lot. Alright everyone. Thank you very much for listening and we’ll be back with more episodes. Hopefully you’ll find entertaining and informational. This is Martin Willis from Seaboard appraisals.com.

https://www.ragoarts.com/

https://www.wright20.com/

Show Notes and Transcript

Back in early 2001, on a bright sunny day I met an auction goer and former consignor at a bank in Durham, New Hampshire. She said she had something important in her safety deposit box that she wanted me to sell at auction. The bank was a beautiful brick Georgian style building perched above the Oyster River. We went into a private room with frosted glass windows, she opened the box, took out a folded document, and handed it to me. I carefully unfolded it saw it was an official New Hampshire 1865 petition and read the following simple phrase on the side of the document: “April 14, 1865, To Edwin M. Stanton, Hon. Secretary of War, please see and hear Hon. Mr. Rollins, & oblige him if you consistently can.  A. LINCOLN”

When I first read this, I saw the date, and knew right away it was important as only a few pieces written on Lincoln’s last day were known to be in private hands. However, I was struck by how little content it had, it was just a one-liner written by our 16^th President. I have held several documents, notes and letters in my hands from Abraham Lincoln that had some interesting dialog to them. This was quick and to the point to serve it’s purpose.

This was not my first encounter with a Lincoln’s last day document. About 15 years prior, I was in a historic home in Kennebunk, Maine. One of their ancestors was, Hugh McCulloch, who was the US Secretary of Treasury from March 9, 1865-March 7, 1869. The consignors let me sell McCulloch’s desk and chair that was used while he was in office and I was there to pick them up. While writing up the contract, I could not keep my eyes of all of the Lincoln letters on the wall in the dining room. The letters were framed and wasting away with acidic back boards. It is so important to house important documents in acid free materials and UV-filter glass, but that is another blog. I asked if I could take a moment and read the letters, and before long, I saw one dated April 14, 1865 and asked them if they knew the significance. I went on to ask if there was any way I could handle the letter at auction for them and told them it could be worth $20,000 or more. However, they were not ready to let it go at that time, but I stayed in touch as much as I could. A few years went by, and I had a consignment of a cane that was presented by Lincoln to his family doctor slated for an upcoming auction. I contacted the family again and they told me it was too late. F.O. Bailey a longtime and now closed auction house in Portland, Maine had sold the document a few months prior. I was surprised I had not heard about the sale, and found out that it sold for $40,000. At the time in the late 1980s, that was a pretty penny.

I was not about to let this one in-hand slip away from me this time. I contacted the consignor and asked what she knew of the document. She said that the family history was the following: her ancestor, New Hampshire Senator Edward Rollins had met with Lincoln prior to the assassination in a White House corridor and presented the petition, Lincoln noted and signed it on his knee. We sadly all know what happened a few hours later at Ford’s Theater. Rollins was there at Lincoln’s deathbed later that very evening and remained until his passing the following morning when Lincoln took his last breath at 7:22AM.

When Rollins eventually arrived home in New Hampshire, he decided to hang on the petition as a memento, instead of presenting it. This troubled me greatly, what if the family was not the rightful owners due to New Hampshire law? This after all was a legal New Hampshire document asking the government for money in 1865 and it was never handed over to the addressee, Secretary of War, Edward Stanton. I contacted a lawyer friend who looked into it, he knew of no precedence and told me not to loose any sleep over it. I mentioned that to the consignor, and told her that I was willing to move forward with it if she was.

After taking notes and researching at a university library I went through a set of books: “Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln“. I eventually went to Vol 8, page 413. My heart began to race as I discovered it was right there in print, with the supporting family hearsay annotated below. This was not an average last day note, it was written about 5:00 o’clock on that fateful day. Lincoln and his wife Mary departed a few hours later for Ford’s Theater. The simple phrase was not that simple, it was the second to last writing that the great President was ever known to write. As I look back, the one thing that has always puzzled me is; if Rollins kept this document to pass down through his family, it is a wonder how it made it into the above book.

As the auction drew closer in May of that year, several news channels and newspapers were running their stories about the upcoming sale of the document. With all the publicity, I was worried that I would get the dreadful call: “Mr. Willis, this petition belongs to the US Government” or “The State of New Hampshire”, some such thing. During the auction preview and the auction itself, I was keeping my eyes open for official looking men in suits that never came.

Prior to the auction, I was told by a close friend in the book business that there was only a handful of collectors at the top end of Lincoln related documents. I found it to be so, and had only 4 phone bidders signed up for the piece ahead of time. I had no idea who would be in the audience to bid, but did notice a lot of new faces at the auction preview.  As the auction went along, we finally came to the Lincoln piece. The bidding began at $10,000 and steadily rose with only a bid or two from the floor. At $30,000 it was just two people on the phone, the others had dropped out. One phone bidder was an agent for a buyer in Los Angeles, and one was a document dealer from New York City. The final bid hammered down at $100,000 to the Los Angeles bidder and the room erupted in applause.

After the auction, I received some calls from the press, everyone wanted to know who the buyer was. I called the buyer agent and asked if it was possible to release the buyer’s name. He said he could not give out the name, but his exact words were: “it may have been someone in a movie that had something to do with wolves”. I immediately thought of Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, but to this day, I don’t know for sure.

Lincoln was not a perfect man as often portrayed, yet he was highly intelligent, honest and forthcoming. He had the courage to take a bold stand and he changed the world for the better. While studying and holding document in my office back in 2001, I pictured being there at the time his pen went to paper on his knee in a poorly lit corridor. I pictured the world that was lived in and how Lincoln was looking forward to post-war living on that beautiful spring day. How he had no idea that there was only a couple of hours left.

The Secretary of War, Edward Stanton who Lincoln noted the document to; along with Senator Edward Rollins (most likely having that noted document on his person), were both at Lincoln’s side during his final hours.  At the end, Stanton is quoted as saying: “Now he belongs to the ages”. This document does as well, and it’s story is much more than just a simple phrase written on someone’s knee.

eBay’s Dean of Education, Griff is an eBay seller coach, instructor, mentor and advocate with the eBay North America Marketplaces Team. In addition, he’s the author of The Official eBay Bible, the authoritative eBay guide for the beginning bidder, seller, and professional entrepreneur as well as host of eBay Radio. For more information, join our eBay Radio Group: http://www.ebayradio.com

Now, I want to note, that not all young people have this attitude; it’s just the majority who do. There are still some young people getting into the business, just far fewer. There is a difference between someone working in the business and someone in the business with a passion for it. When my path crosses with those people, I take a moment to talk with them, and I’m also willing to share what I know. When one of these people ask me for advice on what to specialize in, I tell them to figure out what they love, and find out everything they can about it. If they still love it, then that is a good choice.

I am an antiques generalist, which means I cover the gamut as much as I can. A generalist needs to know at least a little something about everything that was ever made anywhere up until now. It is daunting to look at it that way, but it’s the truth. One can only become a generalist if he or she lives it for a long time. I also see, just like in the medical field, that newer generations of collectors and antiques enthusiasts are gravitating toward a specialty. There is nothing wrong with that, only that generalist—as a result—are becoming fewer and farther between.

So what is it about being an antique lover? Is there a stigma?

I have talked at great length with several old-time dealers about this subject, as well as some young people, and have come to several thoughts and opinions. It is not just antiques that the younger people seem to have lost interest in, as I hear it about other fields as well. For historical societies, collecting hobbies and other things totally unrelated to antiques, interest by the youngins is way down.

In addition to appreciating the beauty of an antique, to care about it, one often needs an emotional connection with it; something that spurs a memory, whether it is related to a family member, such as “My grandmother used to serve us cookies on china just like that,” or simply a fond remembrance of a certain piece from one’s past.

So, what has changed in the last several years that has muted our children’s interest in past? Please keep in mind, this is an opinion and I am speaking in general terms. There are plenty of exceptions:

1. The advent of the double-edged sword we call the Internet. It has made the world a lot smaller and has put everything at our fingertips. The major change is that you no longer have to see something, touch and handle it, in person, and by the same fashion, we no longer having to leave the house to find out something. Searches can be done from a desk or kitchen table. Social interaction is no longer needed to buy antiques, if you happen to buy that way. This includes auctions, as well. To me, this costs us many of the connections that make a purchase something special. I reflect on my favorite pieces I have bought and all have a story attached to them that includes personal connections. Perhaps someone should do a study of the lost social aspects of antiquing via the Internet. I know that I spend more time on my computer and less time with people than I used to.

2. The dining room. My friend, picker Greg Willett says, “Young people want nothing to do with the dining room.” There are fewer people having formal dinner parties as we remember. Of all the things I hear that children do not want, this follows along with my friend’s saying, especially when it comes to china, stemware and flatware. This goes for dining sets, as well. What belongs in the dining room, in general, are some of the hardest-hit antiques.

3. Emotional connection. We collect things that we connect with emotionally, whether it was “Grandma’s” or something you remember from your past. There is more of a disconnect in our general lives than ever before. I don’t know if it because there are so many broken homes or that people move much more than they ever did, never getting a chance to set down roots. There are fewer generational households, too.

4. Less appreciation for quality? I say this with a question mark, but in general, all society is geared toward new and disposable items.

5. Electronics. Ask almost anyone younger than 30 if they would rather have a tricked-out iPad, or an 18th-century chest of drawers that was hand-crafted with fine inlays. I’m guessing you’d be stuck with chest of drawers.

6. Things became expensive. A lot of what was collected has become out of reach to the young collector. If you can’t get in the door to begin with, why bother? Now, as prices fall into the abyss, it may settle and restart a cycle.

I have no answer on how we can turn things around. I enjoy doing my podcast and I like to think that it can bridge help the gap in some small way. I get e-mails from all over the world that are fun to read, and I have made many connections.

I recently received an e-mail from a 14-year-old boy in Georgia who wrote to me to say that my podcast has inspired him to make his career in the antiques business. Whether he will or not, it still gives me a lot of hope.

He will be writing a book on this particular work soon, which you will find on his website: www.martinjkemp.com He said that he knew immediately upon first viewing the restored painting that it was the work of Leonardo: “It’s got that kind of uncanny vortex, as if the hair is a living, moving substance, or like water, which is what Leonardo said hair was like. However skilled Leonardo’s followers and imitators might have been, none of them reached out into such realms of “philosophical and subtle speculation”. We cannot reasonably doubt that here, we are in the presence of the painter from Vinci. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvator_Mundi_(Leonardo)

Bio: Martin Kemp is Emeritus Research Professor in the History of Art at Oxford University. He has written and broadcast extensively on imagery in art and science from the Renaissance to the present day. He speaks on issues of visualisation and lateral thinking to a wide range of audiences. Leonardo da Vinci has been the subject of books written by him, including Leonardo (Oxford University Press 2004). He has published on imagery in the sciences of anatomy, natural history and optics, including The Science of Art: Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat (Yale University Press). SOURCE: http://www.martinjkemp.com/welcome.html

PRICES REALIZED of a few highlights, including the 23% buyer’s premium: Lot 40. Andy Warhol broken canvas, “Abstraction – Gift to Jon Gould” sculpture: $369,000; Lot 44. Andy Warhol, ‘NY Post’ crumpled sculpture: $43,050; Lot 48. Andy Warhol charcoal drawing, “Body Builder”: $43,050 and Lot 52. Andy Warhol stitched photo collage “Jon Gould”: $61,500 plus so much more.

DALLAS – An 1894-S Barber Dime, Branch Mint PR66 PCGS CAC, the finest known, realized $1,997,500 at auction on Jan. 7, 2016 as the centerpiece of Heritage Auctions’ Platinum Night event at the Florida United Numismatists (FUN) Convention in Tampa, FL.

It was sold to an experienced collector, who placed their bid online and wishes to remain anonymous. The winning bidder was one of 16 different collectors vying for the piece.

“This was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to own one of the most famous, mysterious and elusive coins in American numismatics,” said Greg Rohan, President of Heritage Auctions. “It’s a classic of American coinage often grouped with the 1804 dollar and the 1913 Liberty nickel as ‘The Big Three’ of U.S. coin rarities. It has been the stuff of collectors’ dreams since attention was first brought to it in 1900.”

Only 24 Barber dimes were struck at the San Francisco Mint in 1894, apparently in order to balance a bullion account. No more than nine – and possibly only eight – examples of the 1894-S are known to collectors today, with this coin being the finest survivor certified. 

“We know that there are likely at least a couple more of these 1894-S dimes still in circulation,” said Rohan. “Heritage Auctions is offering a reward to anyone who might have a previously unreported example of this coin. We’ll pay $10,000 simply to be the first to examine and verify it is an authentic, previously unknown 1894-S dime.”

Heritage Auctions is the largest auction house founded in the United States and the world’s third largest, with annual sales of approximately $900 million, and 950,000+ online bidder members. For more information about Heritage Auctions, and to join and receive access to a complete record of prices realized, with full-color, enlargeable photos of each lot, please visit HA.com.

If you happen to be one of the 5,000 people to live in a beautiful country town to the west of Boston, Lincoln, Massachusetts then you had the chance recently of owning a local treasure of modernism. During a recent call from my friend Doug Stinson, I learned about a benefit auction he was donating his services at in his home town. He said there was some incredible modernistic silver he was auctioning off the next day, the work of which rivals designs by known silversmith, Georg Jensen.

A Gift to the Town

On April 12th, 60 pieces fine silver and jewelry that Florence Hollingsworth designed and hand-wrought as well as 40 pieces she owned, but not made by her were sold to Lincoln residents and past students only, with 100% of proceeds benefitting the First Parish Church of Lincoln.

Who Was Florence Hollingsworth?

Florence Scott Hollingsworth was born in 1896 in Oregon. She attended Oregon State University, where she met her future husband Lowell. They both graduated in the midst of the Great Depression and they eventually attended Stanford to better their chances for employment. The couple moved east when Lowell was offered a job at MIT Lincoln Labs.

Florence became a well-known silversmith and taught for over fifty years beginning in the mid 1950s at The deCordova’s Museum School in Lincoln, Ma . She became a legend in the town of Lincoln and with her students over the years while many reflect to this day of her warm and generous personality. In 2003, the town honored her with the Boston Post Cane as Lincoln’s oldest registered voter. Florence died in September 2006, shortly after her 100th birthday.

It was decided by Florence during her lifetime to donate the pieces to benefit her church in a unique way. She wanted her pieces to stay local, or for her past students to have the option to buy her works. A beautiful color flyer was sent to all the residents of Lincoln announcing the auction, but  the tricky part was connecting with past students of the craftswoman. The deCordova was not able to supply student’s names, so it was a word of mouth grassroots effort. One happy attendee was a past student, Hilary Taylor who was not about to leave the auction empty handed. Hilary took silversmithing classes from Florence Hollingsworth and has a gallery and workshop in West Concord , Mass called Merlins Silver Star. 

It happened to be a picture perfect day for weather, and if you suffered through the toughest winter in decades (some say on record), you may not have wanted to sit in a church at 3:00 PM Sunday, at auction time. There were about sixty in attendance and as every auctioneer knows, you only need two serious bidding attendees.

There was spirited bids on all the sterling silver pieces, especially the crème de la crème tea set which was hammered down at $8,750 and met with an applause. A pitcher influenced by aforementioned Jensen brought $3,500 and a modernist gravy boat with a walnut handle sold for $2,900. One item  that drew considerable interest was a beautiful modernist Sterling silver box mounted with malachite and mahogany and is adorned with  Sterling inlay which realized  $2,100. The total proceeds were $56,775 and as a benefit auctioneer I can tell you it is an impressive sum. In my opinion the auction would have grossed one third  to one half more if it was opened up to the world of bidders, but that was not Florence’s wish.

Florence Left an Impression

Generous is an understatement; besides this auction of silver, Florence left her wonderful modernistic home to the town of Lincoln to benefit affordable housing. Also, upon her death, she made a $1.5 million gift to Oregon State University to create a scholarship program for promising, needy undergraduates. Not only did she leave an everlasting impression with her students, parish and town residents, but her scholarship will be a gift that keeps giving.

Coming up next month, Christies takes a daring leap and has the distinction of assigning the highest art at auction estimate ever. Picasso’s Les Femmes d’Alger, created in 1955 is going on the block May 11th at the Rockefella Center in New York City. The $140 Million dollar estimate is the lower end of expectations.

This painting in particular is iconic to say the least, but not considered the most valuable artwork in the world. If you could imagine the most viewed painting in the world, the Mona Lisa (6 million people per year) ever for some reason hit the auction block, not only could it somehow cause a war of some kind, but nations would probably bid for it and guessing the price would be very unlikely.

Les Femmes d’Alger in particular is iconic to say the least, but not considered the most valuable artwork in the world. If you could imagine the Mona Lisa coming to auction, think of the chaos that would ensue. Over 6 million people a year view the masterpiece of masterpieces. Not only could it somehow cause a war of some kind, but nations would probably bid for it and speculating an auction estimate would be like throwing a dart, anyone’s guess.

I was once lucky enough to own a Picasso drawing, I took it as an exchange for a debt that was owed to me. It is one of those things that I look back on and regret selling. Because it was to settle a debt, I wanted to be certain I had an authentic piece in my hands. Getting a Picasso authenticated needs to be a whole separate blog, it was most challenging. When I finally had contact from a nice gentleman in France from the Picasso Administration, he said the piece was authentic and the 143rd drawing he did on that day. Now the odd numbers on the piece made sense. I could not imagine drawing that much in one day. If you want to see how fast he was in his work, check out the video below.

Even Picasso’s signature had value, he was known for writing checks for small amounts because he knew people would not cash them, they would save it for his signature. I once saw a bar napkin drawing, he was also known to scribble on them to buy rounds of drinks. There will never be another Picasso, but there will be other painters in the future that we will say the same thing about. Not a Picasso, but something else, the next great Master of his own kind.

The reason for all the hype on Les Femmes d’Alger is very clear. There are many new billionaire collectors who have been fervently awaiting a Picasso masterpiece to come up at auction and this is a crown jewel.

Hold on to your hats this May 11th, and watch what happens after the hammer goes down, the dust settles and the cheers subside. This could very well be a new world record for art.

I dare to predict right now, that Les Femmes d’Alger may knock on the door of $200 Million, and my guess is $192 million. Feel free to post your guess of the auction price in the comments form below.

Update May 11, 2015: The painting was sold for $179.4 million including fees, a record price for a painting at auction.

Follow up with auction results here. Dress sells for $137,000!

60 Years of Waiting Proves Worthwhile

A painting purchased in the 1950s by Finland’s Gösta Serlachius Fine Arts Foundation was never proven to be by the artist as it appeared to be unsigned. Thanks to modern technology, Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) signature was recently found under a layer of paint. The piece was painted near his home in Giverny and called “A Haystack in the Evening Sun” (1892).

I had the opportunity to view a Monet exhibition several years ago in Boston, and there is nothing like seeing the work in person. The pieces that struck me the most were, his lily pad paintings and his haystack paintings, both of which can sell for in excess of $10 million.

Not often can so many magnificent pieces travel through time unattributed, but such was the case of many Nathaniel Gould’s masterpieces. It all started several years ago when furniture scholar, Kemble Widmer and Joyce King were contacted by fine antique dealers, C.L. Prickett who recently purchased an outstanding mahogany Chippendale bombe secretary/bookcase. Prickett contracted Widmer & King to try to track down the maker of his acquisition, knowing it was most likely a Boston, Massachusetts furniture maker.

Detectives at Work

Now let’s shift gears and talk about three vellum covered account books sitting unregarded on the shelves at the Massachusetts Historical Society for 174 years. These books were assumed to be nothing more than account ledgers. During their investigation Kemble had a strong hunch that the piece they were researching was by Nathaniel Gould. One evening, it occurred to Joyce King that when all else fails in their research, Google it. Surprisingly in her Google search, Nathaniel Gould account books popped up under the Massachusetts Historical Society. Ironically, this information had only been on the internet for one or two weeks. Joyce immediately called Kem, (as he likes to be called) and told him what she found, and suggested that they might be important. The next day they made their initial trip to the historical society in Boston and after the pieces were brought out for them to inspect, to their surprise, they could tell right away that these written accounts were geared toward Gould’s furniture making. They discovered that the ledgers were a treasure trove of information including Gould’s prolific unknown work. It also became obvious that the fine wood he used was only possible because he controlled the mahogany coming to the shores of Salem.

by Martin Willis

I have to look back in my memory to try and understand why I loved antiques at such an early age. I attribute this to walking around the border of our property in Eliot, Maine at the age of 7 or so and discovering shards of antique bottles from a 19th century dump. I loved the way the glass had turned purple with time, and the embossing on them told stories. I eventually got a garden hoe and started to dig, and found treasure after treasure of these intact examples of history.

I caught the bug and was hooked right there and then. I eventually got some friends together to search other properties, burrowing deep into the woods, poison ivy and all. I would bring the finds home, clean them as good as I could in a washtub, and display them on shelves in our barn. I had bottles, insulators and inkwells of all kinds, colors and sizes. The shelves became overloaded and eventually went into boxes. I still bear the scar of a bad cut I got at a site and remember it exactly. I was so enthralled in the dig, I tore some cloth of my T-shirt wrapped my finger and kept up the hunt. My prize possession that day was a cobalt blue poison bottle. In the 19th century, there was low lighting, so bottles containing poison had rough ribbed or faceted surfaces. When you grasped one in the dark, you knew not to ingest the contents. In general, the bottles I found were mostly common, and had little value, but for some reason the stories they told were more important than money to me.

Sales Results: Marilyn Monroe Overcoat sold for $176,400
MM Love Letter from Joe DiMaggio sold for $78,125
MM Star Hair combs sold for $22,500
MM Beaded necklace sold for $37,500
MM signed model release sold for $12,500
MM Nude painting by Earl Moran sold for $37,500
MM letter to Arthur Miller sold for $43,750
MM Compact $46875

The reason people usually start collecting is, a connection. Not with the objects per say, but with memories. Sometimes people just plain collect because they realize something appeals to them, this has happened to me with fine art.

People don’t always collect just items, sometimes they collect themes. Here are just a few theme examples: Photography, Civil War & militaria, fine art paintings & sculpture, furniture, duck decoys, historical ephemera, antique toys, coins, beer cans, books. Animal themes collected include: cats, dogs, elephants, tigers, lions, hippopotamuses, squirrels, turtles, loons, ducks and owls. I have been in houses where there are 1,000s of these themed collectibles. The person, couple or family cherished the aspect of collecting, and buying examples, at auction, on vacation, or other various means. Their stories of their collecting experience was often very interesting and meant something to them.

]]> auctionpodcast@me.com (Martin Willis) http://antiqueauctionforum.com/blog/winslow-homer-studio-painter/ Sat, 08 Nov 2014 00:22:09 +0000 http://antiqueauctionforum.com/?p=7981 by Martin Willis

Listen to the associated podcast here.

When visiting Prout’s Neck, right away you know you are somewhere special, a peninsula surrounded by water, a harbor on one side and the rocky ocean coast on the other. It is a place where you can become secluded if you choose and take in Maine’s nature at it’s best. It is a place you can paint.

I had the opportunity to visit the studio of a preeminent figure in American art, Winslow Homer, who was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1836 and later settled to this beautiful surrounding. You can almost picture the artist with easel perched on the shore, creating one of his astounding images. I was disappointed to find out that this never happened. Winslow Homer was a studio painter. To be a studio painter of his magnitude, you could only be a gifted observer, a lover of the visual.

Read More>>…

The More You Pay the More You Like It

Values of rarities are only perceived ones and are subjective to the beholder. Only two people have to have this perception, the winning bidder and the under-bidder. Proven history shows that auction is a great method to sell rare items, people fight with their money to claim their prize.

This was no exception at Bonham’s groundbreaking History of Science Auction held in New York on October 22^nd. Offered were 288 lots including items ranging from 18^th century pocket globes to the ilk of 20^th century tech.

The star of the show was a motherboard retaining a label reading, “Apple Computer 1 / Palo Alto, Ca. Copyright 1976”. Let’s face it, not a pretty object, but historically very significant in the digital world. The bottom line is, when the bidding ended and the dust settled, Apple 1 sold for an astonishing $905,000.

Q.  You call this the Saddle Ridge Hoard; is that where you found these coins?

Mary:  Yes – we found the coins buried on a little area of our property that we call the Saddle Ridge

Q: Have you lived on this property a long time and possibly passed by the treasure without spying it before?

John: I saw an old can sticking out of the ground on a trail that we had walked almost every day for many, many years.

Mary: I was looking down in the right spot and saw the side of the can.  I bent over to scrape some moss off and noticed that it had both ends on it!

Q. Had you ever noticed anything peculiar in the area before?

John: Years ago, on our first hike, we noticed an old tree growing into the hill.  It had an empty rusty can hanging from it that the tree had grown around – that was right at the site where we found the coins…  At the time we thought the can might be a place for someone to put flowers in for a gravesite – something which would have been typical at the time.

There was also an unusual angular rock up the hill from where the coins were buried – we’d wondered what in the heck it was.

Mary: It wasn’t until we made the find that we realized it might have been a marker: starting at the rock, if you walk 10 paces towards the North Star, you wind up smack in the middle of the coins!

Q:   Did one of you stay there while the other went for tools?  

Mary:  John used a stick to dig up the first can.  We took it back to the house, it was very heavy.

John:  Heavy enough that we needed to take a little breather before getting back to the house.  It was getting towards evening and the light was fading.  I said to Mary, “Wow, this thing is heavy.  It must be full of lead paint.”  I couldn’t figure out what in the world would weigh that much.

Q. How long did it take you to realize you had something special?

John: Right after making the comment about it possibly being paint, the lid cracked off and exposed a rib of a single gold coin.  I knew what I was looking at immediately.  I looked around over my shoulder to see if someone was looking at me – I had the idea of someone on horseback in my head.  It’s impossible to describe really, the strange reality of that moment…  I clamped the lid back on – I found a can of gold coins and I thought there was a zero percent chance of Mary believing me!  When I told her, the look of bewilderment – her mouth was so wide open flies could have flown in and out several times.

Q: Were the cans side by side?  

Mary: Yes. We went back to the site and a foot to the left of the first can we broke into another can.  In the process we used a small hand shovel and a few coins scattered; it was so decomposed only half of that can was left.  It was like looking at a pocket of coins.

Q.  What was your first reaction when you saw these cans were full of gold? Did you feel like you had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

John:  Of course, it was a very surreal moment.  It was very hard to believe at first.  I thought any second an old miner with a mule was going to appear.

Mary: It was like finding a wonderful hot potato.

 Q. After the initial discovery how did you locate and excavate the entire hoard?

John: There were five more small cans – which brought the total up considerably, and we found the last one with a metal detector.  It was a big day when we found that can.  We’ve poked around more and now have a sense that we found everything that’s in the area.

Q. Why do you think you were the lucky ones to find this treasure? Do you believe it was divine intervention or karma?

Mary: I never would have thought we would have found something like this; however, in a weird way I feel like I have been preparing my whole life for it.

Q: How?

Mary: John just knew what to do – it was a little bit karmic…  Perhaps in some way we were the ones that could honor the coins.

Q. You have an interest in astrology; have you checked how the planets were aligned or what your chart said at the time of discovery?

Mary: Actually, I did look back at it.  It’s very funny, my chart did talk about treasure, but it was more about the treasure of spirit….

Q. Would you say that your “dreams” have come true?

John: Like a lot of people lately, we’ve had some financial trials. I feel extreme gratitude that we can keep our beloved property.

Q. Estimates put the value of this find at over $10 million; better than some lotteries. What will you do with all this money?

Mary:  We love our lives as they are – I hope we can help our family members and our community and give back some.

Q. Were you ever coin collectors; did you know such coins even existed?

John: Yes I still have my coin collection from when I was a kid. 

Mary: It took us awhile to get the guts to Google what coins we had.

John: In terms of the condition and value of the coins, we as amateurs thought that the 1866-S No Motto $20 might be worth $5,000 or more – we didn’t realize it was considerably better than the coin sitting in the Smithsonian!

Q.  Where did you put them and what did you do with them?

John:  I dug a hole under the wood pile and got a slab of green board to cover it, put the coins in plastic bags, then put them in a box inside an old ice chest and buried them. 

Q: You dug them up and reburied them?

John: Yeah – the old-timers had it right – it’s safer than in a bank!

Mary: We knew almost immediately that we would sell them, but we couldn’t just go to anyone – we had to walk that path really carefully…

John: We knew better than to go to any local pawn broker with the coins to put them on the market, we knew better than that. 

Mary: What we really appreciated was that from the outset, David [McCarthy of Kagin’s Inc.] very much wanted us to know everything we could about our coins.  He didn’t ever try to say, “These really aren’t anything.”  He let us know right away that they were special and told us various stories about the different dates.  One thing that he said that stuck with us was the idea of honoring the whole group, instead of selling a little bit at a time over time, even though it is more risky for us personally.  The history of the coins as a hoard is important.

Q: Is there one coin that stood out in the group that you are particularly fond of?

John: The Dahlonega Half Eagle. 

Mary: Yes – they all have a certain energy about them.  Each is so unique – each has its own character and essence.

Q. Do you intend on keeping any of the coins as mementos from the find?

Q.  Are you going to quit your jobs?

John: No – we’re self-employed – the beautiful thing about self-employment is that you can go to your grave self employed.

Q. You have chosen to remain anonymous out of concern for your family’s safety and potentially from being overwhelmed by the media.  But how do you think this find will change your lives?

Mary: We’re the same people we were before, just with more freedom of choice.  Our finances won’t have to dictate so many of our day to day decisions.

Q. Some lottery winners have later said that such sudden wealth ended up being more of a curse than a blessing. Have the two of you discussed how you will navigate the path ahead and the potential pitfalls that might come with instant great wealth?

Mary:  We try not to dwell on the negative.

John: It will be a broader path than the one we have been on.

Mary: Money can change other people’s perception of us more than our own perception of ourselves.  Have you heard the song by Cindy Lauper, Money Changes Everything? We don’t want that; we don’t plan to tell our extended family or friends until more time goes by.

John: Since the find, we have become a little more aware of them.

Q. Had you ever looked for treasure before?

John: Not seriously. We made several camping trips and bought some gold panning equipment.  We ended up with a vial of gold, so the idea of panning really caught my interest.  The idea of panning for gold has a lot of appeal.

Q. Are there any causes you feel passionately about that you have considered donating to?

Mary: We’d like to help other people with some of this money.  There are people in our community who are hungry and don’t have enough to eat.  We’ll also donate to the arts and other overlooked causes.  In a way it has been good to have time between finding the coins and being able to sell them in order to prepare and adjust.  It’s given us an opportunity to think about how to give back.

Q. Do you see a day in the future when you might be willing to deal with the media and the publicity surrounding this historic discovery?

Mary: Maybe when we turn 80 years old – 40 yrs away! [laughs]

Q. This hoard will be in the annals of numismatic stories for quite some time; perhaps forever. How do you feel about that?

Mary: It would have been quite a pity not to share the magnitude of our find.  –We want to keep the story of these coins intact for posterity.

Q. Do you have anything else to share about finding what may be the greatest buried treasure ever found in North America? 

Mary: Whatever answers you seek, they might be right at home!  The answer to our difficulties was right there under our feet for years. Don’t be above bending over to check on a rusty can!!!!

Her website is: marymileytheobald.com

For Images, Click Here

Visit: Fairmont Studios

Keri Seery speaks about social media, and the symbiotic relationship it can have in the marketing of antiques. Check out Keri’s Facebook Page.

In a conversation a nearly 4 years ago with Eric Bradley, (formerly the editor of Antique Trader), he mentioned that I needed to do a podcast with Sally Schwartz. He told me that she was fun and a real Chicago icon in the antiques world.

I found out Sally was all of that and more. Rarely do you meet someone that is entrepreneurial, follows her dreams and make things happen the way Sally does. This market is just one of her great events, she is a very busy woman and somehow keeps it all together. The connection I have made with Sally has certainly enriched this podcast, and my life. By the way, she really does have a great sense of humor.

Speaking of humor, to find out we have a mutual friend, Greg Willett who joined us for the podcast (also in podcast 42) was icing on the cake. Besides being an amazing picker, Greg has hit the comedy clubs for three years now with over 300 gigs under his belt.

