CHARITY ROW:
Like the Baldelli coin bank we had a few weeks ago this vintage cat-shaped bank is probably also derived from the design work of Lisa Larson and it is further embellished with flowers and leaves.
I suspect it was made in Japan. It is 6 1/2 inches long, 4 1/2 inches tall and 4 inches deep.
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Mr. Froggy went a courtin‘ and since he was a bank he only paid 15% taxes on the income earned while he was doing it.
Meanwhile the hard working blue tailed fly was holding two jobs just to keep current on his mortgage for a little dung heap that was worth less than he paid for it. He paid 30% on his income.
Seething with the injustice of his exorbitant tax rate Mr. Froggy ate Mr. Blue Tail Fly as he was commuting to his second job one afternoon. Then he foreclosed on the fly family dung heap.
He was a model business-amphibian.
Vintage ceramic frog bank. He’s about 10 1/2 inches tall and in great condition. Like investment banks, retirment plans and ponzi schemes everywhere he does not have a hole by which one can remove one’s deposits. You can attempt to fish money out via the slot you put it in or you can smash the whole thing and start over.
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Rupert knew he was special, not just because his mother told his so, but because the light of the world emanated from his hind-end.
Approximately 20 inches tall by 14 inches wide and features a plastic giraffe 3/4 mounted on a brushed copper plate with savannah scene. The photo doesn’t do it justice as it’s not quite as red as the picture above, yet not as pale as the picture below and the strange effect of the light is best viewed in person.
The Watercloset Gallery will be open from 10 am to 4 pm.
Our good friend Cannibal Pig was redeemed (regardless of his past) via a federal witness protection program, not withstanding his possibly carcinogenic nature.
But yet he’s (potentially) so tasty.
He’s 15 1/4 inches tall and as a sign of his reformed nature he’s only armed with a spoon. This is fine IF you believe that a cannibal pig can be reformed . . .
I’m not sure I’d trust him!
Admittedly this isn’t in the same class as Johnny Rotten’s words at the Winterland Ballroom, but I sure feel fooled.
I thought that this was some sort of print block or ornamental swag or something but really, it’s a block of tea. Which is kind of cool and something I’d never thought of before.
Purportedly it is a brick of Hunan mǐ zhūan chá (roughly translated as Brick Tea). It is 7 1/2 inches wide, 9 1/2 inches tall and about 1 inch thick.
As you can see in the pictures it was pressed in a mold that left lettering and decorative embossed marks. Given that we don’t know how this was stored and that it came covered in a fine layer of dust we make no assumption that this is safe for human consumption.
It is a nice little decorative piece that doubles as a conversation starter. Who knows, maybe it’ll be good to have on a shelf for when the end of the world comes and everyone else runs out of caffeine.
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Set of three Oregon Centennial Plates.
These ever popular plates were produced in commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of Oregon’s statehood in 1959. They were made by Johnson Brothers (England) for sale by Meier & Frank.
As I recall they came in something like six colors including brown, yellow, green and the three we have here (Blue, multicolored and red).
All three of ours are in excellent condition and are 10 3/4 inches in diameter.
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There’s a reason that the blue in this pair of Agate bookends is so vivid and unreal. It’s because they’ve been dyed. There’s a largely illegible paper label on the bottom that seemingly indicates that they are from Brazil.
This makes a certain sense when correlated to a poorly referenced part of the Wikipedia page on agate, “Another type of agate is Brazilian agate, which is found as sizable geodes of layered nodules. These occur in brownish tones interlayered with white and gray. Quartz forms within these nodules, creating a striking specimen when cut opposite the layered growth axis. It is often dyed in various colors for ornamental purposes.”
Dyed like these bookends for instance. They stand 5 1/4 inches tall and weigh about 4 pounds so they’d be good for paperbacks and smallish hardcovers.
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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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It took quite a few drafts for Laura Ingalls Wilder to get the Little House series figured out.
This was one of the results of an early draft.
Memories of the Little House “Out Back” is a set of twelve photos of out houses in a mailing envelope (just one cent to send).
Each picture is about 2 1/2 inches by 3 3/4 inches and is annotated with a cute saying, reminiscent phrase or droll quip.
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Sometimes one has to accept that one is an over-stimulated shaggy mutt.This may not the best vehicle to use as a starting point for an intervention but it is a good way to become an enabler.
Vintage Coffee Hound cup and saucer set, made in Japan. Featuring a shaggy mutt who has had too much caffeine. Not surprisingly this is a large cup, about 4 inches tall and 4 3/4 inches in diameter. I’d estimate that it holds about 16 oz. the saucer is about 7 1/4 inches in diameter.
The set is in good condition. The saucer has three small fleabite chips on the edge and the cup is in excellent shape.
