Tag archives: antique
KT doesn’t know it, but she has a 1930s ladies evening bag in the tradition of 17th-century Viennese petit point, a style of needlework that originated with the early French Court as a pastime for Royal women. As the Chinese style of needlework was slowly being discovered during the 17th century, the Petit Point stitch […]
The importance of art to the Olympics cannot be overstated. A case in point is TM’s poster of a coveted, historic, iconic image from the 1984 Olympics, a swimmer under the ripples of the water by David Hockney (born 1937), printed in a limited edition of 750. A poster can be valuable: in this case […]
How did a massive, ornately carved, reportedly uncomfortable sofa – shaped like a gondola with arms of carved walnut supporting a pair of winged sphinx figures – get to a remote farm in Buffelspoort, Rustenburg District of South Africa? This is a short story about how the most out of place objects are usually found […]
HT sends me a photo of a sterling silver tulip-shaped engraved vase, won by her great-grandfather for ‘Best Dahlias’ in the 1904 Santa Barbara Flower Show. HT’s great-grandfather was quite adept at winning flower shows, as he was a Master Gardener trained in the fine mansion gardens of England. Relocating, he lived and worked in […]
GJ found two “blob top” straight-sided, shorter-necked low-shouldered amber/brown 23-ounce glass bottles wedged between the ceiling joists in his 1890s house below APS. They were each slightly different and covered with 134 years of dust gathered in their final horizontal resting place amid the lathe and plaster. GJ had been installing a new ceiling fan […]
In HT’s great grandfather’s day, he farmed citrus and avocados on his ranch on Shepard’s Mesa in Carpinteria. He was an early 20th century businessman and had a hacienda adobe in mind for the main house at the ranch. He hired artisans from Mexico, and the house was built with bedrooms opening to a center […]
A reader asks if restoring paintings or refinishing furniture devalues those objects. I hold onto objects that are damaged or need to be repaired; I call these objects “my orphan-things” and it has given me great satisfaction to breathe new life into them with restorations; but not all my efforts have worked. This newsletter discloses […]
When I opened that antique dresser drawer, a stiff, corpse-like doll stared up at 12-year-old me. I reeled back in horror, and I have never liked dolls from that day. So as fate would have it, I have an online reputation as a doll expert. A case in point is a photo sent to me […]
In the late 1920s, throughout California, towns and cities saw a boom in a certain symbolic style of architectural decoration; we will recognize the style when we visit San Diego’s Balboa Park, or San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts. Santa Barbara contributed to his style in perhaps the most distinctive sculptural work, located in the […]
In a little Midwestern red brick two-bedroom house in 1960s Deerfield, Illinois, there came a burly gentleman who didn’t speak English. He had a four-foot-long walrus under his massive ruddy arm with a blue bow around its neck. That stranger was my mom’s cousin from Germany, and the walrus was a Steiff, a famous German […]
This is an etching that captures the American spirit of the modern, growing metropolis that was New York City in 1926. The work, which shows the city from the shores of Governor’s Island, is by Anton Friedrich Josef Schütz, an artist and founder of the New York Graphic Society in 1925. He was born in […]
Forty years ago, in an antique shop, NH was intrigued by the somewhat sad face of the Prince of Wales engraved on a bullock’s horn, a pair of mated horns engraved with iconography of Australia in the scrimshaw technique. Engravings on horn, bone, or ivory, usually from a marine mammal, are classic material for scrimshaw, […]
BH has an Italian watercolor genre painting which features classic genre style figuration: a buxom peasant girl (wearing a very loose blouse) listens to a man who leads a burro; she has dropped her basket on the stones of a village street. The corridor of stone buildings shows us an onlooker, a young man in blue. […]
TG sends me a lovely etching of Scarborough Harbor in England circa 1920 at 13”x5” and asks if I know the artist. I do; the artist is a maritime painter of Britain’s ships, ports, and rivers in the late 19th early 20th century, William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931), who was known for his oils, etchings, and watercolors. […]
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 […]
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. […]