This is my third, but not last visit to the Randolph Street Market. I attend shows all over the country; my favorite is Randolph Street Market, followed by Round Top in Texas. Both shows have one thing in common, they make it more than just an antiques show, they make it an upbeat and festive event. There is great music, good food, and a huge variety of dealers that handle diverse objects that range from $10 items to pieces in the multiple $1,000s.

My father always told me when I was growing up in the auction business, that if you can keep people from thinking about spending money, they would spend more. By that in the auction business, he was talking about a quick wit. At this antique show, the music, the great food, alcohol and the upbeat atmosphere does the trick. I saw a high percentage of attendees carrying their purchases, and surprisingly, a lot of them were in their 20s.

We talk all the time about how important it is to keep young people interested in the antiques business. Sally’s savoir-faire abilities makes this happen on a yearly basis. Besides making it a fun event to attend, she is big into attracting them through social media, and it works. I walked the crowd and talked to several young adults, most told me they were there because of hearing about it from their friends. Many thousands of people attended and at least 50-60 % were in their 20s, bravo Sally!

While waiting to do the podcast, I sat in Sally’s cabana at the show. I can’t tell you how many people rushed up to see her like they were long lost friends. They all were welcome with elation and open arms. She sat and talked to each and every one of them. How many show promoters are this approachable?

If you are a dealer, or love to attend antique shows and fairs, I highly recommend a trip to Chicago. You have an opportunity once a month and you will not regret it.

Listen to the accompanying podcast here.

]]> auctionpodcast@me.com (Martin Willis) http://antiqueauctionforum.com/podcasts/136-randolph-st-market-anniversary-special/ Sun, 26 May 2013 22:34:28 +0000 http://antiqueauctionforum.com/?p=7313 Recorded live in Chicago, a special Round-Robin format podcast celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Randolph Street Market, with co-founder Sally Schwartz, Kathy Finley, Nena Ivon, Harry Rinker, Susan Klein Bagdade, Al Bagdade, Greg Willett, Danielle Arnet, and former podcast co-host Phyllis Kao. A celebration of the anniversary as well as a discussion on the antiques market place makes this a fascinating podcast for all who are interested in antiques and vintage.…

Check out: http://www.repurposeshop.com

A look at how antiques connect us to forgotten lives of the past

I was walking my dog this morning on the property of the 1790 House, which is a fine colonial structure in Woburn, Massachusetts that houses the auction company’s office.  The property is right next to Rt. 128, which is always very noisy with a constant stream of traffic flowing north and south.

The historic house borders the Middlesex Canal, which was a concept that became a reality in the late 18th century. The canal connected Boston Harbor to the Merrimack River and had 20 locks with the average depth of 3 feet. Barges pulled by oxen transported many goods all the way to Concord, NH and back. The main function of the canal was to transport timber for shipbuilding from the virgin forest of New Hampshire to Medford, Mass. When the canal was built, it was a very substantial feat of engineering for that time.

As my dog and I walked near the canal, we came to some brush that my dog  decided to walk into. I forced my way through the thicket to find my dog, and came upon a magnificent chiseled granite post protruding out of the ground. It had a hand hammered and rusted iron eyelet near the top for rope lashing. I wondered when the last time was that someone saw this post lost in time. I realized that objects like these, along with antiques are connections to the forgotten lives of the past.

I started wondering what it would be like, slipping back in time to the day that the men set the post. The sounds of the busy traffic almost faded away to the sounds of horses, conversations and the hard manual labor. I could almost see and hear the men struggling to set that post in place. I began to wonder what their world was like when they woke up that morning and what was happening all around them throughout that very day.

When I think of the construction of furniture of the same period, similar thoughts come to mind. A piece of furniture is the evidence of the hands of the past that created it.  I can slip back in time again through wonder of what the life of the cabinetmaker was really like. I can wonder what was going on in a single day that he was working on a particular piece and what the conversations were like as he practiced his forgotten craft. I am sure what was said was very different from today, yet the same in many ways.  I can wonder about the cabinetmaker’s sense of humor, as well as the hardships and struggles of New England life that was shaping his thoughts.

I can only imagine what a workshop in Massachusetts was like in the late 18th century. I picture sunlight through windows that streams through the smoke filled air with the smell of wood being freshly worked. The sounds of hand planing and a crackling fire that attempts to take a chill off the bitter cold.

When I think of these pieces, I appreciate the beauty of design, the mastery of work, as well as the long-lasting attributes they have, all because they were made with such care and skill. I think of the tools they had, the lighting and the monumental task of creating a piece from tree to completion without the use of a single machine.

When I turn a piece upside down to examine it, I can view the oxidation brought on by the many years. I can touch the hand-hewn glue blocks, feel the plane work, scroll saw, and chisel work. Sometimes I can see writings, notes and measurements scribbled in chalk or graphite. These are part of the many signs of the hands that carefully worked the piece all those years ago. If I am quiet enough, I can almost hear the conversations and see and see the cabinetmaker at work, the sunlight streaking through the windows of the smoke filled shop with smells of freshly worked wood.

I thank my dog for running off into the brush this morning. He reminded me of my love for antiques and made me ponder forgotten lives. Reminding me I can observe and touch these pieces that show signs of their journey and the people who cared for them through time.

One of the most pressing issues in our industry today, and one near to my heart, is how to engage the next generation of auction goers and antique collectors. I have read a good many articles on how the younger generations; the millennials in particular don’t care about antiques. All too many times I’ve heard “kids these days would rather have a cell phone than a bedroom suite”. Frankly I am starting to take offense. I am a millennial. I am 25, and yes, I own an IPhone, but I also work for an auction house. I care about antiques, vintage, and preserving our material culture for the next generation. Maybe I’m an anomaly, but I don’t think so.

We have been accused of being the “Ikea generation”. I’m just as guilty. Sometimes it’s easier to buy a cheap but functional piece of furniture that you can easily load into your Honda Civic and drive to your college apartment and throw it out at the end of the semester. However, to say that our generation amounts to 30 dollars of prefabricated particle board is selling us short. There has been a huge move with against waste and against big box stores. Here is the perfect opportunity for auctions and other secondary retailers to step in. Buying antiques is green and helps reduce waste. In addition, secondary retailers should capitalize on the popularity of all things vintage. People are buying brand new furniture that is made to look vintage. It seems silly when you could buy something that is actually aged.

I think the number one thing we can do to bring the next generation into the fold, as an industry, is climb down our ivory tower.  We should begin to show the younger generation that the word “antique” doesn’t always mean pricy period pieces.  An antique doesn’t have to be Baroque period or made by Tiffany’s to be of value or worth owning.  These pieces are out of reach even for some of the most seasoned of collectors, let alone to most young people.  Also many of those antiques just aren’t practical for most young household. Can you imagine baby proofing a Belter piece of furniture? Frankly our generation values both form AND function and although some high end antiques are beautiful they often lack that function quality that our generation seeks.

So where is the disconnect for the millennials? I think it is two-fold. The first one is easy to address, it is a simple lack of education on the part of the younger generation about the value and accessibility of antique and vintage items. I think very few young people realize how accessible antiques are to them at very reasonable prices. To address that problem we as an industry should work towards rebranding ourselves to make us more appealing to the next generation. For us it really a situation of adapt or die. The consignments will keep coming, but without a new buyer pool we will be dead in the water. We need to work on rebranding the word antique. If you ask any millennial what they think of antiques they would say something along the lines of old, stuffy, and VERY expensive. Ask the same person what they would think of vintage items and you get a very different answer. Items that are marketed as vintage usually do a very good job attracting a younger crowd. It could be the same exact object, but calling it an antique gives it an aura of old-fashioned and impractical either in price or usage. Use the world vintage, however, and it has an instant appeal. Vintage somehow seems younger, hipper, and much more sexy. We need to capitalize on the popularity of the vintage trend. We need to market antiques as the solution to box store fatigue and as answer to overflowing landfills.  Working to engage the next generation for us will ensure a healthy industry for generations to come.

I have attached a photo of a painting signed Walt Kuhn in upper right, which belonged to my father. We have reason to believe it was passed down from his paternal side of the family. He never displayed this painting nor had it appraised – he died in 2008. We found the painting among his effects and we think he forgot that he had it.

The painting is on canvas, and it has no signature. There is an old New York gallery label on the reverse of the painting that says “Walt Kuhn, Head of a Young Girl” the painting is 14″x 10″

Can you tell me what it is worth?  NK

Dear NK,

Thank you for sending this information. Your painting certainly appears to be by the artist Walt Kuhn (1877-1949). There is a lot to say about Walt Kuhn; besides being an American Modernest Master, he was also instrumental in putting together the landmark 1913 Armory Show. Through this show, he was the first to bring Pablo Picasso among others to the US. Kuhn was offered $20,000 during his life for his masterpiece, The White Clown. At the time, it was the most money ever offered for any painting of a living artist. The White Clown currently lives at the National Art Gallery in Washington, DC and would without a doubt set a new record (the current record at auction is: $1.1 million) if it ever went to auction. Kuhn was known for painting circus performers which as a collector is the most desirable subject. It is possible your piece is of a performer However, not being identified, it would not be a good idea to sell it as one.

I would be delighted to handle such a piece at auction. Without seeing it in person, if authentic, the pre-auction estimate of $8, 000-12,000.

Regards,

Martin Willis, Appraiser

James D Julia Auctioneers

827 Main St

Woburn, MA 01801

Jamesdjulia.com

781-460-6800

by Martin Willis

Check out our interview with Dan Meader prior to this auction here.

When you have so many objects of a great fallen president in one auction, anything can happen. The collection was from the estate of David F. Powers, special assistant to Kennedy and the first curator of the JFK Library.  I made an appearance at the auction, braving four hours of dangerous travel in a typical New England snowstorm. I went as I said in the podcast, just to see the people and watch the event.

I want to start by saying, no one in the business could have done a better job, and that is not easy to say, considering that I am a competitor of my good friend John McInnis as well as a friend of Dan Meader who held the auction in Amesbury, Massachusetts. The one thing I certainly bet John wishes he had done differently is, make it a two-day auction. As fate would have it, the auction ended up being a two-day event after all (18 hours long), but not by choice.

As I sat in the audience, I noticed that the auction length time was in jeopardy. I sent a text message to the very busy Dan Meader asking him if he was aware the auction was moving at 40 lots per hour and for him to do the math at 723 lots. I was there to mainly see the Kennedy flight jacket sell, but quickly realized how late that would be. I was hooked to my mobile hotspot with my laptop and tweeted a bit, then left for the trek north… keeping an eye on the sale as I drove back in the snow (just as bad as texting I suppose). I watched the auction live on the Internet from my comfy home and could see the live video feed as if you were there. I finally started falling asleep at 1AM and they still had 200 lots to go. The auction was over at an unprecedented 5:00AM! Dan told me today, it was simply a matter that they could not stop taking bids. They were coming in slow but steady on the Internet. Every auction should have that problem.

Despite all odds, there was no lack in participation; prices seemed to be immune to the endless sale. I perused ahead in the online catalog and all but a few pieces had left bids on them, in other words, no bargains available for night owls sitting at their computer.

One of Dan Meader’s smart decisions in cataloging was, lotting the pieces in a chronological timeline. It was the first auction catalog that I ever read through that made me feel emotional. Dan told me that people were in tears at the auction preview.

Now for the results, some lots were affordable, as low as a few hundred dollars, but most lots seemed to sell in the multiples of the estimate.  It was exciting to see the flight jacket sell, it took over ten minutes and slowly made it’s way $570,000, which is $665, 550 with the buyer’s premium! Another highlight I was interested in, was the Dallas schedule and notations of the day, including the assassination.. “My President is dead” writes Powers.. This sold for an astonishing $65,000!

This was an exciting sale with important historical items of a single owner and will be talked about for a long time. It grossed nearly $2 million, which I find incredible. It was an auction about the history of a fallen man held dear to David F. Powers and the country that loved him. The collection mostly sat in file boxes after Powers passing in 1998. It is now spread to the wind of collectors, institues and museums, for all to treasure and generations to enjoy.

Please note, click here for auction results. You have to sign up for a free account and be signed in to view prices.

]]> Martin Willis full false 29:49 auctionpodcast@me.com (Martin Willis)Martin visits John McInnis’ Auction Gallery in Amesbury, Massachusetts and talks Dan Meader about the important John F. Kennedy memorabilia that belonged to David F. Powers, JFK’s White House special assistant and longtime confidant. Auction follow-up here! …Martin visits John McInnis’ Auction Gallery in Amesbury, Massachusetts and talks Dan Meader about the important John F. Kennedy memorabilia that belonged to David F. Powers, JFK’s White House special assistant and longtime confidant. Auction follow-up here! …Antique,Auction,Podcast,auction,auctioneer,auctions,auctioning,antique,auction,antiques,auction,Martin,Willis,Don,Troiani,Civil,War,David,Rago,Reyne,Haines,podcasts,Adam,Carolla,Phyllis,Kao,fine,art,art,paintings,audio,show,free,audio http://antiqueauctionforum.com/podcasts/126-colleene-fesko-on-cape-ann-art/ http://antiqueauctionforum.com/podcasts/126-colleene-fesko-on-cape-ann-art/#comments Fri, 04 Jan 2013 19:25:33 +0000 http://antiqueauctionforum.com/?p=6901 Colleene Fesko, frequently seen on the hit PBS television series Antiques Roadshow talks about the John Gale Art Collection of Cape Ann School paintings. She also discusses the internet’s changing affects on the art market, fakes and more. Check out the John Gale video of him describing his collection. The auction will be held at James Julia Auctioneers.…

Check out: roschmitt.com

Here are a few things you’d think you would never see in a New York City real estate office:

Yet, we’d be wrong.  Right now, these and other historical documents can be found on display in the Madison Avenue gallery of Douglas Elliman, a premier New York City real estate agency.  It’s a week-long promotion that will lead to an auction consisting of 300 lots filled with personal documents that belonged to historical figures from King George III to Joe DiMaggio.

The Property of a Distinguished American Private Collector, Part I, this and the upcoming second part of the auction will be hosted by Profiles in History.  Hoping to enhance interest among East Coast buyers, Fraunces Tavern was the original site for the display, which would have been held December 18 in California.  Unfortunately, Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath made those plans illogical.  Douglas Elliman graciously stepped in and offered to open its doors for the event.  In a statement, Douglas Elliman Real Estate CEO, Dottie Herman, said, “In the spirit of true New York resiliency, we were able to provide our gallery space and offer people a unique chance to see this amazing collection before it goes to auction.”

Profiles in History gladly took the consignment earlier this year from the Distinguished American Private Collector.  Martha Malinowski curated the collection for auction.  She has 26 years of experience with Sotheby’s.  Currently with Profiles in History, she was stunned to find so much rich material.  Besides the items mentioned above, there was an original manuscript written by Charles Dickens about the death of William Makepeace Thackeray and other writings from Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway and Vincent Van Gogh.

The least expensive pieces in the collection, like a letter from a Revolutionary War soldier, are expected to net between two and three thousand dollars.  It’s believed the most expensive items range anywhere between $200 and $500 thousand.  Among the most poignant pieces was the letter written by Van Gogh.  In it, he writes in French to Madame Ginoux, a café owner and subject in one of his paintings.  He writes, “Illnesses are there to make us remember again that we are not made of wood.”

The letter is dated seven months before the artist took his own life.

The provided information is written by Ken Torrino, web relations for Elliman, brokers for NYC, Long Island City Real Estate.

Check out http://www.antiquearticles.com

Back in 1982, my father, (Morgan Willis) and I were at a storage place meeting a woman from a prominent family in York, Maine. She was there for an hour before with family members getting things ready for us, as her main goal was to clear everything out of the storage unit. She ultimately wanted to stop paying rent on it as the family had been doing for at least ten years.

In the storage were items that were inherited from someone in their family, and there were nice period American pieces, boxes of early Canton porcelain and many fine collectibles. My dad and I were both very exited with the items we were listing, but of course, we kept our cool. It is never a good idea to get too excited as it tends to make consignors get excited enough not to sell sometimes.

We were all loaded up and ready to go, and my father noticed a corner of a crate sticking out of a dumpster they were using. He asked about what was in the crate and the woman said it was a painting of her grandmother that no one in the family wanted. I guess the bottom line was, Grandma was not all that pleasant to them when they were children, or that was the underlying impression.

The crate was wooden sandwiched with cardboard, when we peeled back a corner, we could see it was a wonderful frame. My dad asked if we could please take it with us, and sell it for them, if not for the painting, the frame alone. The siblings looked at each other and started laughing, and said that we could be their guests in taking it.

When we got back to the auction gallery, the first thing my father did, was take the crate apart and unearth the painting. It was a portrait of a woman in a side profile pose with a wonderful look to it of Boston School. Sure enough it was signed in the lower left “Frank W. Benson” (1862-1951). I was only in my 20s and did not reorganize the name, but my father was yelling all kinds of elations.

Auction time came and phone bids were set up, the family was all there watching what their pieces were selling for, and then the portrait was front/center. It started at $2,000 (which at the time, was a healthy starting bid) and it never slowed until $25,000, then my father took his time as a phone bidder and a floor bidder battled it out until the floor won at $36,500. In 1982, that price made ripples in the auction world of New England.

It was the most expensive thing my father ever auctioned, which truly means it was ‘another man’s treasure.’

]]> http://antiqueauctionforum.com/blog/tossed-but-not-lost/feed/ 4 auctionpodcast@me.com (Martin Willis) http://antiqueauctionforum.com/podcasts/122-gregg-elliott-on-high-grade-shotguns/ Sat, 10 Nov 2012 18:05:48 +0000 http://antiqueauctionforum.com/?p=6788 Show Notes: Martin talks to blogger and expert Gregg Elliott on high grade shotguns, collecting, and how to make careful decisions when obtaining them. Check out his blog website at: dogsanddoubles.com

 …

Martin: Hi everyone, welcome to the Antique Auction Forum. This is Martin Willis. Today is Podcast 122 with Gregg Elliott. His website is dogsanddoubles.com. We’re going to be speaking today about collecting high-grade, mostly antique, shotguns. You can like us on our Facebook page, or you can follow us on twitter. Those icons are on our website. If you would like to contact me, that’s info@antiqueauctionforum.com.

Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy today’s show.

This podcast is sponsored by WorthPoint. Find out what your antiques are worth at WorthPoint.com

I’m with Gregg Elliott. How are you doing, Gregg?

Gregg: I’m doing well, thanks. How are you doing?

Martin: Great, and we’re going to talk about shotguns, which I never thought I was going to talk about on this blog, but it’s pretty interesting. Right off the bat I’m going to ask you what makes a good shotgun a good shotgun?

Gregg: I think, from my perspective, one is original condition; I like to find one that hasn’t been refinished or restored in any way. I really value old finishes because those were put there by the original craftsmen, and they are part of the history of the item and if something has had that wiped away I feel like part of the history of the item is gone.

Martin: Now, are we talking about the stock and barrel?

Gregg: Yes, so the metal work and the wood; both of those can be refinished,

Martin: re-glued and…

Gregg: Yes you can re-glue them, you can basically sand away the original finish and you can apply a new finish. Depending on how much you do that, you can either be refinishing a gun or be what they call restoring a gun. In my mind I like old guns, and I like them because they have the history and I also like to think about these people a hundred, a hundred fifty years ago making them, actually sitting down and you know they sweated and put their effort into these things, and when I pick it up; it’s the only way you can travel back in time.  And I want that preserved. I think part of the experience of antique items is that ability to sort of time travel. So if you wipe all that away, it’s all gone. So a lot of people will get an old gun, and they’ll say well, it will be a… if it’s been used, it will have dings and scratches and marks and stuff on it, and a lot of people, initially what they’ll think is “I want to restore it and make it look like it’s new”. I try to dissuade them from doing that by saying “this is the gun’s history; it’s life. It’s like an old face, you know?” If you wipe that away, you wipe away its history. So that’s why I don’t like it when people do that, and I’ve found the market doesn’t like it either. The stuff that the market wants is, original condition always brings the best money. That’s what the collectors want.

Martin: You know, it’s across the board with most antiques, I would say. I can’t really think of any segment of antiques that would be any different. You know what I mean? It’s basically the same.

A lot of the shotguns, we’ll go into the names, and the rarities – this is going to be interesting, because we talked a little bit beforehand – a lot of the shotguns, like I’m looking at a picture of Hemingway’s shotgun on the wall over there, nicely engraved. A lot of times people really took good care in making a beautiful object. Can you talk about that? Is it still done today?

Gregg: It’s absolutely still done today. The guns back then, the engraving was done to have something cover up the metal. I’ve also been told it was added because bare metal would have a flash to it in the light and the flash could spook game; I don’t know if that’s true, but there was a tradition in gun making to engrave the metalwork on it, which came out of engraving of all metal items; they used to engrave watches, they used to engrave metal boxes; it was just an adornment that they added, and then as gun makers became more competitive and were looking for ways to set themselves apart, they added different patterns of engraving on it, and there was eventually a level of guns called “best guns”, which were the best guns that a manufacturer could make, and they would typically adorn that gun.

Martin: You mean a particular manufacturer?

Gregg: Right, so there would be, for instance, a manufacturer like Purdey in London; they would have a gun called their “best” gun. And that’s just what it was. This was the finest gun that they could turn out. It would have engraving all over it. The engraving would be designed to adorn the gun and embellish it, but it wasn’t something to really steal the show. So the gun as a whole would be really beautiful, but you didn’t really want someone to pick it up and be like “look at the engraving”. You’d want them to look at the whole thing, and think “Wow this whole thing is really beautiful”. So a lot of the British stuff the engraving tends to be a little bit more conservative, a little more refined, but extremely well done. And they all kind of did that because once the market kind of established itself, you know, everybody has got to do it. If somebody has got really nice engraving you want your best gun… some people would actually order them without engraving; they thought the engraving was a little ostentatious.

Martin: There were some inlaid metal as well. Sometimes with silver, and sometimes even with gold; is that right?

Gregg: Yes. There are some different grades; sometimes they would have exhibition guns, and they would use inlays and stuff like that as a way to make something look like a presentation grade just to raise it above even the level of best, to make it extra special, so if it was going to a head of state or someone like that. The Indian market used to really like gold for some reason; there were a lot of guns that were made for Indian princes that got exported from England to over that market. A lot of the American manufacturers would add gold, and I think they did it as a way of… in the business they always wanted to come up with another grade so they could sell something for more money. And so once you have your Best, what do you do with it? You can’t go any further, so what they would do is they would come up with what they would call an “Extra Finish”, or a “Model Deluxe”, or a “Presentation” and they’d put gold on it and they’d embellish it even further. A customer might come in and say “I want something extra special” or “something to wow my friends more than anything else”. There’s a company called Charles Daly that used to import guns, and they used to have a model called “The Diamond”; it had engraving (with emphasis) all over it, and then they said they needed something even better, so they came out with a Regent Diamond and they put all sorts of gold on it. And then there were Extra Regent Diamonds that had even more gold on them.

Martin: Ha. It’s a wonder they didn’t put actual diamonds on them.

Gregg: I’ve seen guns with diamonds on them.

Martin: Really?

Gregg: I’ve seen diamond sights on them. There were guns, again made for Indian princes, who seemed to be into really extravagant items, that would have diamond sights put on them.

Martin: Now, your passion is in shotguns; what is the Holy Grail of all shotguns?

Gregg: I think for me the Holy Grail is anything nineteenth century, in its original case, all original untouched, with a lot of finish. That’s what I love.  When people used to buy shotguns, they would come in a leather case, and the case would have accessories in it that would go with the shotgun.

Martin: Like a suitcase type of…

Gregg: Yes it would look like a suitcase, and they were made out of oak, and they would be covered with leather, and there would be tools in them for assembling and taking apart the gun, so you could maintain it, and clean it and you could oil it; if it got wet you’d want to take things apart so they would come with a whole set of tools. If you can get an original makers case with all the tools and the gun, that’s sort of the apex of what I like. The oils they used to use have a real distinct smell so when you get one of these and you open it up, you get a big whiff.

Martin: (Laughing) Like a new car smell.

Gregg: Yeah if you hang around these guns, that smell is very… when you open up a case for the first time and you get that whiff, you know it’s something old. The cases were lined with wool, and the case has this creak, so it’s like you’re opening up an old treasure chest.

Martin: It’s pretty exciting, I bet, when you see that.

Gregg: Yes. And that’s what I love to find. There’s labels in there; the makers would put their label in there, and the labels are typically pretty extravagant, because this was how, back then, a maker would promote themselves. You would have a gun and you would bring it to a shoot, or bring it hunting, and you’d open it up and your friends would see it, and they would see the big label. A lot of the British companies would have warrants from royals or aristocrats, and they would have those things noted in there.

Martin: I want to talk about what the average price would be for someone to get started collecting this type of nice grade shotgun, but what would you consider a world record price for what you’re involved in?

Gregg: I think the stuff involved in, and you can get really nice examples for maybe $15,000. And then the stuff goes up from there; the sky is the limit. There was a shotgun recently, a Boss (& Co.) over-and-under that was sold, I think it went for $175,000. There was the Hemingway Double Rifle, the rifle that’s on that picture right there, I think that went for a quarter million?

Martin: $339,250. And I’m saying that because of the poster in my office.

Gregg: That’s what’s called a Westley Richards Drop Lock Double Rifle. Those are out there, obviously the Hemingway connection adds a lot of value to it. Something like that without the Hemingway connection is probably a $35,000-$40,000 gun.

Martin: I never really promote myself in these podcasts, but I’m just going to say that I work with James Julia Auctions, and it is the leading firearms auction company in the world. And so the posters here in my office, that’s why I’ve just mentioned it, so that is the world record price.

Gregg: Yes, well, that’s a double rifle. So those are a little different. I think there was a shotgun that Julia’s sold, that there was a famous American writer duck-hunter that owned a Fox shotgun. The guy’s name was Nash Buckingham. And this was a gun that he had written about extensively, and he had lost it, and it resurface, and it was sold through Julia’s and it went for, I think that’s the record for a shotgun, and I want to say it went for three quarters of a million. It was an incredible price, and I think it’s now sitting at the Ducks Unlimited.

Martin: You said it was lost. What do you mean it was lost?

Gregg: He lost it. He went hunting with it one day, and I think the story is that he left it on the car, and they may have driven off? And when they went back, they couldn’t find it.

Martin: Oh my goodness.

Gregg: This was, I think, in the twenties, or in the thirties. It was called Bowhoop; that was its name. It was called that because that was the sound it made when it was fired. Anyway the gun was lost to history. Nash Buckingham wrote about it extensively, loved the gun, and then there was another one made for him which was called Bowhoop 2. The gun resurfaced within the last 20 years in some gunsmith’s shop who recognized what it was. And that gun, because of its historical connection and sentimental value, it went for such a high price.

Martin: Something that we had talked about a little earlier, and I like to always bring up, is the dark side; and that is when you’re talking this kind of money you know, if you get involved in these type of shot guns, let’s say the names are Purdey, Bonds,

Gregg: Purdey, Boss, Holland and Holland; those are the big three, and then there’s lots of other ones.

Martin: and is that mostly England?

Gregg: Yes, those are all English makers. The biggest money for vintage stuff typically goes for British makers.

Martin: Which are your best American makers?

Gregg: The ones that are going to bring the biggest money are ones like, Parker, and Fox, L. C. Smith. Usually Parkers bring the most money. So that’s where the largest… Parker and Fox probably have the largest collecting communities. And those are sort of your classics American guns. Most guys, if you mention fancy old side-by-side shotguns, most people who know that stuff, Parker is what comes to mind.

Martin: Side-by-side, and then there’s over-and-under.

Gregg: Yes, over-and-unders weren’t really an American thing; they were more the British, and then the Europeans picked up the over-and-unders, but the British over-and-unders are the most desirable, most valuable, most collectable.

Martin: Oh really. Why?

Gregg: They just didn’t make that many of them. And at least today if you can find them in nice shape, they’re extremely valuable. That was the one, that 20 gauge Boss that sold at Julia’s a little while ago; that was an over-and-under.

Martin: So, the dark side that I was starting to talk about; which anything that seems to sell for a lot of money, there always seems to be a dark side.  Can you talk about that?

Gregg: Yes, I think the dark side is there’s a lot of money in refinishing stuff and representing it… selling it as something it’s not. A lot of what I do is I help them understand what they have, the market value of it, and its real condition.  Because I have this passion for original condition and original finishes, I’ve developed an eye for it, and I can help people understand if something is original or if it has been refinished. And the problem is that over time there are people who have refinished things and passed them off as original, and they’ve sold for a lot of money. And there’s a lot of stuff out there like that. There’s less today; it’s harder to deduce today because of the internet, but there’s still a lot of that out there, so you have to be very careful about what you’re buying. You have to know what questions to ask and you also have to know what to look for. There’s certain things that, if you see an old gun, there’s certain types of wear that they should have if they’ve been used at all, and those are the kind of things that, when I see something, bells will go off in my head because I’ll be “well, if anyone ever used this, there should be some wear right there”.

Martin: Now I know people, and I’ve dealt with this a lot; anytime that I’ve come up against something like this, it starts quite an argument. Do you have to deal with that, where people just say “oh no no, that’s not…”?

Gregg: Yes, well I had a gentleman reach out to me through my blog, probably a couple months ago, he had a shotgun by a maker called…

Martin: and your blog is?

Gregg: my blog is dogsanddoubles.com

Martin: A guy who likes dogs.

Gregg: Yes, dogs and doubles. So, he reached out to me about a shotgun called a W&C Scott, and he had a grade called the Premier grade, which was one of their finest shotguns; one of the finest English shotguns ever made. And he went on great length to tell me it was all original. He had bought it in England, and it had never been refinished or restored in any way, and he also told me it was in its original case, so I was very excited about it. This was a nineteenth century gun; my favorite stuff. I pressed him for pictures. He sent me photos, I opened them up, and the gun had been completely restored.

Martin: You could tell by a photo.

Gregg: Yes it was a really… it hadn’t even really been restored as much as it had been poorly refinished. It probably had been done… whoever did the work probably wasn’t trying to mislead anyone, but then whoever ended up selling it was trying to mislead someone. When he sent me the pictures and I tried to explain to him very clearly what showed me that it had been redone, he was really upset. I sent him pictures of ones that were original, and I said you know, “This is what original looks like; if you compare it to yours it’s obvious that this has had work done on it. He was really upset, but that’s what I do; I have to be honest and tell people.

Martin: Things are what they are.

Gregg: Yes. There’s nothing I can do about it, and that’s what it is. And you know I think everybody thinks they’re going to be worth a fortune too.

Martin: Yes.

Gregg: And once they… once stuff is messed with in any way

Martin: it drastically changes the value.

Gregg: Yes, it’s a totally… collectors that I know, the people that pay the real top dollar, if stuff has been touched in any way,

Martin: They don’t want it.

Gregg: Not interested.

Martin: Not even at any level.

Gregg: Yep, they don’t even bother with it.

Martin: All collectors, I’ve said this many times on this podcast; all collectors, true collectors, refine, and refining is part of what they do, and they’ll sell their lesser stuff and just pyramid better and better and better.

Gregg: Right. And these people keep moving up. Now I know some gentlemen who only want the absolute best of the best; money is not an object, but the only object is finding this stuff. This stuff is extremely hard to find.

Martin: Are there fakes?

Gregg: Yes there are fakes. There’s absolutely fakes out there. So there’s fakes, (and) there’s fake upgrades; you see this in a lot of the American stuff. American makers would take a gun and they would offer it in different grades. So there would be sort of an entry level grade, and then there would be sort of the deluxe grade. The deluxe would obviously be the most expensive and it would be finished at a higher level. But the base gun would be the same. So the guts of it and the exterior of it would basically be the same but they would embellish it more as you went further up. So if you wanted to, you could get one of these base ones, and if you knew what you were doing, you could embellish it yourself. And there used to be people that used to sort of be their little business it that they would embellish these things, and they were passed off into the market as much higher grade guns. There’s Winchester Model 21; I forget the name of their highest grade guns but I’ve been told that there are more of those on the market today, or in circulation today than the maker ever produced themselves.

Martin: (Laughing) That’s kind of a tell-tale.

Gregg: Yes, the Winchester Model 21, certain makers, the makers original records are available.

