CHARITY ROW:
So I was showing off this awesome toothpick pecking bird and she said “I’m so glad you don’t bring more of the stuff you find home.”
Foiled again.
This plastic bird is about 4 1/2 inches tall. When you press down on the bird’s head a little drawer slides out and it picks up a toothpick in its beak.
Retro cool!
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We just received 12 cool prints produced* for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial (2003 to 2006). Luckily they stand up well on their design merits and don’t show prominent dates. This means they aren’t outdated like so many other commemorative pieces (think of gallery opening posters, or music festival posters: Immediate obsolescence).
Eleven of the posters are framed in a 13 1/4 inch wide by just under 26 inch tall frame. These are in great condition although one poster is unframed. There are two duplicate prints, one each of the Clatsop (which are slightly different tones) and of Fort Clatsop (one framed, one is not framed and it is a little wrinkly).
UDPDATE: They’ve been flying out of here! The prints we still have available at this time (4:30 pm on 1/26/2012) are the the two copies of “The Clatsop”, “Ecloa” and the unframed ”Fort Clatsop”. The one last remaining print is the greenish colored version of ”The Clatsop”, all the others have been sold.
*According to the publication of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design (Volume 1, Number 19, 2005):
NOBLE ERICKSON INC., Denver, CO, working with a team of partners including the National Park Service, the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Association and Washington State Parks, created artwork for interpretive panels, posters, and collector memorabilia to unify signature sites throughout the recently dedicated Lewis and Clark National & State Historical Parks.
Valentines Day is coming and what better way to say to that not quite special someone “You’re so something but it’s not special” than to get them this thing?
This vaguely heart-shaped dish is made of glass pieces and held together with large amounts of lead. The coded message is that you’re subtly saying “I don’t give a rat’s derriere about your central nervous system” at the same time.
Perfect!
It is about 7 inches by 6 inches and weighs nearly 1 1/2 pounds.
George regularly said his prayers as a child.
He forgot to say them for a long time in his later youth and adult years.
Then on one June afternoon in 1875 he found himself wishing he had kept it up.
This little ceramic figurine is about 4 1/2 inches tall.
Smurf spoons make everything better.
When you’re sick soup tastes better; when healthy a smurf spoon will brighten up your morning kibble and they’ll even add that fine note of distinction to a cup of boardroom coffee.
Thankfully there is some difference in size between these shakers. Since they have the same decoration and number of holes it could be difficult to tell them apart if there wasn’t.
They are ink stamped on the bottom Pratt. Unfortunately I’m not sure which potter Pratt made these. The search results are dominated by Pratt & Larson and the Pratt Institute and these are only salt and pepper shakers after all, so I’m giving up trying to figure it out.
The bigger one is about 3 inches tall. They are both about 2 3/4 inches in diameter.
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Traditionally the carving of small animals in the southwest was exclusively done by the Zuni. The animals were used for ceremonial purposes and became known as fetishes. With the rise of the commodification of native culture in the later 20th Century they became valued as artworks as well as religious items. Coincident with this rise, other people started copying them in an effort to capitalize upon their success.
Hence, these aren’t actually Zuni and fall into the category of relatively contemporary copies. The two in the front row are tourist grade stuff of indeterminate origin.
The two in the back are more interesting. On the left is a bear that carries a fancy offering bundle and is signed SA and bears what appear to be the numbers 70. I presume this is a year mark although it could be that I’m reading the letters OL upside-down. It is in excellent shape and is about 3 inches long.
The other consists of two bears and is signed AL. It is in good condition except one of the projectile points is broken. Luckily the bears are OK. These stand about 3 1/2 inches tall.
Both of these were carved by members of the Navajo Nation, an attribution that was made by the folks at the Heard Museum based on the style of the carving and / or other factors. Which is part of why I say these are interesting. For folks a the museum these are later copies of the ‘real thing’ and not worthy of further consideration. Some other folks see Navajo carved fetishes as an important part of what kept the carving tradition alive and helped bring about its revival among the Zuni.
That’s one of those questions that can (and probably will) be debated in academic and collector circles for the indefinite future and ultimately it is yours to decide if these are nice, fake, or nice fakes.
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This blue and white tile is about 6 inches wide and 3 inches tall.
It is marked WC which means you could use it to denote the location of your guest bathroom, pending the re-incarnation of Mr. Fields, in which case you’ll need to relocate it to your home bar.
