The color was as bright as gold, so vibrant in a room where every other piece of furniture was a dark wood. The chairs didn’t just sit there, they shone there. Stricken, I started looking for other silver furniture and spotted two chairs in the same material, which looked to be leather.

A Victorian-style sofa in a brilliant silver color, ready for auction.

I realized that they would look lovely in the right home – something with an antique feel because the sofas appeared to be Victorian and the chairs French.

I’d never considered silver furniture for my home, just like I’d never considered animal prints until I came across some lovely chairs upholstered in the wild look a couple months ago at this same auction house. I’d use both very sparingly among a mix of other furniture that would accentuate them.

I love this auction house because it always has some of the most amazing and wonderfully different furniture pieces. I always take the time to walk through its narrow aisles to see what’s waiting for me to touch and explore.

Two Victorian-style silver sofas.

I take my time to eye each piece of furniture, stopping to rub a fabric chair bottom here or follow the outline of a carved table leg there. I always find something that makes me stop and take notice, and sometimes it’s not furniture. Once I was awed by some 1940s jukeboxes that still had their song lists.

I’m never around for the actual sales, but I’m certain that others also embrace the pieces and they get sold for a fine price.

On this day, though, it was the silver that transfixed me. While the seats looked to be leather, the wood frame was likely silver leaf. I didn’t bother to look for a maker, whose name was probably on the bottom of the furniture.

Two French-style silver chairs.

These modern pieces were a far cry from what I found out about silver furniture via Google. I learned that several castles and palaces in Europe have antique solid silver pieces among their furnishings. Two of those structures are in Great Britain: Buckingham Palace and the Queen’s home of Windsor Castle. Here’s a silver table from Windsor Castle.

The British were among several who loaned silver furniture pieces in 2008 for an exhibit that re-created the opulent apartments of Louis XIV, who reigned in France during the 17th century. Called the Sun King, he furnished his Palace of Versailles with the finest of solid silver tables, stools, mirrors, chandeliers, and more. Such opulence was short-lived, though, because he had to melt it all down to pay for the costs of war. The old was replaced with new gilded furniture.

The furniture pieces at auction were not my style, but I could go for a chair with silver accents like the ones on this website. Take a look at this couple’s San Francisco apartment that’s heavily decorated with silver furniture. Gorgeous. And here’s an armchair that went from dirty tan to an unbelievably beautiful silver.

A silver vanity set at auction.

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3. Silver overlay glassware for Christmas

I’ve seen the dogs’ images in prints – singly and in pairs – as ceramic figurines and carved metal bookends, on plastic serving trays and even on a vintage child’s potty seat. When I first started to see their images at auction, I ignored them.

A serving tray showing two Scotties having a little fun.

Then they kept intruding, and I started to take notice. They were ending up on the auction tables in much the same way as old family photos are discarded after a loved one dies. I saw the most recent Scottie memorabilia at auction this week inprinted on trays. There were four trays, and they seemed to be someone’s collection. They, obviously, belonged to a person who owned and loved a Scottie.

I’m not a dog person, but there must be something so endearing about these little animals that people go ga-ga over them. On the web, I found sites for Scottie dog news, Scottie dog gifts, Scottie dog collectibles, Scottie dog clubs and Scottie dog lovers.

What was it about Scottie dogs that they had their own fan clubs? I knew little about them – wasn’t Toto in the “Wizard of Oz” movie a Scottie? – so I was compelled to find out more. Here’s what I found:

A vintage child's potty seat with a Scottie sticker on the back.

Their real name is Scottish Terrier.

They are self-assured, playful, lovable, intelligent and loyal. They need to get their daily constitution around the block, in other words, “they love walks.”

They were first identified in the Highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, and were bred to hunt rats and other vermin. A Scottish earl first nicknamed them Diehard because of their ruggedness, a name that has stayed with them. Scotties found their way to the United States in the late 1800s, and became very popular in the 1930s. Interest in them has waned over the years.