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Shortly after we last saw him the Third Elf was laid off and his job was outsourced to lower paid workers. The new plant was located near a plentiful supply of cheap rhinestones. The managers at SantaCorp® used this resource to the fullest and encouraged their new lower paid and higher stress workers to cover their anxiety with ‘more bling’.
This set of three innocent holiday angels, with rhinestones, were the unexpected result. They were imported from or made in Japan by Ardco. They stand 10 1/2 inches tall and are in excellent shape. We’re selling them as a set.
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In the late 1960′s Mr.Ed and Francis the Talking Mule both decided that they could parlay their show business careers into political success.
Initially they polled well with farmers from the oat, molasses and bridle belts. However in the run-up to the 1968 election they held a series of televised debates (best memorialized by Gary Larson*) which highlighted a whole new problem. As it turn out the two large mammals were entirely covered in hair bringing the five o’clock shadow effect to new heights. This subsequently threw the primaries to the innovator of the five o’clock shadow problem and true horse’s mule, Richard Nixon.
After that spectacular failure someone determined there was no way to bookend their careers except to become bookends, which we happily present here.
On the left is the revered head of Francis the Talking Mule, on the right, meet Mr. Ed (a horse of course).
Maybe it’s the other way around, I can’t recall.
They are 12 inches tall.
This vintage refrigerator container was made by Hall Pottery for Hotpoint (a GE brand) refrigerators. It is finished in Hall’s famous Chinese red color and is in excellent condition. The storage jar, with lid is about 3 1/4 inches tall and 4 1/4 inches square, which means it is perfect for left-overs for one person, especially if it is 3 am and the person is you.
The Hall China Company was founded in 1903 in Ohio. By the 1930′s they were a significant market force and with the introduction of commercially successful refrigerators found a new marketplace. They made pitchers, containers for leftovers, butter and cheese dishes. This is one of those late 1930′s or early 1940′s Art Deco styled pieces.
Guaranteed BPA free!
NOTE: I’ll be unable to answer emails for the next few days. If this is something you absolutely MUST have please call the store at 503-445-1449 between 10 am and 4 pm. If they don’t answer call back until they do.
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To facilitate one’s self-taught home Hindi lessons, the parts of the body, as defined by this drawing, are also labeled in English. Presumably this also works (but in the other direction) for Hindi speakers (and readers) who are learning English.
Given the illustrator’s choice of imagery I’d guess that the original target demographic was grade school age kids, or absent grandmothers who are looking for a quick gift for grand-kids they barely know in a culture that doesn’t have holiday cardigans.
The paper part is backed with cloth mesh for durability. It is 19 inches wide and 29 inches tall. The wooden sticks are 22 inches long.
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I don’t know much about snuff bottles. I know that his one probably isn’t terribly old but I like how it looks in the pictures, so here it is.
This snuff bottle is 2 3/4 inches tall and 2 inches wide. The cap is attached by two link chains and contains a little spoon. The bottle itself is some sort of marbled looking material that is not stone but I think is supposed to look like beeswax.
Yes, beeswax. Snuff bottles were originally designed to keep the powdered tobacco from caking in the humid Chinese climate. I don’t know if beeswax was actually used in traditional settings, but it seems a decent material to keep moisture out. Whatever ours is made of it is moderately soft and not terribly scratch resistant. I’m pretty sure it isn’t actually wax, but I haven’t licked it to make sure.
The inset stones are made to look like coral and turquoise but seem to be glass. The protective metal bands look like materials I’ve seen used on products from India or Nepal before so I’d guess that is where this was made too. Interestingly a lot of somewhat similar ones are out there and advertised as being from Tibet. My understanding is that due to the occupation of Tibet by the Chinese trade relations with the west are somewhat inhibited. I’m skeptical that those bottles are correctly advertised and I won’t speculate any further on where this one is from.
There is a maker’s mark on the base but I haven’t tried to figure it out. I’ve rationalized this through the presumption that a snuff bottle is the sort of thing you are in the market for already, or have no use for what so ever. If you’re in the market for one you almost certainly know more than I do and possibly already understand the stamped mark.
Rumor has it that these bottles also work well for perfume. Some advertisements also suggest that they could hold opium but I’m not sure that putting sticky addictive goo inside a bottle with a really small opening is a good idea. It seems that it’d be really hard to get out but maybe this is a practical engineering problem I don’t understand (and don’t care to).
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After a while selling things one get to know the taste of certain customers. I’m willing to bet this might be the kind of thing that Nancy wants. She tends to be right on top of what we post, so if you want to beat her to it you better get moving*.
UPDATE: Gone! Sold to Nancy…
This is a nice little Airguide thermometer (4 1/4 inches tall, 3 1/2 inches wide) from no earlier than 1930. From what I can tell it works OK, but I haven’t tested it at the extreme limits of the gauge (in either the oven or the freezer).