Another fine product from Fitz & Floyd, purveyors of vast amounts of stuff you don’t need, but stuff that looks cutesy* enough that you buy it before wondering why.
This lovely renaissance cat is actually a ceramic ‘toby’ or character mug. It stands about 5 inches tall and looks like it holds about a pint. There is a largish chip on the foot ring that can’t be seen from above. Otherwise the mug is in near mint condition.
This may have been part of a larger set as one could (if one were so inclined) buy a matching pitcher.
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*That’s noise you heard was not a hairball in my throat, that’s me reacting to egregious anthropomorphizing of an otherwise OK cat.
I get that sometimes you need to put a warm layer on your hairless equatorial kierros kissa (Finnish for lap cat), but a puffy shirt? And a rose laden hat? It makes me wonder if this is a by-product of another ‘keep Portland wierd’ event (like a Feline Portland Rose Pirate Festival). . . but really?
Do you ever wonder to yourself, “what the heck can you do with the vast numbers of orphan tea cups, cream pitchers, sugar bowls and gravy boats with underplates that get donated to this place?”
I sure do.
Or did.
One of our enterprising volunteers bought some super cheap mis-matched china from us, got some wax and a few yards of wick and made custom candles.
Not bad.
I briefly considered emulating this idea and going into the business but I knew some folks that had a candle business long ago and I discovered I could make a nice mess, but the candles weren’t so good.
Now that winter craft season is in full swing we offer this idea for you to contemplate.
Of course, we can also supply you with raw vessels, figurative blank canvases for you to practice upon. Most of our odds and ends china pieces are only a few dollars, we’ll even give quantity discounts.
Here’s a selection of what we have available at the Estate Store and the Garage Sale.
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You get a dime store hero.
He may not be Neo but he can act as well and he won’t offer you the choice of two pills. The painful truth of reality is all he offers (unless it’s actually the blissful ignorance of illusion in disguise). Truth and fiction are mirages contained within illusions and only he knows the difference; but he’s not saying.
Maybe the machines will tell you instead or maybe he’s one of the machines or maybe . . .
Two cubic inches of lucite or similar clear plastic resin containing 10 pennies dated 1972.
We don’t know where this came from. Really we don’t, unless we’re offered a witness protection package in which case we might be able to recall something.
It is 5 inches tall and we estimate the volume is 16 oz.
And it’s playing both kinds of music, Country and Western. The Country Music Instant Fiddle plays a variety of classic country tunes by artists including Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, and Willie Nelson.
I believe the songs it plays include:
1. Hey, Good Lookin’
2. Crazy
3. All My Exes Live in Texas
4. Oh Susanna
5. Jambalaya
6. Beautiful Dreamer
7. Abilene
8. Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
The duration of the notes seems to be linked to how fast you play. So, you could perform “Mamas…” as a dirge, or “Hey, Good Lookin’” as the next post-punk speed-metal hit.
it stands about 11 inches tall and works, although the volume level is not impressive. If your crafty it would be a good candidate for modification! Just add a microphone and an arena size speaker stack.
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Suppose you’re looking for something for a relative we’ll call ‘Uncle George’.
George lives out of town and you won’t have to face him when he gets his present.
You’re also running out of time.
We’ve got your back.
Just get this inflatable fruitcake.
If you send it airmail it should get to Uncle George in Hoboken in plenty of time. Unless they notice that the return address city and zip code don’t match, in which case you’ll be sending next years present from Guantanamo.
Air mail, inflatable fruitcake, Hoboken, Guantanamo. Air mail, inflatable fruitcake, Hoboken, Guantanamo.
It’s like a mantra for modern America: Air mail, inflatable fruitcake, Hoboken, Guantanamo, Om.
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Two kings and a shepherd walk into a Deversorium VI* , there is a bored night-clerk behind the counter.
The first king looks around with incredulity, “When I made my reservation on-line it didn’t look like this!” “You’re not kidding, what a dump!” the second king said. “I demand to see the manger!”
The clerk looks at them with the practiced disdain of the service industry professional, “What are you two? A couple of wiseguys?”
“See you later guys, I’m gettin’ the flock outta’ here . . .” said the shepherd as he ducked out the door, “and don’t call me for bail when the centurions come.”
Stray nativity scene figures, at the Estate Store for a limited time.