Martin: I was going to say, there are serial numbers involved.

Gregg: Yes there are serial numbers, so you can research these things, and that’s why, it’s only been in the last, say 15 years, that a lot of this knowledge has been widely available. So pre-internet, it was hard to see these things, and see enough of them to develop the knowledge that it takes to understand what’s refinished, what’s not refinished. Unless you were a dealer or someone who was going to shows across the country all the time, you just didn’t see enough of this stuff. But nowadays there’s so much more; I can go look at pictures online, and so it’s easier to find out about these things. But before, stuff was so rare in the first place, and then the knowledge was so hard to come by, that it was much easier to fake stuff, create phonies and then pass them off into the market. And there were people who had long careers selling the stuff, that’s what they did and pretty much what did that side of their business in, was the internet, because information travels too easily nowadays. So these people, some of them got out, some of them are still in, but they’ve shifted themselves.

Martin: Some of these businesses… do you have any wild story, anything that has to do with lots and lots of money? Like I could tell you a ton of art stories where someone did something really (laughing) bad.

Gregg: Well I know there was a Parker shotgun, that was called the Czar Parker that was sold, so someone had done just this; they had upgraded it. There was a story that’s been in circulation; there was a gentleman, his name was Peter Johnson. He wrote a book about Parker shotguns. Somehow there was this story about this gun that had been made for the Czar of Russia, and then the Russian Revolution broke out and the gun was never delivered, so there was this story circulating about it, but no one knew what this gun looked like. They sort of speculated on what it may have looked like.

Martin: So someone created one.

Gregg: So someone created one. Yes. This gentleman created it, then he sold it, and then somehow the buyer figured out that he had been lied to. The whole thing ended up in court, I think that eventually, no one went to prison, but basically the person who had bought it was then trying to pass it off I think to a third party.

Martin: When in doubt get a partner?

Gregg: No I think what happened with a lot of this stuff is when you realize you’ve been ripped off you turn around and try to rip someone else off and get out of your mistake as quickly as possible. That’s what people do. And that’s why it’s so valuable to have somebody who can help you with these things, because you’ve got to be very careful. But this Czar Parker; that’s what happened with it. It’s still around today. It’s what they would call an upgrade, and it’s recognized as that, and it’s been written about extensively as being that. Now there is another gun that was actually called the Czar Parker that actually was the gun that was described by this gentleman in his book. That gun actually exists, and it was sold at auction a couple of years ago.

Martin: So you mean this gun did turn up?

Gregg: This gun did turn up.

Martin: The real one.

Gregg: But, the story about whether or not it was ever made for the Russian Czar, or had any connection like that is so full of holes, that I don’t think it’s true. I think it’s a real clever story that the maker came up with. I think basically what happened is the maker… someone came in and ordered a gun, the gentleman may have been Russian who ordered it, and for whatever reason he never paid for it; he didn’t come through on it. So the maker ends up with this gun, and so the maker was clever and came up with this story. But whether or not it’s… they’ve tried to prove it. There’s no connection.

Martin: You know, so many times in this business… someone will come up to me and say “George Washington owned this” … “I’m not making this up” …“This came through George Washington’s family”. I was in a house in Maine, New York where he (supposedly) played cards with her Queen Anne card table. You know there’s all these stories, but how are you going to document something like that? When it’s a generation away, possibly things can be documented a little better, affidavits can be written; stuff like that. But really, family traditions…

Gregg: People like to believe that.

Martin: People love to believe it (laughing)… when it’s theirs.

Gregg: Yes. I have contacts that I can find records on stuff, I can also find out a lot of stuff, a lot of really high end guns were sold through retailers in New York. So Abercrombie and Fitch, there used to be a company called Vaughn, Leck, Merck and Detmold, so these were early retailers, very high-end retailers of these items, and they kept pretty extensive records, and I have access to people who can research these records. So if people say, you know, this gun was made for x, y, or z, or sold, I can go back and find out in the records. And sometimes, you find out that it’s true, a lot of times you find out it’s a misunderstood story, but you know if you can find that stuff out it can add tremendous value to these things. And it’s also just fun to find these things out. There was a guy I was dealing with that, it was just fascinating to find out who ordered these things. A lot of these guns were extremely expensive in their day. They’re expensive today to have new, and back then they were just as expensive.

Martin: Sure. Relative…

Gregg: Yes. Like a brand new Boss over-and-under shotgun back in 1920 probably cost more than what an average person’s home would have cost. And that same is very true today; they are very expensive.  So the people that bought them were very affluent. There was one gun I was dealing with where the gentleman was involved in the automobile industry and he had invented a way to make automobile frames or something like that, and that’s… he was part of the industrial boom in Detroit. It’s just interesting to find out these family connections.

Martin: Yes and you have an advantage over most other segments of the business, and that’s serial numbers. Things can be traced through serial numbers.

What makes a shotgun, besides the maker, what makes one good compared to one that isn’t?

Gregg: Well, I think it’s… that’s a really good question because I try to spend a lot of time personally trying to understand what quality is. There’s a lot of sentimental attachment to items, and then there’s a real quality. So something may sell for a lot of money but it may not be actual high quality but there’s a lot of sentimental attachment.

Martin: You mean across the board?

Gregg: Yes, there’s a lot of shotguns that may sell for lots and lots of money but no one’s buying them for their actual intrinsic quality.

Martin: Really.

Gregg: Yes they’re buying them for the romance of them, they’re buying them for the American myth that’s associated with them, and they’re buying them because the market’s been doing a really good job of creating a story around them. And what I mean is there are books about them, there are collecting communities, so the stuff is known, and basically what happening is there’s a brand that’s been created, and that brand has associations that people like. So it’s like, if I say Mercedes Benz to you, you think of a certain thing, and whether or not that’s true is beside the point. And that’s very much the case with shotguns. So I try to find out, you know, part of what I really try to do is understand, well, what is good. What’s quality. There’s definitely higher levels of quality, there’s things you look for, and I’ve been able to acquire that knowledge just because I pester a lot of people with questions. I’m very fortunate that I know people that make these guns, and I work on them for a living, and they take the time to answer my questions. So there’s definitely… in my mind the best of the best is the British stuff; what’s called the side-lock British shotgun, and I like the stuff that was made before WWII. I think that’s your highest quality. Even before WWI, people were cheap back then, and they could afford to put a lot of time into making the stuff. And they made a lot of them too, so people that made them had a tremendous amount of experience doing them. They were working with a lot of hand tools.

Martin: So each one was separately…?

Gregg: Well to a degree they were made by hand. There was still mechanization, there was still equipment involved, but the equipment wasn’t sophisticated enough to take over the process back then; they didn’t have CNC machines and stuff like that, so when they made barrels, they had to start with a block of metal. When they made the little actions, they had to start with a chunk of metal.

Martin: Now what’s a Damascus barrel?

Gregg: So Damascus, there’s two types of barrels for shotguns, or basically for any types; side-by-sides and over-and-unders. There was Damascus steel and there was fluid steel. Damascus steel is older, and it was made through a different process. And the way they made Damascus steel was they basically had a rod and they would form strips of steel sort of like spaghetti and then they would wrap these spaghetti around this rod and they would wrap it in sort of a perpendicular pattern to the rod. So they would wrap it up the rod like it was, you know, like wrapping rope around a stick. As they were doing this, they would hit these with hammers and this would, the steel that they were wrapping would be hot and it would form welds and this would then harden, cool and it would form a tube. And this process was called Damascus steel. They would do some other things to this steel before they wrapped it but basically your barrel was composed of sort of wrapped items and that’s Damascus steel. Fluid steel was basically, they poured it into a mold and this block of steel was created, and I think they drilled it out to form a tube, and then they would rough the form out as best they could using machines with lathes and the machines they had back then. So the fluid steel sort of revolution is about 1880 and that’s when at least in the UK, that’s when you see these guns start to coming on to the market.

Martin: Do you mean everything before that time was Damascus steel?

Gregg: Yes everything was a type of Damascus; there were different types of Damascus and if you go back even further they were using slightly different techniques, so sort of most of the, I want to say from about 1750 on, to about 1880, most of that stuff is all Damascus steel. You start seeing fluid steel come on the market, originally it was a little slow to gain acceptance, and then it sort of took over. I think it took over because it was a cheaper process of manufacturing, and so because it was a less expensive, makers could make a little more money on it. There’s a perception today that Damascus steel is dangerous, which isn’t really true.

Martin: Like it would blow apart or something?

Gregg: Yes that it would blow apart, or that is was prone to ruptures, and there were a lot of tests when fluid steel came out; they tested fluid against Damascus in the UK, and it was actually found that in some cases the Damascus was actually stronger. The problem you have is that a lot of the Damascus steel guns are old, and over time people messed with them; they’d go inside the barrel and do things that would thin the barrels out, they caused damage to the barrels, and this creates weak spots. That’s why you have problems. Or people put shells, cartridges in them that are wrong, and so it’s not necessarily the steel’s fault; it’s sort of what people have done to it since it was created.

Martin: Now, you mentioned earlier, I think you said it was the Fox shotgun that was lost in the 20s and it resurfaced, that’s quite an amazing story; I wonder how it resurfaced. Do you have any stories of someone getting a really good find?

Gregg: Yes, I find stuff quite often. I find stuff in the sense of, people reach out to me; they’ll reach out to me through my blog, with items. They’re trying to understand what they have and what it’s worth. There was a gentleman who reached out to me and he asked me a few questions about a certain gun, and asked me if I knew anything about it. I know some stuff about it and was able to help him out, and he told me that I was the only person that he had come across who knew enough about this item to give him a valuation and really explain it to him. And then he said “I also have some other things; would you be able to help me out with them?” and I said, you know, absolutely, and he named off a few items and I frankly did not believe he had them. I thought he was just…

Martin: They were that rare?

Gregg: Yes they were that rare; some people just like to talk, and I assumed that’s who he was. I said “Well, those things sound wonderful; why don’t you send me some pictures and then we’ll go from there. He sent me the pictures, I opened them up and I was absolutely blown away; he was telling the truth.

Martin: Did you go see him?

Gregg: Yes, I traveled out to see him. I saw the pictures, and I had to go see the stuff. Just because, even people who have been collecting this stuff for a very long time didn’t really know this stuff existed. It was sort of things that had been written about in books but people didn’t really know if it was around anymore or even if the books were accurate. So I went out and saw the stuff and this was one of those cases where he had it in a leather case and I opened it up and I got that whiff of history, and there it was sitting there, and not only was it what he said it was, it was in fantastic original condition. Some of these things had never been used.

Martin: Never been used.

Gregg: Yes never been used. His grandfather had just collected them, put them aside, and the family was good enough to just preserve them and take care of them properly. They knew they were something that was valuable and they respected them; they didn’t try to restore them ever, or any nonsense like that.

Martin: Here’s the thing, that when someone has something really great, they do, in my opinion, this is my opinion only, have a responsibility to let whoever is caring for them in the future, to let them know what they are. Because there are so many great finds in estate sales, that people have absolutely no idea because the family didn’t let them know “You have to take care of this. You have to preserve this; this is something really important”

Gregg: Yes absolutely. Some of the people I work with too there’s a lot of people who, there’ll be older gentlemen that have collections that they know are valuable, but they want them to be documented. And it’s for the purpose of when they’re gone, so that people understand what it is, and also so that their widow or whatever doesn’t get taken advantage of. There’s tons of unscrupulous dealers and buyers out there, and if things aren’t properly documented, it’s very easy for someone to get taken advantage of.

Martin: A lot of people make a living that way.

Gregg: Well yes, no one thinks that some old shotgun their grandfather has in some case in his closet could be worth $50,000.

Martin: Sure.

Gregg: But it’s pretty easy. There’s something else. What I actually find, is that people who have nice stuff, know that it’s nice. They may not know how valuable it is, but they know it’s valuable. Stuff like the Antique Roadshow and all these things is giving people the impression now that anything old is worth a fortune.

In firearms, I don’t come across stuff where the people are completely ignorant of it. I think that’s because the internet; people can look up a lot of this stuff. Most of it isn’t that rare. So I usually find that people have a general sense, they may not understand what its actual condition is; they’ll reach out to me for that. And the other thing that people don’t know, is the best way to monetize things. They don’t know the smartest ways to sell stuff, they don’t know which dealers can help them get the most money for their stuff, so that’s what I help a lot of people do. You know, with a shotgun, there’s certain shotguns you don’t take down to Al’s Gun Shop on the corner and let him deal with it, because he doesn’t have the knowledge or the contacts in the industry to get top money for things.

Martin: Right. An auction, getting back to Julia’s, the last two auctions were amazing. Eighteen million ($) and sixteen million. Those numbers are just unheard of in this… so a lot of things, going to auction is not a bad idea.

Gregg: No, auctions are a great place; especially if it’s in really good shape and really high-end collectors want it. It’s a great place to go because what you’ll find is guys will get passionate about things and they’ll pay more at an auction than they would in a retail store. So it’s a great place. I think that for a lot of stuff, that’s where you can get top dollar. I know that some items have gotten top dollar at an auction, and then they’ve sold again for even more money; but that’s typically by people who have very good contacts. Those are dealers who have people lined up for stuff. But I think for the most part, for a seller, the great thing about auctions is that there’s a date when your item will most likely be sold. There’s no… there are some dealers that have things on consignment and they’ve had them for five years. So as an owner you’re sitting there waiting for your check and

Martin: it never comes…

Gregg: yes and the consignment world is sort of fraught with ways to be taken advantage of too. Auction, you can watch what the prices are, it’s a much safer world. You get your check hopefully in 30 days, you’re all done.

Martin: Yes. We’re just about ready to wrap this up. I was at a house yesterday and the gentleman had sold a Colt through auction, through our company, and he said that guns are an extremely good investment. He said he made 750% on his gun from when he bought it. He did very well on his particular situation. A lot of times in this whole market we don’t tell people it’s a great idea to invest, but how do you feel about guns as for as investing?

Gregg: I think, so, if you buy the right stuff, I don’t think you’re going to lose money, and if you get lucky, you’re going to make money.

Martin: That’s well put.

Gregg: So there’s definitely been bubbles. There’s recently been a bubble in Italian shotguns, there’s been bubbles in some American stuff…

Martin: You mean bubbles that have burst.

Gregg: Yes. There was a big run on Italian stuff for a while, that bubble has kind of burst. There was a bubble on some English stuff that’s kind a burst, but the stuff that always holds its value in my mind, is again, going back to original condition, and hard to find items. That stuff, there’s always going to be a market for it; people are going to want it. And the stuff, I don’t know why, but the stuff that always seems to go up in value are small gauge, American shotguns. So your Parkers, your Foxes, those types of items, the upper grades, in original condition, there seems to be more and more people out there who want them. The American makers have the American mystique; they have Americana behind them, and people collect that. No one is paying, I see a Colt over there, and it says “sold for $63,000”. That gun, mechanically isn’t worth $63,000. They’re buying the American mystique; the American West. That’s what they’re buying. And that’s very powerful with the American stuff and that’s what pushes it. And that’s not going away. And people are rediscovering that more and more every day; becoming more interested in it. So that’s, if someone said to me, where would I buy, because they want to invest, I would buy small bore, American guns. I’d buy Parkers or Fox’s and I’d buy it all original condition; I wouldn’t accept anything else. But the problem is that: you might find one of those all year. You know, you’re going to spend, and most guys, when people say they want to invest, they’re looking for a way to (laughing) rationalize their desire to buy. They’re trying to make it seem like they’re not just buying stuff. So you have to have discipline. If you want to be a good investor you have to sit, and you have to analyze everything, and you have to be kind of cold and ruthless.

Martin: Well, you know there was just a report on public radio today that people who can wait are the one who become more successful. So someone that’s patient that wants to buy something really good is probably going to be a lot better off than someone who is just going to race out and try to find something.

Gregg: Yes, I think if you want to be a good collector in anything, then I think you have to define your parameters, have focus, and then you have to be very disciplined. I collect stuff for myself, and I’ve gone from (being) an accumulator to a collector, and I continue to refine. So I used to be at a point where I just liked all of this stuff, and I would get it, and now there’s stuff that, I’m looking for certain things, and I’m trying to focus more on that, and I think that’s a normal path for a lot of collectors. And if you want to build something that’s going to be worth more in the future, that’s what you have to do. I might see personally one or two things a year that fit my criterion… and if I can afford them is another matter.

Martin: Yes, that’s always the key. Well thanks so much.

This is Martin Willis with Gregg Elliott from dogsanddoubles.com and we’re signing off.

Martin:  Hi everyone, this is Martin Willis with the Antique Auction Forum. Welcome to Episode 121 with Mary Miley Theobald. Today’s topic is going to be on historical myths. Some of them do apply to antiques; it’s a pretty fun show, I hope you enjoy it. You can follow us on twitter or you can like us on Facebook; those icons are right on our website http://antiqueauctionforum.com. You can contact me at info@antiqueauctionforum.com. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy today’s show.

This podcast is sponsored by WorthPoint. Find out what your antiques are worth at WorthPoint.com

Martin:  I have Mary Miley Theobald in Virginia on Skype. How are you doing Mary?

Mary:  I’m fine, thank you.

Martin:  And you are a historian, and you live in Virginia.

Mary: Yes I do.

Martin:  I listened to one of your podcasts, the Colonial Williamsburg Podcast; I thought it was great and a really interesting topic because we do from time to time some historical podcasts here and a lot of what we are involved in in the business certainly relates to history, so they’re always very popular on these shows. Can you talk a little bit about what some of your books have been lately about myths and debunking them? This is a real fun subject if you ask me.

Mary: It is fun. And of all the writing I’ve done in the past 30 years this has really been the most fun book I’ve written. I guess it got started back in 2006 when I visited the DAR Museum in Washington, and they had an exhibit on history myths. They were debunking certain myths that are widely repeated at museums, or historic sites, national parks, city bus tours, carriage rides, those kinds of things. Myths like “People didn’t bathe back then”, or “Colonial Americans thought tomatoes were poisonous” or “women secluded themselves indoors during pregnancy”; things that were patently not true. I wrote an article debunking a few myths; I thought maybe I’d find a dozen. And it got a lot of attention. People wrote back saying “what about this myth” and “what about this myth”, so I wrote a second article, started collecting them, had enough for a book, and I’m still collecting; I might have enough for a second book!

Martin:  Well I’m going to tell you a couple I’ve heard, and (laughing) you can add them if you don’t have them already. First of all, I want to say in this business, in the antiques business, there are a lot of myths. One I was heavily involved in – and I passed it along for probably 10 years before I actually researched it and figured out that it was a myth that had been passed down – and I hate to say it, but it was passed down by my father, was:

In 1890 there was a McKinley Tariff Act, and at that time every item that was imported into this country had to, and still does have to, have a stamp with the country of origin. And so the rumor, or the myth, was that most of the porcelain was coming in from China and of course they were marked “China” on the bottom so everybody called the porcelains that you eat dinner on or whatever, they started calling them china. And that was my myth that I passed along until I think I came upon an inventory of a death in the 18th century, and on that it said “China” you know, as household China, and so that made me do a little research and I found out that since porcelain had originated in China it’s been a term for many years. So that was my myth that I passed along, I should say (laughing) one of the myths I’ve passed along. Before we get into some of the myths you’re going to talk about, as far as passing them along; did they go from continent to continent?

Mary: Well sometimes, with some changes. There is a myth in England that’s been around for centuries that says on the effigies of knights that you see in brass or on stone on, say, a cathedral floor, that if you look at the knights feet, if they’re crossed that means he went on a crusade and if they’re not, then he didn’t. Well, English historians have been trying to debunk this myth for 200 years without success; you still hear it. But that is much the same as a myth that we hear here in national parks, or on city bus tours; whenever you see an equestrian statue you will hear the myth that the position of the horse’s hooves tells you the fate of the rider. If one leg is up, that means the rider was wounded in battle, if both legs are up he was killed in battle, and if all 4 are on the ground that means the rider survived the war. Well, this isn’t true, or I like to say its true one third of the time. It’s the same kind of notion that we’ve passed; we don’t have effigies of knights, but we still tell the same kind of stories; that there’s some kind of secret code. I think people buy into it because they like the idea of a secret code; we like to be in on a secret code.

Martin:  Yes it’s kind of like, what was the name of that game you played when you were a kid, “Telephone” or something like that? You pass the message along and it changes; it can become a myth all on its own. Before we get into some of the fun myths that you’re going to talk about:

“Mad as a hatter” – I have always heard that was from Mercury vapor when they were making the hats. Have you looked into that one?

Mary: It is (true). Some myths are true. “Mad as a hatter” comes from that expression; yes.

Martin:  Okay I have one that I had heard of, that was an old-time one that of course was debunked over hundred years ago, and that is: if someone were to travel faster than 60 miles an hour their heart would stop. Did you ever hear that one?

Mary:  (laughing) No.

Martin:  That supposedly, maybe this is a myth about a myth, was back in the 18th century. And the only study they could’ve done back then was if someone fell off a cliff; and yes of course their heart would stop (laughing) eventually.

Mary: I’ve never heard that one, but I’m learning more and more every day. People from museums, and national parks, are always sending me things; they say “we heard this” or “we’ve been saying this” is it true? And I have to go do the research and find out.

Martin:  Ok, well write that one down (laughing).

Mary: I’ll add it to my list. I’ll add the China one too.

Martin:  Now can you talk about some of the most entertaining myths that come to mind right now?

Mary: I’ll tell you one in my book that I think is the silliest one, and it does pertain to antiques. You may have heard that in a 19th-century home that has a staircase that turns at the landing, there often is a niche in the wall, and the myth says that these are called “coffin corners”, and that they were built-in to allow people to get the coffin downstairs; to turn the corner; you couldn’t get a big coffin around the corner. The explanation for this is that people died at their home in their beds in those days; not in a hospital, and the bedrooms were often upstairs and so to get the coffin upstairs you needed this coffin niche to get it around the corner. Well this is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard! Anyone who died in their bed upstairs, you take the body downstairs and then put it in a coffin; you don’t carry a coffin up, put the body in, and carry the coffin down!

Martin:  A coffin weighs quite a bit by itself. That is pretty funny.

Mary: It does! But you will still hear in 19th century homes people will refer to these as coffin corners, when they are just decorative niches for a vase, or a bust, or a lovely flower arrangement or something.

Martin: Now, there is the Irish wake table which was a table that they actually put the coffin on, and they used to use it for dining afterwards.

I know that I have heard certain myths about doorways and things like that: when it came to the coffins going out, and they had to build doorways in a manner where they would be able to get a coffin through the door.

Mary: That’s silly, yes. Makes no sense at all.

But some myths make us feel superior. Myths like, oh, that the American Indians sold Manhattan for $24, or worthless beads. “Oh, those stupid Indians” we feel so much smarter than that. It’s certainly not true. The Indians weren’t selling anything, because they had no concept of ownership of land anymore than ownership of air, and they were accepting presents, and offering to share, probably. Or the idea that Colonial Americans thought that tomatoes were poisonous. We feel superior about that, because we know better, and “Weren’t they foolish?” Well no they weren’t; they were just as smart as we are.

Martin:  Yes I believe that. Just going back to the Manhattan (myth); if I recall, that was in my childhood history book in school.

Mary: It probably was. There are plenty of these myths in history books. I’ve found several; I reviewed a fourth-grade history book and found four of them.

Martin: Wow. Can you give us some examples?

Mary: One of them was about the massacre of 1622. A Virginia massacre that is often called “The Good Friday Massacre”. If you go online, you can type in Good Friday Massacre and find a whole lot of information about it. The trouble is, Easter that year fell a month after the massacre. It didn’t happen on Good Friday; it was a mistake made by a nineteenth-century clergyman who was putting a religious bend on the story, figuring that it had religious connotations that the Indians were attacking to show their disdain for the religion that was being crammed down their throats. But, (laughing) the calendar doesn’t support this theory. But you’ll find that in textbooks today.

Martin:  Yes. It’s kind of like when history is passed on; it becomes very solid a lot of the time. Especially when it’s in the written word.

Mary: Yes, yes. They had a myth that said that most men wore wigs in the 18th century. Hardly any men wore wigs in the 18th century. They estimate maybe 2 to 5 percent.

Martin:  Like the powdered wigs, you’re talking about?

Mary: Yes, powdered, or unpowdered.

Martin:  Was that like for, do you know the reason that 2 percent did wear them?

Mary: It was a fashion. It was expensive, some men liked it; it was a matter of taste.  Thomas Jefferson seldom, if ever, wore wigs. It was just not something that very many people did; men, or women for that matter.

Martin:  Now Thomas Jefferson had a pretty full head of hair, did it have anything to do with balding, like Adams or anyone like that?

Mary: No, it was just fashion. If you wore a wig regularly, you shaved your head because it would fit better that way.

Martin:  Wow, interesting.  I believe one of the myths you had was about fire screens. Fire screens sometimes in auctions are a very desirable piece that will sell for good money.

Mary: Fire screens, the myth says that fire screens were placed between the lady and the fire so that her wax make-up wouldn’t melt. Makes sense, logical, but fire screens were purely decorative. They were only found in well-to-do homes, as shown by inventories, and women didn’t wear make-up. Most didn’t wear any kind of make-up; they certainly didn’t put wax on their face.  We know this from looking at household management books that tend to have recipes for making your own creams, and anything to do with skin-care. But women didn’t wear make-up, and we know that from the fact that so many European travelers remarked on it. Maybe the upper-class women in France or wherever wore make-up, but not here.

Martin:  Now I also heard something slightly related; that a wing-chair’s whole design and construction was to keep the drafts out. Have you ever heard that one?

Mary: Yes I have heard it, and I haven’t researched it. It has a ring of truth to it, but I can’t say on that one.

Martin:  Okay put that one on your list too (laughing).

Mary: I can tell you another chair one about the roundabout chair.

Martin:  Basically a corner chair.

Mary: A corner chair. And the myth says, and we’ve heard this here in the Governor’s Mansion in Richmond, that the chair was invented to make it easier for men with swords to sit down.
Martin:  Oh.

Mary: And that’s just not true; that chair, as you know from your knowledge of antiques, came in to fashion in the early part of the 1700’s and kind of went out by the end. It was more of a man’s chair; it’s often called a smoking chair, a writing chair, things that were manly things to do. I’ve talked to a number of re-enactors who say it’s actually harder to sit in that chair with a sword, that tried it. But the fact of the matter is men didn’t wear swords indoors, so why would you need a chair to sit on? (Laughing) The two didn’t intersect; so it’s not true. It’s a commonly heard myth though.

Martin:  Yes. Can you go into some of the other ones that are common out there that we hear a lot?

Mary: Well the title of the book being Death By Petticoat…

Martin:  I love that.

Mary: I know, I thought that was cute. The petticoat, being another word for the long skirt that women wore in the 17th and 18th centuries, the myth says that you will, and you will hear this particularly in New England in kitchens, that the most common cause of death for women was burning to death when the petticoat brushed against the fire in the hearth. This is a horrific way to die, and I’m sure there certainly were some people who did die by burning, but it was rare. The most common cause of death for women was not childbirth either. It was disease.

Martin:  Yes, I know if you look back at the Civil War, most of the men that died, of the six hundred thousand, a large portion of them was disease.

Mary: Right. Let me think of some that have to do with antiques. One is the quilt designs; that there are secret codes to help escaping slaves in the Underground Railroad. If you ever say this (laughing), I will come to haunt you.

Martin:  I haven’t heard that one.

Mary: Well it’s actually fairly recent. It started, I think, in the 1980’s; about 30 years ago. And it’s very complicated; it would take a show on its own just to go through it, but the myth says that the slaves made the quilt patterns to give secret messages about escaping; you know, “go north” is the flying geese pattern, because geese flew north.  Well, who needs to sew a quilt to say “go north”?

Martin:  (Laughing) That seems like a lot of work.

Mary: Go north. You just say it! And there are many quilt patterns that are supposedly part of this story, but they didn’t even exist until the 1920’s. They’re relatively new quilt patterns, so there are just all kinds of ways that this is bunk, but there are people making a good bit of money off of it, selling quilts that are supposedly Underground Railroad secret-code quilts.

Martin:  Well I just thought of something, it’s not really a myth, but, had you ever heard of where the term “grandfather clock” had come from?

Mary: Yes, that’s one of the myths.

Martin:  Oh it is.

Mary: That’s one of the myths that they had at the DAR Museum. I didn’t use that one in the book, but it was not called a grandfather clock until later in the 19th century, and they believe it did tie into that song.

Martin:  Right. Now the DAR is the Daughters of the American Revolution. The other one that I had heard that was sort of a myth was that Paul Revere was so spectacular. It was because of a poem that was written and that’s what made him later on, I think it was a 19th century poem, that made him really popular; he was just one of the (many) people that were involved.

Mary: Yes. And I’m not taking anything away from Paul Revere; he was a marvelous silversmith, and a great patriot, but it’s almost a shame to give him all the credit when the credit was widespread. He did a courageous thing, but so did a lot of other people. But we have similar stories here in Virginia; it’s not just a Massachusetts story. It was people riding to warn the countryside about troops coming.  The myth part of it is that Paul Revere rode around shouting that the “British were coming, the British were coming” because they were the British.  That would make no sense. He would have said “the Regulars are coming” or something like that because it would have meant nothing to people to say…

Martin:  Wow that’s something I never would have thought of. I understand; because everybody was British at the time. And then it went into the Loyalists after the change. I guess it was the Loyalists right at the start of the revolution and then all the way through, right?

Mary: Oh sure, some historians estimate that a third of the population was loyal to the king, and about a third wanted independence, and the other third didn’t much care; was going to sit around and see which way the wind blows.

Martin:  That’s kind of like the election coming up, I think.

Mary: It probably is, and you might be able to say that about just about any controversial subject. The Loyalists were always around, and many just kept quiet and stayed, and many left and went back to England, or Canada, or wherever.

Martin:  Now I want to talk a little bit about home construction because I had heard this myth or rumor, or whatever, years ago, that what’s called the balloon construction, you know, the 2 by 4 construction, was never meant to be a permanent house. It was built temporarily and then it caught on; have you ever heard anything like that?

Mary: No.

Martin:  Any others pertaining to home construction in this country?

Mary: Well there’s the one I call my most embarrassing myth; the one I used to tell.  When I was a tour guide at Colonial Williamsburg in the 70’s, I learned this from another docent; we really weren’t trained to say it but that’s one way myths spread. The myth says that sometimes stairs were built with one riser shorter than the rest so that it would trip up a burglar sneaking up in the middle of the night; even steps, even steps, and then boom; the foot comes down hard because of the riser. You know, it made sense, but of course it’s not true, the truth is that stairs are hard to build, and if you’re a sixteenth of an inch off, or a thirty-second of an inch off, on each step, by the time you get to the top, you could be an inch off! What are you supposed to do? You think anybody’s going to tear down a whole flight of stairs and start over? No, they’re just going to have the last step a little shorter.

Martin:  I have actually been moving furniture out of a home that had a step like that, and each and every time you step on that you do the same thing; it’s pretty funny. I can see how a burglar would be heard, doing that. Are there any other ones related to early construction that you can think of?

Mary: Well, there is the myth that the early settlers built log cabins.  The first settlers, whether they were Spanish in Florida, or French in Canada or English in Virginia; they did not know how to build log cabins.  That wasn’t the way construction went where they were from. Log cabins don’t come in to America until the Scandinavians brought them, because that is how they built them in Norway, or Sweden, and that would have been in about the middle 1600’s. Then because of all our forests, it was a really good idea so it was the default house for a frontier; the easiest, quickest thing to build. But as soon as you were into a permanent town or something, you built wooden houses or brick houses.

Martin:  Now I know the thatched roof, sometimes you see renderings of early settlements and a lot of times you see the thatched roofs. Indeed the European influence; they were doing what they knew.

Mary: Sure. How would you do anything else? It’s not like you brought a lot of construction manuals with you.

Martin:  Were there any myths that you researched that were surprising to you that were actually true?

