Tag archives: vintage
I authored a little book prior to the Pandemic titled No Thanks Mom: The Top Ten Objects Your Kids Do Not Want – to my surprise it went viral. The heart of the book is my generational differences chart (I cover amusing and accurate differences in homeownership, design trends, and acquisition styles between the generations). […]
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 […]
Among the best advice for discovering a hidden valuable is to go through the handbags in an older woman’s closet! I am often called to a home to appraise a specific object or group of valuables, but often I will discover something completely unrelated. Here are a few of these discovery stories: 1. A newspaper […]
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 […]
Gloria, who wishes she were as lucky as the picker who found a so-called Van Gogh, sent me a Wall Street Journal article about a small 18×16” painting at the center of a $15 million dollar battle. Is it a real Van Gogh? The world of scientific art analysis says it is a Van Gogh […]
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 […]
The Boys and Girls Club Thrift Store in Ventura was an unlikely place to find a Kundalini yoga ‘sound bath’ practitioner’s quartz crystal singing bowl, but JE writes me that her “FIND” is a whopping 12” diameter 10” tall delicate blue bowl. She thought it was expensive at $75 (with rubber mallet); shoppers can find […]
My daughter-in-law Meredith asked for the gift of an early 20th century white Damask banqueting tablecloth that had been owned by my great-aunt. Perhaps your family set tables this past season using the “canvas” of a fine tablecloth for the “artwork” – the meal prepared at home. The history of the tablecloth involves art history, […]
Over the holidays, my family treated each other to two nights of a bougie hotel experience in Encinitas, instead of forcing one family member to host Christmas. The pricey hotel experience featured the work of a choice local photographer as artist-in-residence; an ocean-loving surfing creative artist-athlete whose huge glossy canvases transformed the hotel’s corridors – […]
RF has two exquisite Japanese woodcuts, and while she couldn’t quite make out the signature, I can. It is that of Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), a leading artist of the Shin-hanga (“new print”) movement of the early 20th century in Japan, which focused on the techniques of traditional woodcut or watercolor, but borrowing from the Western […]
This article is about my early 19th century medal, an Order of Knighthood, which may be connected to my partner’s family history. When objects of history lie in a drawer for years (I don’t remember where I got this) and are rediscovered – the find is historically relevant to my partner! You see, my partner’s […]
HH has a 1920s Sterling and enamel medallion from the Royal Antediluvian (‘before the flood’) Order of the Buffaloes in red, white, cobalt, and turquoise; made by Fattorini & Sons LTD., Jewelers, Bradford House, Birmingham. The red ribbon is embroidered ‘RAOB Grand Council.’ The Sterling is hallmarked with a lion and letter E, the piece […]
FF has a nice midcentury example of a technically challenging type of glass; Sommerso, or “submerged” – a technique requiring skill and dexterity which developed in Murano, Italy in the 1930s. His vase is in three colors of glass (colored amethyst to cobalt to crystal clear) and stands at 8” tall. It weighs quite a […]
PP has a 20” plaster casting of a Dromedary (Arabian) camel ‘after’ (reproduced from) a sculpture by Antoine-Louis Barye (1795-1875), the great bronze artist/animalier of the mid-19th century. Sculpture of this period, in which Barye was a leading figure, had a story to tell; and it was a monumental story. This is the period of […]