They were beloved by at least four presidents: Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose statue at his memorial site in Washington, DC, includes his Scottie Fala, who is buried near the former president; George W. Bush (Barney), Teddy Roosevelt (Jessie) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (Telek). The Roosevelt family had a Scottie named Maggie before they moved into the White House.

Some celebrities chose them as pets, including Joan Crawford, Shirley Temple, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart (here’s a circa 1946 photo of Bogie with his Scotties as he’s cleaning guns apparently from his collection). Comedian Bill Cosby gave Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, a Scottish Terrier as a mascot in 2008.

A Scottie print.

The dog was a popular game token in Monopoly and was a character named Jock in Walt Disney’s “Lady and the Tramp.”

They are prone to certain health ailments, including bleeding disorders and cancer, as well as a benign hereditary disorder called Scottie cramp.

They have been the best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club Show far more than any other breed except one.

They have quite a pedigree. I also learned that Toto was not a Scottish Terrier. The animal that played the role in the 1939 movie was a Cairn Terrier named Terry.

Trays with Scottie images on sale at auction. There were four of them and likely belonged to a Scottie owner.

Related posts:

1. Ceramic dogs with a proud name

On the lid were some deeply embossed words that led off with this inscription: ”The ‘General’ Seamless Bread Maker.” It was the strangest-looking bread maker I had seen.

The General bread-making machine ready for auction.

I had toyed once with the idea of buying a nice electric bread maker so I could start making my own wheat bread. I scuttled the idea because I knew that it would go the way of the automatic rice cooker and the cute little ice cream maker I had bought – both now sitting on a shelf somewhere in my pantry.

This bread maker before me, though, was a lot more interesting than the modern ones I’d seen. On the top were instructions on how to make bread: “Put in all liquid first. One quart of liquid to three of flour. No seams to fill with dough.” It sounded simple enough, but there certainly had to be more to it than that.

It was surprisingly clean for its age, as if it has been used little or not at all. On what looked like a crank were two patent dates, the latest was Jan. 29, 1907. This was a No. 10 model.

The parts for the General bread-making machine at auction.

Looking at the crank I was reminded of the other antique home and kitchen items I’d come across at auction that required a crank to operate, including a White Mountain ice cream maker.

As usual, I was curious about this machine, which surely eased the chore of making fresh bread a century ago. I could find nothing about the General No. 10 on the web, but was bombarded with plenty of machines bearing the name Universal. It apparently was a pretty popular bread-making machine manufactured by a Connecticut company near the turn of the 20th century.

What I found even more interesting was the inventor who revolutionized bread making – an African American man named Joseph Lee. Born around 1849 in Boston, he worked in a bakery as a boy, and went on to become a successful restaurateur and caterer in the city. In the 1890s, he invented and patented a machine that ground bread into crumbs. In the past, day-old bread was discarded, but his machine opened up a whole new way to recycle it. He used the machine to make bread crumbs for such dishes as croquettes, fried chops and fish, and for cake batter in his enterprises.

Photo of Joseph Lee from the cover of a book about his life, along with the patent design for his bread-kneading machine.

Lee sold the invention to the Royal Worcester Crumb Co. of Boston. A 1902 American Kitchen magazine extolled the convenience of the company’s prepared bread crumbs – something grandma didn’t have – which offered “escalloped oysters at the moment’s notice … or croquettes that melt in one’s mouth, besides all the other toothsome fried things that everybody delights in.”

His invention apparently made frying a delectable undertaking.

Lee then sought to find a better way to make fresh bread simply and with less labor. That led to the invention and patenting of a bread-making machine. I could find nothing about whatever happened to it. Lee died in 1905, and school teacher Jerome T. Peoples last year chronicled his life, inventions and more in the book “Lee’s Bread Machines: The father of automated bread making.”

Bread-making machines appeared to be a hit around the 1890s and into the 20th century. That was around the time Landers-Frary & Clark of New Britain, CT, came out with its Universal machine – the “mainstay” of its business – along with its food chopper and percolator. The Universal had embossed instructions on the cover, and an inscription on the side noting that it had won a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Homemade, but not made with an antique bread maker. Photo by Kongur.