Mary: Yes there were. The myth that some craftspeople told me about that wigs were baked in loaves of bread to set the hair. And I thought that if anything is a myth, this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Of course it’s a myth, right? Well when I did the research, I found actually, I learned how the myth got started. I mean yes it’s a myth in its overt sense, but there is some truth in it. Making wigs out of human hair was hard; it was rather an involved process. I won’t go into all the details, but when you have wet hair on curlers that you are trying to set, how are you going to dry them? You’re not going to whip out your hair dryer; you’re going to have to dry them in an oven because that’s the only place for heat. There was a style of wigs that was a frizzy style that would take an extra step, and you would take it to an oven; to a bakery where they have ovens, and you would put paste around the curlers and bake it. Well, what is paste? Flour and water. So you’re actually putting flour and water paste around this bunch of curlers, which happened to be called a loaf, and you’re putting it in the oven to set, and you crack the paste open, and the curlers are there, and it’s frizzy, and you make your wig. So, yes it is kind of true. The myth takes it too far, but it is kind of true.

Martin:  A lot of times, what kind of crosses over into the antique business, is something is called something, and a lot of times people wonder why. I don’t know if you can think of anything; right off the bat something that comes to me, is what’s called the “spill vase”. I had heard it’s a spill vase because it spills over easily because it’s small like a bud vase; when in fact, spill was little pieces of wood and tiny pieces of paper that were by the fireplace mantel, that people used to use to start fires with. There a lot of things that must carry over; not particularly just in antiques, but the wording always has people wondering why it’s worded as such or why it’s called something. Can you think of anything that’s called a peculiar name that we use today, and wonder why it’s called that?

Mary: Yes, I think so. The idea that when you have a piece of silver and it’s stamped “coin”, that that means it was made from melted down coins. Coin silver was made from melted down coins; that’s the myth.

Martin:  I have heard that before, yes.

Mary: It was not. That isn’t to say it never happened. We know a case where George Washington actually did melt down some silver coins to make some little cups, but it was rare. Coin silver is just a reference to the silver content in the piece; that it was 90% silver, as opposed to 92.5%, which is sterling. Ninety percent was the same as the coins back in the days when coins actually had silver in them. So it’s telling you the standard, not the origin.

Martin:  Well here’s what I’ve heard passed around, in particular to coin silver: It was used as tableware and as currency.

Mary: Well, that would be true, because if it’s real silver, why not? You could actually melt your spoons down and pay your debt; it’s not 100% silver, it’s 90%, but you weigh it just like you weigh coins. Merchants had scales so they could weigh their coins and their silver or their gold; otherwise you didn’t know.

Martin:  Right, and I know in Europe, for instance, assayer’s marks, as far as sterling silver, was very well documented for many, many years.

Mary: Yes. I can tell you a couple myths about paintings.

Martin:  Oh I’d love to hear that.

Mary: There’s one that you hear commonly that men were posed with one hand inside their vest because it saved money; the portrait painter would charge less if he didn’t have to paint a hand.

Martin:  Oh, hands are one of the most difficult things to paint; I have heard that, yes.

Mary: Hands are difficult, but that isn’t why men posed, you know, Napoleon, George Washington, or whomever, with their hand inside their vest, that was just a dignified pose for men for several hundred years, so you see it a lot.

Martin:  Before you move on to the next thing, I had heard something about Napoleon’s hand; he had some type of physical issue that made him always (laughing) push on his chest. When I was a kid, I had heard that.

Mary: Gosh I don’t know what that’s about. But you think that Napoleon, or King George III were worried about paying their portrait painter? That’s not the issue; it has nothing to do with money; it’s just a dignified pose.

Martin:  Yes. What’s the other one about paintings?

Mary: The other one is about… this is the one I wish were true, because it makes such sense; I’m really sad that this isn’t true. The myth is about folk art portraits. It says that folk artists would paint the bodies and the background…

Martin:  Yea! You’re going to tell me that’s not true?

Mary: I’m sorry.

Martin:  I’ve heard that for years.

Mary: Yes it make such sense because you could just imagine in the winter the itinerant artist is home, can’t travel, so he paints all these bodies and backgrounds and then he loads them up on his cart come spring, and he goes out, and all he has to do is paint the heads, and it’s so efficient … but it’s just… there’s no documentation for it. There has never been a headless portrait found. On the other hand there are many portraits, or some portraits, that are just heads; that haven’t been finished. What a portrait artist will tell you, is you paint the face first.

Martin:  Yes you start with the eyes first; I’m a painter.

Mary: Oh, well then you know.  But the reason; why is this myth; how did it start? Well when you look at a piece of folk art, especially a portrait: the perspective is off; the hands are too big, or the arms are too long, or the head is oversized. And it looks as if somebody is just slapping a head on a body, when that is really just a reflection of the unschooled artist.

Martin:  Now, are there any, besides paintings, are there any antiques that you can think of that there are myths about?

Mary: Well, have you ever said the one about the “fainting couch” that was invented during Victorian times, that when a tightly-corseted woman felt faint, she had a place to fall?

Martin:  I’ve heard that one, yes.

Mary: Well, I’m afraid that doesn’t have a lot of truth to it. As you probably know, that is not a very accurate term to use; fainting couch. Those sort of daybed kind of furniture sofas have been around since Egyptian times and Roman times, and they weren’t to catch women when they fainted. There’s also a myth that says in some houses there was a “fainting room”. Can you imagine some woman saying “Oh can you excuse me, I’m feeling faint. Could you guide me to the fainting room?”

Martin:  It better be close by.

Mary: A daybed was just a fashionable piece of furniture, and a lot of Victorian parlors had them.

Martin:  So where did the term “fainting (couch)” come from?

Mary: Probably came from more like 20th century people putting our own ideas, was seemed logical to us, imposing it on the past.

Martin:  Yes. One thing I want to point out, there is a real misconception because of our technological abilities, that we just assume people were not smart, or as smart as us, and I’m telling you, if you really look into this, they were just as smart as we were probably 100,000 years ago. A lot of the myths are along the lines of thinking they weren’t as smart as we are.

Mary: Yes, well like the one about the Victorians being so prudish that they would dress their naked furniture legs.

Martin:  Yes.

Mary: We feel so superior; how silly that is. Well, I haven’t seen any evidence that that ever happened.

Martin:  It was again just fashion of…?

Mary: I’ve never seen it. Show me an actual photo or print that shows a leg of a table or a piano or whatever with a skirt around it. I’ve never seen one, and I’ve looked. I’ve looked hard, but I’ve never seen one.

Martin:  There are the dressing tables.

Mary:  That’s a skirt. Yes.

Martin:  Yes they were skirted.

Mary:  And we do that today, I mean we put a tablecloth on a table that goes all the way to the ground. That’s from the top to the ground.

Martin:  So you’re saying during Victorian times they didn’t cover the legs of furniture.

Mary: No. I’ve looked and looked, and I haven’t seen a single example in any photograph of any Victorian interior that shows that. I think it came, well I know it came from a book; Frederick Marryat, who was an English traveler, and he was sort of a satirist, and he made fun of the Americans and how prudish they were. This would be in about the 1830’s, 1840’s. He was poking fun by saying he was at a girl’s school and the mistress of the school was such a fussbudget or whatever that she dressed all the pianos with little trousers and little skirts, so they wouldn’t see any legs. So he’s making fun of it, and I think that may have led to the idea that this really did happen; if it did, it’s rare. It certainly isn’t typical.

Martin:  Do you have another example of furniture in earlier times?

Mary: Yes, I’m thinking of the petticoat mirrors. You probably call these pier tables; I mean correctly they would be called pier tables. And there’s often a mirror,

Martin:  On the lower side, yes.

Mary: And the myth says that these were called petticoat mirrors because their purpose was so that women could make sure there petticoat wasn’t showing; they could walk by the mirror and check. Well that isn’t the purpose; it was a light reflection purpose. I’ve had some friends who work in costume in Victorian historic houses and they say actually you can’t look at your petticoat in those mirrors the way they are tilted; you would have to get so far back you’d be outside of the house to get a good angle on it, so it wasn’t really possible to see your petticoat. Makes sense today, so we repeat it and we think it’s true.

Martin:  Yes. We’re about ready to wrap this up, do you have one more that you can throw at us?

Mary: Well I’ll give you one that is really commonly heard. This is about food; that cooks were using spices to mask the flavor and odors of rotting food. You hear rotting meat, and that was what they wanted spices for. Sometimes this statement is made about the medieval era, and sometimes it’s made about the colonial period, or even up to the nineteenth century, but in any case, it’s false. The spices that we consider common today, like pepper, were really, really, expensive because they came from the Spice Islands, which would be like Indonesia and Sri Lanka and such. And nutmeg, cinnamon cloves; only the wealthiest people could have afforded these spices. These are not the kind of people that eat rotting meat. Spices were so valuable that they were kept in locked cupboards. They were used very sparingly. Not to cover up rotting meat.

Martin:  I have heard that some spices were more valuable than gold. I’ve heard that before. One that I have heard that just came to mind sort of along those lines is that in early times that people wouldn’t bathe all winter long. Is that (laughing) really true?

Mary: Well, (laughing) probably for some people. But that’s the myth that says people didn’t bathe back then; whenever. If bathing means getting a big tub of hot water and sitting in it, then yes; people did not bathe like that in the old days. But they did wash. They washed in a small tub that had a few inches of water that you would sort of stand in, or they would wash like a sponge bath with the water and the wash stand in their bedrooms. Most people washed, as far as we can tell; washed hands and face daily, and they weren’t really quite as dirty as we like to think That’s another one of our ideas that we are so superior today and they were so inferior, but really most people kept pretty clean, maybe it was a little bit more work, when you think about how much work it would have been to have a hot bath; pumping water, heating it on the stove, carrying it upstairs, and then having to reverse the process; carrying it back down, dumping it out. No, they didn’t bath like that; but they washed.

Martin:  Yes. Well I think that’s a really good one to end it on. Can you tell the listening audience where they would find your books, or book?

Mary:  This book is Death by Petticoat, and it should be available in any Barnes and Noble or any independent book store, and if not, it’s available Barnes and Noble online, or Amazon.com. Death by Petticoat, published by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Martin:  If you go to this podcast, just below there will be a link to find that book. Thank you so much, Mary.

Mary: You’re very welcome.

Martin:  This is Martin Willis with Mary Miley Theobald, and we’re signing off.

            Over the last few years it seems like there has been an increased interest in collecting the bizarre and odd, particularly the oddities of yesterday. As collecting the artifacts of the carnival midways, sideshows and traveling medicine shows gain popularity, so does the popularity of these entertainments’ (only slightly) more refined cousin, magic. Although magic and illusion have been popular entertainments for centuries, the hey day of stage magic was arguably around the turn of the last century. This period has left us a legacy of beautiful advertising material, souvenirs and actual stage props. The problem is that magic, by its very nature, is secretive which compounds the normal problems that come with antique verification. Many items sold as magic props, such as puzzle boxes and two headed coins, are actually novelties or gambling items. If you are not a magician (and sometimes even if you are), it can be very difficult to spot a legitimate prop and even harder to tell something relatively old. However, props are only one of the types of magic related antiques you may find.

ADVERTISING

            One of the most popular areas of magic collecting is advertising, which basically means posters although some collectors concentrate on promotional photographs or print advertising. Just like everyone else, yesterday’s magicians needed to advertise their shows to potential audience and regularly used posters of various sizes. Collecting magic advertising is really not any different than collecting other genres of vintage posters. The biggest problem with magic posters is that there are many, many reproductions. You can be reasonably sure that anything on tin or canvas is most probably a modern reproduction. It can be difficult to tell an original from a newer copy but there can be a few obvious clues. The most famous magicians (Houdini, Thurston, Blackstone, Kellar, Hermann and the like) are going to be the most reproduced and, therefore, the easiest to misidentify. When you run across a performer you do not recognize, try to determine the approximate age of the poster so you can gauge if the piece appears to be old enough to be an original. This can be difficult because so many posters show performers in costume, not the fashion of the day. However, a quick Internet search on your smartphone, though, will probably give you an idea of the years they were performing.

SOUVENIRS, BOOKS AND MORE

            Vintage posters can be expensive because they were created to be disposable objects and so few survive from older performers such as Thurston or Houdini. Luckily, they are not the only artifacts left from the golden age of magicians. Just like today, yesterday’s fans wanted keepsakes from their favorite performers. Many magicians offered a range of souvenirs, including good luck coins and cards, programs and books.

            Books are probably the easiest items to find. Some magicians sold memoirs of their exotic (and sometimes fictitious) travels while others sold books of simple to do magic tricks. Walter Gibson, the prolific author behind the vast majority of The Shadow’s printed adventures, was an avid magician who co-wrote and ghostwrote books for famous performers including Harry Houdini. Harry Blackstone, who inspired a radio show that featured him as The Magic Detective, even appeared in comic books!

            Some magicians had keepsakes for sale or to giveaway during their performances. Howard Thurston, one of the most successful magicians in history, was famous for his ability to throw playing cards to audience members– even those sitting in the balcony! His double thick souvenir cards featured his picture and wished the recipient good luck. Several versions are available, the most common being one with Jane Thurston, his adopted daughter and assistant, on one side and the magician himself on the other. Other magicians used similar giveaways, commonly called “throw out cards.” Good luck tokens were also common giveaways. These are often confused with palming coins, the special coins some magicians used to increase visibility of coins while on stage. Generally the magic tokens have a promotional image and, again, wish the holder good luck. Many people turned these tokens into charms, watch fobs or keychains by punching a hold through them which will adversely affect the value (unless you need a charm, watch fob or keychain). Magicians’ tokens are easy to identify because they feature the name, image and/or logo of the performer. They are often made of less expensive metals (such as the popular but vague “German silver”) although there are some silver tokens.

            There were other souvenir and giveaway items. Some magicians, for example, had small mirrors made featuring their image on the reverse. There are several companies today making small metal pill boxes, cigarette cases and miniature lunch boxes featuring images from vintage magic posters. These are commonly mistaken as souvenir items from the past, especially if they have been abused a bit and gained an aged appearance.

MAGIC PROPS

            By far the most interesting, expensive and (financially) dangerous area of magic collecting is actual props. There are several obstacles for the beginning collector to overcome. First of all, these are the actual devices that create a magician’s illusions and effects. Props literally form the secrets of magic so they are difficult for non-magicians to identify. For example, there are many altered coins (often referred to as gimmicked or gaffed coins) that are used in magic. It is common for double-headed (or tailed) coins to be sold as a magic item. Honestly, a two headed coin has little value to a magician. A coin with two heads, but each from a different type of coin, may be a magician’s gaffe but a two headed coin is a novelty. Puzzle boxes are another item commonly sold as a magic prop that are really not associated with stage magic. Even if you can identify an item as a real magic prop, it can be difficult to authenticate age. The Chinese Linking Rings sold today are basically exactly the same as those used by hard working vaudeville magicians. Plastics are an easy to spot  indication that a prop is not that old, but materials are not always a reliable indicator of age. Many magic props today, such as the small coin containers used in many close up effects or the cups used in the world famous “cups and balls,” are crafted from brass as they were 100 years ago! A final issue is the wild variance in prop quality. Some props are finely crafted works of art while other, equally legitimate, props are essentially homemade pieces that are meant to look great on stage but are obviously painted plywood when up close! A great example of this the wand. While some magicians used turned wands made of teak or other fine materials, at least one famous American magician made his own wand by fixing used brass bullet shells to the ends of a simple black dowel! Basically, the quick and easy rule for non-magicians collecting antique magic props is: Don’t do it! If you are interested in collecting props then you need to take the time to learn magic.

RESOURCES

            Despite their reputation for secrecy, you will find that there are magicians’ groups who will happily help you to determine if you have purchased a legitimate piece of magic history. The fact is that many magicians are attracted to the history and traditions of magic. In many ways magic is like a craft or even a martial art that has been handed down from one generation to the next. Today’s magicians love the stories and artifacts of yesterday’s performers. If you have something you would like checked out by a magic expert you should try to contact a local magic group. If you would like to actually take up magic, many of the same groups will be able to help as well. Some of the biggest include:

International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM), probably the largest magic society in the world. Organized into local chapters called rings, they are headquartered in St. Louis, MO but have rings in at least 30 countries. You can visit their website at www.magician.org.

Society of American Magicians (SAM), the oldest magicians’ group in existence. SAM has members worldwide but most chapters are in the United States. There website is www.magicsam.com.

The Magic Circle, the UK’s largest magic club. Headquartered in London (where they maintain a museum of magic), there are local groups throughout the UK. They can be visited at www.themagiccircle.co.uk.

Magic Collectors’ Association (MCA), although much smaller and a bit harder to find than the other groups, the MCA is dedicated to the history and preservation of magic instead of its performance. You can learn more about the MCA at www.magican.com/mca.

            Like any other field, auction catalogs of authenticated collections can be an incredible resource. Although any auction house may offer an item or two or even the odd collection, there are also a few auction houses that specialize in magic. One of the great ways to learn about antique magic props and related materials is to see what is being offered by these institutions. Probably the best of these houses for someone hoping to learn more about magic props is Potter and Potter Auctions, a Chicago based auction house that routinely deals in magic and related items (such as gambling devices). They offer print catalogs and free downloadable digital copies as well at www.potterauctions.com.

            Magic holds a special place in the hearts of many people. Just as the craft of magic itself keeps alive many traditional secret skills, the posters, props and souvenirs of yesterday allow us to keep alive some spirit of yesterday’s performers. Collecting magic related antiques can be rewarding, but you must be careful when making purchases. While there are many reproductions and misunderstood items to be found, there are still real, legitimate connections to yesterday’s great performers waiting to be found.

Martin: Hi everyone, this is Martin Willis of Antiques Auction Forum episode 120. I’m excited about today’s guest; it’s the award-winning legendary actress, and singer as well as author, Polly Bergen http://www.facebook.com/pages/Polly-Bergen/150067449164. Because of that I have her music as an intro and outro. Hope you enjoy that. A couple of announcements: You can follow us on twitter and you can like us on facebook; those icons are right on our website. This pod cast is sponsored by Worthpoint: Find Out What Your Antiques are Worth at Worthpoint.com http://www.worthpoint.com. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy today’s show.

 Martin:  I am in Connecticut with Polly Bergen. How are you doing Polly?

Polly:  I’m very well. Thank you, Martin.

Martin:  It’s such a pleasure to work with you first of all, you are really gracious with me to record about antiques.

Polly:  Oh it’s my pleasure. I’m old enough to be able to talk about old things!

Martin:  (laughing) Now, you were collecting all the way back into the 1950’s but before we get into that, first of all, for the younger people – we have a lot of younger people around world who listen – can you kind of go into…

Polly:  Oh they have absolutely no idea who I am. Well I basically started as a singer when I was very, very, young.  I lied about my age, and I started in Las Vegas when the gangsters actually owned and ran Las Vegas; it was very exciting in those days. My mother used to travel with me, and she would pretend to be my sister because if she was my mother then people would say “why is she traveling with her mother if she’s 22?” – when in fact was 16.  So that was kind of the way it began, and I really accidentally got into acting; I never really meant to be an actress, I never would really particularly care about acting until much later on in my life. But I ended up doing a television show about a very famous torch singer, from even before my time.  She was from the 20s and 30s, and because I was in love with torch songs I sang a lot of the material that she had been famous for singing.  So I started studying her – her name was Helen Morgan – and I included a number of her songs in my act, and kind of became very well known for doing her material, and ultimately ended up selling her life story to a very big television show at that time, called Playhouse 90. It was an hour and a half dramatic show, live; in the days when television was live …

Martin: that’s a little tricky

Polly:  Yes, and I won an Emmy for best actress in the year that I did it, and that kind of started my career off. And it was strange because, as I said, I was basically a singer but I ended up winning as a dramatic actress because her life was such a drama, and I was signed to a major studio to act, and my career kind of took off. The odd thing was of course was that the first three movies I was in were Martin-Lewis films, in which I played comedy. So, I played Dean Martin’s girlfriend in all the films, which I loved because I adored Dean – I’m not too crazy about Jerry, but I adored Dean –

Martin:  (laughing)

Polly:  and I started that way. And then from there I had my own television show, and I went into more movies, more television, I started doing a lot of theater, I really kind of ended up working in just about every different area of show business; on the stage, on records, and television, radio, motion pictures… and then oddly enough, I got married, had three children, and really decided that I wanted to devote my life to being a married lady and having my children. And I kind of gave up show business more or less. But it just didn’t give me up. They just started coming after me, and then I accidentally went into business – really just by a fluke – I had had a product, made for me by a chemist, that I particularly loved and I started having it made, and loaning out to my friends. The next thing I knew, I was in this tiny little business called “Oil of the Turtle” – because it was based on turtle oil. And the next thing I knew it was the biggest, hottest product on the market and I ended up running this multimillion dollar cosmetic company. So then I was the first show business personality that owned and ran a multimillion dollar company.

Martin:  like so many people do now

Polly:  yes

Martin:  Jennifer Lopez, you can just name a whole bunch of people.

Polly:  Yes, so I really ended up being known, depending on when you first met me, and depending on your age: to one group I was known as a singer, to another group I was known as an actress, and to another group I was known as a businesswoman; and all of them didn’t necessarily know that I did anything else. So that was kind of fun in my life.

Martin:  And you actually, in one of your roles, you played the first lady president.

Polly:  I did. In 1961, I played the first female president of the United States in a film called Kisses for My President.

Martin:  Actually if you were running right now I’d vote for you.

Polly:  Thank you very much. The film actually co-starred Fred McMurray, who was a major star in those days, and the story really basically was about him being first lady.

Martin:  (laughing) I can see him fit that part.

Polly:  and he was quite wonderful in the part.

Martin:  What was your favorite movie you did? Was Cape Fear right there?

Polly:  Oh, I wasn’t really nuts about any of the movies I made. I think that the work that I enjoyed more than anything else I ever did was a gigantic miniseries called Winds of War.

Martin:  Oh yes.

Polly:  and it was followed by another miniseries called War and Remembrance, and they were two gigantic books by Herman Wouk. They are incredible books; still are being bought and read by millions of people. I played this incredible character opposite Robert Mitchum whom I had become very friendly with because we had done Cape fear together. I played his wife in the miniseries and that was probably the most thrilling work I’ve done as an actress in my lifetime.

Martin:  Now, you are still active, you are in desperate housewives

Polly:  Oh yes, well I did desperate housewives now and then. I played Felicity Huffman’s mother.

Martin:  with Larry Hagman as, um…

Polly:  I know it, and one joke, Larry Hagman was on and I married him and then of course he dies of a heart attack – because I’m overwhelming, you know.

Martin:  (Laughing)

Polly:  We had great fun. It was before he went back to Dallas; he talked about the fact that Dallas was coming back on the air, and he’d had a rough time because he had been taking care of his wife for quite a long time, who had Alzheimer’s; very difficult for him. He’s quite a wonderful man; I’m very, very, fond of him.

Martin:  That’s great; it’s so great that you’re staying active.

Polly:  I love it. I particularly enjoy doing stage work but I don’t know whether or not I have the stamina to do eight shows a week now, which is what you have to do when you’re doing Broadway shows. That would probably be a little bit more than I’d be willing to do physically. But I do love working in the theater, and I love working on stage; there’s something quite wonderful about working in front of a live audience.

Martin:  Now, you’ve had some beautiful songs that you sang.

Polly:  Oh well yes, as I said, I really started out singing all these very famous old torch songs that are from a lot of wonderful Broadway shows like Showboat, and shows like that.

Martin: You started collecting – now this show is basically about antiques – you started collecting some beautiful things early on, and I just want to talk about that because I like to interview collectors; they’re just interesting people.  What started your interest in antiques?

Polly:  I really think … history was my favorite subject in school,

Martin:  mine too, actually.

Polly:  so the idea of furniture and objet d’art that has history was always fascinating to me, and I couldn’t wait to hear the history of this piece, and the history of that piece, so I started really collecting things that had a story to tell. That was great fun for me. The very first thing that I ever collected was – I don’t even know what you call it – was a model of Lincolns hand; just a hand, and it was kind of a fist.

Martin:  Now was this like a life-casting?

Polly:  Yes it was a life casting of Lincoln’s hand. That began my collection of hands.  I still have them; they’re sitting on the coffee table in the living room, and the only and I don’t have (anymore) is Lincoln’s hand; somehow or other, over the years it, was lost in one of the moves, or someone stole it. But I have all sorts of hands in there. That was my first collection. Then I started collecting… newels?

Martin:  Newell post caps; beautiful crystal balls …

Polly:  Right, right. I thought they were fascinating that they came from very famous homes, and

Martin:  Are they European?

Polly:  Some are European, some are American. They come primarily of course from gigantic mansions, which are wonderful to see and think something that beautiful actually was something you grab at the base of a staircase.

Martin:  And sometimes they fell off, like in It’s a Wonderful Life; remember when he ran down the stairs and grabbed it and it fell off? We had one like that where I grew up; it always came off.

One of the things about collecting that people don’t understand today is, back in the days well before the Internet – you know things today can be found so easily on the Internet just search and click and it’s there – but you have quite a collection; how did you find those?

Polly:  To a large degree I found them by accident. I would be going through an old store and see one, and I’d ask about it, and if it had a real history, I would grab it. And I would sometimes ask if anyone knew of any shops that had any newel posts, because I was always on the lookout for them. But they weren’t things that you saw around; they just weren’t.

Martin:  Well I’ll put it this way: I’ve been around this job for 40 some odd years – it’s really hard for me to say that, but it’s true – and I’ve only seen a few here and there that I can remember.

Polly:  Yeah, they’re not just hanging around.

Martin:  And what else did you start collecting?

Polly:  Well let’s see, I collected Buccellati pieces,

Martin:  Yes, beautiful Italian silver.

Polly:  Mainly fruits and vegetables.

Martin:  And you’d find one here and there?

Polly:  Yes, I’d find one here and there. I bought my first one in London, and then I bought a couple in Rome, and one in Paris, and in Vienna, and then several here in United States. And again I just kept running across a piece, and I have something like 13 of them now.

Martin:  You know, when I first met you and first started talking to you about antiques the one thing you said right away that intrigued me, and I really liked it, is that you said you never cared what something was worth; you only wanted it because you enjoyed it.

Polly:  Right, it was just something that I loved. Listen I wish I’d been more conscious of the worth of things because I would’ve collected things that I thought would be worth something someday, but I never did that.

Martin:  But you actually did collect some things I think.

Polly:  I guess…

Martin:  Yes I mean you were buying some things in the 50s, a few pieces that I’m handling for you, that are just tremendous; wonderful. So your taste has worked well for you, I believe.

Polly:  Well I hope so.

Martin:  And it’s awfully hard to say in this market, in today’s world, but you spent some money in the 50’s that, well, let me put it this way: we had a discussion about a piece I’m handling; people were buying houses for what you spent on that piece.

Polly:  Oh yes I know because my father and mother bought a house for what I spent on that piece!

Martin:  (Laughing) You know, we can announce what it is, it’s a most amazing European clock.

Polly:  It’s a clock. I saw it on the floor of an antique shop. It’s an enormous piece; what is it about 4′ x 5′? Something like that.

Martin:  Exactly; right on the money.

Polly:  All hand-carved, and its Mother and Father Time; one is holding a scythe, and the other is holding an hourglass.

Martin:  Beautifully carved.

Polly:  It’s an incredible piece, and I saw it… and you know, how many people buy something that’s 4 feet  by 5 feet that you put on all wall? I don’t know what I was thinking!

Martin:  And you think was around 1955?

Polly:  I would say was around 1955, 1956.

Martin:  And you spent, can we say what you spent?

Polly:  I spent $5000 for it, which was a lot of money in those days.

Martin:  Yes my parents bought a house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1956 for $6500.  So you were investing big-time.

Polly:  You know it was just one of those things that was so amazing looking to me, and then of course I found out that it actually worked! (joking tone) Never in my mind did I think it really kept time, but then I discovered it actually was a clock that worked, that chimed.  Over the years, the problem I’ve had with that is that it is has forced me to buy and or rent homes with a certain sized living room or library that would allow me to hang that piece. For just one short period of time in my life was that piece not with me. At that time I gave it to my daughter to hold onto; she had it in her garage for year or so. It was really hard not having it with me but I was renting this little apartment in New York, and there was no place to hang it.

Martin:  Yes and that particular piece is very, very, heavy. We had three of us to get it down, so you need a real strong brace to even hang something like that.

Polly:  Oh yes you can’t really hang it in any of the new buildings; the walls are just not strong enough to hold it.

Martin:  Yes, and plus the painting that you had was 300 inches by 175 inches high (laughing)?

Polly:  Yes it was a diptych, and each piece was 75” x 75” so that meant was a 75” by 150”.

Martin:  It was actually larger than that…

Polly:  was it larger than that?

Martin:  yes

Polly:  oh that’s right you said you measured it.

Martin:  Yes it was 75 x 150” each.

Polly:  Yes I was taken by a friend of mine to visit a friend of hers, who lived in an old police horse academy in New York City. He had bought it and turned it into his home. On each landing there would be a room and it’s where the police horses were kept, and then on the ground floor he had put in a swimming pool; if you can imagine in New York City. This was down in the 20’s in Manhattan.  Hanging above the swimming pool was this painting. I took one look at that painting and I said “Is that for sale?” and it was crazy, it was crazy, because it was gigantic – just gigantic – I didn’t have any place to hang it. He said “Well, I guess” and I said “How much?” and he told me, and I said (laughing) “Oh. Could I pay it over time?”; it was so much money I couldn’t pay it in a lump sum. And he said “Sure you could pay me so much a month or whatever; its fine” and so I bought it.  But again, from then on I was trapped buying or renting a place that had a wall big enough to hold that piece.

Martin:  Now, we’re going to take a little skip here, I want to talk about your beautiful home. This is an early home that you restored. Can you tell the whole story about this?

Polly:  Well, this was originally built – we discovered it at Townhall – this was originally built in 1760. The last owners lived here almost their entire lives; he was one of the major doctors in this area. It was interesting because it was originally an old millhouse.

Martin:  Yes I can see the millstream out front here that you’ve done beautiful stonework with.

Polly:  Yes it has the millstream, and there was originally the little millhouse down there which we kind of restored and turned into a guesthouse.  Two waterfalls, and a swimming pond in between the two waterfalls.

Martin:  Really. Do you actually swim in there?

Polly:  No we haven’t because well, personally I don’t swim, but it’s not been used in like 50 years so; it’s all filled up with silt. I think it would be very expensive to keep up because it’s a running stream, so it’s constantly carrying debris from wherever the stream comes from.

But we came up here to look for a house in the country. We wanted to get something near a very dear friend of mine, Rex Reed, who is a very well known writer. And the very first house that they brought us to see was this house, and we pulled into the driveway and to the left was these two waterfalls, and straight ahead was a bridge going over the stream, and then up on this knoll was this wonderful little farmhouse. And before I ever really saw the inside of the house I turned and said I’ll take it.

Martin:  Yep. I understand.

Polly:  I fell so in love with the whole look of the land. There was just something very special about it. And then of course I came in the house. You had the three fireplaces, all original. I took the original kitchen and knocked it down and put in a big kitchen and breakfast room, and a couple years later I built on a whole master bedroom suite. Before that, I lived in the bedroom upstairs but you know as I got older, I thought, it’s silly; I’d be better off building a bedroom downstairs.  And that’s what I did; that’s what we have now.

Martin:  Oh it’s a beautiful bedroom too. Now I want to just take a second here, because this stonework you have here; I’ve never seen such beautiful stonework.

Polly:  I know. It’s incredible work.

Martin:  And I’m just going to announce this guy’s name because I just spoke with him earlier and I said “You’re an artist with your beautiful stonework”. He’s a stonemason but he’s a stonemason artist.

Polly:  He really is; he’s a sculptor. His name is Remi.

Martin:  His name is Remi, and I don’t know how to pronounce his last name: LLeshi. His website for anyone who’s interested, is expressmasonry.com.  He said he will travel anywhere for work, and his work is the most incredible stonework I’ve ever seen.

Polly:  We have people who actually leave notes in our mailbox saying “Who did your front wall?” And of course that’s just the beginning, because he did all the walls around the house, and in the back, and the gigantic fireplace; he is truly an artist.

Martin:  Absolutely. The way he makes the stones curve and everything…

Polly:  and every shape. There is nothing usual about it. There are all these odd shaped rocks that he puts together, and some he carves himself and puts in. He’s phenomenal.

