My love for Negro League baseball (0)

3/15/10 •

A couple years ago, I went to a black memorabilia show in a hotel in North Jersey. I wanted to see what was selling and for what price. That was before I discovered auctions.
The show had lots of vendors hawking Aunt Jemima items – vintage and new – black sheet music, magazine covers, black figurines. It [...]

A house for the birds (2)

3/12/10 •

I don’t usually go for much new stuff at auctions, but I kept passing by these cute little pastel birdhouses lined up neatly on one of the tables this week.
They were the colors of spring in their light blues and lilacs and pinks and yellows. They were either someone’s collectibles or they were handmade. They [...]

Buying 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 [...]

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 [...]

True blue Delft pottery (0)

3/04/10 •

I was new to auctions when I saw my first piece of Delft pottery. It was in a glass cabinet with other “medium-high-end” items at what would become one of my favorite auction houses.
It was a large white round bowl on a stand with lovely blue decorations along the sides – either a punch bowl or fruit [...]

Pyramid Club’s black arts legacy (0)

3/03/10 •

I was checking out the upcoming auction at one of my favorite places when I spotted it: A program for the Philadelphia Pyramid Club’s art exhibition from the 1940s.
Was it possible? I had wanted to find one (or two or three) of these original programs forever. For nearly 20 years, the club held one of the pre-eminent [...]

Birthdays and birth certificates (0)

3/02/10 •

I come across a lot of ephemera – paper and documents – at auction, but I’ve never come across anyone’s birth certificate.
Maybe it’s not the type of document parents keep along with the baby photos or recordings of first words or steps. It’s a state document that we ask for when we need it.
 
Birth certificates [...]

Listening to the sounds of noisemakers (0)

2/26/10 •

My auction buddy Janet seems to like noisemakers. She’s always picking up a few here and there at auctions. Usually, she chooses the tin toys with black images on them. 

Clackers, clippers and clappers, that’s what they’re somtimes called, depending on what type you’re holding. They should also be called racket-makers, because they are very very loud and annoying. [...]

A black car-maker in the 1900s (6)

2/26/10 •

One of the highlights of auctions for me is stumbling across history of the contributions of black people to this country. I react with sheer joy because much of it was never written or was lost or was stolen as another’s own or just disappeared.
I made a discovery earlier this week that absolutely thrilled me. [...]

James Van Der Zee’s photos of Harlem (0)

2/25/10 •

No one quite captured the culture, the love and the beauty of the people of Harlem like photographer James Van Der Zee. We all can conjure in our minds his iconic 1932 photo of a black couple wearing raccoon coats proudly showing off a Cadillac on a Harlem street.   
It’s a photo I’d love to [...]

Black women artists at fine art auction (0)

2/24/10 •

Black women artists were in the house Tuesday at the Swann Auction Galleries African American Fine Art auction in New York. Their images were on paper and canvas staring from the walls, and their signatures were written notably on their own works.
 
In many instances, they stood as image and artist. Elizabeth Catlett – seemingly always [...]

Privy to slop jars, chamber pots and the past (0)

2/22/10 •

“Maybe they cleaned it,” I said to the buyer slightly to the front of me as she hugged the slop jar/chamber pot she’d just gotten at auction. “They” were the previous owners who had once used this slop jar, hidden it under the bed for that midnight rush to the toilet.
It was a lovely pot, ceramic [...]

The glow of aurora borealis jewelry (0)

2/19/10 •

In the back of my mind, the words “Northern Lights” triggered a memory when my auction buddy Janet mentioned them in referring to some jewelry she had just bought at auction. Alaska, North Pole, Northern sky.

When she showed me the jewelry and I held it up against the daylight and the white snow outside my porch, [...]

Collecting Coca Cola: It’s the real thing (2)

2/17/10 •

I believe I have gremlins in my house. Some months ago, I cleaned up and left on my kitchen table three small vintage Coca Cola collectibles I had just gotten in a box lot at auction. An old Coke button, a bottle opener and a tiny lighter in the shape of a Coke bottle.

When I went back [...]

Early black portraits: A rare find (0)

2/16/10 •

I’ve learned that you don’t have to make important finds at auctions. Sometimes, museums themselves can discover treasures among their troves of donated and purchased items.
That was the case recently at the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent. A local writer named David Emmi came across two pendant portraits of an African American businessman [...]

Through an artist’s eyes (0)

2/15/10 •

I was at the tail end of an auction a couple years ago, waiting around for some artwork that had captured my eye. I was there with my art-loving friend Kristin, it was late and we were among a handful of holdouts, wandering around to see what finds could be had for a pittance.
We stood impatiently as [...]

Vintage Valentine’s Day cards at auction (0)

2/12/10 •

A few weeks ago, I was walking among the tables at one of my favorite auction houses, not finding too much that struck my fancy. Then, on a far table I saw a box of greeting cards. Nifty, I thought.

As I’ve mentioned many times, I’m drawn to ephemera – old papers – because you never [...]