BL sends me a fabulous yellow Steuben glass set, a barware service designed and created in the late 1920s by Frederick Carder (born England 1863, died Corning, NY, 1963) who was head of Steuben glass from 1903 – 1930. BL wonders about the color of his glassware set – and the history. The pattern is […]
SB sends me photos of a 19th c. ceramic figure; a relief-painted scullery maid holding a gold-gilded metal cookpot, and seated on a gold-gilded metal chair. Such an interesting combination of materials here: a pottery figure, glazed and painted, seated on a gilded metal chair. To produce such a piece in the 19th c. took […]
RH sends me a tin children’s ride-on rocking horse that has been living in his garage for years; he THINKS it belonged to his mom but he is not sure. I believe this horse was his mother’s mom’s or her dad’s, as I think this toy dates from the late 19th early 20th c. These […]
JJ has a wonderful goose-neck floor lamp, found at the Earl Warren flea market. The base is a naturalistic bronze – a round figure of a lily pad featuring a little crawfish with tiny minnows. The base is stamped R B and Co., with what appears to be two sets of numbers which likely indicate […]
RH has a Chinese style coffee table with a startling scene of ancient Chinese Court life, composed of applied carved semi-precious stone figures. Two of the six figures are battling: there’s a man wielding a bamboo stick and another kneeling, the other figures look on from an elegant pagoda. RH has always wondered about this […]
JS has a small painting on canvas purchased from a booth at the Earl Warren Flea Market. Those two figures are saints, but what else can I say about the work? She writes she has never before seen such an unfortunate looking canine and had to have this work!! First, congratulations JS; you scored. This […]
Years ago, RR inherited a tall pottery umbrella stand which was shattered in a recent wildfire; she had discovered two shards that, when put together like pieces of a puzzle, read RN 288102 and RN 284106. A trace of a word is above these marks, “Melbou-” possibly for Melbourne, more than likely the pattern name. […]
OS asked for a dollar estimate for her Barnaby Conrad signed lithograph. When an artist is a huge personality with a legendary past, “comparable sales” (prices paid of past works) will NOT accurately reflect the stature of the artist’s oeuvre. Artist, author, portraitist, cabaret owner, bar room pianist, bullfighter, friend to writers, one-time Vice Consul […]
PP has a weakness for vintage hats; for the past 10 years she has paid $300 a month to store her collection of 1950s hats. She sent me a picture of hat which is a cross between lime green and avocado, a cloche hat with a gold silk band. The interior is marked for Mousse […]
GG sends me a beautiful leather-bound book, The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), The William Caxton Facsimile Edition; of which only 500 were published by Cambridge University Press in 1973. She has #248, signed by Cambridge University scholar Walter Hamilton of Magdelene College. On the last page of this huge volume is a wonderful […]
LM sends me a photo of a terra cotta bust (at 30” tall) of a gorgeous young French female of the late 18th century. Her beauty is classic even today: flowing hair, effortless smile, full cheeks, upturned almond shaped eyes, a heart-shaped face. Madame Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) was not only one of […]
In 1960, the MET held its famous museum show of industrial design called “Ideas for Living.” A designer’s showcase of streamlined ways to simplify life, repercussions are still being felt today in post-post modernism. TT owns a stove and range combination that was built into a Santa Barbara condominium in 1962 and has stayed in […]
“Mr. Watson, come here, I need you!” So said Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant in 1876, and those were the first words understood – and heard – through a telephone wire. Bell had spilled battery acid on his pant leg, and he needed help before the acid burned through the fabric. Thus began the […]
I have clever readers who connect material objects with present day symbolism: FR asks, “What do I really see when I see a mask on a face?” Apropos to our past three years, she was compelled to rethink her huge three-foot Venetian papier-mâché mask of the face of Michelangelo’s David. She mentions seeing her attractively […]
Mickey Mouse is trending in memes; as of January 1, 2024, he entered the public domain. Disney fought for years to block this day, but to no avail. Now the mouse can be made to say or do any number of scandalous and snarky things: social media is awash with creepy Mickeys such as the […]
HG scored this flea market book: Daisetz Suzuki’s Zen and Japanese Culture – a classic printed in hundreds of languages. This 1959 edition was published by the Bollingen Foundation, known for publishing books of significant impact since 1940. This title has always been of value in the market since its first printing in 1938. In […]
DD sends me a seafront shot of what she thinks is a view of a church and a bathhouse (note both sections of the photo). I searched for a similar vintage photo, so that I could identify the seaside church with two spires and a Roman-style boathouse close to the shore. Come to find out, […]
Straight from Butterfly Lane, I have a question from a reader about a pair of candlesticks: PJ says he wants to sell the sticks you see in his photo, as they are not his wife’s taste, and have been inherited by him from someone to whom he had little connection. They are of significant weight […]
An artist in Montecito was gifted a unique ceramic charger plate found at a thrift store in Goleta, signed ‘M Arntz’; she writes that the blue glaze has a delicate shading of beige on a textured surface, a work of art. Indeed, it is. The work is by Michael Arntz, a local hero in the […]
FM of Montecito sends me a photo of his grandfather’s vintage Mallory hat, and wonders what became of the venerable custom and manufacture of American fedoras. The story is a sad one in my mind because a handsome man with a hat is irresistible. FM’s hat was made in 1920 by the great American hatmaker […]
Apologies: the photo is not so good, but FK, an older resident of Montecito, sent me a Kodak photo of her Temple Lion in the U.S. Post, asking me if her Chinese ceramic was in fact late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) as told by relatives, and, what is a temple lion, and why a lion? I […]
SR sends me a photo of a pink and blue gold gilded porcelain bottle with an ornate gold stopper and interesting “scoop” or funnel to the top in gilded metal. SR calls it a MOURNING BOTTLE, and says it was a gift of Sir Benjamin Rycroft (1902-1967), a pioneer in corneal surgery, and one of […]
A reader’s Great Uncle Len lived, for almost 95 years, in a large house close to the Mission in Santa Barbara. Our reader has inherited the contents of Len’s precious steamer trunk, and is asking “WHAT do I do with a trunkful of photos, clippings, photos, schoolbooks, school report cards, ledgers from the family business, […]
When an object or a collection is welcomed into a museum, values are raised for objects with similar provenance; a MJ reader’s Bob Dylan collectible vinyl album is a great example of this phenomena, albeit on a celebrity scale. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there is now a museum dedicated to the life and works of Bob […]
A Montecito Journal reader has a series of works that are dear to my heart. This is a portfolio of early 19th-century foreign and European landscapes rendered in 50 plus lithographs by the Scottish artist David Roberts (Edinburgh, 1796-1864). I had a year abroad in grad school at the University of Edinburgh and met my […]
What do these faces reveal? We see Native American Chiefs circa 1838 pictured in two wonderful lithographs. JF owns these two portraits of distinguished Native Americans, and he wants to know how the portraits came to be. Were they painted “on site” in a Tribal village? In a studio? Interestingly, the artist is notable, but […]