As I comb through box lots or clean single items, there’s always that question in the back of my mind. In the quiet of my living room, I listen or look for something – a sound, a movement – but nothing happens. I’ve never felt a presence with me in the room. I do feel a reverence toward these people who lived years before I even existed.  

Are they looking over my shoulder as I sit there going through their “stuff”?

Is the woman who left the stack of metal and bone knitting needles remembering the last shawl she made? Is the little girl who wrote her name and troop number in her Girl Scout Handbook remembering how proud she felt? Is the mother who carefully catalogued the family slides of the addition to her house remembering the construction mess?

Even if their whole spirits have gone, I do believe that each of them left a dab of themselves behind. We tend to put our hearts into the things that make us happy, so it makes sense that a snippet of us remains. Those snippets, I believe, are the things that connect us living beings with those who no longer live, a continuation of the life cycle that runs like a thread through mankind.

We all know the story of the most famous of spirits. The three that guided Scrooge in Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” opened up his poor small miserable life into one that welcomed others inside. Scrooge emerged from his Christmas Eve journey through his past – and future – a changed man who embraced family, love, giving and food.

I suspect that any spirits I bring home are of the same sort. I buy art at auctions, African American art in particular. The art speaks to my soul, and I believe that the artists painted from a place of joy, from the same place inside themselves that caused their creation to touch me. It’s a positive energy imparted through the paint and the lines and the colors and the subject matter. So if their spirits followed me home, they came as guides to help me experience and appreciate their works.

I do have a pencil drawing I got at auction by Philadelphia artist Julius Bloch called “Two Faces,” though, that gave me pause. The artwork hangs on a wall in my bedroom, and it took me aback once when I saw it from a distance: The bottom drawing looked like a spirit forming. It is the faint outline of the face of what looks like a little black girl. The top drawing has her in full form: her hair filled in, a ribbon tried around it in the back, puffy lips.

It’s a bit creepy, but a lovely drawing, perhaps a study.

I have to ask: Do spirits even exist? What about ghosts? I’ll leave those metaphysical questionsto my friend Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, who writes the Soul Rhythms blog. Religion and spirituality are her bailiwicks, and she’s better inclined to speak about them than me.

In my auction finds, I’m even more curious when I come across old photos taken by people posed in their best Sunday outfits. I really do want to know who they were and what their lives were like. But I have to wonder, though, if they are as curious about me.

As the one who’s living, maybe I’m spending too much time wondering what the dead may be thinking. Maybe they’re just enjoying the afterlife and don’t even care that I’m going through their “stuff,” because they really don’t need it anymore. Maybe they just want me to enjoy it and leave them alone. If they do, I thank them and ask that they not follow me home.

Or just maybe they are watching over my shoulder and what they see is someone who respects what was once theirs and treats it as if it were my own.

(By the way, the photo below is African American photographer James Van Der Zee’s depiction of a ghostly spirit, a little handiwork apparently done at the request of this patron.)

Related posts:

1. Fela, spirits and African masks
2. Nostalgia, paper dolls and auctions
3. 10 ways not to be a jerk at auctions

The letter was from a doctor-soldier recounting what he had experienced at a liberated concentration camp in Austria, near Salzburg. The remnants of humanity he found in the Nazi’s aftermath were heart-wrenching – even for a man who had endured the horrors of war for the past few years.

His letter was a carbon copy, neatly typed and folded, dated May 24, 1945. The soldier, a medical doctor named Irv, had been sent to the camp to evaluate and report on the “tremendous medical emergency” there.

Right now, the man on trial in Munich is accused of being an accessory to murder at another camp, Sobibor in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1943. That camp, though, was no concentration camp where Jews were put to work. Prosecutors say that defendant John Demjanjuk served at an extermination camp – its sole purpose was to kill.