In a 1905 newspaper ad, the company promised that its bread maker could mix and knead dough in 3 minutes. and it came in two sizes. One sold for $2 and the other $2.50. This new bread-making machine, a company official said in 1955, allowed dough to be ”prepared in the evening, left in the machine overnight, ready for baking in the morning.”

Universal No. 4 machines I found on eBay were selling well, most for less than $100.

Another turn-of-the-century bread making machine was the Manning-Bowman Eclipse, manufactured in Meriden, CT, by Manning Bowman and Co. It seemed to have worked the same way as the Universal.

The instructions for making bread were embossed on the top cover.

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I suppose that it struck us both as strange that a rickshaw would be up for auction. They are not a common mode of transportation in this country. In my mind’s eye, I could see Chinese men in tented hats and black full garb pulling them in their own country, likely an image from some old movie.

A Chun King rickshaw ready for auction.

But there it was up high atop a metal rail – an austere network of orange, yellow and black thin metal rods, narrow wheels and a bright yellow square cloth overhang with fringes to shade its occupants. It seemed to be in good condition, and looked amazingly lightweight.

As I approached it, I saw the name imprinted in orange and black lettering on two slats at the back: Rickshaw Chun King.

I knew the name Chun King for its prepackaged Chinese-themed food – which I never had the pleasure or displeasure of eating. If you’re going to each Chinese, do it in a real restaurant.

I wondered about its origin, so I went Googling and found only one other rickshaw that looked exactly like it. That one was selling for $595 on a retail site, which guessed that it was made in the 1940s or 1950s.

I found out plenty, though, about Chun King, including something that was new to me. The founder of the company was not a Chinese businessman but an Italian American named Jeno Paulucci.

Paulucci founded Chun King in the late 1940s, selling egg rolls, chop suey and chow men, according to his obituary in the Washington Post when he died last year at age 93. He got the idea for packaging the products through his own keen observation and sustained it through his acute marketing skills.

He saw that grocery stores were not selling prepackaged the food that Chinese restaurants were dishing out. So, he developed his own chop suey recipe, got a $2,500 loan from a friend and started his Chun King company.

Front view of the Chun King rickshaw.

He hired a radio personality named Stan Freberg to be the host of the “Chun King Chow Mein Hour” in the 1960s, and sales took off. Freberg, a comedian, became the funny face of the company. Paulucci deluged TV with his Chun King ads – which were apparently a hit - and even pulled Freberg down a major Los Angeles street in a rickshaw over a bet about whether a commercial would work.

A 1963 Life magazine ad showed his egg rolls and chop suey on a page with coupons, urging shoppers to “hop into your rickshaw” and head to the grocery store. The ad even featured a Chinese man promoting the products. It was great marketing.

“What could be more American than a business built on a good Italian recipe for chop suey?” the Washington Post quoted President Gerald Ford speaking at a dinner in 1976 for an Italian American association cofounded by Paulucci.

Paulucci sold the company to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in 1966 and went on to make Jeno’s pizza rolls, replacing the chop suey inside his egg rolls with pizza toppings, along with other products.

The company set up a Chun King Rickshaw Inn with a rickshaw for display out front at the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, and replicated it at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair. The inns were part of a drive-in chain that Paulucci started in 1962. At a charity event in 1987 in Orlando, Paulucci arrived in a bicycle rickshaw.

The rickshaw appeared to have been a part of the persona for Paulucci’s company. These human-powered vehicles themselves were said to have originated in Japan in the mid-1800s and later made their way to China and India, where they became popular.

Interestingly, the rickshaw wasn’t the logo for Chun King. It resembled a Chinese symbol.