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*Deversorium VI -We’ll leave the star of Bethlehem on for ya
Santa discovered long ago that it’s really hard to run a profitable business when you’re only open one day a year. To stay on top, he diversified and added the wholly owned (but off book) subsidiary of SantaCorp®, Santa Nugs 364.
Selling little golden drops of addiction to the Reindeer may not seem like a jolly business, but it sure is profitable and there’s business every day but one.
We have two of these 9 3/4 inch diameter plates showing Santa handing out ‘pre-flight treats’ to two reindeer.
In middle school he’d dip her pigtail into the inkwell, they went steady through high school and attended the prom together. After graduating they were known for their unusual sense of style and for wearing complimentary outfits.
They went every where and did every thing together, finished each other’s sentences and generally made everyone around them nauseous.
For the holidays they’d ham it up and add bells.
Not only were they incredibly cute, now their friends, neighbors and families had to plug their ears too.
The holiday pig bell is 5 1/2 inches tall.
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We had one of these a while back but I didn’t think about it too much. It seemed like something that would make an OK paper weight or a big bead. I didn’t know where it came from and didn’t think about it too much.
However, I’ve seen them elsewhere since then, in the gift shop of the Luxor in Las Vegas (at radically inflated prices).
This is not just a bead, or a paperweight or a souvenir, this is a magical instrument.
To evoke the magic of the Las Vegas experience you buy it at the gift shop at a radically inflated price, string it (as a bead) and then you beat yourself over the head with it.
When you eventually wake up, with a splitting headache, broke, and lying in a pool of your own blood you can feel like you’ve been to Vegas.
Here at the Estate Store we’re happy to facilitate this magical experience at a fraction of the cost of the real thing. You won’t need to pay for airfare, a hotel room or expensive ’food’. You won’t need to be assaulted day and night by bright lights, loud music or have your wallet lifted by the cash extraction machine that is Sin City.
All you have to do it buy this scarab and assault yourself instead; all in the comfort of your own home.
Dimensions: 3 3/8 inches long, 2 5/8 inches wide and 1 1/2 inches tall.
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Get a friend to give $20 or more to Community Warehouse through the Give!Guide, and we’ll enter both of you in a drawing to win a $200 gift certificate to spend with our generous partners at Rerun, the awesome neighborhood resale store on NE Fremont and 7th.
This is a great excuse to spread the word throughout your network about how Community Warehouse is the place to bring and shop for gently used stuff all while helping your neighbors in need. Make a deal with your pal to split the gift if either of you win and make a date for a fun shopping excursion together! Once your friend makes a donation (by 5 p.m. on 12/29), all you need to do to be entered is e-mail jocelyn at communitywarehouse dot org with your name and your friend’s name. We’ll hold the drawing on Thursday, December 29th!
After the wedding but before they had kids Elmer was put in charge of the glue division. For a while he was a mild-mannered manager, but then things got sticky and eventually he became a petty tyrant.
In a physiognomic change straight out of a 19th Century novel his external appearance began to reflect his new inner character.
It wasn’t until his nose devolved into a porcine snout that anyone really recognized what had happened. If they’d been paying attention they might have caught it earlier when this image (based on a photograph taken at the corner of Nomen est omen and Phrenology streets was produced.
As the image on this cup shows the right eye was the first external sign.
We’ve had this style cup before and it was made by Universal Cambridge. This particular item is in good condition although there are two glazed over manufacturing chips (and one tiny flea bite chip) on the inside edge of the rim opposite the graphic.
It is just over 3 inches tall.
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In 1986 the hit Motown song I Heard It Through The Grapevine* was co-opted to sell raisins. California raisins. Entirely unrelatedly (i.e., coincident) with this Californians** fled to places where land prices were still affordable for average folks. Places like Oregon.
Apparently they brought the raisins with them.
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*The song was written in 1966 and first released by Smokey Robinson & The Miracles. Marvin Gaye became the most famous performer of the tune. My favorite version is a five minute long live rendition that starts with a phone call where he first hears the news. Unfortunately I got it off a crappy bootleg mix years ago so I don’t know where it was recorded (but it’s darn good anyway). I do know it’s not from Live At Montreux, which is worth a watch on its own.
**I’m not picking on Californians for this. A huge chunk of Oregon’s population is from elsewhere, including myself. I’ve lived in places where nearly everyone grew up there. It leads to a disturbing sort of group think and institutionalized forms of behavior. Some fresh viewpoints are a good thing for any community; the hard part is to not destroy the new place you like by making it like the old place you left.