The chrome is still shiny with no rust spots or pitting and the black paint is also in good condition.
I’m not sure what the indicator dial is made from but it is in fine shape and the glass cover is OK too.
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*Unless she doesn’t want it now that I’ve suggested she might. If that’s the case this could be here a while and maybe you should go have a cup of tea before giving us a call.
The moment I saw this I flinched. Memories of Sunday Mass at the crack of dawn came flooding back and the long forgotten fear that Mom would want me to be an altar boy caused my guts to roll.
In retrospect I realize that I probably didn’t have to worry. My older brother’s witty comment years earlier (to the archbishop) likely got me on the Catholic not suitable blacklist before I was even born (He said something like “You’re wearing a skull-cap (actually a Zuchetto); do you have one with a propeller too?”). The archbishop laughed it off but I’m sure that it was reported and somewhere in the unknowable mass of a 2000 year-old bureaucracy there was a notation, in triplicate: operor non fides suus pius.
Although I could be wrong, I think this is one of those little trays that the altar boys held under your chin during communion in the event any crumbs dribbled out of your mouth. It’s be disrespectful to lose bits of the transubstantiated savior and I suspect he’s hard to get out of the carpet.
This one has a 7 inch diameter brass tray and a 7 inch long handle. On the back it is engraved with a dedication reading “Presented By Nativity Service Mothers Cincinnati 13 Ohio”.
It’d make an interesting service piece for your annual winter solstice dinner.
Until the day he ate the first shoots of the spinach crop their relationship was idyllic, like a story book fable. But Millicent swore that the young buck had gone too far this time. She grabbed a handful of beet greens and a hot chile pepper and decided to teach him a lesson he’d never forget.
If she didn’t strangle him instead.
This frightening vintage plaster statue is about 12 inches wide, 8 inches tall and 8 1/2 inches deep.
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Set of eight gold-edged dining plates celebrating the 34th annual banquet of the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association. They’re in great condition (like they were used only once) and are 10 1/4 inches in diameter.
After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 the 48* states were faced with the question of how to regulate the alcohol market.
The majority of them decided to essentially privatize and license the industry but 19 states and a few smaller jurisdictions recognized the potential windfall** that controlling booze meant for the state coffers.
By 1937 the state alcohol control agencies decided that ‘organizing’ was the next step. Presumably this was not overt racketeering but an effort to share industry best practices and to leverage each agency’s limited power into a combined, syndicated force.
Besides, once you have a national organization, you have a built-in excuse to take trips to conferences at the taxpayer’s expense.
If you’re really successful at this you can even get special gold-edged plates made for the annual meeting!
This set of eight gold-edged plates were specially commissioned for the 34th (woo-hoo!) annual banquet of the National Alcohol Beverage Control Association. Apparently they couldn’t come up with a decent image for the center of the plates so they went with the banquet menu.
I see it as a symbol of government agencies spending like drunken sailors.
The Americana is now the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers but as this vintage postcard shows it was the perfect place to hold an alcohol control conference. It’s in an unregulated state *** and every room has a bar and TWO telephones for drunk dialing the folks back home.
* With the entry of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union in 1959 they chose to not adopt the liquor control model.
**On the face of it the potential economic windfall is meant to offset the depredations of demon alcohol through enlightened management of the unwashed masses. Interestingly 2/3rds of the items in the NABCA news ticker are about profits. Not one is about the gun-toting, rum-running, criminally controlled, amoral wastelands of the 31 states that are not part of the NABCA.
A secondary line of evidence can be seen in the management of alcohol in the home state of the NABCA president at the time of the 34th conference. He hailed from New Hampshire which has conveniently located two outlet stores on an expansive (16.71 miles) stretch of Interstate 95. One is located on the southbound side of the road and one northbound and they primarily sell cheap booze to folks driving in from out-of-state. These folks substantially contributed to the $521 million in 2010 alcohol sales ($130 million in profit), significantly up from $255 million in 1998. As the Commissioner said “… another record-breaking year … Total sales increased … profits were up …focus this year has been on renovating and relocating underperforming stores … made a concerted effort to better the New Hampshire Liquor Commission and add more profit to the bottom line. I am proud of the gains we have made as a team … there is more to strive for and achieve in our future … brighter and more efficient stores, better facility locations, greater selection and sharper prices.“
I suspect the unwashed masses aren’t the ones who need to be especially careful of the perils of alcohol.
***This was not just a one-off accident. Although the sample size is small (n=15 out of 74, or 20%) EVERY conference I can easily find location information for was held in a non-control state. A short-sighted analysis would see this as a great excuse to get rid of the OLCC. Maybe, just maybe NABCA would hold a conference in Portland then and give some legs to the poorly thought out convention center hotel proposal (Happy 7th birthday !).