Demjanjuk, 89, a retired Ohio autoworker deported from the United States in May, is accused of being an SS guard at Sobibor. Prosecutors say that he and fellow guards guided Jews from the trains into the gas chambers. On Oct.14, 1943, Jews there revolted and half of the 500 people escaped. The camp was closed and trees were planted to hide what had transpired.

Demjanjuk, who is wheeled into his trial in a wheelchair, has denied the charges, saying he was a Russian soldier taken prisoner by the Nazis and actually spent his time in prison camps during the war. In 1987, the Israeli government tried him as the SS guard Ivan the Terrible who inflicted suffering at the Treblinka death camp in Poland. He was convicted and sentenced to death. The conviction was overturned in 1993 by the Israeli Supreme Court, which found that he was not that man.

During World War II, some six million European Jews died at the hands of Hitler and the Nazis in a systematic and brutal plan to exterminate a race of people. The total does not include the non-Jews who were also killed.

Some families of Jews who died at Sobibor don’t know if Demjanjuk was complicit in the extermination or not, but they say they want to make sure the world knows what happened at the camp. And they are right.

That’s why letters like the one that Irv sent back home to his family and that I picked up at auction are very important. His is an impartial observer’s view of what he saw and heard and smelled at that Nazi concentration camp near Salzburg, Austria:

“And what I saw there, I can’t get out of my mind, and I shall never forget! But, believe me, when I say that of all the experiences that I’ve had so far, this was by far the most horrible. What a masterful, brutal, systematic method of eradicating whole races of people the Nazi’s had! The human misery, I’ve never actually conceived it! Believe me – you must actually see, smell, feel these wretched masses of beings, have them touch you, speak to, or scream at you with their parched throats, before you realize what has actually gone on here in Europe. They cry with joy – they are so dehydrated from lack of food and water that no tears come out. Their tear glands are even dry. They have been given a daily ration 1 slice of bread and a glass of water. Their tales of misery, you can hardly bear listening to – you get so choked up – but are almost ashamed to cry.

“I take back what I said in my other letter about the Jews being extinct. There were a thousand of them in this camp of ages ranging from about 12 to 70 years old. They were the worst treated of all. The Gentile political prisoners tell me that their only crime was the fact that they were Jews. The average Jew lived no more than 6 weeks here. He was treated brutally and if he didn’t die before the 6 weeks were up, he was clubbed to death and burned. The Jews slept 4 or 5 to a single bed, the rooms were so crowded, the heat from their feverish bodies plus the stench of infected, infested, ulcerated bodies – almost knocked you down. In one bed I noticed one Jew dead. The other three bed-mates were too weak to remove him – so he was left there to occupy the precious space. In that same bed the other three had defecated. The excreta was all over them and everywhere. They were wretched with hunger and pain. I saw them fall down and die everywhere. Some “skin and bones” ran out into the woods to die, some died on the camp roads. I gave adrenalin to one that collapsed – it was hopeless, he died a few minutes later. Many more collapsed and died – I estimate about 300 during the time I was there. One made his way to a nearby village and begged for food. He ate a lot and then fell dead – the strain of eating and the dilatation of his stomach was too much for his weakened body. Two men fell over dead into the reservoir while trying to get water. Other men, dying of thirst, washed and drank from this same reservoir.

I went to bed last night, as I said, but couldn’t get it out of my mind. However, one thing is sure, now I really know why we fought.  I thank God, we did.”

I was thinking about Irv’s letter last night while watching the Academy Awards on television, particularly the mention of Quentin Tarantino’s movie “Inglorious Basterds.” It’s the story of a team of Jewish-American soldiers called “The Basterds” that terrorized and slaughtered Nazi troops in 1941. For me, one of the best lines in the movie was uttered by Brad Pitts’ character, Lt. Aldo Raine:

“We’re going to be doing one thing and we’re going to be doing one thing only: killin’ Nazis.”

I’m sure Tarantino loved writing that line; it made the movie. The film had always been my “go-see list” but I never saw it. Now I will.

