SubscribeBuying auction items I can actually use (0)
3/11/10 •
At auction this week, I didn’t see much in the way of vintage on the tables, so I bought for my house. Functional and utilitarian items that could make my life easier.
I was standing outside, watching disinterestedly as the auctioneer sold off boxes of items I couldn’t use: books, glassware, electric hedge clippers. Then he mentioned [...]
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Norman Rockwell’s make-believe world (0)
3/10/10 •
I spent an afternoon this week in Norman Rockwell’s America. I wasn’t at an auction, but inside an exhibit of his Saturday Evening Post magazine covers and some 3-D life-size sculptures of scenes from them.
The exhibit has been up for the last four months at the King of Prussia mall near where I live and will [...]
Do I bring spirits home with me from auctions? (0)
3/09/10 •
I always wonder if the items I bring home from auctions hold the spirits of the people who once owned them. I wonder if bits of their spirits remain in the clothes they wore, the collectibles they touched, the photos they had taken of themselves.
As I comb through box lots or clean single items, there’s [...]
A trial, a Nazi guard & a soldier’s letter (0)
3/08/10 •
I was reading an article in my local newspaper yesterday about a trial in Munich, Germany, of a man accused of helping to murder 27,900 Jews at a Nazi camp in 1943. It reminded me of a 1945 letter I had come across last week among my auction finds.
The letter was from a doctor-soldier recounting what he [...]
Recipes, cooking & George Washington’s slave chef (0)
3/05/10 •
We’ve all collected recipes. We’ve clipped them from magazines and newspapers, jotted them down from the memory of a family member or printed them from the web. At auction some months ago, I bought a group of items that included a small box of clipped and written recipes that go back to 1929.
Some of the [...]
I started going to auctions to fuel my love for African American art – but at a bargain. I love the old masters: Lois Mailou Jones, Jacob Lawrence, Hughie Lee-Smith. I wanted to find their works and discover other veteran artists whose works may have been hiding in an attic or basement, and forgotten.