Don’t just stand there like a gape-jawed guppy. There’s no trout that there’s a lot to lake about this piece, it’s pretty bass.
This pitcher or vase is 12 1/2 inches tall and has one chip on a lower lip. It’s nothing to carp about and I’m sure a ceramic sturgeon could fix it. In the meantime it’d look good perched on your mantle-ray.
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Suppose for a moment you need to transport a cake.
Perhaps you need to carry this cake across and international border as part of a global confectionery smuggling ring. Maybe smuggling cakes through customs doesn’t have the same thrill it once did and you’ve moved on to smuggling cakes into Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879 meetings?
Wouldn’t you want to have a tried and true cake carrier? One you can rely on, one that won’t give you away as a heretic?
This is the cake carrier for the job. It has been extensively used and the lower tray bears many radiating lines from the plethora of cakes that have been cut upon it.
Overall it is in generally good condition and it was taken care of in its past life. They even spruced up the lid with a decorative paint job* and by replacing the knob with a glass one.
Medium cake sized!
The maximum dimensions are approximately 11 inches in diameter and 7 inches tall.
*It’s possible that the decoration is the way it originally came. It looks just a bit off so I think it is a later addition.
Set of three matched vases, marked Made In Japan. They have a double-dipped green and blue drip glaze over dark orange. I suspect these are from the late 1950′s or early 1960′s. They’re all in good condition and stand 6 inches tall.
We’re selling them as a set.
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No, seriously, what the heck is going on here?
I get that it’s a fake tea set with the mother cow as a pot, sister sugar and baby brother bull as the cream pitcher (thank goodness for transgenic organisms, now the bulls make milk too!).
I can’t tell if they’re about to have dance party (a barnyard ball? a hoe-down?) or if momma’s had enough of sonny’s B.S. and is going to club him over the head with the milk bottle. Either way sister sugar looks like she’d rather be somewhere else, anywhere else; she’s got a spoon and some flowers and is ready to hit the road if only you’ll help. . .
There is some slight damage, including a chip on mother’s ear and a broken rake in the boy’s cloven hand. The tea-pot is about 7 inches tall. I’d probably not use them for actual foodstuffs, but the lid of the tea-pot and the sugar bowl can be switched as a morality lesson on the potential horrors of Frankenfoods.
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This vintage bathroom scale is by Borg* which was acquired by Sunbeam-Oster in 1993. Given the streamline design it probably dates to the late 1940′s or early 1950′s. The design can be seen in the drawings submitted with a patent application in 1945 (awarded in 1948) so it probably isn’t any older than that. By the early 1950′s Borg needed to update its product line and introduced the ’Flight’ scale, designed by Raymond Loewy Associates in 1953 (at the outrageous price of $15!).
If this is your sort of thing I recommend looking at The Book Of Scales (Stan B. Hansseen, 2007). It’s pretty interesting, unless it’s not, in which case it’s pretty boring.
Our scale seems to work (the result was within the expected range) and it is calibrated up to 250 pounds.
As it turns out the the Borg scale isn’t just a means of measuring the deleterious effects of what you’ve eaten lately. There is another Borg Scale which is a measure of perceived exertion in sports of patient physical tests. This was named after Gunnar Borg, a psychologist, who developed the scale, along with other mechanisms, to better understand how people perceive the intensity of experiences.
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*As someone who spent winters in the late 1990′s frozen into a shack in rural America I immediately thought of the Borg a la Star Trek. I also realize that the “these are not the droids you’re looking for” paraphrase is actually a Star Wars (not Star Trek) reference, but why pass up the chance to use it?
We have recently gotten two old globes. One of them is less old than the other and simply shows that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics still controls much of Asia. We know this predates the dissolution of the USSR in 1990 but post-dates the end of the American war in Vietnam in 1973. We’ve had similar ones in the past and they’re not that unusual, even though they’re interesting to check out. $15
The other one is quite a bit older and shows a vastly different period in time.
This is the Replogle Air-Ways globe (10 inch size). It shows all the world’s major airline routes and political subdivisions of the day. It was made somewhere in the late 1930′s or early 1940′s (see this 1943 sales advertisement). It is in good condition and sits in a cardboard stand (to save on metals for wartime use?). The stand is printed with a horizon ring that shows travel time based on a 300 M.P.H. flying speed. We also have a piece that goes into a peg at the North Pole and acts as a scale (at 300 M.P.H.) for Great Circle flying distance and time.
While it’s pretty neat to think that 300 M.P.H. was once the upper limit of air travel speed I personally find it most interesting to see how the world was once divided. Check out the footprints of European colonialism in Africa and Southeast Asia and the radically differently structured Middle East in the slide show below. $50
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