Related posts:

1. Letter buried in camera case
2. Yank magazine and WWII

Some of the recipes were on faded and yellowed paper, lined notebook paper and index cards. Some were handwritten and others typed. They were from magazines that no longer exist (The Gentlewoman 1929, Household Magazine 1931). But the recipes themselves were very familiar, indicating little change in what appealed to us: pumpkin pie, chestnut dressing, cornbread, biscuits, ice cream, fried chicken, chocolate cake.

There were tell-tale signs of the ones that this saver – a woman, I’m sure - went back to often: the recipes were stained with food and grease.

She seemed to also be into menus. The box contained several copies of a food column called “Three Meals A Day” from the Chicago Daily Tribune (1931) that offered daily menus:

Tomorrow’s menu:

Morning: Egg Poached in Milk on Toast, Toast, Butter, Strawberry Jam (with recipe), Coffee, Cream

Noon: Cream of Asparagus Soup, Chicken Salad Sandwich, Stuffed Olives, Milk

Night: Lamb Chops, Mashed Potatoes, Mint Jelly, Buttered Peas, Jellied Pear Salad, Roll, Butter, Boston Cream Pie, Tea.

I’m sure this woman, like me, also had her share of cookbooks. Unlike her, though, these days I go straight to Google when I want a recipe. I still have a few trusties that I go to in my black binder of clipped recipes, but I’m one for trying new dishes from the Food Network and other sites.

The recipe choices from my auction find were pretty basic, and I don’t think anyone would confuse her – or me – with being a chef. But I do enjoy the chef competitions on cable TV. And I especially enjoyed a two-part series that recently ran in my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, about George Washington’s chef, Hercules.

Hercules was one of nine slaves in the president’s household in Philadelphia in the 1790s.  He was described as one of the first great chefs of Philadelphia – a dandy of a guy whose work earned him an income, fancy clothes and the freedom to walk about the city unfettered.

Hercules escaped his life of slavery on Washington’s 65^th birthday after he was transferred to the president’s Virginia plantation. Washington was afraid that Hercules was planning an escape and wanted him out of Philadelphia.  

The series included several of Hercules’ period recipes, along with photos, kitchen logs and other information. Here’s also an NPR story from 2008 about Hercules and Jefferson’s enslaved cook James Hemings, a PBS video about Hercules and a  video of Philadelphia chef and restaurateur Charles Staib cooking a dish from Hercules’ time.

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1. Cookbooks: How I found Julia Child & Abby Fisher
2. A love affair with the automat

It was a large white round bowl on a stand with lovely blue decorations along the sides – either a punch bowl or fruit bowl. It stood out like a gem among the other items in the cabinet.

I wasn’t into pottery much then – I especially wasn’t into manufacturers – and so I bought the bowl for its beauty, and then researched it. A couple years later, I found a little tea strainer that was as cute and delicate as it could be.

Delft pottery was first produced by 32 factories in Delft, Holland, back in the 17^th century, according to an article on the homestyletoday.com website. Also called “Delftware,” the pottery was hand-painted earthenware designed by craftsmen. By the mid-19^th century, Delftware faced competition from European porcelain makers and its popularity declined. Today, only a few factories still produce the pottery.

I sometimes find souvenir and real pieces of the trademark blue Delft at auctions or antique stores. I’ve even come across lookalikes at flea markets and on roadside tables, especially the Dutch clogs. The true collector knows to bypass these and look for the correct manufacturer’s mark on the bottom: apothecary jar, initials JT and the word Delft. Or if you’re like me, you just buy what you like.

Besides the pottery, the town of Delft is also known for one of its most famous artists, Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), who captured his birthplace in a painting called “View of Delft” around 1660. Vermeer is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age primarily for his masterpiece “Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665).”

At auctions, I still check out any blue-and-white pottery I see with intricate designs, along with the obligatory Dutch windmills, shoes, ships and lighthouse scenes.

