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.

This is a nice vintage Turnabout “4 in 1″ Dumbo cookie jar. The head and body can be rotated to display four different configurations of Dumbo (and was used for other characters too, like Mickey and Minnie and my favorite, the Donald Duck/Jose Carioca combo).

He stands 13 1/2 inches tall  and is in good to very good condition with no chips or cracks. Even the over-glaze paint is in much better than average condition.  Often on these jars the paint is largely gone, due to handling wear and washing.

Not surprisingly the design is patented*. What is surprising (to me) is that the patent for a reversible cookie jar of this sort wasn’t issued until 1944 (and again for good measure).

It’s odd when one considers that Dumbo (the film) was released in 1941 and Dumbo (the character) was nominated as Time Magazine’s mammal of the year in December 1941, even in the face of more pressing world events. He had originally been intended to be the cover character for the final issue of the year, but with the attack on Pearl Harbor and the American entry into the World War he was demoted in favor of General MacArthur.

Given the divergent dates between the release of Dumbo and the successful patenting of the reversible cookie jar (note the patent was issued when this piece was made) I suspect this particular piece was made after 1944 and may be from the early post-war period.

*The patent holder was an employee of the American Pottery Company. This company made the cookie jars and then they were sold to the Leeds China company, which was a distribution firm that had the license to sell Disney products.

To further confuse things American Pottery Company was involved in cooperative efforts with the American Bisque Pottery Company (which in turn worked with Ludowici-Celadon Co., Terrace Ceramics and made and decorated jars that were distributed by Cardinal China Company).

Dux was a San Francisco based company started by Swedish designer Folke Ohlsson  around the time he moved from Sweden to the United States in 1953. By 1955 Dux was featured in major trade magazines as mentioned in Arts and architecture: Volume 72 (1955):   “Dux: A complete line of imported upholstered furniture and related tables, warehoused in San Francisco and New York for immediate delivery; handcrafted quality furniture moderately priced; ideally suited for residential or commercial use; Write for catalog – The Dux Company 390 Ninth St. San Francisco“

Ohlsson is also credited with introducing the idea of shipping furniture disassembled in a flat pack or knocked down fashion, thereby reducing costs and contributing to the democratization of design.

As anyone who has ever exhaled a deep breath in the vicinity of furniture from that Swedish place beginning with the letter ‘I’ that I won’t mention by name here knows, flat pack furniture sometimes doesn’t hold up well in the long run. This may also be a problem with older knock down furniture as the corners/legs of this piece look to have after-market reinforcement blocks. Who ever did this did a nice job. Also, there is one very small crack in a stretcher and two slightly grey spots on the top itself.

All of these details may be seen in the pictures.

When made up this table is 19 1/2 inches wide, 29 1/2 inches long and stands 20 1/2 inches tall.  As the mark shows it was made in Denmark. Even with the minor flaws I’d consider it to be in good condition.

Just yesterday we offered another Carol Grigg print, Wearing the Robes. We have two copies of this one, titled Learning the Song and they came out of the same collection of unfinished projects. Like the other print these are 24 inches by 18 inches and have some minor crinkles (notably in the corners). Unlike the other print these do not have any faint stains. $30 each.

UPDATE 2/4: One has been sold.

Funny the things people find when they’re cleaning out the house. Take this Carol Grigg print for instance. It’s been packed up for a long time and was never framed. One of our generous volunteers brought it to us in recognition that if it takes 20 years to start a project it stands a good chance of never being completed and one might be better off without it at all.

So here we are. This print is 24 inches wide by 18 inches tall. It’s in good condition with a couple minor wrinkles in the corner and three really hard to see reddish spots near the upper edge (almost directly over the rider’s left hand). They’re barely discernible in the picture.

Because of this minor damage and since the print is unframed we’re willing to let it go for $25.

Happy February 2nd. It’s also  Groundhog’s Day, Candlemas,  Imbolc, and/or St. Brigid’s Day.  It’s a busy day with all those holidays stacked one atop another. Luckily they’re pretty much mutually exclusive and none of them have any relevance to the subject at hand, namely this vintage love seat.

It’s a decent old piece. The wood work is nice and the upholstery is in fair shape but in a somewhat dated pattern (little flowers, thank goodness it’s not plaid). Generally it is in fair condition.The major strike against this piece are two water stains, one on the far left edge of the seat and on the left arm and one on the upper portion of the left side back.

I gave them both a good sniff and they don’t smell bad or even seem to stink at all. This is a good thing, 1) ’cause I don’t have sinuses saturated in wretchedness and, 2) the love seat can still be used until you can get to reupholstering it.

This piece is about 58 inches wide, 36 inches tall and 32 inches deep. The exposed wood work appears to be mahogany and it has a collection of carved flowers and leaves at the center of the back.

In real life Big Bird is an “eight-foot two-inch (249 cm) tall bright primrose-yellow bird.”

Really, he is.

He’s known for being both easily confused and for being surprisingly talented.  Among his many talents are skating, dancing drawing and riding a unicycle. This is a little incongruous since he is described as a six year old in the TV show’s writer’s guide.  Luckily slight inconsistencies like this haven’t undermined his career.

He’s also know for saying wise phrases as “I guess it’s better to be who you are. Turns out people like you best that way, anyway” which seems equivocal and subject to revision at a later date. Maybe he’ll decide that people will like him more if he’s a cookie jar? Obviously, if this really were Big Bird’s favorite cookie jar it would be more than just a touch narcissistic.

What Big Bird is here, for us, now is a cookie jar.

He’s 12 1/2 inches tall. Although he looks like he is from about the same era as the E.T. lamp we just had the text along the edge of the base shows the design was copyrighted by the Muppets in 1971.

This is a BCM/HL Registered Design which is a mark of high quality furniture. Well, I hope it is.

The BCM/HL label seems to be something of an enigma, with no one exactly sure what it stands for. I did a little looking around and it seems that BCM most likely stands for Bath Cabinet Makers.

Not the ‘rubba-dub-dub’ kind of bath, but Bath, England, which might be most familiar from reading Chaucer in high school.

The HL component of the name is unknown to me but it should be decipherable with access to the correct references (which I don’t have).

Bath Cabinet Maker’s was founded in 1895 and claimed to produce the highest quality furniture in England. At some point after the late 1960′s the company was absorbed into the Herman Miller empire, however the brand survived to some degree at least as late as 1984.

This armoire/wardrobe is about 40 inches wide, 77 inches tall and 17 inches deep. It is in great condition and has two clothes hanging bars in the upper section, with attached hooks. Below is a full width drawer.

 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.