Martin:  So, I am looking at your Windows – we are in your dining room right now – and these windows look Victorian.

Polly:  Yes they are original, several of the panes are in fact original.

Martin: Do you think these are period windows?

Polly:  Oh yes, absolutely.

Martin:  So that’s wonderful you kept them instead of doing the standard replacement.

Polly:  Oh yes, the sad thing is that several of the panes obviously over the years were broken, and they were not replaced with old panes. You can see the period ones, and the new ones.

Martin:  Yep. Just wonderful, mullioned windows. Very, very, nice. So how many years did it take you to restore this home?

Polly:  Oh, about two years.

Martin:  That’s all?

Polly:  We had to completely redo all the wiring; all the electrical work had to be redone. We also sunk it all underground. Before, there were wires just going everywhere and coming into this gigantic box right next to the front door (laughing) which was pretty unattractive, so we buried all the wiring.  And that took quite a while; it took over year just to redo all the wiring. But the house itself – what you see is pretty much what was there, except, as I said, except for the add-ons, we kept as it was; we didn’t change anything.

Martin:  I think you did a wonderful job.

Polly:  Thank you.

Martin:  So getting back to collecting, you have everything. You have paintings, you have… you name it, you have it. When did you stop collecting?

Polly:  Oh, I don’t know if you ever stop collecting.

Martin:  (laughing) I love to hear that.

Polly:  But I guess a couple years ago I finally said, because I have so much stuff, and I started living smaller. You know, when you live in 15,000 square feet, you’ve got a lot of room for a lot of stuff. And then when you move into 2,000 square feet, you’ve got 13,000 square feet less (laughing) and no place to put the stuff. So I started slowly ridding myself of a lot of the large – I had a lot of oversized things, so I rarely was in a living room that wasn’t at least 20 x 25. I just couldn’t put the things I owned in a room smaller than that.

So I got stuck living much bigger than I wanted to live when I got older.

Martin:  Now, when you collected, did you also stop at estate sales? Or was it strictly shops?

Polly:  Pretty much shops. I really didn’t go to estate sales, I didn’t go to tag sales. In my day, you mainly found things in shops.

Martin:  Boy if you could go back in time; I see pictures of old shops and what they had then. It’s really amazing. And Europe as well?

Polly:  Yes, but less in Europe. That really became a matter of shipping, and it was too cumbersome. And usually when I went to Europe, I really went on a vacation; I didn’t go to buy anything. I was one of the few people that would go to Europe and not buy anything!

Martin:  I even do it that way. Last time I went to Europe I went strictly on vacation and stayed out of the shops; it was hard to do. But anyway, this has been absolutely wonderful, Polly.

Polly:  I’ve enjoyed it so much Martin, it’s been fun talking to you.

Martin: And it’s been wonderful working with you; thank you so much.

Polly: Thank you.

Martin: So this is Martin Willis with Polly Bergen, and we’re signing off.

A decidedly interesting part of antiques and collectables is art. In years past there have been stories of paintings or other ephemera relating to artists that have sold for record sums. Some people may argue that it’s silly money, but others take a real interest in it. One aspect of artwork that very often gets neglected, but is just as valid and worthy as expensive paintings, is that of vintage cartoons and an upcoming auction on 18th October is going to be showcasing and hopefully selling, some of the most interesting ones from recent years.

Political satire and historical cartoons through the ages

Ben Franklin’s “Join or Die” from 1754. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

The US is very lucky in that it is one of the few countries, alongside the UK, that can more or less trace it’s political history through the emergence of cartoons and satire. The very first political cartoon of its kind was one that was created by Ben Franklin in 1754. It was entitled simply “Join or Die” and showed a caricatured image of a snake which became a symbol of the revolutionaries. Since then, images such as these have been used to lampoon and send up authority figures.

During the nineteenth century, critiques would be made on the presidential elections via the medium of art and cartooning. Thomas Nast was considered to be the real founding father of political satire via cartoons. His work certainly pulled no punches and he made his feelings about anyone in the political sphere he did not like, patently clear.

Thomas Nast cartoon. “The Brains”. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

As the years went by, the satire got harsher and the cartoons became much more vitriolic, with artists like Clifford H. Baldowski (Baldy) making waves with their stance on matters of great importance, like the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, during the mid to late twentieth century.

Baldowski’s work hit a particularly rich seam during the 1970s and 1980s with images of Watergate Scandal and Richard Nixon being particularly memorable. His work differed from many satirists in that he didn’t make gross, ugly or oversized caricatures, but might home in on a particular feature of a political figure and exaggerate it slightly for effect. In many ways this was more effective than going for the jugular. His images still remain popular to this day.

Alongside this political satire was a much gentler form of cartoon art that was suitable for everyone. It showed a fun side to life and one that enthralled children and adults alike. Cartoon strips such as Felix the Cat, or even very early animations featuring the likes of Mickey Mouse or Betty Boop manage to bridge the generations and make caricature something that was very accessible for everyone.

Felix the Cat. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

Upcoming auction

It is this marrying of the political and the fun, easily accessible art that make the upcoming auction of the Howard Estate all the more interesting.

Charles L Howard was an obsessive collector of cartoons and his entire collection is due for auction at the Hess Fine Auction Rooms in St Petersburg, Florida on the 18th October. Howard’s collection is a really interesting jaunt through the annals of not only political and historical satire, but also a welcome hark back some wonderful images of original cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse, Dick Tracy and Pop Eye and Olive Oyl.

Howard’s story is very interesting. In a report from the New York Times, it was said that he spent many years writing to the cartoonists from some of the many newspapers in the US at the time, asking them to send him original drawings of their work. He then took these and framed and displayed them in various places within his offices and home, amongst all the vintage furniture and other collectables he had. In 1939 he allowed some of the images to go on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and this is the first time since then the artwork has been not only viewable, but available for purchase too.

Popeye and Olive Oyl. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

He died in 1957 and it appears that the artwork he had amassed over the years is pretty much all very collectable. Much of the artwork is remarkable and indeed harks back to the time of Thomas Nast, with some of his images that date from around 1880, up for sale during the auction alongside comic strips of Felix the Cat. Enthusiasts have already shown a great interest in the items that are for sale and there is a real buzz around the auction. Hopefully it will renew an interest in a very thought provoking social and political topic.

Growing up, my mother had a houseful of antiques—which I not-so-affectionately referred to as junk. I felt embarrassed when my friends referred to our house as a museum. Moreover, I had no idea that these items held value. My concern was that I had to help dust around all of these “trinkets” and field questions about their origin. My mom collected old medicine tins and bottles, tobacco tins, inkwells, kitchen spice tins and timepieces. She tried to explain what the colorful lithographs meant and why they were important: nostalgia, historical interest and face value. It was not until a friend asked me years later to join him relic hunting with a metal detector that my attitude toward antiques changed. Below is advice on selecting a relic metal detectors for locating antiques for readers of Antique Auction Forum from industry professional Michael Bernzweig of MetalDetector.com.

Antiques like these mini balls, buckles and bullets are common finds for customers of MetalDetector.com who hunt for relics and antiques.

My friend was poking around on the shoreline searching for antiques (or relics)—in particular, antique rings and jewelry and antique toys. In the process, he came upon an old inkwell that looked exactly like one of my mother’s! His fascination with the history of the inkwell (everyone used them until there were fountain pens) and the fact that he sold it at auction gave me a newfound appreciation for my mom’s “stuff.” Now I regularly embark upon treasure hunts with friends with metal detectors and we’re creating lots of fun memories. On a recent hunt we’ve even recovered some valuable coins and an antique pendant.

Interested in Relic Hunting with a Metal Detector?

Once you’ve established an interest in unearthing antiques, it’s time to invest in a decent metal detector. It’s important to choose your metal detector carefully if you’re using it for a singular purpose. Metal detectors for relic hunting are designed specifically for locating objects such as coins, buckles and jewelry. It is important to note that areas which produce great relics may also contain high mineralization. If this is the case in your area, choose a detector that features a ground adjust or ground balance control. The next consideration is the frequency of the detector. Many relics are produced from iron, brass and steel. A detector with a lower frequency will better to target relics than a detector with a higher one. Smaller objects are easier to pinpoint with a smaller search coil. You may want to select several coils ranging from small to large. Many detectorists appreciate the target identification feature— meters that identify targets in the ground before you dig them up. A metal detector is a significant purchase; be sure to research metal detector options and ask for help choosing the right model.

If you do find an amazing antique on a relic hunt, how can you determine its value? Find a local appraiser who can give you insight into the origin of the item. Appraisals can determine fair market value for artifacts. Collectors may be surprised at the high value of the objects they find using a metal detector.

Antiques and relics often turn up while hunting in the woods with a metal detector. In this photo are some nice examples of dug eagle buttons. Metal Detecting old river crossings and campsites typically produce relics according to Michael Bernzweig of MetalDetector.com.

Biography

About the author: Michael Bernzweig manages MetalDetector.com in Southborough, MA. He has written extensively on the subject of metal detecting since the mid 1980’s. He has traveled world-wide in his pursuit of educating, exploring and advising others in the proper use of metal detectors. Outside of the business he enjoys mentoring students, being involved in the community and spending time with his family.

Metal Detectorist Michael Bernzweig of MetalDetector.com spends time relic hunting using the XP DEUS Metal Detector.

Martin:  Hi everyone, this is Martin Willis with the Antique Auction Forum. Today’s episode is number 119 with Dale Blackwelder. He is a picker who specializes in artwork; very interesting.  It’s a short podcast but I hope you enjoy today’s show.

Martin:  I’m with Dale Blackwelder. How are you doing Dale?

Dale:  Real good.

Martin:  Now you’ve been dealing in art for…?

Dale:  I had my first store, I think, in 1969 or 70. I used to do clocks and music boxes, (but) I always had an affinity for art. I liked looking at it and I started collecting paper works; now it’s mostly oils.

Martin:  So you’ve evolved mostly into art over the years?

Dale: Well, yeah. I like mechanical things, and what I could see really well. It was easy to do, and it was quick… you know, I could clean a clock and make a few dollars. And at that time the Europeans were sending everything over to the United States, so you could go into warehouses and buy 50 great clocks – and oil paintings and things.  There was just so much of it; it was really inexpensive, so I started then.

Martin:  Now, in our conversation we had prior to this, you don’t use a computer. You never used a computer, you never will, probably (laughing).

Dale:  Most likely not; I just find it keeps you from learning what looks good and what isn’t good.

Martin:  I like that.

Dale:  Because if you only buy it because somebody else says that it’s good, then you really don’t have the feel for what art is. Art is in the eye of the beholder and if you don’t like it, somebody else will. So you don’t have to like it to sell it, you don’t have to like it to own it, you know, because there’s something for everybody out there, and if you restrict yourself to what the computer says then you’re not buying art; you’re just buying what’s on the computer.

Martin:  Yes. There is an old term I’ve heard many times: a “book buyer”. They call them a book buyer because they buy it because it’s in the book.

Dale:  Right. Now, it does help sell it. You could have a coffee table book with that artist, or that painting, and then they say “Oh. Well, here you go” and then all of a sudden it doesn’t matter what it is; somebody’s going to buy it because it’s in the book.

Martin:  Yes. Now, do you think you’ve developed an eye for art on your own? Do you think it was trial and error? Or do you think you just naturally have that?

Dale:  Well, I’ll tell you what I recommend to people. I say what you need to do is go buy some art magazines like American Art Review and just – you don’t even need to buy it, just go to the bookstore, sit in the chair and thumb through it every single month because they do sometimes obscure regional artists, and a lot of times they do very famous artists – just look, and look, and look, and train your eye; say “oh I like this one”.  Or if you go to an auction house; if there’s ever an auction around where you are, go to an auction. You don’t have to buy anything, but you go through there, and don’t look at the prices or the estimates, just go through and say “I really like that one” and “I really hate that one”.  If the one you really hate is $20,000 and the one you really like is $200, figure out why. And when you go back and get the results – because auction houses are very friendly about what we sold this for because they want you to know we can sell your stuff – if every time you pick out a painting and it’s the one you hate that sells for the most, you might want to reevaluate what it is you see and don’t see. And that’s a good way to learn values of things that you like and what other people like.

Martin:  You say you just kind of have to adjust in what you’re attracted to.

Dale:  If you want to sell it. You just have to figure it out. And the same thing with museums. Go to museums and see everything you can see and pretty soon your eye will gravitate up and up and up until you can say “this one almost got it; if he had would’ve just done a little tweak over here, the whole thing would explode”

Martin:  There is a saying I’ve said before on this podcast; that a painting is only as good as its weakest element.

Dale:  Right

Martin:  Another thing my father used to say to me is “Never look at the signature; always look at the painting”

Dale:  Right, absolutely. The signature, it means a lot at the tail end, but in the beginning it’s totally… when I sell art I tell people, don’t buy it because of the name, buy it because it will grab you one day a month, and you stand in front of it, and you go “Ahh I know why I bought it” That is the painting for you. It might not be the most renowned artist, or it might not even be signed; it’s just if it evokes an emotion in you, that’s your painting.

Martin:  Now, a lot of times I kind of go on the dark side of collecting, and wheeling and dealing, and a lot of times people will buy paintings that look like an artist’s and then the next thing you know you see it in an auction with a signature on it.

Dale:  Yes, there are things you need to do if you’re going to buy a lot of art to sell art; a good magnifying glass, a black light,

Martin:  There’s even some ways to get around… a black light will fluoresce a fake signature but there are ways around that.

Dale:  Right, and red doesn’t bounce back like other ones, so there are things you need to learn if you’re going to be a reputable art dealer and be as honest as you possibly can with the person. And you do have to be leery of a few things; if it’s too good to be true, it’s probably, too good to be true.

Martin:  especially if the price is …

Dale:  Right. I find that if you’re out searching, a dollar painting is easier to make money on than a $500 painting because whoever is asking $500 for it, they’ve done some real research on it and its close, or not it; but the ones that are just off in a corner for a buck, they stand a chance to be real.

Martin:  Yeah, that’s really something I’ve never thought of.

Dale:  Yeah, just because it’s a dollar doesn’t mean it’s not as good as the guy asking $500 for the thing because he just didn’t like it (laughing) and it sat over there.

Martin:  Yes.  I don’t know if you’ve ever thought this way before or not, but when I was in California for nine years, if I go into an estate sale and the first few things I saw were way, way over priced, I got excited, because I knew they didn’t know what they were doing.

Dale:  Yes, that’s exactly right. And you know what?  You can go into the most highbrow store or the most lowbrow store; not everybody knows everything and there is something for you.  So don’t be intimidated by, you walk in and everything is thousands and thousands of dollars.  Just take your time and enjoy it. Figure out why they priced it like that, and there is probably something in there that they didn’t price properly that you might be able to get.

Martin:  And where do you find your buys? In places like that?

Dale:  Well people say “How do you get so much stuff?” And I say “I never stop”. It could be…

Martin:  thrift stores

Dale:  anywhere.

Martin:  Where do you live?

Dale:  I live in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Martin:  You’re in Arkansas.

Dale: Yes. In Arkansas, some of the communities that people retired to – the state only has a couple of million people; a lot of people leave there, but a lot of people come there to retire. In the 50s and 60s a lot of people came to Arkansas to retire in their 70s and they got rid of a lot of things.  And they come from New York and Chicago – kind of like a warm thing but didn’t want to go to Florida – and they brought a lot of really wonderful paintings and furniture.

Martin:  Just like they do in Florida

Dale:  Right. So if you happen to be lucky enough to be near one of those communities, you can shop those estate sales and things, because those are people’s things that they thought were the best, and a lot of times they are.

Martin:  That’s right they brought the best and sold things they didn’t want.

Dale:  And so you know it helped the family because they can liquidate it, and you can pay little bit more because you have a little more information.

Martin:  Now you said you don’t use computers; do have books, do you…?

Dale: I am a very tactile person. I like nothing more than to sit down and hold a book, and browse it. And I’m not very good with names; names don’t seem to affect me too much. I’m really a tactile individual person, and I can tell brushstrokes, that if you can’t read the signature you can tell the artist by how he painted it.

Martin: I really love to look at really good brush work. Sometimes you can stare across a room and the painting looks great, but when you go up close to it you see this wonderful brushwork that is just amazingly tight.

Dale:  Right, and strictly identifiable; you can have a signature that there’s no way to read and you can look at it go “oh, of course that’s what it’s”

Martin:  Another thing I’ve noticed, sometimes an artist would do such a wonderful academic work on something and then the signature… you can’t figure it out. But one of the tips my father taught me is – I’m going to spread the news on this one – when you have a difficult signature to figure out, take a piece of paper and start backwards, because when you go forwards, your mind is trying to tell you a name. If you go backwards, you’re in limbo so you have a much easier time trying to figure out the name.

Dale:  And to the neophyte people – I’m a neophyte too; I’m certainly not in the class of a lot of people – but I tell them the computer is wonderful; it’s a great tool. It truly is, because if you have somewhere to start, you can go there and actually see the results and things like that. But I use the print media, because if you look at the signature and it has seven letters in it, and you get three of them, you can go to Davenport’s or any of those other ones, and say “okay it starts with a D in it ends with an E, and there’s five letters in it” and if you take the time, and it’s good enough – you think it warrants that – you can go down and pretty much pick out six names that fit that category. Then you look at the date, the genre, stuff like that, and then you go to the computer and all of a sudden you say “oh, this is like one of the thousands that he did”.  I don’t know if a computer can do that because I don’t use a computer but I do know that the print will help you a long way; and people forget about it; they don’t want to do it anymore. They just want to stand there and say either this is it or it isn’t.  And maybe it’s just the mystery in it, or the hunt, or… but I like the work. It’s fun to me. And if you get in it, it can be fun for everyone.

Martin:  My father had an auction hall for years, and he had a painting hanging with an indistinct signature, and everybody always tried to buy it; but nobody knew what it was. And I remember I spent an entire weekend, but I did figure it out, and he did very well (laughing).

Dale:  Another tip is to ask everybody you know. Say “Okay I’m going to show you something. First thing that comes to mind. Don’t deliberate, don’t anything. It could be brown, it could be blue, it could be whatever name you want” And so I ask my friends; they have a pop quiz when they come over (laughing); I bring out three things I say “what’s the first one?”

Or you can put a mirror in front of it and read it backwards, like you said, and sometimes the reverse twist of it… there are little techniques that you can learn and try on your own to help you identify things.

Martin:  I also think that it’s really important for someone that knows art to have them have their very first impression. Like I will just tell a friend of mine, “turn around, and you tell me what you think right now” and I turn it around right then. It’s an instinct thing.

Dale:  Right; and your first impression is generally the best.

Martin:  That’s right. If you have a little teeny tinge in your gut that something is wrong about it you’re probably right.

Dale:  That holds true with the rest of life too. If it comes there one time, listen to it; because it’s probably the right answer. Because you bury it the first thing, you know (laughing), so, just listen to it early.

Martin:  That’s right, that’s right. Let’s talk about… what are some of your good finds?

Dale:  There’s a lot of small auctions in Arkansas, and I go to these auctions and buy things and had a couple of good purchases you know, simple little things. A gentleman had moved to Hot Springs years ago with his family. Came from Hollywood; he had really, really, exquisite taste. He was a confirmed bachelor, and at the end of his life he was kind of a hoarder; turned into an introvert. The roof leaked and the papers were stacked up and…

Martin:  yes I know the type (laughing)

Dale:  things were stacked against the wall, and mold that just kind of engulfed the whole entire thing. He died and left everything to the Catholic Church. The executor of estate said “well we have to sell everything through auction; we can’t sell it privately” (or I would’ve loved to have purchased a lot of things) but there were some paintings stacked up against the wall. I went through them and they were completely covered in mold and stuff like that and I said “These really have some value” and he said “How could they have any value? I was going to throw them out” I said “The first rule is: don’t throw anything away. Because just because you don’t like it, or the condition doesn’t matter, have somebody have a look at it.” So I picked a couple paintings out and one of them got nearly $60,000 and the rest were five or $10,000. He had really nice things, and of course they had to be cleaned and brought up so…

Martin:  A lot of times you see cigarette smoke.

Dale:  Oh yes and it’s just as black as the ace of spades, and it’s actually pretty simple to remove, but boy does it change the color, and all of a sudden a wonderfully dark moody painting is just bright, brilliant.

I’ve found, not in the art world, I found a lot of paintings, you know, like I say the dollar ones are an easy thousand dollars a lot of times because they just are easier to make money with.

There was a painter, Wooly Whitson, and it was the most beautiful nude at ever bought my entire life. It was just huge, and it was in a little junk mall, and they didn’t like it because it was exposing the naked body of a woman, and it turned out to be a real nice painting.

We were at a Picasso retrospective at the museum in Little Rock, and there were Diego Rivera’s, and things like that tied into it to make the show full, and right next to the Diego Rivera was this little tiny Cubist painting by this guy named Holty (Carl Holty). He didn’t make it as big as Rivera and Picasso, and I have a life-size portrait of his wife in 1914. All these Cubist and young artists of the time would go to his studio and drink and frolic and have parties, and I have some books with him sitting in the studio with all these great artists and they all took off everywhere, but there was this little tiny ode to Holty next to the Diego Rivera and it was this giant painting and this little bitty tiny thing next to it so, it’s fun and I love it

Let’s see, I’m here today at Round Top Texas, and one of the times I was here I went to one of the fields and there was this really bright colored rug. I said “how much is your rug” and the guy gave me a price, and it wasn’t very much, and he says “I don’t know why it’s so much money; my neighbor gave it to me to sell, and he said he has to get this amount” and I said “well I can do that” and so I paid him. I didn’t try to trivialize it by saying “give you nothing for nothing”, and so I bought it, and was happy as a lark. And it turned out to be like a 7 x 9 Germantown eye dazzler. So, my daughter wanted a painting by an artist named (Eduard) Veith; he was a German secessionist. It was a portrait of this angelic woman, on paper, and it was a hand cut frame that he had done, and it was just exquisite. The guy that owned it, when I showed him the rug, just about died; and the painting was very expensive and so he paid me a lot of money for the rug and I got the painting for my daughter.

Martin:  At the same time?

Dale:  Well I traded – the rug was very expensive too. So I traded the rug for cash and the painting for her. So you can trade, or barter, or however you want to do it.

Martin:  Do you do a lot of that? A lot of trading and bartering?

Dale:  Whatever works, I’m not averse to any of that. It’s just, you know, some people have a lot of money, some people don’t, so if it’s easier to trade or whatever, it’s – I don’t mind.

Martin:  One last question. What you think the future of collecting is going to be?

Dale:  I think the new shows have really, really, sparked interest

Martin:  You’re talking about television shows?

Dale:  Yes. And I think it distorts the value of things, so be careful; because you see it on TV and they say “This is $50,000. This is the hit of a lifetime” and it might be just that particular one because it had a blue bird in it and you bought one with a yellow bird, and yours is only worth $400. So you have to be very careful. Just because it appears on TV as a certain thing and it’s the Holy Grail, it’s probably not the one you own. And everybody says “but it’s just like that, except for that” so you just have to be realistic. And just like everything else, it’s a big wave, and it goes up-and-down and up-and-down. If you like art, you buy it because you like it. If you’re going to invest in art, hold onto it, because it’s going to go up, it’s going to go down; know when to sell it – it’s like those cowboy songs “Know when to hold, know when the fold” – it’s a longevity thing. But if you’re doing the flip quick, which a lot of people do and make a lot of money, but you know, if you think you’re running the museum, that’s really good; hold onto it. If you just want to sell it sometimes, if you get offered something, sell it.

Martin:  Right; there is a saying that everybody makes a little money, or no one makes any money.

Dale:  Right, and there’s more out there, and tastes change, so if you buy a lot of mid range stuff for a lot of money, you’re going to own it. If you buy inexpensive things, you can sell inexpensive things every day. Or you can sell the very best any time you want. At the mid-range it’s a crapshoot; everything else is easy.

Martin:  Right, well I think that is really stellar advice. This is Marin Willis with Dale Blackwelder, and we’re signing off.

Pocket watches are something that have had a long and very varied history. As the saying goes “Tempus Fugit”, time flees. These items can be simply designed and functional, meant for every day use, or they can be intricate and ornate objects which are meant to be shown as a display of wealth, as well as serving a useful purpose. Timepieces are now amongst the most collectable items of jewelry for sale at auction these days and over the coming months there are two important and notable events doing just that.

A brief history of timepieces

Intricately designed pocket watch from the 18th century. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

Thousands of years ago, man had literally no concept of time. Life was governed by the transition of the seasons and day moving into night. The notion of AM or PM just did not figure at all. Over the centuries, the need to be more concise and recognize how the day evolved became more necessary. The first recorded instance of pocket watches came during the later stages of the middle ages when people from the upper classes of society requested craftsmen to make them timepieces that they could hand around their necks, primarily as a show of wealth but also as a stylish means of being able to tell the time accurately wherever they were.

It was alleged that Queen Elizabeth I of England was one of the first people to own a wrist watch and other notable names in history who are said to have owned pocket watches are the Duke of Modena and the Ottoman watchmaker Meshur Sheyh Dede.

Until the Industrial Revolution they really were the reserve of the upper echelons of society only. The ordinary person would simply have to carry on relying on whether the sun was over the yardarm or not! Once the Industrial Revolution took hold, the trend for these pieces spread worldwide as trade broadened and important developments like the railways cropped up everywhere. In the United States and The United Kingdom it was made compulsory for men who worked on the railways to have about their person at all times an accurate method of telling the time, thus they were supplied with pocket watches to be able to do this. They only fell out of favour when technology moved on with the development of the Quartz movement which rendered the daily winding of watches obsolete.

Pocket watch Auctions

Ornately engraved pocket watch with roman numerals. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

An article in the New York Times from last week tells of a number of different auctions that are coming up, purely devoted to the selling of pocket watches, many of which have their own story to tell or secrets to yield. A majority of the pieces from the first auction, which starts this coming weekend on the 29th and 30th September in New Hampshire, come from one anonymous person’s collection. There will be a large number of pocket watches to be sold here, with auctioneers estimating that many of them will sell for thousands of dollars each as they come with original instructions and boxes.

Many of the time pieces have been lovingly engraved with people’s names or carry the names of people who had spent many years working as part of the fire service or on the newly developing railway systems, which gives them an added historical importance and may mean they are relevant to anyone who knows they had an ancestor that worked on the railways during this period.

The two day auction will on day one take in watches that came from Europe, whilst the second day’s sale will feature US timepieces as well as carriage clocks and chronometers from ships.

A second auction takes place in Philadelphia at the start of November, which is a smaller collection, mainly consisting of European watches that have come from different benefactors who have donated pieces to the Museum of Art there. The collection isn’t expected to fetch as much as the New Hampshire auction will, but there is just as much interest in the pieces for sale.

Keeping time

image courtesy of wikimediacommons

It’s important to make sure that if you’re planning on going to these auctions or on buying a precious timepiece, such as a pocket watch or antique clock that you make sure to protect from theft at all times and get the right insurance policy so that it is safe within your home environment.

Time pieces such as these are very often created from precious metals that are ornately engraved or come in intricately designed boxes that add to their value. Therefore caring for them and storing them properly is paramount if they are to keep their value and stay safe once they’re out of the auction room.

It’s important to make sure that if you’re planning on going to these auctions or on buying a precious timepiece, such as a pocket watch or antique clock that you make sure to protect from theft at all times and get the right insurance policy so that it is safe within your home environment.

People will always be fascinated with auctions of any kind. The passion for collecting and restoring antiques and other valuable goods is gaining in popularity as people’s interest in vintage items over new continues to increase. However, in terms of collectables, one man’s meat might be another man’s poison and a recent news story about an upcoming auction might just be about to further put this theory to the test.

Crime Scene Collectables

The public have always had a perhaps slightly grim fascination with anything crime or gore related and the interest in picking up items from crime scenes is not a new one by any stretch of the imagination.

A story published here in the New York Times tells of how a New Hampshire based auction room are preparing for a live sale at the end of September, selling some of the most interesting and perhaps macabre collectables that have been purloined from the scenes of some famous crimes US History.

Bonnie and Clyde. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

One of the most interesting parts of this auction will be the selling off of material relating to the crimes of Bonnie and Clyde. In particular, the sale of Bonnie’s Colt Revolver which was apparently strapped to her thigh at the time of her death. It’s currently estimated to fetch around $150,000 to $200,000. Accompanying the gun is a note, which is proof of it being genuine.

Also of interest are some of the more bizarre curios, such as hair pulled from the moustache of John Dillinger’s corpse, Al Capone’s white rosary beads and some sheet music he wrote to accompany the lyrics to a love song he’d written to his wife. Estimates for these items start from around $3,000 and go up to $10,000. It is claimed that at the time some of these crimes were committed, during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, police officers and law enforcers would actually hand people bloody relics or souvenirs of the people that they had gunned down and killed.

Al Capone. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons

The darker side of crime collectables

While the auction mentioned above relates to crimes that were committed many years ago, a report for dailyfinance.com from last year tells of such sites where more recent crime related items, such as letters of confession from murderers, artwork that they have done or even crime scene photos will sell for relatively large sums of money to interested collectors.

Naturally, this has quite disturbing and upsetting repercussions for the living family members of the victims of the crimes committed. They have branded such sites as sick, but the owners who sell the items say that they’re just as entitled to make a living as anyone else and that what they are doing is not illegal.

Indeed, the upcoming auction mentioned in the New York Times story was to have included some real crime scene photos that have since been pulled from sale, due to not only the content but fears that whoever bought them might try to publish them to a wider audience instead of keeping them for private interest only.

Popular auction sites such as eBay have a blanket policy on banning the sale of anything that might be deemed criminally offensive, such as memorabilia from crime scenes, no matter how old or what its provenance is.

It seems here that time and folklore seems to be the biggest factors in whether something is a genuine antique or whether it’s ghoulish and unacceptable. The rosary beads of Al Capone are perhaps of more historic interest than a piece of artwork or a photo being sold by a murderer from the last ten years or so.

The trend spreads to housing

Arthur Barker. Son of Ma Barker and killed in an FBI Shootout at the family home. Image courtesy of wikimediacommons.

The trend has even spread into the housing market, with properties in which outlaws spent time hiding out coming up for sale. One of the more interesting is the home of Ma Barker, who was killed alongside her son during an FB shootout.

Interested parties might be keen to note there are still visible bullet holes in the walls from the 1930’s crime scene. Estimates reckon the property might go for as much as $1 million.

Some collectors who buy crime related items might wonder whether they need specialist cover for such pieces, but the truth is they can still be covered by an ordinary art and valuables insurance policy for the home. Anyone that has actually bought a property that was a bona fide crime scene, such as the Ma Barker house might need more specific preservation cover, with advice from the government on restoration, however. There are many places that can provide help and advice if you have purchased and are unsure of what to do regarding these sorts of antiques, so if in doubt talk to someone in the know if you have any issues with anything you have bought that needs insuring.

Martin Willis:  I’m on the phone with Terry Kovel  How are you Terry?

Terry Kovel:  I’m fine, thanks. Good to hear from you.

Martin:  Yes thank you, now, I am talking about Terry Kovel of Ralph and Terry Kovel’s price guides. I have seen these books around and, growing up in the business, God I want to say back in the 70s, I first picked up a Kovel’s.  How many books have you published? When did you start?

Terry:   Now I’m giving my age away. Our first book came out in 1953. It was Dictionary of Marks: Pottery and Porcelain, and it’s kind of funny, the first copy arrived the day our daughter was born so we kept saying we were to call her Mark if she was a boy but, I got a girl; she lucked out.

At any rate, then they said we were experts, you know, “You wrote a book. You’re an expert”.  Price book came along a couple books later, but the one this year, the 2013 Kovel’s , is the 45th price book, and they’re all new every year so I can count it and, hold your breath, this is our hundred and first book.

Martin:  Oh wow. You would do this every year; I can’t imagine what an undertaking that is. I remember going through your price guides not always agreeing, to being honest with you, when I was younger, with the prices, because I was following what things were selling for at auction growing up in the auction business and there was a stretch away from prices in the book. But it did give the lay person an idea of what some things were worth; I think it was a very valuable tool. Can you tell me, in the beginning, how you obtained the prices for these pieces?