Once, I found a piece with an unusual mark on the bottom and discovered during research that it had been made by the Oud Delft factory in Holland. What was unusual was the Colonial Williamsburg connection: The Virginia history site - a reconstruction itself – had sanctioned two Holland companies to make reproductions of its own antique pottery, including original jars, vases, flower frogs, wall pockets, lamps and other pottery. Here are some examples.

Another time at an outdoor flea market, I came across a pair of Delft-like earrings, a dangly pair in a silver-plated casing with blue windmills on a white background. Were they real Delft? Probably not, but they were nice.

My other Delft finds were a flower-frog reproduction made by Sleepy Hollow Restorations in Hudson, Valley, NY, a strawberry planter/candle-holder and tiles. Most of the pieces did not have the authentic Delft trademark – they had the inscription “Delft Holland” – but they were neat repros, including that sweet little tea strainer.

Related posts:

1. Miniature pottery
2. Stangl Christmas plates at auction

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 black art exhibits in the country, and the programs are hard to find.

The first one I ever saw was at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and I believe it was also from the 1940s. So when I saw the program up for auction recently, nestled behind two pencil studies of a nude African American woman and man, I knew I had to have it.

The Pyramid Club was founded in 1937 by Dr. Walter F. Jerrick and a group of black professional men as a cultural and social outlet at a time when they were excluded from white organizations. The group eventually purchased a building on Girard Avenue to hold events - the most important of which became its annual art exhibitions, which began in 1941.

Many up-and-coming black artists were given their first nudge by the club, and became renowned through its very popular shows. The exhibits were headed by Philadelphia artist Humbert Howard, who by the late 1940s had expanded the artists’ list to include whites who painted black subjects – raising the ire of some members. Among the white artists was a Russian-born painter named Ralph Taylor, who drew the studies for the nude man and woman accompanying the program at the auction.

The program I bought (for $12.50 in back-and-forth action with another bidder) was apparently from Taylor’s estate, and the artist had an oil painting in the exhibit called “Life Class.” I passed on the study, though, because the auctioneer said that others of Taylor’s works would be auctioned off later.

The show featured works by 57 artists and ran from Feb. 20-March 20, 1948. It was held at the club’s headquarters (the building was padlocked in 1963 by the IRS for nonpayment of employee taxes, and the club basically dissolved. The building is now on the market for $1.2 million).

According to the program, several of the club’s members also exhibited their own paintings in another gallery. Included were Howard, John Harris, Dox Thrash, Frank Syres and Beatrice Clare Overton (who’s listed among the members although the club excluded women up to some point).

This eighth annual invitational exhibition was held in memoriam to artist Laura Wheeler Waring, a Philadelphia artist, who had just died on Feb. 3, 1948.

What I found fascinating about the program was the names of the black and white female artists whose works were included – some of whom I had not heard of before and could find little information about. Waring was a familiar name. The others were Etelka Greenfield, Elsie Reber, Edith Townsend Scarlett, Reba Klein, Naomi Lavin, Elizabeth Coyne, Hilde Foss, Sarai Sherman, Maude C. Lewis and Overton.

Although the club did not admit women as members, it did have a Pyramid Wives Club and a Women’s Coordinating Committee, which managed the  reception at the exhibit, according to the program. Women were also on the club’s exhibition committee.

Other featured artists I recognized were Allan Freelon, Julius Bloch, Paul Keene, Edward Loper, Samuel J. Brown and Claude Clark.

This is a wonderful piece of ephemera that I intend to keep.

Related posts:

1. Black women artists at fine art auction
2. Women’s club, Henry Hudson Hotel and facial tissue
3. African American art

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 came to my mind this morning because today is my birthday, and I actually have a “certified” copy of my birth certificate (it looks like a clipped version with very basic information). I think I may have needed it to get my Social Security card for a summer job after my freshman year in college – the issue date is 1970. I have both the Social Security card and the birth certificate in the same folder in my file cabinet.

