Tag archives: elizabeths appraisals
Our reader’s painting, 20th century, 31.5” x 28”, sent by a former servicemember – U.S. Marine, DF – brought a tear to my eye. This is a painting of a tall ship by an amateur. It is signed in Arabic, rendered in a talented copyist style, and depicts the USS Philadelphia, a warship built between […]
Oh, my dear Jeff!I’ll be the first to confessYour acerbic finesseSinges my skin like a spark to a dress. But your piece on Ms. Flagg–Well, on that I will brag!I laughed out loud–truly cackled, by gag!Every phrase, every turn,Had a bright comic burn;What a picture you painted–what language! What swag! So bravo, good Wing–Let the […]
JC, who has sent her family’s objects and memories, now sends me her mom’s pair of pearl collars, faux pearls on silk that used to grace a common cardigan or blouse in the 1940s. These were produced by Glentex in Japan and, in Brooklyn, by an industry with the curious name of Baar & Beards, […]
PS is curious about a pair of silver stirrups necessary for riding a horse. We can all imagine a time when cars were not in our world yet, and we rode horses – or were pulled by them. And for thousands of years stirrups have been a ubiquitous and recognizable equine accoutrement. PS is wondering […]
What are these objects I list here, and what were they used for? Washbats, washboards, a washbox, washing dollies, peggylegs, possers, poss sticks, dolly pegs, peggy, maiden, plunger, ponches, and punchers – all of these were used to wash clothes with or without a wash-tub, and sometimes at the edge of a stream or river, […]
JE has a wonderful 1900s vintage Japanese necklace composed of faces of benevolent gods. The links are porcelain on sterling. Firstly, the faces (and the gods they belong to) are important to Japanese mythology; they are the Seven Gods of Fortune. They are pictured on kimono toggles called netsuke, and in woodcuts since the 1600s. […]
This frightening but beautiful African work of art is a wooden and polychromed (painted with many colors) carved BaPende mask from Zaire, part of a group collected by a world famous celebrity. The owner of these masks queries, “Where can these masks best be sold?” Indeed this collection is superb, and varied in age and […]
When I was 20, I got a job as a dancer in Michigan with a touring company of Showboat. I loved the Grand Rapids area. On a particular day off, I toured the Widdicomb Furniture Company’s Museum of Historic American Furniture (this was in the late 1970s). Modern furniture was included in the display, as […]
DS has a set of Stanley Roberts International House of Design stainless flatware, accented with an insert of flat rosewood running down the handles. Very modern, and a hot item today, as American modern stainless and sterling flatware is sleek and simple – and desirable in the market. AND there’s plenty of 1950s and 1960s […]
DS sends me a 250-year-old English engraving titled The Sea fight off La Rochelle. The work is an image reproduced from Jean Froissart’s 14th century account of the Hundred Year’s War, Chronicles (1337-1410). The engraving itself is the portrayal of a naval battle from the Hundred Year’s War – 14th century sailors falling in droves into […]
What are the value characteristics of Native American rugs? The most salient value is the profound symbolism in each rug, the meaning the rugs traditionally carry for the People. Since the early 20th century Tribal rugs have been available through regional Southwest trading posts which dealt directly with Native artists. Two such rugs were collected […]
Confession! I have a doll phobia, and there’s a name for that: “pediophobia,” an intense irrational fear of a humanoid form when appearing too realistic, seemingly too close to becoming one of US. In fact, the more realistic the doll, the more frightened I become. Thus, when JP sent me that shocking photo of a […]
HK sends me a matched pair of lamps. One is a table lamp, and the other a swag chandelier – both designed in a swirling compilation of many styles to create so much grandeur that they cannot be anything but the embodiment of the 1970s. Seeing the photos, I imagine these lamps’ ‘friends’ – objects […]
LW has a miniature pine dry sink, the type – though in larger scale – that was in use before indoor plumbing, and whose basin was typically zinc, soapstone, or copper lined. The dimensions are 8” (w) x 4.25” (d) x 7.5” (h), and the sink well is 2.5” deep. Hers is stamped with a burnt-in […]
IP met me at Avalon Conservation Labs in Goleta where he had brought an antique piece of tapestry, about 42” square, framed inside a Lucite box. The family from whence it came was involved with a major museum, and IP thought it was worth preserving. Yet he knew nothing about it. As beautiful as he […]
BC in Carpinteria has an ornate lamp, and it was, in the late 19th century, considered an exquisite newel post gas lighting fixture. In its day (1860-1880) it was as beautiful as it is deadly. Firstly, let us talk about the symbolism of the design. Lighting in the late 19th century was novel and figural. […]
J has a German saltware pottery ewer that couldn’t be more German if it tried. That style of blue relief decoration on heavy stoneware with shiny surface dates to the 14th century in Rhineland. This is stoneware which bears a salt glaze. Stoneware was discovered in the 13th century when potters in Germany found that […]
JE sends me photos of two pieces of a five-piece set of covered dishes circa 1900 by Copeland Spode. Both the style and the form of the dishes – indicating the use to which they were put – point to the late 19th to early 20th century This is the British Edwardian period, so beloved […]
This object that was once the rage tells delectable stories: here is an 1880s cruet stand. HU sends me a round, swiveling carousel of silver plate inset with five crystal cruets, topped by an elaborate silver figural handle featuring a nude putto. By the late 1880s every upper-middle-class and most middle-class aspirational families of the […]
LW called me while her friend’s house in the Palisades was still smoldering. She asked me this important question: “Elizabeth, W didn’t have an appraisal for his contemporary lithography and modern art collection. He assumed the artwork was insured under the fine art category in his general homeowner’s policy, and he seems to recall the […]