Terry:  Well originally we literally had people reporting to us from all over the country. I had a lot of friends who were “antiquers”, you know, so I told them “write down the prices”.  But every price we record in any book was an actual asked-for price. Now we can’t guarantee that’s what you paid; we know everybody works with that a little bit, but also, there really weren’t any antique auctions that were doing much of anything when we did this in the early 50s. They were all local. They didn’t have catalogs. And you’ve got to remember that the East Coast always had an entirely different price structure than Cleveland, which is where I live, and certainly different than California. I remember talking to a dealer in Colorado who said they bought all their antiques in Ohio, retail, and took them out to Colorado and sold them. That’s really what was going on then.

Martin:  Oh yeah that was going on right into the 70s and early 80s pretty heavy-duty. My father was actually involved in sending items from this area, mostly oak and Victorian pieces, right to the Denver-Boulder Colorado area.

Terry:  Yes that’s it and what we did, they tell us – I’ve always been surprised at how much they think we changed things – we leveled the market. Things got much closer in price because people realized what the difference was, and of course the auctions were getting more and more important and today I think most auctions are, in some cases, retail.

Martin:  I see that myself. A lot of times dealers will come up to me during an auction and say “where’s that person going to go with that piece”, you know, it kind of hits the top, but you know it’s variable; that’s for sure. And speaking of variable, you just mentioned regions of the country, and when I first looked at my father’s appraisals that he was doing, in the cover page he had a notation that said “prices may vary in different regions of the country”

Terry:  Yes and we say that in the introduction to all our books, by the way.

Martin:  Oh you do; and have you always?

Terry:  Yes. And we’ve always explained if it’s wholesale or retail, and we used to only, and you’ll love this, we used to only list things up to $5000; now we wouldn’t have anything to say if we did that (laughing). So we’ve raised the price limit. But we occasionally have something like a major sale of mechanical banks or something and we will put in a price like $35,000 and we explain in the paragraph that introduces banks that this year we’ve included some unbelievable ones because we want you to know that the top of the market is really way up there.

Martin:  Yes, I think that’s pretty much across the board. I’m sure you realize that since you have your thumb on what’s going on in today’s world. And do you currently get a lot of your prices through auction results?

Terry:  Yes, but every word is edited in our book and actually every word is proofread three or four times and I read every word a couple of times; we look very carefully for the things that seem to be impossible. We don’t take prices from places like eBay, where we don’t think the people know what they’re selling.

Martin:  That’s interesting. I have sitting here on my desk right now has we’re speaking, three Kovel’s books, let’s see, I have the 2008 price list, the 2001 price list, and I also have the Yellow Pages.

Terry:  Oh my, that’s out of print long ago.

Martin:  (laughing) and let’s see, that is a collectors directory of names, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and Internet addresses, etc. of dealers and things across the country; is that right?

Terry:  That’s right, yes, and clubs and anything that might useful to a collector. (Information now online at http://www.kovels.com/Directory/

Martin:  I see Warman’s has been around just about as long as Kovel’s what’s the situation with that?

Terry:  Warman’s started before we did. He was a printer in Philadelphia, a smart printer in Philadelphia, and he evidently was printing some price lists for several auction houses or galleries; I think most of them actually were shops, and he took a bunch of those and put them together.  I remember one of them was a list of prints, one was a list of furniture, he put them together and he put in mail order ads in magazines and he sold them. But the trouble was, he put the ads in before he had the book, and then it took a long time to fill the mail order ads, and then every bookstore in America was getting heck from their customers because they couldn’t buy a Warman’s and here were all these ads. So our publisher, we had already done a couple of books for them, suggested that we write a price book. And we did it with a computer, or the equivalent of computers from those days, which meant we could get it out in print in six months which was about a year earlier than doing it the old way.

Martin:  You and your husband Ralph must have had a real passion for antiques in order to take on something of this magnitude. Can you explain how you got started?

Terry:  You know it’s kind of funny. Ralph came from a family that thought antiques were old things, you know. People that had money to buy new things didn’t buy old things; which by the way, was 99% of the American public at that time. I had a mother who collected antique silver and a few things, but that’s about the extent of it. But when we were on our honeymoon, we rode our bicycles past an antique shop in Bermuda. We stopped, and Ralph fell in love with a bunch of stuff, and we spent all our honeymoon money on antiques. And I still have most of them by the way; they were very good buys! And it just went from there. When we got back, we moved into an apartment and, you’ll like this, we had to have accessories – everybody had to have accessories – like ashtrays and lamps and things, and it was okay to go to a house sale for that; but Heaven forbid that you should buy a piece of furniture or clothes or anything else. It just wasn’t done, and that, once again, was true of America in those days. So we started there, and that’s how Ralph decided we needed to do our first book; which was the Dictionary of Marks – Pottery and Porcelain and that book remained in print until about a year or so ago and is now available online on our site Kovels’ New Dictionary of Marks – Pottery & Porcelain: 1850 to the Present.

Martin:  Wow.  I do want to talk to you a lot about what’s available online and what’s changed and all that, but first we’ll talk about a few other things. I had a book at one time, I kept this book because it was fun to look at, and the title of the book was How to Turn Your Ugly Antiques into Modern Furniture.

Terry:  Oh I know we have a couple of those, one from the 30s, one from the 50s. Peter Hunt did all this stuff at some point, I think in the 60s or 70s, and now of course you buy Peter Hunt for a premium. They’ve been massacred for years; I love the ones where they cut the legs off, and they paint them, and they say “Now you have a wonderful antique table”.

Martin:  Yes, changing a rope bed into a settee; people actually do that today, and you know actually for the prices that a 225-year-old rope bed is selling, you might as well turn it into a settee (laughing).

Terry:  You’re right. But we keep track of the newer things; the younger look at antiques, (especially) since my daughter is my partner now. And yesterday, somebody came up to me in the office and showed me a picture from one of the magazines; someone had taken vintage suitcases; not good ones, just old suitcases, cut them in half lengthwise, and used them as shelves. I hadn’t seen that one before, so we’re still slaughtering anything we can change into something else (laughing).

Martin:  Yes.  You talked earlier about back in the 50s when you are on your honeymoon and nobody wanted the old stuff. That’s almost a trend that’s happening with young people today, as I’m sure you understand, for the most part.

Terry:  Well I can understand part of it, first of all silver has to be cleaned! And interestingly silver, of course, has a meltdown value so at least you know you’ve got that, but you can still sell very good English 18th-century, even Sheffield, in silver because there’s still a group of people out there. But I don’t think they’re in his or her 30s, or even who lives in this country in a small town because this is strictly for people who give banquets, you know. There still are some of them around. Everything’s international now, so if it’s really good it will go somewhere.

Then it’s also true that, for while there, I was giving what… I was always giving antiques as a wedding present; I always warned the bride, and then I’d get something that’s noncontroversial. But for a while there, everybody was getting pottery instead of porcelain dishes, and they were getting pewter instead of silver, and you know now they’re going back, interestingly enough, into the dishes because you can buy a full set, 12 place settings of great dishes for two or $300 now, I mean they’re giving them away!

Martin:  Even less sometimes. I’ve seen this trend. I was in California for nine years and I saw (I’m back on the East Coast now) I saw, say, sets of Limoges, you know the Rose…

Terry:  Oh yeah well that of course was very big for so long, and then it just died.

Martin:  I’ve seen 12 place settings go for $100-150. It was baffling to see the change. This same auction house I worked at had weekly appraisal clinics, and the theme I heard over and over again was “my grandchildren don’t want anything to do with this” or “no one has dinner parties anymore so we need to sell the flatware”.

Terry:  But I was at an antique show here in this area in Hudson, Ohio; it’s a well-known one that basically is “country”, shall we say. There was one dealer there with what I would call piles of service plates. They weren’t the real big ones, but they were really dinner plates, with elaborate designs and gold borders and I think “can you really sell those?” He said “I sold four sets this morning” so somewhere there are people who are using service plates, which I was stunned by because the rest of this particular show, everything was made out of wood.

Martin:  I usually think of a service plate as around 11 inches.

Terry: Yes, but these were 10 inch plates. They were very elaborate but I don’t think they were eating food off of them; maybe they were putting them in a cabinet but who has a cabinet like that anymore?

Martin: (laughing) That’s true. Unless it’s a Built-In.

Terry:  But he said it’s a big seller everywhere.

Martin:  That’s interesting.

Terry:  But not Limoges! (laughing)

Martin:  This is a question that people are often asking me, and I want to see your take on it. You just finished your 2013 book; what would you consider the heavy-duty trends of today?

Terry:  All right well that’s easy. First of all, Chinese, but I suspect it’s getting near the end – and I would like you to later ask me about that because I have some stores about that. Secondly, the 50s. 50s, 50s, 50s. I just got a Nordstrom department store catalog in the mail today, and they have one section that they’re calling “Vintage Vibes”, and in it they’ve got jewelry that looks like its old, and clothes that look they’re old; I mean they really do; they’re almost exact replicas. So that’s coming back too. You can see in the clothing that the 60s and 70s are back. And the jewelry that goes with it is back. And the lifestyle is back to some extent; that’s when peoples first started doing buffets and having informal parties, and didn’t want to work too hard cleaning their houses, so they simplify their lives. There’s a whole long history of this; we’ve gone through all of this, but essentially, after World War II everything changed.  All the modern things came in; the Scandinavian, the Eames look and whatnot came in, and that’s what everybody wants because it’s easier to take care of and it’s modern.

Martin:  I work with an auction company and the owner is James Julia up in Maine

Terry:  Oh I know them

Martin:  Yes very bright man and he was saying the other day, I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting him, he believes the bloom is off the rose slightly on the Chinese items, and I want to hear your take on that because you said you have something to tell me about that.

Terry:  Oh I’m absolutely sure and actually I’m in a way quoting the last James Julia sale. There was a big to-do on Antiques Roadshow on rhinoceros horns. Somebody had rhinoceros horn libation cups and they said his collection was worth something like 1.5 million dollars; he had a bunch of them. He put up a couple for sale and they did all right. The auction companies were pricing them at $50-60,000 and they were selling for $150,000-$250,000 – and everybody was kind of looking at them (askance). Well I know of one where they bid $150K from a very well known Chicago auction house, and he didn’t pay for it!  He came in and he said “Well that’s too much money. I don’t want to pay”.  They said “Well you bought it”.  He said “No, I’m not paying it; I’ll give you $80,000”. Well the owner of the piece said “I’ll eat it before I’ll let someone do that at an auction house”

Then I started looking into it and this was not happening just once, this was happening all over the place. Some of these major, major, prices you were seeing never got bought, never got paid for, and you can’t sue someone in China to collect.

Martin:  Have you read the Huffington Post article about this?

Terry:  Probably, I’ve been keeping very close tabs on this because I know the person that got stuck on the $150,000. By the way they’ve since sold it for $40,000 and gotten paid.

Martin:  There’s an issue right now that you cannot currently import rhinoceros horn into China so they cannot get their pieces, so that whole market for American collectors is going to drop drastically. This is a recent development.

Terry:  Yes they’ve done this on other things too. There’s a story from a couple of years ago about a young couple who inherited some vases that sold for millions and millions of dollars and they’re still trying to collect; they’ve never been paid.  And I just wonder what happened with their estate because they had no money; this was something they inherited, and what does the government think they owe in taxes? I don’t know what you do with that; it’s a mess. But they’ve been doing this on a lot of things and I, in a way, think that – do you remember the days when there was a ring at every auction?

Martin:  Yes, you mean a pool?

Terry:  Yes a pool, right. I have a feeling there’s a little of that going on because the Chinese had buyers who came over for four or five people in China, and I think they just got smart about it. They were paying ridiculous prices from my point of view; yes for a museum piece, but the average blue and white something or other wasn’t worth nearly what they were paying. It’s an interesting problem because we went through it with the Russian bidders a few years ago.

Martin:  Yes that’s absolutely 100% right. I have a friend that has really good insight sometimes, and he quoted this to me that you may find interesting, and that is, the top 20% of a Chinese auction is doing extremely well, very very good, and everything else is selling for just about what it always has. What do you think of that?

Terry:  Well I don’t think it’s quite down that far, but I think it’s getting there. For a while there, everything was selling way over. But it’s kind of hard to figure these things out because, what we’ve collected, we have a country store in the basement; by the way, we don’t sell anything, we’ve never been dealers; Ralph was in the food business so it was inevitable right? Every time he called on a customer and they heard it, they would say “oh we have a lot of old labels here, do you want them?”  You know, it was a great deal for a while. But those things were throwaway, literally; it was trash. It’s gotten to be that some of the prices they’re paying for that are astounding to me; they’re paying thousands and thousands of dollars for a tin sign that was made in multiples. You could buy a good oil painting for that. So the interest level on certain things is causing the prices and when the 20 people who are bidding the highest of the prices stop collecting for one reason or another everything is going to drop. This always seems to go in cycles. That’s what happened to the bottle market; people still collect, but… We love to do comparisons.  Anytime we find something that was originally sold at the Gardner’s Sale  because he was the greatest bottle collector around, we have that price; we have all the old catalogs, we go back and look them up and we show you that price, and then we show you what happened recently.  I know we reported one in the last few weeks where the bottle went from, like, I don’t know, 30 some thousand dollars down to 20 some thousand dollars now. But nonetheless they’ve dropped.

Martin:  Well I know a historical flask, not that long ago, went very high, and bitters bottles are breaking records so it’s, again, it’s the very top crust, it seems, that is holding on or up.

Terry:  Yes the bottles people, by the way, are very active. I’m a member of all the bottle clubs; we’ve always collected them. You go to one of the meets, or one of the conventions, or one of the shows, it’s mobbed. They have big crowds. But they aren’t exactly what you would expect. It’s kind of this one little group that moves from place to place. And they’re, like everybody else, looking for younger collectors.

Martin:  Yes. Let’s talk a little bit about younger collectors. What do you see as a solution to getting more people involved? Have you ever given that any thought?

Terry:  Well I hear enough about it. I think in some ways we get what we deserve in this industry. The younger dealers that I see at the shows are salespeople; they merchandise. They do a good layout. They show you how to use things. They have a show that has lecturers with some kind of information that shows you why you should own it, or how you can do it. Each of these little groups seems to be able to find somebody. Like the political button people must be going crazy right now; there are a lot of younger people who are looking at political buttons. They start with what they remember from their parents; they don’t go way back. And I don’t think there’s a solution to that.

Martin:  So there is a disconnect. I spoke with Harry Rinker about this a while back. His theory is that if there’s not an emotional connection i.e. having tea with your grandmother with a Limoges coffee set, and if a ($) value is placed on it instead, and it is tucked away and no one can use it, that kind of breaks the emotional contact that you would have.

Terry:  Harry and I both agree that there’s about a 25 year cycle. You start out like we did when you’re newly married and you buy something and you get intrigued; we started the store stuff earlier on.  And then you get a little richer, we hope, a little better off, and then you buy a little more, and then you know more about it, and then you know what to buy, and pretty soon you’re the guy at the top of the heap. And then, you have to move to a smaller house, or somebody dies; such things happen, and you’re gone, and there’s no top guy anymore so the prices drop down to the beginners again, and that’s really what happens; it takes about 25 years.

Martin:  A lot of times I think in general the market has dropped for the most part but..

Terry:  oh it has; the economy is showing. People don’t have the extra money they used to have.

Martin:  This is another situation am going to throw at you and see what you have to say about it. What you think the effect of the baby boomers getting out of the collecting market is going to change?

Terry: Well, I think, as I said, I think we’re going to have shows that aren’t just antique shows. They have crafts there, and modern jewelry makers; good ones though, not the ones who string beads; the ones who are actually making something. And we have a number of shows in this area where we have modern potters; we have some that are specifically for things that are made after 1950. And I think that’s what’s going to happen. Specialized things are going to be more out there. We just have to adjust. And of course you have to know how to use social media and you have to do all those other things to stay in business.

Martin: That’s right, that’s right. Now I want to talk to you about what has changed in what you do since the Internet has come alive.

Terry:  Everything. Ralph died in 2008 and my daughter became my partner, thank heavens because she really knows the Internet. We have had a website for long time; we were smart enough to do that, but we have a subscription newsletter that we have done for 30 years, and we now have online http://www.kovels.com/Online/select-subscription.html  as well as the printed ones http://www.kovels.com/Print/print-subscription.html. We’re getting a lot more online than we ever did. We have some of our books up, as I said, the Marks Book is up . We give a lot of free information away because we want you to come to our website. It’s a weird economy; you make your money on the ads; you don’t make your money on your product anymore. But you have to know how to do it. I personally can’t buy anything online; I have to see it, and hold it, and look at it; now that I say that I have bought one or two things, but they are things I know really well, but I know people who just love going out there saying “I think I want to buy a red chair today” and will look for one until they find one. You never could do that before, and the dealers have to live with that. And they have to show glass candlesticks upside down or whatever it takes to get people to stop in the booth and figure out “Gee,I like that. It looks good”

Martin:  People used to enjoy the hunt in driving around to antique shops, yard sales, things like that and now they enjoy the hunt by sitting in their living room and getting on their laptop and looking that way.

Terry:  I know, and it’s embarrassing because, as you say, “Gee, I want to collect sock stretchers” and they go out there, and up comes something that shows you there’s 22 of them being sold at auctions next month, you know, that’s no fun (laughing).

Martin:  I don’t know about you, if you even do this, but I still like to go to estate sales and I like to go to small auctions; when it’s a large auction online it’s pretty easy to see everything there but, it’s still the hunt, in my case,…

Terry:  Oh I go to everything.

Martin:  Oh you do.

Terry:  I just love it, yes. I figure this is my inexpensive entertainment, you know, I go in the shops. I go into yard sales if I see them; I don’t go to house sales anymore because I find that the house sale people around here have already invited the dealers the day before. And I won’t go to anything like that, but some of the yard sales you find things, particularly for our country store because people think old boxes aren’t worth anything.

Martin: I have to say that there was a difference in San Francisco, I do have a lot of listeners in California and I hope no one is offended by me saying this, but I have gone to many estate sales in California where the dealers were already there for two or three days and overlooked a lot of real gems, so, I’m giving this message to people out in California – don’t stop going to yard sales or estate sales because you think the dealers have already been there because you never know what you’re going to find.

Terry:  Oh you are absolutely right and one of the things you find, by the way we have a free e-zine I guess they call them, it’s Kovel’s Komments you sign up on our website, as long as you register I will send you this note every week and I like to write about things nobody else is writing about like some lady just found a Renoir painting at a flea market.

Martin: Oh yes I saw that, still life.

Terry:  Yes so that’s the kind of story I love and it’s no question that sometimes it does happen. I went this antiques show and I bought a mourning picture; not everybody wants those, but we collected them for years, and this one was fabulous, and it was very inexpensive, and she said “nobody has even looked at them at this sale” I said “I’m not surprised. Nobody looks at them anywhere” (laughing)

Martin:  Just for the listener that doesn’t know, in the 19th century generally, during that era, a mourning picture would be of someone passed away, a lot of times its needlework, sometimes it’s not, and often times there’s a memorial of the person centered in the picture.

Terry:  Yes this has a memorial, and it’s made of hair, and needlework, and some kind of drippy grain – I can’t even figure out what it is, and paint. It’s very elaborate and very small, and I think it’s German; that’s what the dealer and I decided, not American.

Martin:  Wow interesting. Now since we’re on the subject, why don’t you talk about what you would consider your best find?

Terry:  Oh that’s easy. It was very long ago. We went to a house sale, it happened that we knew the woman who was running the house sale, and she had called us up and said “I’ve got this house; it’s got all this glass and stuff from the cupboards. It looks good to me, could you come over and give us some advice”. So we went over and we told her “yes you’re right its 18th-century and”… it’s a long story – at any rate we went to the sale, and we had not seen it ahead of time and we bought for $10 a silver sugar caster. We knew it was solid silver, and we knew it was American; we had just finished a book on silver. But we didn’t know until we got home that it was made by Paul Revere Sr. and it was all marked; it’s now in a museum.

Martin:  That is just amazing.

Terry:  Yes, you don’t get many of those. But the other thing that we did, which was an amazing one, was we actually wrote the first article about George Ohr pottery. Do you know George Ohr?

Martin:  Oh yes.

Terry:  Well he was a real nutcase, but he did great pottery. And we did an art pottery book and when we were at the Smithsonian doing research, the person who was taking me around said “you’ve got a see one of these things we’ve got here; a crazy man gave us this” and they had seven pieces of George Ohr pottery, given by George to the Smithsonian; because he was “the greatest potter in the world”, he said they had to have it. We thought this guy was great, we did a lot of research and we wrote an article for a magazine called The Western Collector, which was phenomenal but didn’t last long – in fact that was the last issue of the magazine when that article came out – that’s embarrassing (laughing).

But the man who discovered that George Ohr had put all his pottery in an attic in the early 1900s and had said “I’m not going to do this anymore”, had gone down and was buying old cars from their sons, and he bought about 4000 pieces of Ohr that was in the attic. He called us and said “I got this stuff, we saw your article, you’re the only one that has said anything about him, I’d like to show it to you” And he stopped here on the way to a show, and he had the pieces marked five dollars and $10, and I think the most expensive was $25. And he brought in 40 pieces, and my husband fell in love with them and bought all of them.

Martin:  Oh my goodness, that was good timing.

Terry:  Yes, now those pieces today, I have one that must be worth at least $10,000. It’s just phenomenal, but as I said, you don’t get that lucky very often.

We know a dealer who bought at some point – Ohr was floating around at the shows for about three or four years before anybody started paying anything for it, and this dealer bought all the puzzle mugs – Ohr did things for fairs as well as doing the big fancy stuff, and these were mugs where you had to figure out how to get the liquid out because it had holes in the side: they were “puzzle mugs”. He carried those around for two years; he could sell them for 25 bucks apiece and he finally just sold that whole collection to somebody else. So somebody somewhere made money on these things, but it took a long time. I own one of those because I thought it was interesting.

Martin:  I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter a few years ago, sitting in a café, and she said to me after we talked, “you don’t deal in real value do you, you deal in perceived values”. That is pretty apparent in the things that we do and especially to someone like you.

Terry:  Well but what isn’t perceived value? The art market, if you owned a French realist painting 10 or 20 years ago, you were getting a fortune. Today nobody’s buying them; they’re worth about a fourth of what they used to be, and these are major artists. Everything is perceived value; who would pay $80,000 for a car when they can buy one for 30,000? I know it’s a better car but, you have to think it’s a better car too.

Martin:  Yes. I guess, you’re absolutely right about that. We pay a lot for diamonds because we think diamonds are valuable. And, were getting a little philosophical in this (laughing) that’s my fault, but I just think it’s kind of a fascinating thing when you have to create records year after year of what is going on, I’m sure you look back and say “wow, I can really see the trends”

Terry:  Yes you really can, particularly like, doorstops; nobody looked at the doorstops when I first started collecting, and then they went way through the ceiling, and now they’re coming back down again a little. And why should a door stop be worth anything? I mean really when you get down to it, one of the best sellers today, and I find this amazing, is anything made of iron; Griswold pans, doorstops, door knockers, mechanical banks, toys, they’re all selling for high prices and I have no idea why.

Martin:  That’s interesting. We’re almost out of time here, and I want to touch briefly on fakes. In your opinion how much you think that affects collecting and the market

Terry:  Well if you really keep up with the market then you know there’s fakes everywhere and we actually do a booklet every year on fakes and the booklet is based on things we wrote about 20 years ago and the fakes are still out there. Don’t be upset, because, museums have been fooled. The Metropolitan, the Victoria and Albert, the Ford Museum; they’ve all had fakes. And a good faker can fool anybody. They’ve just arrested some guy who was selling paintings in about 15 different painter styles, and Christie’s and Sotheby’s were selling them as these new-found masterpieces.

Martin: Was this the person that would not sign his paintings?

Terry: Yes I think so. Most the time, if you’re specializing in bottles, or iron, or whatever, you get to know what it should look like, and you get this sixth sense which tells you something’s not right. I know of a painting, for instance, that was in the Cleveland Museum that everybody walked by every day, and one day one of the restorers walked by and said to the curator “I don’t know why, but there’s something wrong with that picture”. It had great provenance. He said “there’s just something about it that annoys me every time I walk by it”, and it turned out he was right. It was a modern copy. What was wrong was they had used white paint that was a different color than it should be. Who knows the color of white, you know (laughing)? But if you know your field well enough, you get a feeling for it, and I guess you have to figure its part of your education to buy a fake now and then.

Martin: Yes that’s right. I also think that, in my situation, my first, initial feeling instantly is the one I always have to go back to, because there’s been many times where right off the Bat I go “no, that’s not right”

Terry:  That’s right. You have to trust your instincts if you’ve been a collector because in the back of your head somewhere it’s like you know if it’s a great piece if you see it in a pile of junk, you just know somehow and you can’t explain to somebody that the texture is wrong.

Martin:  I know people often times when I’m at an appraisal clinic and someone brings a good reproduction or fake and they ask me, why do I think it’s a fake, and I say “I can’t really tell you, I just know it is”(laughing). I’ve said that before.

Terry:  Well I know that when the Ohr pottery first came out I went to a show, and all of a sudden, there I am staring at a blood red Ohr pottery vase.  I went to the dealer, who was selling Royal Doulton primarily, and I said “I know this is an unfamiliar thing to most of us but I’m telling you that can’t be right. That had to have been re-glazed; he never did a decent glaze in his life; he always had imperfections in it”. And it disappeared; she took it off the market. I was right, (we found) since then he did pink, but he never did red.

Martin:  Well this has been wonderful. I’m going to ask you if you would be up for coming on the show again.

Terry: Sure I’d be glad to.  I’ve got to give my plugs!

Martin: Oh yes. Here you go. The floor is yours.

Terry: Everybody go to the bookstore, go online, you can go on our website, for Kovel’s Price Guide 2013. It just came out; 40,000 prices, all put in there in the last year, by the way.  It has 2,500 color pictures, which is something we do now but we could never do before because of all the digital stuff. It’s really useful. Our price list online, which is free, has all the prices dated, which means if you’re trying to figure out taxes, estate taxes or whatever, they are dated so you have a base price you can use because this is valid as far as the government is concerned. So it’s worth looking; as I said, there are 800,000 prices online that are free. Our website is Kovels.com. Look around and see what’s there, and sign up for the e-zine because http://www.kovels.com/Table/Kovels-Komments/ I love stupid stories and if you know any let me know about them.

Martin:  Well this has been fantastic. I really enjoyed having you on as a guest.

Terry: Well thank you, it’s been fun.

Martin: Thanks so much. This is Martin Willis with Terry Kovel, and we’re signing off.

Kovels Komments

Jack: I’m doing well Marty, yourself?

Martin: Good, thank you, and where are you?  You’re in Arizona?

Jack: Prescott Arizona; one of the top retirement locations in the United States.

Martin: Ah, well, that right away makes me think of a lot of goodies that may come in that area.

Jack: That’s Correct.

Martin: Yeah, I think of it this way, in retirement places like Florida, places like that, a lot of people may sell their furniture but a lot of times they’ll bring nice decorative arts with them or art work; in Florida a lot of things end up settling there and I’m sure it must be the same where you’re located.

Jack:  more so actually in phoenix than in Prescott. There’s a lot of the antiques shops here but not a lot of what I would classify as genuine antiques; more tourist type stuff.

Martin: Ah.  So today we are going to talk mostly about the subject of Ruba Rombic glass which has always fascinated me from the very first time I saw it, now how did you get interested in this subject and start researching and collecting this type of glass?  And before you get into that can you explain basically what the glass is, you know I think of it as like the Cubist type form in the Art Deco era but I want you to give a description if you would please.

Jack: Sure, in the mid twenty’s, actually 1926, the Consolidated Glass Company located in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania, 15 miles outside of Pittsburgh, got into the art glass business at the urging of Reuben Haley who had worked at the U.S. Glass Company and had left when the ownership changed and he didn’t like the new owners.  So in ’26 he came out with a line of glass called Martele which is basically American Lalique and in ’28 he came out with a line of glass called Catalonian, all Spanish, and ‘28 was Ruba Rombic.  Ruba Rombic was very very Deco.  There’s a lot of different ideas of where the name came from, but I think it came from number one, Reuben, and number two, rhomboid which is a geometric figure with no parallel planes, and Ruben Haley was actually a sculptor; had worked at some of the silver companies earlier and the way I heard the story he picked a piece of plaster off the factory floor and sculpted the first piece of Ruba Rombic design in the plaster. And I heard that from a guy who worked for him.  I also interviewed his son, Ken Haley in Pennsylvania before he died.  So it’s very cubistic glass that came out in ’28 and the problem was it was ultramodern, number one, so some people liked it and some people didn’t, and in 1929, in October actually, we had Black Friday which was the great depression so bam the production lifecycle of Ruba Rombic wasn’t very long, and we’ve had varying estimates of how many pieces there are.  Bob Aibel of Moderne Gallery of Philadelphia thought it was about 1,500; based on what I know, I think it’s between 2,000 and 3,000.  But those are very, very, very small figures when you compare them to something like Lalique where if you go to a major glass show in Miami you’ll probably see 20 or 30 pieces of Lalique you can purchase, and if you see one or two of Ruba Rombic you’d be lucky.

Martin: I would say you’re right, the first time I saw a piece was when I was working in California, I’ve been in this business all my life, and this thing came in the doors, someone put it on one of our display case shelves, and I looked at it and I go “Wow.  What is that?” I mean it really hit me as something pretty special.  And it was a little difficult to find it when I was doing my research. But that was only, I’m gonna say seven or eight years ago and I’ve been at it since 1970.

Jack: You were asking how I got into it.  I was collecting at one time Millersburg carnival glass, and I had a very advanced collection, you know; got to the point where I was looking for pieces I didn’t have and making offers of multi 1000 dollars and couldn’t buy them, so I started looking for something else to collect and I knew a dealer down in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, and she had a couple pieces of Consolidated and I didn’t even know what it was at the time, I just liked the look of it so I bought it and then I started to try to figure out what it was, and there was very little research material and I really like research, more so than even collecting.  And I started researching this stuff and I said ” there’s really no definitive reference work” and so I started going down to the Pittsburgh area because there’s two different companies involved; it was originally called Phoenix Glass which was wrong, it was just like the idea of carnival glass originally, before the research was done. So there was Phoenix Glass in Monaca, and Consolidated in Coraopolis, so my research led me more and more into collecting but it took me a while to find this Ruba Rombic and that was kind of interesting because the people that originally collected it were depression glass collectors, of all things, because of a woman named Hazel Marie Weatherman who found an old catalog that had some illustrations of Ruba Rombic.  So originally when collecting it early on I remember an ad in Hobbies Magazine, and I bought some shot glasses for $5.00 a piece from the East Coast and I got 1 for a dollar because it was chipped.  Now you look at the prices today and you’ll pay $150, $200 for a shot glass.

Martin: That’s right. That’s right.  I had someone actually come into my office in April that said they have a collection of 20 pieces and I was, I’m still, very excited and hope to get it because you rarely see a grouping that large.  When you’re saying there’s 1,500 to 3,000 pieces in total that’s, you know, a very limited supply out there.

Jack: and what’s strange is it’s scarce but when it was being collected early on, a couple real treasure troves of it came out. One was like 100 pieces in sunshine yellow that Bill Heacock found, another bunch was like 25, 30 pieces on the East Coast, I actually bought that and I was bidding against Bob Aibel of Moderne Gallery and out of that lot came two 16½ inch vases which are ultra, ultra rare.  But every once in awhile a bunch of it turns up and I think what happened is it was probably floor stock that somebody bought en mass when the depression hit.

Martin: Right, that makes total sense.  Now, the Holy Grail of the Ruba Rombic, is it the Fishbowl on Stand?

Jack: Um, no I think the Holy Grail actually is the 16½ inch vase. They made vases in three sizes; 6½, 9½, and 16½.  And the 16½ you typically only see in museums, there’s one in the Toledo Museum of Art in French crystal, there’s another one in the High Museum in Jungle Green, and there’s probably a total of 6 to 12 total known of the 16½ inch vases.

Martin: Wow.  And in one single color?