I’m a baby boomer, born in the 1950s in the great Southern state of Georgia, and the information recorded on the birth certificate reflected the times:

Color: Col.
It was the 1950s and this was Georgia. I’m not sure why it doesn’t say “Negro” rather than “Colored.”

Did you know that birth certificates in this country are only about 100 years old? Births were first recorded in the 1900s, and before then they went unrecorded or some family member recorded them in Bibles.

The first birth certificates were issued for tax purposes, among other things, according to Wikipedia. Births were registered with churches, a practice that endured into the 19^th century. Births, marriages and deaths were first recorded in the United Kingdom in 1837, and government agencies were required to start keeping birth records in 1853.

Birth certificates are also important in this country because they officially prove our citizenship. At least they should, unless you’re the president of the United States and a few loose cannons don’t think you were actually born in Hawaii. President Obama’s birth certificate proves that he was born here, which really doesn’t matter since his mother was a natural-born U.S. citizen and thus, so is he.

Wikipedia also noted that for nearly 50 years, the U.S. Census Bureau designed the birth-certificate forms and kept the records nationally before the U.S. Public Health Service took it over in 1946.

For black people, birth records of our ancestors are few and far between. Maybe some were recorded in Bibles or kept in someone’s memory, but most are lost. There are the Census records, though.

Back in 1989, I checked Census records in the National Archives in Philadelphia to see what I could find for a family reunion newspaper. I found records of the family of my mother’s father at the archives in Philadelphia, but I was never able to find records about her mother’s side of the family. The information below was taken from the Census records. It showed the birth dates of the parents and children (The last child was born after the Census was taken).

The 1900 Census records showed that my grandfather’s parents were born during slavery, got married and remained married for 17 years. They had eight children who were born between 1886 and 1900. He was born in April 1852 and she in March 1855. His parents were from Georgia and he was born there. Rebecca’s father was from Georgia and her mother was from South Carolina.

I wish I knew and could find more. People who throw away all those records and photos that I see at auction are tossing away treasures.

Related posts:

1. Missing: Vintage black baby greeting cards
2. Long road to a black (Disney) Princess

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. You can find them in various types: rachet, rattle, shaker and paddle.

She found six of these noisemakers in vivid lithographic colors at auction recently, three with black figures and three with Halloween witches, blacks cats and pumpkins.

The black noisemakers appeared to be from the 1940s or 1950s, and the men painted on them were singing (they were described on the web as minstrels). The sound that came out of them was not harmony but ear-splitting noise – the kind you’d expect when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve. Curious me, I decided to listen to their sounds. 

I gave the ratchets a twirl. Listen for yourself. Click on the Play button to the right on the player (you may want to turn down the Volume at the left to keep from disturbing your neighbor):

I also shook the witch noisemaker. You can listen to that one here:

And I paddled the ball:

Like just about everything else, noisemakers are collectors’ items. From my research, I found that collectors are always looking for the tin ones, which were made by several U.S. manufacturers. The name you find most often on them is Kirchhof of Newark, NJ, with its trademark wording ”Kirchhof ‘Life of the Party.’ Kirchhof, Newark, NJ. Made in USA.”

The company began making them in the early 1900s, according to the the website Country Joe’s Collectibles. Its earliest ones were made of tin with wood handles, according to the website, and they were later made with plastic handles. This site has some neat noisemakers for sale and also for viewing, including one with clowns. You can view more with black images on this site, and this one has some early wooden noisemakers (search for the word “wood”).

Other U.S. makers included T. Cohn, J. Chein & Co., and Bugle Boy. The black ones that Janet likes were made by U.S. Metal Toy Mfg. Co. I also came across some noisemakers made in Japan.

I also found Grogger, the Purim noisemaker, that worshippers sound when the rabbi mentions the name “Haman” in the reading of the Megillah on Purim at synagogue. The idea is to drown out the name ”Haman,” the villian of the story and an enemy of the Jewish people.

The website Welcome to Halloween noted that Halloween noisemakers likely began in Germany. You can see some images on the site.  