From the makers of Batholith Buddies we bring you the Ash Cube, Mt. Saint Helens commemorative edition. We have two of these beauties. The good folks at A.S.H. Co. selected the finest ash available especially for your collection of exploded mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
This collectable come with a 32-page book on the eruption.
You will certainly get your money’s worth of euphemisms.
Guess what? For once, I’m not actually trying to sell you anything*. I saw these tidbits and thought they were not only interesting but too good not to share.
Here’s something to bear in mind the next time you’re attending a pub-quiz or you’re looking to stop conversation at a cocktail party:
That’s a lot of horse . . . poop. It might be more meaningful if one knew that the displacement of a single Nimitz class aircraft carrier was approximately 100,000 long tons, or 224,000,000 pounds. But until I looked it up I had no idea, let alone what the displacement of three of them plus destroyer escorts (how many per carrier? What kind of destroyer?) It’s a lot of . . . crap, both the amount of manure deposited in New York in the pre-automobile age and the unapproachable citation used by the commentator.
I see it as a sign of the decay of reporting** in the information age, but I’m also a cynic.
In other news:
Bees “have a street value of three cents apiece.” Street value? Is this the next scourge of urban America? Is this the source of the next ill-founded Nancy Grace diatribe or Herman Cain’s next denial? Might we expect to see shady characters loitering outside elementary schools selling black-market honey-bees?
Next on Faux News: We go under-cover to expose the ways of the bee dealers! “Hey, kid: try one! The first one is free, but after that it’ll cost you a fishscale, one small trime. . . Yeah, I’m gonna be rich! ”
Bee afraid good citizens, the apiarists are coming (one if by land, two if by bee?).
* Well, not trying too hard. If you’re interested in such things you can have the March 1937 issue of the Royal Neighbor from which these advertisements were taken for only the price of 100 bees.
**I do find some hope for the future thanks to the statement in this piece that “trying to put highways in old cities was like trying to integrate a bandsaw into a Persian rug.” Just because reporting is a dying art doesn’t mean that it needs to be dull and unpoetic.
I’ve met some hard working scientists over the years, people who’d go to Antarctica for the summer and return to “someplace warmer” (northern New England) for the winter.
As a group though the folks who worked for CRREL were just as tough, if not more so.
CRREL is the US Army’s Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. They specialize in the engineering problems of cold environments, what happens to stuff when it is really, really cold and they find ways to deal with those problems.
I never had the guts to ask if any of them still had toes, but judging from the way they waddled in their snowsuits I’d say it is as likely they did as they didn’t.
I won’t guarantee that this cup will keep your coffee hot, but it should hold up just fine in chillier places.
This cream pitcher, sugar bowl with lid, two cups and saucers were all painted by the same person. Unfortunately I have no idea who that person was.
This is deeply aggravating. In my past life, when I did archaeology, it was really easy to forget that objects were just the instruments to get at human behavior. Most of them were anonymous, maybe sometimes you’d see a finger print in the clay of an ancient pot but generally the maker was unknown.
All of the pieces in this set are signed, by E. Hamiss-Taylor, which makes them very much non-anonymous. You’d think this is the sort of name that would spring immediately to the top of any internet search but I’ve had no luck.
However, even negative information is information and we can say a few things about these pieces.
The painting of ceramics was a popular late 19th and early 20th century activity. This fits with the mark on the bottom of the cups (see photo below) which dates to after 1902 but no later than 1937. Ceramic painting was an activity particularly undertaken by women and the lack of any mention whatsoever in the documentary record suggest that E. Hamiss-Taylor was probably a woman.
Since this collection remained together this long I suspect she was someone’s grandmother or great-aunt. This is only speculative, but the use of the hyphenated name is a bit unusual for the time so perhaps she was widowed and then remarried?
In any case the gold handled cups with little flowers are very nicely done if somewhat conventional for the day. The creamer and lidded sugar are a little bit less refined, but I think they’re the stronger pieces. They’re more abstract and draw on Celtic and Nordic asymmetric design. They presage the works of later ceramic artists like Clarice Cliff, while drawing on popular motifs of the day, like those undertaken on furniture (with a higher budget) by Queen Marie which can be seen at the Maryhill Museum.
Although I’d rather not, I’m willing to split this set up. The cups and saucer are available separately from the creamer and sugar.
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