Jack: No.  They came in multiple colors.  I have two in Smoky Topaz which is sort of a brownish crystal color, they come in French crystal which is a frosted glass where the edges are left clear, and French crystal is an allusion of course to Lalique.  They come in Jungle Green, I’ve heard about them in what they call White Opal which is an opalescent glass with no color over it but I haven’t been able to confirm that.  So it comes in several colors.  You talked about the Fishbowl, and there’s probably 20 to 25 Fishbowls without the stands, and there’s probably 6 to 12 with the stands.

Martin: Wow, that’s pretty amazing.  As in all highly collected pieces, are there fakes?

Jack: Um, there actually are no fakes.  There’s only one piece, and there’s, it’s kind of unusual, it was made in the 1960s. I’ve got one with the original label. It came from Yugoslavia, I believe it was a bath salts bottle, and it’s in a color that is very close to Jungle Green, it’s got a big tall stopper, it’s almost 15 inches tall and the reason you can tell it’s not a Ruba Rombic is it’s got a whole bunch of characteristics that are wrong.  The stopper is hollow; all the stoppers on Ruba Rombic are solid.  It’s got definite mold lines on the side of it, the size is wrong, you can find it every once in awhile on eBay and people try to sell them has whiskey decanters which of course they are not.

Martin: You just mentioned that the fake had a mold mark.  Are there no mold marks on these glass pieces?

Jack: What they did at the Consolidated is they used what they call coggle-joint molds, and that’s where the mold lines follow the design so there are mold marks but they are very very hard to find.

Martin: That’s interesting. Now the design of these is just so abstract and it seems to me, my first thought in looking at a piece, it must be very difficult to design something like this so it has an appeal and doesn’t look awkward or clunky.  Were there pieces that do have that type of look, a little say, not so appealing?

Jack: I think there are pieces that, I don’t know if I would say it that way, I would say there are pieces that are more highly collectible than others, it’s like rarity is not the only determining factor; desirability plays into it too.  Some pieces just look spectacular you know, the water pitchers are super rare but they just look fantastic when you find one, but then some of the serving pieces are rare, you know, the relish dishes and stuff like that, but they’re not so desirable in my mind; they just don’t hit you the same way as some of the other pieces.

Martin: Now, can you explain how this was brought into the market, you know, to begin with?

Jack: Yeah, what happened is there’s an annual show down at the Fort Pitt Hotel in Pittsburgh in January for both glass and pottery, and what happened with Ruba Rombic is Consolidated rented three rooms in 1928; one room was full of Martele, one room was full of Consolidated, and one room was full of Ruba Rombic.  And they actually took out a seven page add to advertise this in the Gift and Art Shop and several other glass trade magazines (that you could review at the Library of Congress is one place). So it was introduced at the Fort Pitt Hotel in 1928 and that’s when you start getting reviews and that’s when you started hearing what it meant; Ruba Rombic, Ruba’i was a poem, rhombic meaning regular in shape; you had a lot of press coverage from that.  Mainly in trade journals because trade journals is where the wholesale buyers bought the stuff, department stores, and that’s how it was introduced.

Martin: I see.  Now you mentioned earlier about a piece being in a museum.  Are there holdings of these pieces in museums or is it just a few pieces that you’re aware of?

Jack: There are several museums that have significant amounts of this.  Kirkland Museum in Denver has a significant collection and Antique Roadshow actually featured them; they made a visit there a couple years back. Brooklyn Museum has got a collection, Toledo Museum has got a collection, there’s several museums that have it and there’s been a couple of traveling exhibits also that have featured this glass. The Machine Age in America, when it traveled to Carnegie in Pittsburgh, I actually loaned them a dozen pieces from my collection to augment their display when I was living in Chicago, including my Fishbowl.  The Fishbowl, one interesting thing is that all the Ruba Rombic is made by Consolidated except the Fishbowl, and if you look at the patent on the Fishbowl it’s got the factory owner’s name but it was actually designed by Kenneth Haley who was working at Phoenix after his father died.

Martin: Wow, how about that.  You mentioned earlier Hazel Marie Weatherman I believe, and you talked about a catalog, could you explain again how this had something to do with depression glass?

Jack: Yes Hazel Marie Weatherman had a book called Price Trends of Depression Glass II and in her revised edition of that book she came up with a catalog of Consolidated Glass, including some Ruba Rombic pieces.  So she published that catalog in her price trends book, it’s like a price guide really, and she put it in what she called market prices, and they were all ranges, you know like say a shot glass would be 5 to 10 dollars.  So that was the first that I could find of actual, in the marketplace, information on Ruba Rombic.  And it was for depression glass collectors and dealers so initially I would find most of my Ruba Rombic at depression glass shows. I would go to the show down in Miami, go to Chicago, et cetera, and there would always be dealers that would have some because that’s where the information originally came out.

Martin: I see.  Well a lot of people always want to know this; are you aware of what the record price is for anything in this line?

Jack: the highest price that I can document, and the problem always is there’s private sales and people won’t talk; that’s one of the problems you run into.  But I know, and it’s almost 20 years ago, one of the 16½” vases sold for $12,500.  And I think if that were to hit the market with a knowledgeable buyer and seller today it would be closer to $25,000.  But the documented price is $12,500.  I also heard that Fishbowl has sold for close to $20,000, with the stand, but I can’t confirm that.  And that’s the problem you run into again when you have private sales and people won’t talk about when they spent.

Martin: Now did the Fishbowl itself come in different colors or was it that yellow Marigold?

Jack: No it’s a Vaseline, a true Vaseline, very thick glass it’s like ¼” thick, it’s got a signature on the base molded into it, and the Fishbowl came in two sizes which is sort of amazing because I didn’t see the second size for a long, long time but there’s a ¾ sized version of the fishbowl that you see once in a great while.  It also came in a couple of different bases; the one that you normally see is the one on the cover of my book which is a floor stand, but there’s also a small table stand, maybe three or 4 inches tall that would sit in the center of a table.  That’s highly unusual.  Those are the two stands that I’ve seen that actually were made for the Fishbowl.  And they actually follow the angles of the base.  I’ve seen people put them on bases they don’t belong on and try to say it’s a Ruba Rombic base, but it’s not.

Martin: now let’s talk about your book.  What’s the name of it and where can someone find it?

Jack: it’s called Phoenix and Consolidated Art Glass 1926-1980.  It’s been out of print for 10 years so where you find it is used book dealers and eBay.  We printed 5,000 copies and it sold out in oh, 1999 I think it was.

Martin: almost time for a second printing?

Jack: Yes, the publisher is out of business but I’ve got all the files and pictures and all that sort of stuff and with the advancement of technology it would be actually fairly easy to do.

Martin: I understand from all the people I’ve talked to, I’ve never written a book but I understand that there’s a lot involved in that; how long did it take you to put that book together?

Jack: The research is really what took the time because what you find is finding the glass is easier than finding the catalogs and the real information, not just the thoughts about it, it took me about 10 years to pull it together because I was definitely against a picture book where you just have a lot of pictures and no information. I wanted something that was definitive in terms of really being a reference book.

Martin: Has there ever been any rumor or any factual evidence that you’re aware of, as to what actually inspired Rueben Haley to design the first piece?

Jack: No, I actually talked to a guy that worked with him, who’s still alive by the way, down in Pennsylvania and he told me the story about him picking up the piece of plaster off the factory floor and sculpting it but there’s nothing that says I was inside his head and I can tell you why he did this. Don’t know. It was very Art Deco, you know, the height of Art Deco, so I’m sure he was influenced by other things.

Martin: I had just wondered if perhaps it was maybe a Cubist painting that he was inspired by, but I can totally see… I love the Deco era because it’s so out of the box, and you find so many unique pieces whether it’s a radio, or any type of decorative art or furniture. You never know what you’re going to see; it’s really amazing. Overall how do you think the market is on Art Deco; is it just the high end items or is everything still strong in general?

Jack: I think it’s like a lot of antiques, it’s cyclical, it’s up and down, and Ruba Rombic is so rare that anything that comes on the market, unless it’s very common, and the only thing that are really common are the smaller plates, will sell for fairly good money, and the reason you can tell that is if you watch some of the stuff on eBay, even the stuff that I would consider to have significant damage, brings fairly good money these days. And the reason for that is in the early days the good stuff was bought up by collectors and museums, and that’s where it’s sitting right now. So what you’re seeing that’s coming on the market is stuff that was probably passed on 20 years ago. You know if it had a crack in it, people wouldn’t buy it. Today they will. So I think the really great stuff, no doubt about it, is going to bring big bucks and you can see it in terms of, they appraised a whiskey set that I think was last year on Antique Roadshow from a woman in Pittsburg, that’s a premiere piece if you want to collect that stuff, here’s a whiskey decanter and shot glasses and a tray which is very hard to find, which is sort of an iconic piece if your collecting that stuff it’s going to bring big bucks. And when people realize how rare this stuff is, a lot of people still don’t know even what Ruba Rombic is; I see glass collectors and they’re talking about how rare there glass is, and I say “have you seen a piece of Ruba Rombic” and a lot of them haven’t.

Martin: Right, it goes back to what I said; it took me a long time to find my first piece, and I had never had a big fascination for it, but every time I see a piece these days I’m pretty interested in looking at it.  It’s funny how you can look at a piece at different angles, and this is a type of glass that you can actually move around on your shelf to get a whole different effect.

Jack: Right, fantastic and especially if you’ve got a display case with mirrors and stuff like that you really get some interesting look-sees at it.

Martin: What are other types of glass that you collected.  You said there was a type of carnival glass?

Jack: Yes I started off with carnival. Initially I was just collecting general carnival, and then I met a collector in Chicago that knew what he was doing and I basically dumped what I had bought originally and I got interested in Millersburg carnival glass out of Ohio and again that’s another company that didn’t have any research, so I did a bunch of research and what I published was Millersburg Research Notes at that time.  I sold my collection of Millersburg in 1982 in Strongsville Ohio.  The auction grossed a little over 100 grand.

Martin: That was big money then!

Jack: Yeah one piece brought $8,000 a Rose Columns vase in blue that I had purchased for $300; two people were after it and it was the only one known at the time; there’s a couple known now.  So from that I bought a house.  It was the middle of the depression.  But I actually had started collecting Consolidated at that point in time, and I was really into research, so I was finding out what this stuff was.  I was in Chicago at the time so I could drive to Pittsburgh in 8 hours, so I just ran down people, looked at catalogs, and finally found Kenneth Haley in Greenberg, PA with his wife, visited with him several times, interviewed him over the telephone several times, and that was in effect a breakthrough. I also found an owner of Consolidated at one time, Bob Dietz, that was living out in Studio City in California, went out and visited with him, he had some catalogs he gave me.

Martin: Original catalogs?

Jack: Original catalogs, yeah. He has a couple pieces of glass and he had several catalogs, and if he had two, he would keep one and give me the other. If he had just one catalog he wouldn’t give it to me but he would let me photograph it.  The catalogs are really the hardest thing to find.

Martin: Oh I bet. Now has anyone ever talked about the molds turning up anywhere?

Jack: Yes the molds actually have turned up, it’s kind of interesting because Consolidated went out of business in 1963 and it was in the middle of a labor dispute and the Dietz brothers actually bought the company for, it was $20,000 I think, in that range, with backing from the guy that owns Sinclair Glass in Hartford City, Indiana. Sinclair Glass Company ended up with the molds or at least half of them, and the rest were scrapped, and I actually visited, when I was researching for the book, Sinclair Glass in Hartford City and they were using about a dozen of the molds. The rest of them they had out in chicken coups laying on the ground and you know chicken coups are not water proof of course, and just amazing that I could see a Dancing Nymphs mold, or half of it at least, laying on the ground full of water. But they had about a dozen they were actually using. They made, in the sixties, they modified one of those molds to make swag lamps; you know how they used to hang from the ceilings? So they put flanges on top of some of these vases and made swag lamps out of them. Didn’t make a lot, because you don’t see them very often. Those molds, a dozen or so were eventually sold to Pilgrim Glass up in Ceredo, West Virginia, when Kelsey Murphy was up there as their glass designer, and after they were sold I actually went up there and visited Kelsey to take a look at what they were doing. They had the big 16-inch blackberry umbrella stand mold, and when I was there they made me one in black that was sand blasted to make it look matte rather than bright. And Pilgrim now is out of business and those molds have gone to a collector; they’re out of the market. Phoenix molds, they had a bunch of molds too, and they’re in a basement. Phoenix no longer has hand-mold capabilities; they’re all machine molds, so they can’t use those molds.

Martin: I would still feel a little bit uneasy if I had a major collection and I knew the molds were out there, myself, but is there any danger of that being pirated in any way?

Jack: Well anything is possible. I’ll tell you one story when I was in Chicago, and I won’t name names to protect the guilty, but I’ve got a pair of Ruba Rombic wall sconces, they’re rather large, they were probably commercial you know in a theater or something like that; they’re very rare. So I knew a lamp dealer, a fairly significant lamp dealer in Chicago, and I was telling him about the sconces and he asked me if he could borrow them to send them to China and have them reproduced.  Which I would not concur to, of course, but that’s just the kind of stuff that’s going on.

Martin: Absolutely. I’m going to get a little off track here but I’m going to tell you that I saw some French Empire-style, dore bronze figural candelabras that were cast in China that you could not tell these were not period re-gilt. The casting was perfect. They can make amazing copies in China, it seems.

Jack: They have to have something to copy though, so unless somebody cooperates, they’re not going to do it.

Martin: Yes. I’m glad (laugh) you didn’t in that case, but I’m sure that person that was looking is probably continuing to look.

Jack: They’re still in business and I’ve seen some of the Consolidated lighting glass, the lighting glass came out a little later than the rest of the glass, and so there’s a lot less of it because of the depression, but I’ve seen some of the stuff reproduced. Some of the sconces I’ve seen reproduced, and those you can actually, if you’re a glass collector, you can actually tell the differences between the reproductions and the originals. But I haven’t, other than the molds I told you that actually moved around to Sinclair Glass Company in Pilgrim, are the only ones and those are identifiable. There are ways of telling those.

Martin: You mentioned when we first started talking that the Great Depression hit. So that hit in 1929, was this glass made just the one single year?

Jack: I think it was probably made in 1928 and into 1929.  I read the trade journals, I was at the Library of Congress, and the union used to send in a report every month about what was going on at the factory, and it sounded like the worst thing in the world, you know the people were being laid off, so I think the longest it was made was 18 months. Now they made some lighting glass a little later; ‘28, ‘29,’30, but it’s very hard to find so they couldn’t have made very much. For example, I sent you a little recap of Ruba Rombic, and it include a 14” shade in there; there’s probably less than ten of those shades known worldwide. So they couldn’t have made them very long, just impossible. And after Consolidated shut down in ’31, some molds actually went to Phoenix, and they had labels on them originally called The Reuben Line because Kenneth Haley moved them over there, not his father. But they never made any Ruba Rombic after Consolidated shut down, and they never made it after reopening in 1936. So it was just a short period of time that Ruba Rombic was actually produced, and I’ve never seen a Ruba Rombic mold; even when I visited Sinclair and I walked through all those chicken coups looking at all their molds. They weren’t there. And now, Sinclair is out of business, and my understanding is those molds have been turned under ground, (according to) some people I’ve talked to down there.

Martin: What do you mean by that “turned under ground”?

Jack: Basically buried them. Took a tractor and pushed them under ground.

Martin: That’s good. What would you consider has been the biggest grouping that has come up in Ruba Rombic glass?

Jack: The biggest collection that I’ve ever seen that have become publicly available was Bob Aibel’s Moderne Gallery in Philadelphia in 1992 mounted an exhibition and sale called “Ruba Rombic at Moderne” and Bob Aibel actually hired a professional PR firm, sent out postcards to 3,000 people on his mailing list and it was 350 pieces of Ruba Rombic that were on exhibition and sale. Most of them were for sale; there were a few pieces that were for exhibition only but most of them were for sale. The majority of the pieces in that collection, but not all, were from the collection of a depression-glass dealer Kevin Kiley of West Orange, New Jersey. And then Aibel augmented it with additional Ruba Rombic dealers in New York. And they had a preview, which I attended because I had lent them a lot of illustrations from my book, a seven-panel broadside that introduced Ruba Rombic was blown up, and so that sale set the water mark, the early water mark as far as pricing because all of a sudden when Ruba Rombic appeared at Moderne Gallery we left the age of being able to buy cheap Ruba Rombic at depression-glass prices to having Ruba Rombic accepted as true Art Deco glass and priced accordingly. Several major pieces sold at that sale; there were a lot of museum acquisitions, I mentioned that French crystal vase that Toledo Museum of Art acquired for $12,500; that actually came from Bob Aibel’s sale, so it was the high water mark. I’ve never seen a public accumulation like that since. There are several private large collections of Ruba Rombic; I have one, I know of one in San Francisco, I know another one in Miami, but these are not public so you can’t just go and look unless you know the people.

Martin: Interesting. This has been great. I want to ask you one more question. Are you available to the public that is listening to this to evaluate …

Jack: Yes I will, but I give my opinions but I’m not a professional appraiser, and I guess there’s a difference between that because I’ll say what I think something’s worth and I’ll say “here’s what the market looks like today” and a professional appraiser would probably give them three different values on it, you know; “Here’s a replacement value, blah blah blah”. So I give opinions based on my experience.

Martin: That’s the real opinion, (laughing) that’s what it is. So thank you so much, and what’s the best way for someone to get in contact with you?

Jack: The easiest way to contact me is just to send an email to jdwilson1@earthlink.net

Martin: Alright, thank you so much, this is Martin Willis with Jack Wilson, and we are signing off.

Fred Giampietro: Fine, fine. How are you?

Martin: And I apologize it took me a little while to pronounce your name properly. I’ve known your name, and of the pieces you’ve sold, I’ve seen your ads for many, many, many years of handling very fine things, and I’d like to know how you got started. What was your beginnings, and how did you evolve into handling such fine pieces?

Fred: I grew up Cheshire, Connecticut. My parents did not have money. They were very, very middle America, ran a landscaping nursery, and when I went up to school in Florida to study classical music I met Kathy, who – we later got married, so in 1973 I found myself at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida studying classical music, and one of my first dates with Kathy was to an antique shop. Her family always collected. Her father was an artist – is a contemporary artist and they loved antiques and they used to rummage around finding stuff, so first date we go to a place called Carousel Antiques in DeLand, Florida next to the University, and I bought a Shaker Number 7 Rocker. I don’t know what came over me. I just loved the stuff. I loved the idea that shop had everything from Victorian furniture to vintage clothing to old tools to junk, and there was this Shaker Number 7 Rocker and I got –

Martin: So, you know how to – you knew how to spot something fairly decent right off the bat, obviously.

Fred: I didn’t know it was a Shaker. I knew nothing about Shaker or what Shaker was, but I took it home. Took it to some antiques dealer that – who I respected or thought I respected and they told me what I had and –

Martin: Did it have the number 7 in them – one of them?

Fred: It had number 7 on it and it had – I’ll never forget it had a broken rocker and I, promptly, had the rocker replaced, and I took it to the dealer and they said: you did great, except you replaced the rocker, so I learned not to touch anything.

Martin: Wow! Right off the bat! First item!

Fred: Right off the bat! First item, right! So I’m down 70 bucks. Day one, so, and we bought – I was very interested in all kinds of stuff. I was driven by our budget, of course, which was not a lot. We used to get cash advances on our MasterCard. It used to be called Master Charge then, so I used to go and I said: yeah, I used to get Master Charge. I used to go and get 50 bucks, or something like that, and we’d go out and we bought the pressure glass and we used to haunt old Five And Dimes and buy 1960s space toys that were still on the shelf and take them to flea markets and sell them. Buy them for $0.89 and sell them for $8.00, so it was that kind of thing.

Martin: What a nice thing for a couple to have, together: a passion for doing this. It sounds like you just had a really –

Fred: Yeah, we did, and we really learned it from a dollar up, I would say. We explored that whole range of material.

Martin: You can only lose a dollar when you’re playing with a dollar.

Fred: Right, that’s true. Yeah, we graduated to auctions. There were auctions in Florida that they called Boxslide Auctions where there was one good thing in every lot and we would go through and find it and fill our VW bus up, go through it, set up a Sunday flea market.

Martin: Now, the auctioneer said that there was one –

Fred: Yeah, he did. He would say there was one good thing in each lot. We never knew what it was, and we probably threw away some of the good stuff, but –

Martin: This was long before Ebay when you could find out that way.

Fred: Yeah, we just pretty – he just promised us and we believed him and we would go through and we’d throw away a lot of stuff, give a lot of stuff away to some Goodwill or Salvation Army and, then, set up at the Dinner Key flea market at that point in time. Now, we’re in Florida, the next year – I mean, in Miami the following year, and we set up there almost every Sunday.

Martin: So, you started in Florida and then you moved back here to Connecticut, eventually.

Fred: Yeah, right around, I think, our senior year I was – had been accepted to do my graduate work at Yale in classical music, and I was in Norfolk in 1976, performing there, and I was staying up in Norfolk, and, at that point in time, every chance I had I would head up Route 7 and this was about the time where I’d stumbled on 3 Ravens antiques, which was Harold Corvin, and whenever I walked into that shop and saw the Decoys, and the Windsors, and the painted furniture, and apothecary covers, and, which is, brimming with all this stuff, to me, that looked like it was just incredible and he took a real liking for my wife and I, took us under his wing, and got us into the Hartford show, and from there forward I was, kind of, his picker, for a while and I would run everything that looked like it was folk art by him, and he would buy a lot of it.

Martin: Yeah, so you were fairly young, and that’s what a little bit lacking in this business, today – not a whole lot of young people getting in it, like you did.

Fred: It’s hard. I think, you need money. You were able to get in the business with very little money –

Martin: That’s right. That’s one of the –

Fred: – and my biggest mistakes were – even if I bought something that was problematic, which I did often, inflation would always carry me out, because in – a Windsor chair that’s been ended out still has value and prices were rising, so worse comes to worse you hold onto it for 90 days and the prices will catch up and you can get your money back.

Martin: Yeah. Now, when would – would you say this was in the 70s? When was this?

Fred: Yeah, it was – exactly. It was in ’76 –

Martin ’76.

Fred: – when I first met Harold Corvin.

Martin: Yeah, see, back then I was exploring the wonderful world of oak furniture.

Fred: One of the first things I bought was a collapsable oak high chair.

Martin: Oh yeah I bought many of those. They go down to a stroller or a rocker.

Fred: A rocker. That’s right.

Martin: Yeah, that’s funny. So, we met back – I want to say in the early 90s when you bought a, just, a fantastic Baltimore bench, and –

Fred: Was actually, probably, it might have been in the late 80s.

Martin: Was it late 80s?

Fred: Might have been.

Martin: I do remember the looking at this piece and thinking one level, but you knew it was a much higher level than that, and that takes a real talent to learn these type of things. How did you know that was such a special piece?

Fred: Well, I think, one thing that I’ve always had going for me, in a way, and I think – I always approach something from its weakest element, and I can’t help myself. That’s what I focus on. I never focus on – I remember dealers used to say to me: wow, look at the great seat on that winter chair, but I would say to myself: yeah, but the back is ugly. They’d always say: oh, gosh, look at the great – how tall the feet are in that chest. I’d said: yeah, but it’s too wide, and so, I’d always – the weakest element. It was always my baseline, so that’s where I – that’s my starting point from analyzing the piece of furniture, not the best point, and when you have a really weak element or a really strong element where you have something that’s out of balance, and that becomes problematic. This bench was not out of balance. It was beautifully balanced. It had nice, tall seat height. It had beautiful, tall back that, just, was just kept going –

Martin: So, you remember that bench clearly, now.

Fred: Yeah.

Martin: Wow! That’s great!

Fred: And it was, I remember, that it was a large bench but it was light as a feather. They, just, used just as much wood as they needed to to make it strong.

Martin: Did you ever attribute that to – I know it’s Baltimore, right?

Fred: I didn’t. I didn’t attribute it, and, I think, at that point in time very little work was being done with Windsors, and then, since then, Charlie Santore, I think, has done quite a bit of work and, probably, now one could figure it out.

Martin: I do remember my father telling me – I’ve learned a lot from my father and from growing up and he always said: look at the weakest part of a painting. If you find something weak in the painting the painting is only as good as its weakest part, and so, I think that’s, more or less, across the board.

Fred: I think it’s across the board in everything. I think you can go to a great concert of a string quartet, but if the cellist just comes in in the wrong spot, well, there’s not much you can do about it. You can say it was great but…or if you go to have a great meal and it’s too salty or it’s – there’s no great elements to it – I think it’s with everything. I think balance is the key – key to success with any material.

Martin: Now, you’ve been in this business for this many years, and everybody is talking about the changes. There’s many, many changes, and you seem to evolve, and I want to talk to you because, now, you’re selling contemporary artwork.

Fred: Yeah, we have – we run about 10 contemporary shows a year in the gallery, which is open Tuesday through Saturday. We represent 22 artists, contemporary artists, which we have exclusive contracts with, and it’s – for me, it’s something I’m doing, but I always did it as closet collector. I mean, I collected contemporary art alongside of collecting folk art all the way along. When we were coming up in the business, as I said earlier, my father–in–law’s a – is a well–known contemporary artist, so I’ve learned a lot from him, and I was buying and selling early modern furniture before anybody wanted it just ’cause I thought it was a great design, so, today, I’m saying, we’re just going to – we’re going to start going more public with it, but also know that when we had our gallery in New York we did show a couple contemporary artists, at the same time, so for me it’s the same set of tools. I mean, judging a contemporary work is the same set of tools as judging folk art. It’s very closely related, because much contemporary art, especially abstraction, which is what we like, is one–off expressions, and most folk art is a one–off expression, so every time you’re judging a piece of folk art it’s a new experience for me. It’s not like a wind-up toy, or a collectible, where there are multiples, generally.

Martin: Right, and do you deal, also, in large pieces? I think of a lot of contemporary work as really large canvases. Do you deal in all types of canvases?

Fred: Yeah, we represent 3 or – I think 3 or 4 sculptors, and some of that work, on commission, would be very large. It has to be built on site, and –

Martin: Oh, like a metal sculpture.

Fred: Yeah, metal, steel sculpture, outdoor sculpture, and then we have most of our artists’ work ranges from, it could be, 6 by 8 inches to 10 feet – tent pole canvases.

Martin: Now, how far out of this – New York City are we, here?

Fred: 70 miles.

Martin: 70 miles, so I’m sure you get people from New York for your openings. Do you?

Fred: We get people from everywhere. I – there’s a big local community, here. We have Yale School Of Art, here. Yale School Of Art is, probably, the most respected school of art in the country and has probably spawned some of the greatest contemporary artists that have ever been, and it’s very highly regarded, and we do tap into that. I mean, we represent one of the professors of painting at Yale. Some of the MFA graduates we represent, so we use that, very much, and having – being a Yale alumni, also, it doesn’t hurt, so that’s our springboard. That’s, again, our baseline. We look at what’s happening at Yale. We use it, very much, as a gauge of where the market and where the trends are going, because it’s very timely what’s happening, there, and it’s right – it’s a mile from here, and this complex we’re in, which is called a Erector Square, which is the old A. C. Gilbert Erector Set Factory, houses 200 artists’ studios.

Martin: This is the Erector Set Factory?

Fred: Factory, yep.

Martin: How about that.

Fred: So, they’re all above us. There are 200 artists’ studios, some very famous artists who bring six figures –

Martin: Connecticut has a lot of great –

Fred: – are all here.

Martin: Always has had a lot of great artists.

Fred: Yeah, so it’s a great location, so this is really, sort of, a hotbed of activity for that kind of material. I did it for several reasons. I went into contemporary because I really believe in it. I love the way it – this juxtaposition with folk art. I see a lot of relationship, and from a pure financial standpoint there’s a lot of material, a lot of folk material, that is owned by contemporary collectors, so there’s, really, a real cross–pollination that occurs from a purely commercial dollars and cents standpoint. I’ve gotten some great pieces of folk art from ex–Yale professors. They bought folk art from me, so I feel like I do my own thing. I really, kind of, walk a little bit different line than most dealers do – how I buy, where I sell it.

Martin: Yeah, now, do you do – I saw you, recently, at a show. Do you do a lot of shows, per year?

Fred: I don’t. I don’t do very many, at all. I like to – that was the New Hampshire show. I like to go back there, every once in a while – sort of, gives me a good feeling for what’s going on in the market. I’d like to stay connected to where, really, it’s what I call the trenches of Americana, where the dealers, the pickers are coming and going, and what’s really happening, and you could learn a lot. I spent a lot of time just watching what was selling, what wasn’t selling, and why, ’cause that changes.

Martin: It does, yeah.

Fred: Other than that, I do The Philadelphia Hospital Antiques Show, which is a great show for Americana, probably the best show for Americana, and I do – I used to do The Winter Antiques Show. I did it for 21 years. I’ve given that up. Now, last year was our last year. I’m now doing The Metro Show in New York, and we feel as though it’s a better fit for us with our interest in contemporary and modern, and, sort of, blending the two and doing – going in there with that look, rather than trying to do a pure folk art Americana booth.

Martin: A lot of people are talking about trends. I mean, people always want to know what the next trend is. It’s always – no one has a crystal ball. Do you, in your opinion, do you see anything gaining strength, right now? A lot of people talking about Asian, which may be slowing down, a little bit, but do you see anything in the antique market gaining, right now?

Fred: Well, I think, really, what’s happening in the antiques market is the very, very best, the very top 1% or 2%, if you’re able to identify it, is still bringing what it was or more, but there are fewer buyers for it, so it’s very thinly traded, so to buy something for a million dollars and try to find somebody to buy it that a) needs it, b) likes it and c) has the money at the moment is – there aren’t too many backups for those people.

Martin: You know, you think of this – this is a pretty big country – just say were talking about American. It’s a pretty big country, but I’ve had this happen, recently. I had – I can’t, really, talk about it, but there was this major piece and I was told by the expert that there was, either, 2 or 3 people in the entire country that will have an interest in that, and, then, those people get knocked out, somehow, by completing their collection, or whatever it is.

Fred: It’s true. I’ll never forget, I helped put together a really significant collection several years ago, probably 15 or 20 years ago, and the gentleman who owned the collection was the head of one of the biggest consulting firms in the world, and he had just sold it, and I never forget I had a great carved piece, and I called him. I sent him a picture of it, and, at that time, I had to FedEx a picture with a Polaroid, and he called me back and he liked it and I was being a little aggressive on the price, I must admit, and he was trying to say Fred it’s – and I was going on and on about it. He said: I want to say two words to you, and I want you to never forget these words, about folk art, in your business, and I said: what are those? He said: thinly traded. He said: Fred, you always have to think about who’s behind me to buy this, ’cause I’m not trying to get you down in price. I’m not trying to do anything. I’m just trying to tell you something about the market. If you have 1, 2, 3 people behind me ready to spend this 6 or 8 thousand, or whatever it was, at the time, then fine, but if there truly is nobody, then, to be fair to the customer you’re selling it to, you have to recognize that, so, rather than ask you 6,000, I’d better be asking 6,000, or close to it, to the person right behind you. If I’m going to drop it to 3 then it just isn’t a great value, and that stuck with me.

Martin: You find that out the hard way at auctions.

Fred:You find it out the hard way at auction. You do, because the true value at auction, to me, is where the third person drops out, so, if you have two – if you have three people bidding, now you’re down to two and they bring it up another hundred thousand. That is why, when something comes back, at auction, it often goes for less.

Martin: That’s right, significantly.

Fred: Yeah, because it’s that third person that’s no longer there that – it’s really a trifecta – has to happen for that to, really, occur, and, sometimes, that floor is quite low. Sometimes you have two people hammering it out for hundreds for thousands of dollars, and nobody – and everybody’s scratching their head. I see it happen even at low levels. There was an auction, recently, at one of the New Hampshire auctions, and there was, just, a very plain horse weather vane and it brought three times what it was worth. It didn’t make any sense, but, obviously, there were two retail people that wanted it, and, now, if it came to auction, again, it’d rather bring 8,000 it might bring 3, or 2.