If you’re not a collector, there are plenty of websites that will show you how to make your own, and the process seemed very basic. There are also sites that will show you how to teach your children to make them.

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2. Rubber stamps as collectibles
3. The life sounds of soul music

I made a discovery earlier this week that absolutely thrilled me. I was attending the African American fine arts auction at the Swann Auction Galleries in New York, sitting at a table waiting for a staffer to bring me a James Van Der Zee photograph of a Valentine tea party from the 1920s. I looked up and spotted a fading advertising poster with an antique car on it. 

I love antique cars so I was intrigued. The staffer couldn’t find the photo – it was actually hanging on a wall in the gallery – so I asked to see the poster. The photo of the poster below is from the Swann website.

“The Patterson-Greenfield Automobile”

“Made in Two Models for Roadster and Touring Car”

The first and only black car manufacturer near the turn of the century! You’re kidding me! But there it was.

I have come across magazine ads for antique cars at many of my auctions. A couple weeks ago, I blogged about a set of old car ads from the pages of Time magazine from the early 1900s.  A month or so ago, one of my favorite auction houses sold old Rolls Royce trophies from 1927.

But never had I come across an ad for this car or even heard of the company. I was in car heaven. Swann had described the poster as ”Printed pictorial poster on heavy cardstock. 12×10 inches. Circa 1916-1920. Estimated sale: $3,500-$5,000.”

C.R. Patterson, Son & Company was also the country’s first African American carriage-builder in the late 1800s. Patterson’s background is sketchy, and where he was born and the date of the origin of his company vary depending on who you read.

Here’s what I found, though: Charles Richard Patterson was born in slavery in West Virginia (or Virginia) and is believed to have worked with the plantation’s blacksmith in the smithworks and wagon repair shop, according to the website CoachBuilt. He fled slavery in the 1860s and eventually settled in Greenfield, OH, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Patterson was hired as a blacksmith for Greenfield’s first coach and wagon-maker Dines & Simpson, and eventually became its foreman. In the late 1800s, he bought out another carriage-builder and renamed the company C.R. Patterson, Son & Co., making horse-drawn carriages and buggies. The name was changed to Sons when a second son, Frederick Douglass Patterson (no connection to the famed abolitionist), joined the company after the father became ill. 

According to CoachBuilt, the company produced 28 types of vehicles, with prices from $120 to $150 each. Patterson’s buggy was the most popular item and was sold in the South and the Midwest. The company advertised in two black publications - The Crisis (founded in 1910) and Alexander’s Magazine (published from 1905-1909 in Boston).

Frederick Patterson got the idea to go into horseless carriages during a trip at the turn of the century, according to CoachBuilt. Later, when asked why, he said: “In 1902, there was one car to 65,000 people and by 1909 there was one vehicle for every 800 people and with those kinds of figures … I believe it’s time for us to build a Patterson horseless carriage.”

It’s not clear when the company actually began making automobiles. Some accounts say it was 1902, others say 1915. If his quote above is correct, it may have been closer to 1915. The company may have built cars until 1919.

Here’s an account from CoachBuilt (which has some photos of the Patterson car, family members and advertising documents):

“Development of an automobile began in 1914 and the first Patterson-Greenfield rolled out of the company’s Washington St. facility on Sept. 23, 1915. Priced at $850, the Patterson-Greenfield was offered as a touring or roadster and featured a 30hp Continental 4-cylinder engine, full floating rear axle, cantilever springs, demountable rims, electric starting and lighting and a split windshield for ventilation. “

The company is said to also have built a four-door touring car, as noted in the auction poster. It made from 30 to 150 cars. Near its end, it made school buses, trucks, moving vans and hearses. The company closed in the 1930s, and apparently, none of the cars have survived.

As for the auction poster, it sold for $5,200. Someone got a great piece of history.