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This one was a bit different, though, because printed on it was the word “Chocolat.” My friends and I had just left a chocolate café where two of us had tried the treats – a small layered mocha chocolate cake slice for me and a crumbly ill-shaped cranberry tart for her – and we were headed to our car. My friend Sandy had chosen a red box of Valentine chocolates for her husband.

The stop at the café had been preceded by a lackluster dance performance to the 1970s music of Sly and the Family Stone – Forgive them, Sly, for they knew not what they did with your music.

Two of the chocolate molds that Joan Coukous bought in Brussels.

As we passed the sign, we were accosted by a man in a black overcoat and a white hat with the words “Chocolat Moderne” on the front. His wife was offering free samples of her chocolates on the ninth floor, the man – I later learned his name was Jim – told us.

With very little coaxing and with chocolate still on our minds, the four of us went upstairs to sample (and they were delicious). The shop had two glass countertop cases of chocolates. There were chocolates shaped like valentines and others made with ingredients that stretched my imagination: sea salt, olives, tomatoes, cardamom.

As my friends Kristin and Theresa bought bon bons to take home, I began reading the news stories about the chocolate maker, a banker turned chocolatier named Joan Coukos. One item stood out in the articles: She was compelled to make chocolates after coming across some molds in Belgium.

Now I was hooked even more. These metal containers had imbued Joan’s chocolates with a piece of history.

I have written before about chocolate molds. While visiting Bethlehem, PA, more than a year ago, I had come across a man who collected antique German chocolate molds, and used them to make Easter bunnies, Santas, Halloween and other figures from chalkware. My first introduction to the history of chocolate came in the form of a beautiful chocolate pot that I found at auction some years ago. The pot and cups were engraved with lovely pink flowers and the cups were so delicately thin that they were almost translucent.

Standing there in the Chocolat Moderne shop, I wanted to know more about Joan’s chocolate molds.

When she found the molds, she said, she was working at a major banking company in the midst of a merger and was sure that she would be laid off. A foodie, she knew she wanted to make something with her hands that she could sell, but wasn’t sure what.

On a vacation trip to Brussels, Belgium, in 2000, she was looking through a magazine on the plane and saw some high-end Belgian chocolates (“It sounded like (those) chocolates were a lot more exciting than what I’d had before,” she said). The country is known worldwide for its exquisite chocolates.

Out walking one day, she came upon the Sablon Antiques Market, an apparently famous weekend market in the city.

“It happened all by chance,” she said. “I was walking through an antiques market not looking for any antiques. … Suddenly, I saw a stall with a lady selling metal objects for cooking. As I got closer, I saw that they were molds. I didn’t know anything about making chocolates. I didn’t really know that chocolates were made in little molds like this. I asked the lady what they were and she said they were chocolate molds.

“A little bulb went off in my head.”

So she bought the molds and figured she’d teach herself how to make chocolates. She experimented, read books, Googled, took classes, and went to demonstrations and lectures. She was invited to a bon-bon making class by a chocolatier in France.

A duck made from one of Joan Coukous' chocolate molds.

All the time, she was using her antique molds. She has about 10 of them (she picked up others on another trip to Brussels). Some are singles, and others are multiples. She believes that her duck mold (or a horse mold) is similar to one used in the 2000 movie “Chocolat,” which tells the story of a woman who opens a chocolate shop in a small French village.

At Joan’s shop, we searched her molds looking for a maker, and found the name Letang, along with an unclear inscription. I found by Googling that the first mold-making shop was founded in 1832 in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Letang. The unclear inscription was: “Letang Fils. 108 R. Vielle du Temple Paris France.”

Letang’s company supplied tin-plated molds to chocolate makers in the city and later sold them worldwide. Over the years, the company’s molds were recognized as among the best, and Letang received several distinguished awards. In 1877, it began publishing catalogs of its molds. In 1922, the company opened a store in Belgium, and it continues to make a variety of molds in France.

One of Joan Coukous' molds.

I found other vintage Letang molds on the web, include a saxophone player, a hen and some fish.

