SubscribeApril 2012
How authentic are my African masks? (0)
4/16/12 •
African wooden masks and carvings seemed to be cropping up more often at the auctions I attended. I wondered if people were shedding their links to the motherland and re-decorating, or families were discarding leftovers from estates. Regardless of their reasons, I seemed to be getting back into buying them. I have a few masks and [...]
Lovely GE Monitor Top refrigerator (0)
4/13/12 •
The refrigerator sat by the door, just inside the auction house. It seemed to be as pearly white as the day it was bought for $176.40 from Philadelphia Electric Co. On top was a round white compressor that looked like a hat box. In a 1930 magazine ad, Generel Electric had actually described the top [...]
Chairs with needlepoint cushions (0)
4/12/12 •
I was recently browsing the furniture space at an auction house, something I do pretty often because I usually spot such lovely antique pieces. I don’t buy, I just admire. I’m amazed at the awesome furnishings that some people were fortunate enough to live with. As I walked some wide aisles and squeezed through others, I [...]
Checking your weight for a penny (0)
4/11/12 •
I was enjoying my healthy lunch at Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market recently when I looked up at the back side of a scale. “Stop,” it hollered in bold red letters. “Have you weighed yourself lately?” I hadn’t, so I kept reading. “Weigh now on this Computer Scale. What you should weigh (it showed two charts opposite each [...]
Remnants of slavery – auction ads & neck shackles (0)
4/10/12 •
I was flipping through a decade-old black history newsletter recently when I came across an article illustrated with two 19th-century ads announcing slave auctions. The headlines slapped me across the face because they were so jarring: “A Gang of 101 Negroes! By John B. Habersham & Co. G.W. Wylly, Auctioneer.” The auctions could have been any [...]
Coming face to face with black history (0)
4/09/12 •
“Is that a numbers book?” the woman asked, smiling, knowing the answer but asking the question anyway. On her face, you could see the memories. It was same look I had seen on countless others who had spied the H.P. Dream Book on our table at the 2012 Black History & Culture Showcase last weekend. [...]
Topsy Turvy black and white doll (0)
4/06/12 •
The auctioneer had a hard time getting someone - anyone – to bid on the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. Several people had already bought what they considered the best of the dolls: Barbie and friends in a trunk with loads of vintage clothes and an array of Madame Alexander international dolls. No one seemed to [...]
Decorating your yard with wagon wheels (0)
4/05/12 •
I had arrived at the preview a bit late and immediately headed to the outside space in back of the auction house. It was open ground where boxes were always set up on tables and sundry other items on the ground – much too much to fit on the cement ramp among the beautiful furniture. [...]
Store-bought weaves for a pittance (0)
4/04/12 •
As I approached the auction table, my first thought was that some women would kill for this. That’s an exaggeration, but the unopened packages of dark hair weaves, buns and extensions were the stuff of some women’s – especially black women’s – dreams. The auction house had bought out another auction house and was unloading the hairpieces this [...]
Nostalgic for roller coaster & ferris wheel rides (0)
4/03/12 •
Which do you prefer? A fast and daring ride on a roller coaster or a serene swing on a ferris wheel? I’ve always chosen the roller coaster because life should be exciting, adventurous, challenging, and sometimes scary. That’s what a ride on a roller coaster always felt like to me. I would search them out, stare [...]
Joseph Holston etching & African bell (0)
4/02/12 •
Some years ago, I was at a gallery in the Washington, DC, area, and almost bought an etching by artist Joseph Holston. I don’t remember the image in the etching but it was apparently something that moved me. But not enough, I suppose, because I didn’t buy it. I’ve known Holston’s name for years, and [...]
March 2012
Unmasking the legacy of women (0)
3/30/12 •
Sometimes while researching one auction item, I’m led to the history of another that’s just as fascinating. That’s truly been the case in my discovery of the contributions of women. Many of them have touched the way we live, how we dress, how we decorate our homes, how we think and how we appreciate culture and art [...]
Treasures in your home (0)
3/29/12 •
Next weekend, I will be joining another history buff in a presentation on historical treasures to look for in your home. It’s part of the 2012 Black History & Culture Showcase that has been held in Philadelphia for the last eight years. This will be our first time participating in the showcase and our first such [...]
A wicker basket shaped like a big bug (0)
3/28/12 •
From a distance, the thing looked like a giant wasp with its wings clipped. I spotted the oversized bug when I ventured into another room at the auction house, wasting time as I waited for an etching by artist Joseph Holston to come up for bids. The thing wasn’t exactly a bug, but it had the contours of a wasp. [...]
A storybook about a black boy named Nicodemus (0)
3/27/12 •
The first thing that caught my eye as I saw the small stack of tattered books on the auction table was the bright yellow color of the book jacket. Then I spotted the red lips of the black children and old man in the center, and I knew that wasn’t good. With the red lips, [...]
Trayvon Martin & forbidden neighborhoods (0)
3/26/12 •
My auction buddy Janet pulled forth a recollection that even back then should have been unbelievable. We were standing on the sidewalk last weekend at an estate sale in a blue-collar neighborhood at the bottom end of Philadelphia. When she came to the city more than 30 years ago, she recalled, black people couldn’t come [...]
The joy of being a woman (0)
3/23/12 •
It’s a sheer pleasure being a woman. Some of the best stuff in the world is made – not made, but designed – for us, and we partake of it unabashedly. We are some of the smartest and most beautiful souls in the world – if only folks will allow us to be us. And [...]
Inside a local ‘Storage Wars’ (0)
3/22/12 •
The man was tailor-made for a Philadelphia version of A&E’s “Storage Wars.” He was a big burly guy with a belly that protruded beneath his blue pullover rather than hung over his belt (at one point, another auction-goer jokingly patted it). He was loud, forceful, persistent and intimidating – most times in a playing-the-dozens sort [...]
Pigging out on porky (0)
3/21/12 •
“Someone had a thing for pigs,” I said to a woman standing next to me as she craned her neck to see inside a cardboard box full of small pig figurines. The box was at the end of a long row of tables at the auction house, surrounded by other boxes of pigs in all [...]
Cakewalk images demystified (0)
3/20/12 •
One of the exasperating anomalies of history is that people can get lost in it. One minute they’re recognized; the next, no one remembers their name. That seemed to be the case when my auction buddy Janet and I came across some postcards and bronze sculptures a year or two ago at auction. She collects [...]
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.