Related posts:

1. New cars then and now
2. Missing: Vintage black baby greeting cards
3. Long road to a black (Disney) Princess

It’s a photo I’d love to find at one of my local auctions. But because Van Der Zee was a New York photographer, that may not be likely. Four of his photos were up for sale Tuesday at the African American fine art auction at the Swann Auction Galleries. So were works by several black women artists. 

One of Van Der Zee’s photos - I was very happy to see – went for $8,000: “Untitled (Harlem Backyard Banquet)” from the 1920s. Photo above is from the Swann site.

It was a black-and-white photo of an outdoor party in Harlem, and you could practically hear the happy talk and good cheer, and feel the we’re-just-having-a-good-time-being-together camaraderie of the people sitting around tables of food in the backyard. This was an unusual photo by Van Der Zee because most of his works were staged in his studio using props.

Van Der Zee was the premier photographer of Harlem – the cultural, entertainment and literary center of the universe for black people during the 1920s and 1930s. It was a place where they could just about shut out the ugliness that sought to define them as people. When writer Zora Neale Hurston arrived there in 1925, she said there were so many black people that she thought it was a parade. I learned this bit of information from a PBS documentary on the writer.

With his camera, Van Der Zee put Harlem’s people on parade. He photographed politicians, entertainers and the black middle class. And he didn’t shy away from retouching his negatives and prints for a special look.

He was born in Lenox, MA, and came to Harlem in 1906 with his family at age 20, working as a musician (he was a pianist) and forming the Harlem Orchestra. His love, though, was photography; he had gotten his first camera at age 14 back in Lenox. He became a darkroom attendant in 1915 in Newark, NJ, and within two years, opened his own studio in Harlem.

Over the next 50 years, he would chronicle Harlem in photographs and become its most noted photographer. His star faded as the decades passed, but was reignited in the late 1960s when 75,000 of his negatives were discovered and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York mounted an exhibit of his works called “Harlem on My Mind.” He died in 1983.

I don’t often come across studio shots of black people at auctions, but I find lots of them of white families, sometimes in those nice old fancy paper frames. Any photos of black people are normally snapped up quickly and expensively by other bidders.

My auction buddy Janet recently missed out on four small photos of black women in nice coifs that were part of a tray lot of jewelry. She had to leave the auction early, left a bid that was way too low and was out-bidded. She apparently forgot that photos of black folks – along with black memorabilia – are hot items.

At the Swann auction, the three other Van Der Zee photos went for less: “The Good Shepherd,” a 1933 photo of a church lady in white uniform, $1,800. “The Director,” a nattily dressed choral director in tails (1930), $800. “Religious Play #1,” a 1935 church play, $1,000.

You can view more of Van Der Zee’s photographs in this 2002 exhibit on the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery site. 

Related posts:

1. Old family photos
2. Intimate photos
3. Black women artists at fine art auction

In many instances, they stood as image and artist. Elizabeth Catlett – seemingly always there in lithographs – was all over the place. Meta Warrick Fuller was there for the first time. Laura Wheeler Waring – whose works I’ve only seen in art books – represented with two pieces. Selma Burke showed off  in sculptured stone.

Artist Camille Billops came in person; two of her prints were up for auction.

The black women artists were on hand, all right, but unfortunately, none of their artwork sold for the thousands of dollars that a Sargent Claude Johnson sculpture or a Norman Lewis abstract or a Malvin Gray Johnson or Jacob Lawrence painting can draw.

But isn’t that the story of black women artists? Or most women artists, for that matter? Their works have never been considered equal to that of male artists. Female artists can be a hard-sell, and some of that was the case at Swann (although some male artists didn’t do too well, either).

Black women artists have been struggling for recognition for decades. They were right there with the men painting and etching and carving during the years of and beyond the Harlem Renaissance, all trying to making a living and name for themselves. Some women do get their names mixed in with the men when historians talk about artists from that period: Laura Wheeler Waring, Meta Warrick Fuller, Edmonia Lewis, Augusta Savage, Lois Mailou Jones, Selma Burke, among others.