Joan opened her company in 2003 and went about it in an “artistic, non-methodical way,” she said. “I took a leap of faith.” She put her energies, she said, in her product and packaging, but not much into marketing, public relations and sales.

Along the way, though, she seemed to have gotten some good publicity: She was a guest on an Oprah show in February 2008 along with writer and lecturer Marianne Williamson and others talking about career-changing in midlife. She was featured in several newspaper and magazine articles, and made an appearance on the Al Roker show. The February issue of Oprah’s O magazine features her Valentine chocolates.

She creates what she calls “new” chocolate. It’s nothing like the plain old pecan/caramel turtles that I love, or the Ghirardelli and others we can buy just about anyplace. That’s the old chocolate.

New chocolate is high-quality and decorative. “It looks different and tastes different,” she said.

Creating them in those old quaint chocolate molds makes them even more special.

A seashell mold.

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I have this print, she said, pointing to a small image of Tanner’s “The Banjo Lesson.” The museum had used it in an exhibition note alongside Tanner’s oil painting “Christ Learning to Read” that also focused on the theme of teaching.

"The Annunciation," circa 1898.

I was familiar with the banjo image, because reproductions of it have been bought by tons of African Americans wanting their own replica of  this master’s works that represented them. “The Banjo Lesson (1893)” and “The Thankful Poor (1894)” are among Tanner’s most recognizable works. Tanner saw them both as representing positive and non-stereotypical images of black people, according to the auction catalog.

But you won’t find either of them at this exhibit (“Banjo” is owned by Hampton University and “Poor” by Bill and Camille Cosby). That’s probably a good thing because they could easily distract you from all the other wonderful works produced by Tanner and cause you to miss the breadth of his talent. The exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts covered five rooms, and each focused on a different stage of his life, his travels and his sensibilities.

This exhibit is not one to be missed. Called “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit,” it is a collection of 100 paintings, prints, photographs and sculptures, most of which were completed when he lived in France for 46 years. The works will be exhibited at the academy in Philadelphia until April 15, 2012, and are then headed to Cincinnati and Houston. A companion exhibit of works by African American artists inspired by Tanner was also on display.

"The Resurrection of Lazarus," 1897.

You can’t have a Tanner exhibit without his religious paintings – “The Annunciation,” “Christ Learning to Read,” with his wife and son as models. Or the first-time-shown-in-the-United States “The Resurrection of Lazarus.” He painted that oil on canvas in 1897, and it traveled here from its home at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris.

PAFA has a familial tie to Tanner, who studied at the school from 1879 to 1885 and was its first African American student. He developed a fond relationship with his teacher Thomas Eakins, a renowned American artist who himself had gone through the academy. Tanner spent most of his years in Paris – he sailed for Europe in 1891 – to escape the indignities of being black in America.

On the wall in one of the rooms were his comments from 1908 regarding the freedom of living abroad:

“In Paris … no one regards me curiously, I am simply ‘M. Tanner, an American artist.’ Nobody knows or cares what was the complexion of my forbears. I live and work there on terms of absolute social equality.”

It was a sentiment shared by many other African American expatriate artists, writers and musicians who found refuge in a country that accepted them for their talents absent of their skin color. According to the auction catalog, some of the artists – including Aaron Douglas (who as a child was inspired to paint after seeing a reproduction of a Tanner work in a magazine), Palmer Hayden and Hale Woodruff - visited Tanner in his studio in France.

"Georgia Landscape," 1889-90.

The exhibit brought me face to face with a Tanner I was unfamiliar with. I knew nothing about his time spent in my native South. He moved to Atlanta in 1889 and opened a photo studio that apparently didn’t do too well, according to notes at the exhibition.

He must have loved the land he saw, though, because he captured on canvas the misty mountains of Highlands, NC, and an uneven road through a scraggly countryside in my home state in a painting titled “Georgia Landscape (1889-90).” About a half-dozen of the works in the exhibit were painted while he was there.