Martin: I remember someone – this was a long time ago. I had a Hoosier Cover – do you remember the Hoosier Covers? I had one at auction and it went for a ridiculous $2500, and a guy said to me, he said: I have one in my home – much better than that one, so I’m putting it in the next auction. I said: well, it could have been a fluke. Well, his brought $250, and it was better, so, it’s just, these things can happen as a fluke, but I also – this brings something to mind.  A lot of times people used to judge what something was worth at an auction by when the dealer would finally drop out, and they’d hit it one bid above, but, now, that doesn’t seem to come into play anymore. The internet, less dealers going to auctions –

Fred: Right, you have to be pretty astute to follow that, and I think that, and I must admit I did that when I was really young and I first started out. I would go to auction. I keyed in on this dealer named Ed Clerk. I loved Ed Clerk. He was a – he dealt in Shaker. I don’t even know if he’s still around, and there was this little, tiny country sales, and if he was there I would bid on it one bid above him. I mean, I was in college. I didn’t, really, know anything, and it was my, again, it was something for me to follow, so, I think people do that, but you can get in trouble. You don’t know if somebody’s bidding for a client. They have a big – you’re also taking that dealer’s knowledge for granted.

Martin: That’s right, and it can bite you.

Fred: It could, definitely, bite you. There’s no question. There’s no question about that at all.

Martin: I usually tell people if they want to gain knowledge: first of all find a really good dealer that –  respectable dealer, and a lot of dealers are willing to share their knowledge and tell you why something’s really good.

Fred: The only real way, and there are few exceptions to this, but, the only real way to, really, amass a really fine collection is to put your trust in one or two dealers, and, preferably, one, and a couple things will happen. They’ll illuminate all the problems. If that dealer’s a very active dealer you will get the first pick of everything that they get, so a lot of what makes it out into the world – when somebody sets up with one of the New Hampshire shows, or – that’s not the first run at a lot of that stuff, for dealers. A lot of their stuff, their prime, fresh material, that is sold to their collectors, so if you get into that, in that group, and then they’ll have your best interests at heart, and you’ll learn a lot.

Martin: Now, is it, on the other side of it, like a really good picker? Do you have good pickers out there that –

Fred: I do. I’m fortunate. I’ve been very fair with the pickers. I always share the profits, 50/50, with them, and I’ve had some –

Martin: That sure makes them loyal when you do that.

Fred: – some pickers that have been dealing with me for 25 years, or longer. I mean, I just sold a – I sold a piece that a picker introduced me to 25 years ago, and I – and the people called me back, directly, 25 years later, and I bought it and I sent them a check for ten grand. I mean, they said: what’s this for? I said this is for that weather vane that you – on the barn that you showed me 25 years ago. He couldn’t believe it. He refused it. I said: you’re not going to refuse this. I wouldn’t have gotten in there without you.

Martin: That’s very honorable.

Fred: Yeah, so I think that, just, you have to do that because there are no secrets in this business. You try to get away with it once and –

Martin: You cede the show.

Fred: – they may not – and, technically, I didn’t have to, but then it just builds up, sort of like, distrust and all that stuff, and who needs it?

Martin: Yeah, that’s right. What would you say has – I keep looking at the whirly kit you have over here. It’s just really fantastic. Can you just talk about that piece, real quickly?

Fred: Well, I think, both the whirly gate, which is – it’s just a soldier whirly gate, and that flying horse weather vane, there’s a bit of abstraction going on in the way they were conceived and, again, that’s what I look for. I don’t look for stuff that’s terribly realistic, so I try to see how it will hold up with a contemporary painting.

Martin: I see.

Fred: So, for – everything, for me, is I never judge a piece of folk art on how it holds up against other folk art. That’s meaningless comparison to me, and even in, when people call – have this piece of folk art, they’ll call it a masterpiece. Well, to me, it’s only a masterpiece if you can put it in a room with a masterpiece Tiffany Lamp, a masterpiece Albert Bierstock, a masterpiece Victorian furniture, and it will hold its own in that arena, then it is a masterpiece. It’s got to be a horizontal experience. It’s not a vertical. What does it mean if a rhinoceros horn cup is a masterpiece only in a world of rhinoceros horn cups. I mean, it doesn’t hold a lot. You have to – it’s got to go out into the broader art world to see –  that’s the true test. It’s like comparing a Chevy to all other Chevies. Until you get it on the road and compare it to other cars you could buy you’re not going to, really, know, and, the fact is, if you, truly, get a great piece of, or what I call a true masterpiece, which I’ve had very few of, it just uses a sales technique by many people, and then it really will hold its own, and when you get it in a room with a Mark Roscoe painting, or you get it in a room with a Gottard Townsend High Point, or a fantastic serape, 19th century serape or 18th century serape carpet, or a first phase Navajo blanket, every – there won’t be a weak link in that group.

Martin: Very interesting, and is that – do you try to help people decorate, like that?

Fred: I do, absolutely. Yeah, so we – some of the interiors that we’ve – that were, we’ve – a few times we’ve done soup to nuts where we’ve had a little bit of a hand in layout of the rooms and a little bit of a hand in cabinet work and the furnishing and carpeting and we do blend with modern furniture, early modern furniture, mid–century modern furniture with folk art, and I try to get some contemporary work in there, flat work. That’s always the toughest, and if you get people in there you don’t have to get it in their environment, but it’s a great go with for folk art.

Martin: It sounds like a show house. I mean you could just –

Fred: Yeah, I mean, I’ve had this carousel horse sitting here for a month or so, and I’ve had various abstract paintings behind it, and every time it – I put one up someone goes: boy, does that abstract painting look great with that carousel horse. Well, of course it does. It looks a lot better than an Omni Philips would look with it, frankly. In the same sense a great Omni Philips would look great with a, to me, with a Nakashima bench below it, or a great piece of modern furniture, so I love to mix two things. I’m not a purist, in a sense that it has to be a – an authentic 19th century interior.

Martin: I like to mix. That’s how I – that’s how my house is and has been for years. I like to mix it up.

Fred: I think it makes it much more interesting, I think, and, I think, also, from a standpoint of economics, it broadens your possible risk and gain. You’re broadening your portfolio, so to speak, so 25 years ago, if you invested evenly in folk art and early modern furniture, I don’t know where you’d be ahead. I mean, I’ll never forget, and a lesson I learned with that is very early on I was putting together a portfolio for somebody and somebody just reeled out this whole big stack of Bill Traylor drawings that I could have bought for $2000 or $3000 a piece, and I wouldn’t put them in this portfolio, and I said: this is crazy, and that would have been the winner.

Martin: Oh well, yeah.

Fred: That would have been the winner, so, again, it’s just taking a few risks, broadening your perspectives.

Martin: The thing we – I’ve talked about many times on this with many different guests is if you don’t, really, like something there’s no sense in trying to put it in as an investment in mind, in your own collection.

Fred: Right, you do have to have – and, first and foremost, you really do have to respond to it and love – and love it. I mean, my feeling is that people buy more than they should buy. They should buy fewer and better, and, I think, they’re driven to do that because they’re not satisfied with what they’re getting.

Martin: Fewer, yeah, that’s another thing we’ve talk – I’ve talked about many times, too, is you’re much better off buying the one good item than ten so-sos.

Fred: I’ve recently talked to somebody, a collector, about this Dentzel carousel horse and she was just crazy about this –

Martin: This one?

Fred: – yeah, and she was just crazy about this horse, and I said: do you know anything about carousel? She goes: yeah, I have 80 carousel horses. I said: 80 carousel horses, and she said: but nothing like that, and she just couldn’t – so there you go, so maybe she wouldn’t have needed numbers 32 through 80 if she had anted up and bought – ’cause my theory is that people spend the same in their collecting life whether they’d buy 5 things or 50 things or 500 things or – it takes a little bit of financing, a little bit of working with dealers to, really, stretch, and how ever you have to, or sell things to trade things in, but I try to get people to buy less and buy better all the time. I mean, I have a very healthy dealer trade, so I sell to dealers every day, almost. Dealers come by here. They bring stuff to me. I sell things to them. I get – I advertise in all the Yellow Pages to buying estates, so I – right down to 1940s mahogany furniture. I’ll buy all of it and I know where to go with it. What I’m seen with is folk art, but I use that as a way to get access to other pieces. That’s from the dealers who may specialize in oriental rugs if they get into an estate where there’s a cigar star figure they’ll think of me.

Martin: Yeah, the really good ones – we handled one the other day that did very well, and it’s funny. It was like the next one down sold for a third of the price. It didn’t look that much different, but this one just had couple things going on that really made it set.

Fred: Yeah, there’s a full range, and then, every once in a while, I’ve sold cigar star names that people have been offered close to a million dollars for, and it’s because they were just, like –

Martin: They had all the bells and whistles.

Fred: They had all the bells and whistles and, then, great condition, so it’s – I mean, I think, as you know, seeing as much stuff as you see that something – that top 10% is where all the money is. Another great dealer told me that. He said: the top 10% is where all – something could be 10% better but be 3 times as much – as expensive.

Martin: Yeah, same with the masterpiece work for art. I mean, it’s the same thing across the board, again.

Fred: I mean, you can get a – take a weather vane that’s been painted black, and you can get the same one that’s got an extraordinary verdigris patina, and one goes for 1800 and one goes for 150,000, and that’s just the way it is. That’s just the way it is.

Martin: I have an upcoming guest. I was just talking – the reason I’m down here – Polly Bergen, the actress, is an upcoming guest, and I was really amazed. She bought her collection in the 60s and 50s, and it’s absolutely fabulous, the items that she has, and she said not one time did she ever buy because she thought something was valuable, and it’s very – I mean, I just have – some people just have the ability to have the eye.

Fred: They do, and I think – I call that, kind of, decorating with antiques or decorating with folk art, and people live with it in their environment and – more so than as a collector, per se. 25 years ago you could find some great things doing that and some of the greatest things I’ve ever owned have come that way. Today it’s a little more difficult to go out and do that.

Martin: Do you think there’s still a lot of things out there that, just, have not been discovered, like major – let’s say folk art?

Fred: It still happens. I have to say, in the last two years I’ve had two things, maybe three years – it’s been three years I’ve had two things, both of which were undocumented, both of which were extraordinary pieces, and I’m always surprised when it happens, so it still does happen.

Martin: Now, I don’t know if you can recall one single piece, but is there something that stands out in your mind that you say is the – your favorite piece you’ve ever owned?

Fred: That would be tough. Sometimes it’s the story that surrounds it. It’s the way I got it. I mean, there are probably a – there are probably 2 or 3. I mean, I think there is a pottery bust that – of a black man that I – used to belong to the great collector William Greenspan, and I think that’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever handled. It’s now in a collection in Washington state. I think the Isaac Nuttman still life, the great Isaac Nuttman still life, to me, is one of the – is a true masterpiece, and it’s one of those – the few masterpieces that I would say that I’ve handled over the years, and today it would bring as much as the great Indian weather vane that Jerry Loren brought. It might bring 5 million dollars. I don’t know what it would bring today. It’s just one of those pieces that extends out of its category.

Martin: You probably can relate to this feeling that I get, sometimes, when I see something real extraordinary and I’m discovering it for the first time. It’s only a little bit of it that has to do with the value, and most of it has to do with how rare and wonderful something is. Is that – do you feel the same way that I do?

Fred: Yeah, there’s no question about it. I mean, generally, frankly, when I’m dealing with something that’s very valuable, like that, it’s always on a consignment basis, so usually my – I’m out of the loop, essentially. I’m making a fee to handle a piece like that, so it’s, generally, not about the money. In some instances it’s been, really, about helping some churches of other institutions that really needed the money, desperately, so it’s wanting to do the right thing for them, and, hopefully, you’ll make a few bucks, at the end of the day, when you do something like that, but yeah – no, it’s not, generally, driven by its – what its pure value. If anything it just, to me, I don’t even like it. It just limits the playing field. Once you cross 100,000 at folk art in Americana your numbers drop down to just a handful of possible buyers for these things, today.

Martin: Now, would you say that the buyers for that type of thing of a – in an age group that will be actively buying for time to come, or are they older people?

Fred: I think, actually, a lot of those people are finished buying. I think that they have mature collections, not that they’re not buying, but it’s very difficult, when you’ve been selling somebody great things for 20 years, it’s hard to find that piece of the puzzle that might be missing that improves the collection, and I always say that to them. This is our goal here is adding a piece and improving the collection, not diluting the collection, so you add something that’s secondary or tertiary to something that’s already great. Now you’ve, sort of, lowered the standard, overall, so finding that piece is very difficult. I think the future of this business, and it’ll probably do down the road, is that it will be the people who collect other things that really want a prime piece of American folk art, that value it in their collection of whatever they collect.

Martin: About the baby boomers. What do you think is going to happen when, eventually, all the collections come back on the market? Do you think it’s, again, like you were talking about, earlier, that the, really, top 10% is still going to be solid, and, do you think we’ll see a shift in values?

Fred: So, you mean, by baby boomers, the people who are, like, around 60 now?

Martin: In their 60s and then they start selling and simplifying and –

Fred: What I see happening is that there’s a lot of bad material being sold. There’s a lot of fakes, there’s a lot of overly–worked material, there’s a lot of resurfacing going on. There’s a lot of stuff that isn’t even American it’s – and that dilutes the marketplace, so if you have a weather vane that’s worth $100,000 and then you see – you continue to see them at auction ’cause they’re popular, they’re bringing 15, 20, 15, 20, 15, 20, and they’ve got major problems it starts saying – throwing, sort of, like, a disconnect in this whole thing. What is it really worth, and does that collector, who might pay 100,000, does he start getting gun shy to say: gosh, if I pay 100 could it really bring 15? They don’t, really, know what’s going on, so –

Martin: And it seems like there’s a lot of this in weather vanes. I hear about the weather vanes many times.

Fred: Certainly, weather vanes, but all areas of folk art. I mean, I had a collector, recently, that sent me a picture of this carp mermaid. He was so excited about it. He just got his polychrome mermaid. Well, I knew exactly what it was. It was a – I see them at Brimfield, so I went to Brimfield and I took a picture of a 8 by 8 foot crate. It was 8 foot by 4 feet by 8 feet crate stacked with these sticking out with made in China stamped all over the box, and I sent the picture, and they were $90 each, and he paid, I think, 13,000 for this.

Martin: Oh! See, that – when you hear of something like this that’s someone who may not ever collect again.

Fred: Right, so what happens is they really get soured to the collecting, and it’s a shame, and it really does dilute the business, so I really think it – the jury’s out on what’s going to happen, and I am concerned about that. It’s one thing having something restored that’s, basically, a real piece. The Indian that you were talking about, that you had at auction, was restored. It was repainted. It’s still a real Indian, but I could show you pictures of scarfini fins that are made in Bali, right now, that are really good until you turn them over, and know what the wood is – know that it’s not this monkey pod. It’s not –

Martin: A little bit lighter.

Fred: A little bit lighter, or a lot heavier. One or the other, so it’s those things that it’s hard to know, and, I think, it’s why, if you look at Sotheby’s, Christie’s, who have “Americana” departments, they’re, sort of, combining them with other departments, because I don’t think they can find enough, really, quality material, to go through, so I think that the jury is out on how that goes. I guess there’ll always be a very small group of people who will run with that flag for nuance.

Martin: So, this has been really wonderful talking to you, today.

Fred: Yeah, thanks for including me. I appreciate it.

Martin: Yeah, thank you so much for your time. So, this is Martin Willis with Fred Giampietro, and we’re signing off.

The End

Visit Jack’s website here.

I am an east coast gal. I was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and raised in Wells, Maine. I visit York, Maine often, it has always been one of my favorite places because it is part of the route ‘home.’ When I think of why I love the coast of Maine, York is always one of the reasons. 

Recently the George Marshall Store Gallery contacted our business to be apart of the exhibit Accord VIII: A Pairing of Antiquities and Contemporary Art. Up until this point I had never visited the gallery, only heard great things about it. Before working with the museum I went to the site and was amazed. I had no idea the amount of history that existed on this very piece of property. The museum is truly a gem. The seaside setting is the icing on the cake. To smell fresh salty air while looking at art and antiques is what the tourists dream of and the ‘Maine-rs’ sometimes take for granted. 

I am a second generation antique dealer. I have been apart of 7 major exhibits since I joined the family business. This was the first that I was apart of where a pairing of contemporary art and antiquities have taken place in the same setting. I was both nervous and excited. As a 30 year old woman I realize that my generation and my parents generation have different taste. Much like fashion, mixing and matching is what makes the ‘outfit.’ And, history always has a funny way of repeating itself. As someone who loves both fashion and music I believe in the power of influence. Where that influence takes you, is ultimately up to you.

No matter what your age, to see how contemporary art and antiques influence each other in the same environment is amazing. They don’t fight or compete they simply exist in the same space together as if it was a relationship that eventually was meant to be. Finding the connection is all apart of the experience. To see how opposites attract and how influence can start is truly beautiful.

The phrase ‘what is old is new again’ comes to mind. The future is about making it all work, buying what you like and finding the relationship with your art, antiques, home and yourself.  Always remember, good taste transcends through time and never goes out of style. 

Richard Wright: I’m doing fine. Good morning to you.

Martin: Good morning and thanks for joining us. This is the second time you’ve been on.

Richard: Yes.

Martin: You were all the way back in the beginnings of this podcast and I appreciate your willingness to come back, and today we’re going to stay on a, or mostly on a topic, of mid–century modern, just for our listeners, out there, who have an interest in that, and so I’m going to, just, fire some questions at you. Your company’s been around for a while and you’ve handled – I saw on your website you’ve handled over 20,000 objects, so far.

Richard: That is true.

Martin: And, encompassing, mostly, the 20th and 21st century, basically. Right?

Richard: Correct.

Martin: Yeah. So, as far as mid–century modern – that’s a term you hear all the time, today, and, what does it actually mean and what are the years it encompasses when it comes to furniture and decorative arts?

Richard: So, mid–century modern is generally – there’s not a strict definition of it, but, generally, it falls into the category of post–war design. So it begins in 1945 and it, sort of, runs stylistically to, about, 1960. After 1960 you start to have other influences in design that, sort of, move design in a more radical place. So, real, kind of, heroic mid–century modern is 1945 to 1960.

Martin: So, again, you said that it’s not really strictly defined, because I’ve seen people sell 1970s items and call it mid-century modern. It’s, kind of, stretching it, a little bit, in the 70s.

Richard: Totally. I mean, I think that the concerns of design, the design world, coming out of the war were completely different than the, much more consumer-driven, culture of the 1970s design. There is a absolute stylistic shift that starts to occur, probably strictly, we’d start to see that shift show up in the late 50s – 1958, 1959. I’m using 1960 as a nice, round number, but mid-century modern really is – it is a cohesive style, visually. That style starts to fragment later on in the century.

Martin: Now, do you call that The Brady Bunch 70s?

Richard: Yeah, well, I think I would approach it from the higher end, which would be a radicalization of design it’s – but, certainly at the mass–culture level it is at, sort of, op art, pop art sensibility. I mean, one thing you see in the second half of the century is the speed up of consumer culture and the ability of that consumerism to absorb new styles very quickly, and that’s something that’s happening today and is quite fascinating. So, the difference – the amount of time that the avant–garde design moves to the mainstream becomes shorter and shorter. Again, that process is going on, today.

Martin: Now, why is the mid-century modern design popular in today’s world?

Richard: I think the mid–century modern, at its best, has a sense of timelessness about it. I mean, it has a modern sensibility, if coarse, so it doesn’t have the timelessness of your grandfather’s antiques, but it has a purity of design that is – that really stands apart from many other works from the century. I think that – I often think of this work as being heroic design. The Second World War had ended and design really took upon itself to try to create, not just a utopian vision, but to try to really take some of the lessons that were learned in the war, in terms of new materiality, new manufacturing processes, and bring that to furniture design that would make people’s lives better. There was an absolute sense of very lofty goals for the furniture, and it was also the first time that America led the design world, so I think that there is a natural, enduring appeal, for American collectors, for, sort of, classic, American mid–century design.

Martin: Now, would – how does Frank Lloyd Wright fall into all of this?

Richard: Frank Lloyd Wright, obviously, comes out of the turn of the century. Frank Lloyd Wright –  he really is tied into several generations, earlier, of design. I mean, I think he ties into it in terms of his growth as an architect continuing into the – to expand organic design to include things like the Guggenheim Museum and the, sort of, curvilinear side of organic versus his earlier prairie style, which was in nature but was very rectilinear. The decorative arts that are associated with that sort of architecture, his work, Joseph Hoffman, the Austrian Viennese School, is very separate from concerns about ergonomics, human form, it, sort of, perversely, points to nature, but it’s completely geometric, which is quite in opposition to nature. So, he’s – it is – it’s, really, after Frank Lloyd Wright – I mean, Frank Lloyd Wright was never – he never, really, did mid–century modern, in my opinion. I mean, he did some decorative arts in the 50s, but they were – it, really, just updated of his earlier design works. He’s really just, stylistically, not part of that movement.

Martin: Was his son involved in any mid–century – I know his son designed some furniture. Was he involved in any mid–century furniture?

Richard: I think, just, purely on a timeline you would say yes, but, again, stylistically, I would argue no. In stylistically, he is, sort of, a – contemporarily quoting his father’s work, or channeling his father’s work. In terms of the story of design I think of that as – it’s just a little cul–de–sac. It’s not part of the larger story of design in the century, and, sort of, the emerging narrative that’s – it just – it isn’t. Frank Lloyd Wright’s certainly is, earlier on, but not later in terms of the dec arts, and, certainly, Lloyd Wright is not, in terms of decorative art, or architecture, I would argue, for Lloyd. Frank Lloyd Wright you can’t deny.

Martin: I have talked to a few different people around the country about what it hot and what is not and I was surprised that there are, like, pockets in areas that people are, really, not all that interested in the mid–century modern look. Would you say that it’s mostly concentrated in the big cities, where this is popular?

Richard: Well, I guess I probably see it a little bit differently. I mean, I do think that it is more of an urban design movement, no doubt, but we get things from all over the country and there are pockets of collectors, literally, all over the country. To your point, the highest concentration is: New York, L. A., Miami, but I think that the appeal of it, especially to a younger collector, is more broad. I tend to see it break out along generational lines and I think that if you are of a certain age you may have a negative connotation with mid–century and think of it as being cheaply manufactured and, I think, sometimes if you’ve lived through an era it can feel a little too close to you. I’ve gone through that experience, myself, in learning to appreciate 70s and 80s design, which is something that was not innate to me. I didn’t live through the 50s so the – again, my heroic vision of it, the narrative of the design is close enough that I can connect to it, but I have enough distance that I see it a little more purely.

Martin: Now, speaking of the collector that collects these type of things, what would you say the general demographics are?

Richard: Well, I mean, the demographics are fairly broad. I think that there are, at the high end it tends to, actually, be a little bit of an older client because they have more disposable income. I think, at a interest level it, really, cuts to very young people all the way through people in their 50s, 60s that are, sort of, doing a second home or empty nesters that are, sort of, doing something a little more – little less traditional. So, it’s, really, quite broad. In the demographic I see a lot of people who have a bias or interest in visual culture, so people that are in the film industry, in fashion, in the art world, there’s a very high concentration of collectors within the modern and contemporary dealers of fine art. I mean, the – we have a pretty good number of some of the major contemporary artists tend to like this, sort of, very visual furniture, so it’s, sort of, a natural that people that like that visual play are drawn to this sort of work.

Martin: As far as your background goes, gaining all this knowledge, what drew you, initially, to the 20th century and 21st century design, in general?

Richard: I was really drawn to this area of collecting because of the accessibility and affordability of it. I began in this business 26 years ago, or something, in the 80s, and I was right out of college. I had very little money. I was, just, very captivated by the adventure of it all, and, being a visual person, I was drawn to the best–looking, cheapest items I could find, and that was mid–century. At that time, the real challenge was selling it, not getting it, so it was quite a – there was a – there was – it was widely available and so it allowed me to really learn the material and to, really – been involved in the formation of the market. So, the success of my business has been very tied to the fact of having deep contacts, because I was in it, I’d say, before there was even a market.

Martin: Wow, that’s interesting! Now, say a popular magazine comes out featuring a certain design. Does that affect the market in any type of way?

Richard: I think that it does. I mean, I don’t know that it’s so direct that there’s one magazine that has a lot of power, but I think that people should be clear that fashion affects collecting tastes. So, the value and desirability of categories of collecting do rise when they’re – when they seem and feel and are presented as being fashionable. This plays out in the fine art world, as well, which, I think, many people don’t want to see, but it clearly plays out in the decorative art world. So, there is a bit of sorting out of what is fashionable and what is iconic and what is important. Those are all, sort of, different things and all those – you know, you start to make choices as a collector, and you can be furnishing, which many people are, you can be furnishing and collecting, or you can be purely collecting and not really using the furniture, and we cater to those, broadly, those three different audiences.

Martin: Do you believe that this trend of people being interested in mid-century modern – do you think that’s going to be ongoing, for a while?

Richard: I think that the category of collecting is very durable. I think that it’s place in the history of design is – you can’t debate the importance of that era in the history of design. I think that the – any market is constantly in flux, and I think that the collecting tastes do change. I mean, one of the things I’m proudest about in my company is that we continue to evolve new markets. I believe that we try to lead collecting tastes and we also follow collecting tastes. We’re not in a vacuum, so I’m not selling the exact same product that I sold twelve years ago when I opened. It’s a different product mix. I think that the visual interest of vintage design, historical items, is incredible durable. Things from the past have a power for us, today, and I think that as the classic modern gets older and older the power of that continues to increase, and that, in many cases, especially with the important pieces, the value has increased, as well.

Martin: I’ve been a collector of antique boats for a long time, and I, currently, have just one, right now – it’s not, really, an antique it’s a ’63, but I also have a brand new boat and there’s no connection – I don’t feel the connection with my new boat as I do with my antique boat, and I think there’s something to be said about a history of a product and the nostalgia that it brings back when you’re living with something.

Richard: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that you feel the past life of objects and I think that if you are, at all, sensitive you feel the power of certain objects. I know very little about vintage boats, but I can see a beautiful wooden boat on the water and just – it just stands out and it’s – so there’s a visual power and there, to your point, there’s also an intangible presence. One of the things that I worry about, with mid–century, is the – sometimes the over–bias to refinishing things and – because the work’s not that old trying to make it perfect or look new. To me, that’s a huge mistake. I like to feel the life accruing on a piece of furniture – well cared for, not abused, but that’s what gives it its character, it’s patina, as we all refer to.

Martin: Right. Now, when does it – when would you say that it crosses the line? When it’s, like, seriously water–stained, or something like that?

Richard: Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s – that line is different for every collector, so, there’s not a clear answer. I think of things that have been well cared for and show their age as having an attractive patina. If things show evidence of being in someone’s basement and abused or just, kind of, ignored, yeah that’s less interesting, visually, then, sort of adopting the abandoned dog. So, it’s – but there’s a lot of grey area in between and it can depend on your interior. I get why people want things to be refinished, as well, so I understand both sides of it.

Martin: Yes. Along – sort of, along those lines I always bring up fakes in my podcast and is there more of an issue with knock–offs of design than there is with fakes?

Richard: There’s been some issues with both. I mean, certainly, there’s been a wide number of reproductions and knock–offs of things and that has cut – that’s really hurt some markets. Often times it’s less the fact that you’re confusing the reproduction with the original. It’s usually, if you have any level of expertise, pretty easy to decipher 90 – I’ll say 98% of the time, but it has watered down the look and watered down the desirability in some markets. Take something like George Nelson clocks. George Nelson was one of the major designers for mid–century for a clock company in Michigan: The Howard Miller Clock Company. His office designed about 150 different clocks in a very – like, 5 year window of time. They’re unbelievable in their quirkiness and in their visual sophistication and in their exploration of deconstructing the clock. There is a very core group of collectors that used to buy – the market does still exist, but they used to buy these clocks very passionately. Vitra Design Museum started reissuing nearly all of them. It was shocking, to what extent, they reissued these clocks and the accessibility of the clocks that looked, from the exterior, without picking them up, they looked like 95% correct. I mean, they were very faithfully done. The value in that market came down 60, 70%. It just hurt things, and made it less interesting because now you see the clocks in gift shops and they’re, sort of – the desirability of the rare item comes down if it’s widely reproduced.

Martin: Yes. I’ve seen that happen in many different designs in pieces, over the years, where something is copied and, all of a sudden, it does affect the originals. I don’t think I’d really want something you’d find at a gift shop, so – totally understand that. What would you consider would be, as far as furniture goes, what’s the American Holy Grail of mid–century modern furniture?

Richard: Probably the designs done by this sculptor Isamu Noguchi. I think you could debate which one of these quirky designs is the Holy Grail – famous cloud sofa or his famous chess table or one of his unique custom tables, but his furniture, to me, sums up what was going on in America in the Post War, because it is incredible beautiful. It’s incredibly optimistic. It’s, really, a fusion of art and design and it was produced by a major furniture manufacturer to be marketed to the masses. It’s – so, to me, the idea that a corporate entity saw the possibility of, not just good design, but truly challenging, great design was amazing and most of them were commercial flops, but one of the tables that he designed has been in constant production. It’s a wooden – it’s just a coffee table with a glass top on a tripod wooden base –  very, very famous table. God knows how many were made and are still being made. Some of the rarer tables from Noguchi, though, are the most valuable and probably the most sought–after. There was just a unique marble table done by Noguchi that turned up in Massachusetts, not too far away from you, and it was made in the 1940s. It was fantastic. I competed very hard to try to get the table. I ended up not getting it. It went to Christie’s, and it sold for $2.5 million.

Martin: Oh! Wow! I would say that’s the Holy Grail!

Richard: Yeah, that’s the Holy Grail. Earlier in my career, in 2005, I had a Noguchi table that was mass –produced. We don’t know how many. I mean, mass–produced meaning it was made by Herman Miller. It wasn’t made by Noguchi, as opposed to the other table. We sold that for $625,000, back then, so there’s a very – Noguchi occupies a very special place.

Martin: Along the same lines, what is the most popular, sought–after decorative art?

Richard: There’s probably not one iconic decorative art item, but mid–century modern really was interpreted throughout the range of the decorative arts. In America there’s a very quirky set of lamps that was produced in 1951, and first shown at the museum of modern art. It was a very interesting time when museums sponsored design competitions, and there’s a series of lighting that was produced by Heifetz that comes out of that – out of a 1951 low–cost lighting design competition. There’s wonderful metal work that’s done at that time that has the same, sort of, mid–century exuberance done right here in America, and you can’t fail but mention Italian glass. There’s a incredible Renaissance of, really, mid –century style that occurs in Italy, in Murano, with, sort of, a reawakening of the traditional crafts brought to life by the new visual aesthetics of the Post War Era.

Martin: Now, who would you say your sellers are, for the most part? Is it the baby boomers?

Richard: Yeah, I mean, for the most part – well, it’s – the collecting category as – it’s starting to become mature enough that it’s a mixture of things coming out of original homes and things coming – recycled from collectors. We’re starting to see the beginning of significant collections coming back onto the market. We’re, of course, always excited to get the call, or more likely the email, of somebody’s estate. Sounds morbid, but auctions are – we always talk about the 3 Ds: debt, divorce, and death are the drivers of many of the property that comes to market, so, what’s exciting about this area of collecting: things are still coming fresh to the market. I think that collecting categories get stale when there’s not new material, so I just told you the story about the Noguchi table that just sold this spring. That would have been the – I’m going to cry talking about it, but it would have been the finest piece that I ever would have handled in my career, so, I’ve done this 26 years. It’s exciting for me to think that those big fish are still out there in the sea. That’s what is great about that area and, honestly, about what I do.

Martin: Well, I wish you got that. I know what it’s like to lose a really good piece. It’s not fun. You just give it your best shot and when you’re competing against a major auction house, like that, it’s tough.

Richard: It’s tough when you get to – I think what’s interesting for me is the rise in valuations on the pieces. I learned a lot competing for that table and to lose a million dollar plus piece to an international auction house based in New York City is not so hard. The fact that I felt – really, Sotheby’s was taken out fairly early. It really came down between me and Christie’s. To be able to even be in the running for a piece at that level I felt very proud. It’s also fascinating, to me, to be contemplating seven–figure prices for decorative art items that – I started in this business as a dealer with $2,000.00, so it’s come a long way in the years I’ve been involved.