Like the men, some found patronage through groups like the Harmon Foundation, but they never really got their due.  And many of them, including Lois Mailou Jones – whom I interviewed in the 1995 for an article in Emerge magazine (I still have the interview on tape) – escaped to Europe for awhile to practice their craft among people who saw beyond their color.

Today, black women artists, galleries and museums have tried to fix the slight. Books have been published, exhibits have been mounted, and more words has been written about both the elder female masters and contemporary artists.

It was a joy to see Fuller’s two works at Swann, because her pieces rarely come up for auction. Swann noted in its catalog that this was the first time such pieces by her were being sold. 

They were gotten for surprisingly inexpensive and disappointing prices. One was a plaster sculpture painted gold called the “Peeping Tom of Coventry” from 1899. (The full photo is at left, from the Swann site.) It was estimated to sell from $10,000 to $15,000, and sold for $6,000. The other was a painted plaster plaque called “Ta Adoramus Domine (The Three Kings),” circa 1930-35, which needed some conservation work. It was estimated at 4,000 to $6,000, and sold for $3,600.

Fuller attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art in Philadelphia, and studied in Europe under sculptor Auguste Rodin (“The Thinker”).

Another whose art I don’t often come across was Waring, whose lovely oil-on-canvas scene of a rural landscape near her studio in Cheyney, PA, outside Philadelphia went for $10,000. Swann said this was only the second Waring piece it had brought to auction. According to the catalog, Waring directed the music and art departments at Cheyney State Teachers College (now Cheyney University) after returning from Paris in 1928. She was there until her death in 1948. The painting was circa 1940s.

Here are some other prices paid for black women artists’ works and images at Swann, including some that didn’t sell. (These prices do not include the 20 percent gallery premium). You can see all of these on the Swann website:

Sargent Claude Johnson, terra cotta sculpture “Standing Woman,” pictured below, right. $44,000.

Selma Burke, sandstone head of Sierra Leone drummer “Asadata Dafora,” $22,000 (didn’t sell).

Elizabeth Catlett, lithograph, “Domestic Worker,” pictured far below, left. $13,000.

Elizabeth Catlett, lithograph, “Bello I (Black is Beautiful),” $2,200.

Margaret Burroughs, lino cut, “Black Venus,” $4,500.

Mavis Pusey, abstract lithograph, “Untitled,” $1,100.

Camille Billops, intaglio, “I am Black, I am Black, I am Dangerously Black,” $2,600.

Camille Billops, etching & aquatint, “For Japanese with Mirrors,” $1,000.

Betye Saar, screenprint, “Return to Dreamtime,” $800.

Phoebe Beasley, collage, “Conversation with Butterflies,” $6,500.

Margo Humphrey, lithograph, “The Last Bar-B-Cue,” $8,000.

Marie Johnson-Calloway, collage, “Family,” $5,600.

John Biggers, charcoal & crayon on paper, “Entering the Market,” $10,000.

Charles White, lithograph, “Juba,” $4,200.

Hughie Lee-Smith, oil on canvas, “Mabel (Portrait of the Artist’s Wife),” $19,000 (didn’t sell).

Thelma Johnson Streat, gouache, crayon/pencil on cardstock, “Mask,” $3,800 (didn’t sell). I had never heard of this artist before. She was born in 1911 in Washington state and was a primarily a West Coast artist. According to Swann, her 1941 painting “Rabbit Man” was the first work by a black woman to be exhibited and purchased by New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1942.

Barkley L. Hendricks, oil & acrylic on canvas, “Jackie Sha-La-La (Jackie Cameron),” $40,000.

The highest price painting at auction Tuesday? Malvin Gray Johnson’s “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” $190,000. It was an oil on canvas from 1928.
 

For a different perspective on Tuesday’s auction, check out Swann’s blog.

Related posts:

1. Swann’s African American art auction
2. Pyramid Club’s black arts legacy
3. African American art