He showed an affinity for plain people in his paintings of the French countryside and its people – done about five years after his adventure South. Those images were so big and so bold that I felt like I was in the room with the cobbler and his son in “The Young Sabot Maker (1895)” and sitting in an oversized boat with fishermen hauling in their nets at sea in “The Miraculous Haul of Fishes (1913-14).”

"The Young Sabot Maker," 1895.

Even Tanner the photographer was new to me (he used photographs to create some of his paintings), and it was a side of him I was happy to meet in an exhibit that was not overwhelming, large-scale or endless. The exhibit rounded him out a man and an artist, bringing me closer to who he was and what he tried to achieve at a time when it wasn’t easy for him.

In her talk about the works, the curator noted that one painting by Tanner – “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” – was still out there somewhere missing. A reproduction photo of it hung in a shadowy space in the second room of the exhibit.

A study photo for "The Banjo Lesson," attributed to Henry Ossawa Tanner. It was initially used to illustrate a Christmas short story in Harper's Young People Magazine in 1893, according to the exhibit catalog.

My friend Kristin directed me to the painting and suggested that I be on the lookout for it, wishfully thinking that it might turn up at auction. The painting was exhibited at PAFA in 1896, toured nationally and internationally and at some point was lost, according to the exhibition catalog. There are photographs of it, and a later work on paper in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

I don’t expect to find it hidden behind some awful-looking painting at any of my auctions. But I might have a better chance of coming across a January 1903 copy of the Ladies Home Journal magazine with reproductions of paintings by Tanner called “The Mothers of the Bible: A Series of Four Great Biblical Paintings.” I will definitely keep my eyes open for a copy of it.

The exhibit also included a children’s book about Tanner, written and illustrated by artist Faith Ringgold. I got a copy and will add it to my collection of children’s books illustrated by artists.

Related posts:

1. A painting by artist Henry Bozeman Jones
2. Robert Cromartie, an unknown African American artist
3. An artist’s ‘dark and stormy night’ painting

As I approached it, I saw writing on the side in black felt pen: Mother’s Picture Collection. I glanced inside and saw that it was chock full of photos of an African American family. Now, I was doubly interested and knew that other auction-goers would be, too. Photos of African Americans sell relatively well at auction, because many people see them as highly valued Black Americana.

A photo that nurse Lessie inscribed to her mother.

I cursorily flipped through the photos, and saw single and attached Kodak prints – indicating that these had some years on them – studio portraits, and some later shots of the family of a woman named Lessie who had lived in Los Angeles. There were baby photos, soldier photos, boyfriend photos, a night at the club photo and photos shot at a home wedding.

Then I came upon some that other auction-buyers would surely want: a studio portrait of a young Lessie (short for Leslie) in her nurse’s uniform and addressed to “the sweetest mother ever born – whom I love with all my (she had drawn a heart here). Lessie.” There were also about 20 photos of a group of nurses in uniform.

The photos appeared to have been taken while these women were in nursing school. The photos stood out from the rest because they showed African American women in a career role. And that role was not as a domestic, the employment of necessity for too many black women around that time.

The photos of the nurses look as if they were taken on a campus.

Most of the photos were black and white,  and two were in color. One of those was dated Apr. 19, 1949, on the back. The box contained Lessie’s report card from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles from 1945 to June 1949, so she was not likely in any of the photos. These could have belonged to a relative.

Lessie’s report cards showed that she was a B-C student who was outstanding in work habits, responsibility and cooperation.

I found an ID card of Lessie’s for an elementary school in Los Angeles where she was a school nurse.

I’m always a little saddened to see these old photos on the auction table, and always wonder why family members throw them away. Were there too many of them and they kept the best ones and tossed the rest? What can you do with a family member’s old report cards and photos? (Old report cards weren’t selling well on eBay; some photos were doing better.)

The same group of nurses from Lessie's box of photos.

In choosing nursing, Lessie was following a tradition of African American nurses that began in the 1800s although they were not formally trained as such. The most famous of them was Sojourner Truth who is better known as a former slave who became a well-known abolitionist and lecturer, speaking out vehemently against slavery. In 1865, she tended black soldiers at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington.

Also during the Civil War, Susan King Taylor nursed black soldiers from the 33d United States Colored Troops, and taught them to read and write. She wrote a memoir of her life, including her time with those soldiers, one of whom was her husband. She was also a laundress in their camp at Beaufort, SC, where she met Clara Barton – who would later found the American Red Cross – nursing soldiers in a hospital.

Mary Eliza Mahoney was the first African American registered nurse. She eschewed domestic work and decided that she wanted to be a nurse. She attended nursing school in the late 1870s, and after completing the training served as a private nurse for 30 years.

The first program to train African American nurses was started at Spelman Seminary (now Spelman College) in 1886, and the first hospital school of nursing came five years later at Provident Hospital in Chicago by African American surgeon Daniel Hale Williams. 

Two nurses stand in front of what looked like a 1940s automobile.

At auction, I almost didn’t get Lessie’s photos. I had stepped away from the box-lot room because the box was far back in the room and I assumed that I could come back before the auctioneer got to it. To my dismay, the box was gone when I returned. Later, though, I saw that it had been moved and forgotten.

I asked an auction assistant to offer the photos for bids, and as expected, another bidder wanted them to. I got them for $7 – although I only wanted to pay a buck.

Related posts:

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They were coupon books issued to U.S citizens during a time when homegrown and imported goods became scarce as the country fought a war in Europe. I had not seen any of these thin postcard-size books at auction before, but I was familiar with what they were – even though they were distributed some years before I was born.

These ration books at auction came with a leather pouch.

The books belonged to a couple who had lived just outside Philadelphia during World War II. I can only assume that their descendants were cleaning out a house and decided to trash these relics, which they considered of little value or use any more.

I found the books interesting because the personal information on the front told so much about who these people were:

Philomena, the wife, was 22 years old, 5 feet tall, weighed 115 pounds and was a store keeper. Her husband, Francis, was 29 years old, 5 feet 7, weighed 148 pounds and was a cost clerk. Both signed their names in a very clear and smooth script.

The books warned the couple and all who used them that it was the property of the U.S. government, should not be sold, and must be returned to the rationing board if lost and found. It warned them to never buy rationed goods without the stamps and to only pay the legal price.

“This book is your Government’s assurance of your right to buy your fair share of certain goods made scarce by war. Price ceilings have also been established for your protection. Dealers must post these prices conspicuously. Don’t pay more. … ‘If you don’t need it, DON’T BUY IT.’”

Ration coupons from inside the books.

And by the way, it added: “When you have used your ration, save the TIN CANS and WASTE FATS. They are needed to make munitions for our fighting men.”

How the heck do you make guns from fats? Answer: Cooking fat was used to make glycerine, which was a key element in explosives. Women were urged to turn it in to their butchers.

The rations lot contained Books 1, 3 and 4, which still had some coupons in them.

These books were among the 100 million issued by the government from 1942 to 1945 as goods became scarce and imports slackened or dried up. The aim was to make sure that everyone got his or her “fair share” and to free up resources to fight the war, which the country had entered in 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

These ration books belonged to a couple. The cover of the books showed personal information about them.

Each member of a family was issued the ration books, even children and babies. The family shopper would select the rationed product – which consisted of such things as meat, sugar, coffee, shoes, canned goods, fuel, shoes – give up the coupon and pay a specified price for it. Stores had to post both the price and the coupon value of a product.

Sugar (1 ½ cups per person per week) was the first to be rationed in Book 1 in 1942. Then came Book Two in January 1943, Book Three in October 1943 and Book Four near the end of 1943 – all of which contained various items. Rationing remained a way of life until the summer of 1945, although sugar continued to be controlled in some places until 1947.

The wholesale rationing of goods had been preceded by tires and automobile. Gasoline was rationed in 1942 to save tires and rubber. If you wanted a new car, a bicycle or a new stove, you needed both a special certificate and a good reason for buying it. Shoes were also rationed, along with farm equipment, chicken wire and other supplies. Here’s one newspaper’s roundup of rationed items for Nov. 12, 1943.

A family's ration books from World War II.

At an auction less than a week later, I found another group of ration books for a family with children: Housewife mother Edith; attorney father Charles; son Steven, 6, and Ruth, possibly a daughter. They had Books 3 and 4, all in a leather pouch.

These books also offered personal information about the family, and a genealogy site on the web suggested that they were a good source for family-history research. The site Genealogy Today offered a database to search for ration books.

At auction, the two sets of ration books did not generate a lot of bids. Both groupings sold for around $15. One site on the web said individual books were worth no more than $10 each, most of them less. On eBay, a large lot of ration books, coupons and tokens sold for $71 (the highest price), and some individual books sold for as low as 99 cents. Many more went unsold.

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“I found this when I was cleaning out,” she said, referring to her de-cluttering the house after she was forced to place Ayers in a nursing home when his illness became unmanageable. The piece was a charcoal of a mass of faces, dated 1961.

Charcoal of faces, 1961.

She moved on to a painting in a far shaded corner of the living room, almost hidden, dated 1972-73. “I love this piece,” she said. “This piece I’m going to keep.”

No title, 1972-73.

She mentioned that Ayers is known mostly for his pen and ink drawings, which was suprising to me because I had seen and loved his gouaches or watercolors – I’m still not good at distinguishing these two mediums.

Several years ago, I came across a bright orange watercolor/gouache of Ayers at auction. I hung it on my wall and later mentioned his name to a friend who recognized it and thought the artist lived not far from me. I was intrigued and wanted to know more about him. I found little on the web, though.

A reader saw my blog post about the painting and gave me a lead on where he might be living. A friend located a phone number, and I made the call. I found Ayers – actually not him but his wife Sheila, who met him about 30 years ago when she managed an art center where he was teaching a design course. They have been married for 20 years, his second.

Pen and ink, 1979.

I was saddened to hear that the artist had Alzheimers because I truly wanted to interview him, but his works – on the family’s walls, and in binders and portfolios – told the story just as much as his words. Sheila took me on a journey of Ayers’ life through his works and her recollections.

“He was the gentlest man I’ve ever known,” said Sheila, who moved to this country from England in 1960. “He was very very very patient. He was always cooled out.”

Standing no taller than a little under 6 feet, he was also a small man, like the thin lines of his intricate pen and ink drawings. He followed the teachings of self-awareness espoused by the Indian writer Jiddu Krishnamurti, Sheila said.

“He was the gentlest soul,” she said again. “A poet, a writer, an artist, just a gentle soul.”

I came across one of Ayers’ poems on the back of a drawing from a college art class:

“I peered around a wall
In the deep green night
and
For the first time
Saw myself in every phase,
And I was afraid,
For such things I knew
not were there …”

Two 1952 drawings from art class at the Philadelphia College of Art.

“Basically I am a poet,” Ayers said in a 1977 newspaper article. “I even consider my art work to be poetry. I deal a lot in the reality of dreams.”

He was born July 2, 1932, the only child of Alice and Lorenzo Ayers, and grew up in Germantown, a section of Philadelphia. He attended the Joseph E. Hill School, a public elementary school named in honor of a noted black educator of the 19th century.

Ayers started drawing in the first grade, according to a biography written by Sheila, and “loved airplanes and has many drawings in his school books of all kinds of planes, from war planes to large jets.” She showed me one of his early drawings, with his name written in a child’s hand at the bottom of the page.

He was stationed in Germany for two years while in the Army and worked as a cook. After the service, he attended the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts), excelling in pen and ink drawings, watercolors, gouaches and collages, according to Sheila. He graduated in 1954.

During the 1970s, Ayers spent some years painting in Greece and Holland, and completed much artwork there. “He felt his art was not appreciated here,” Sheila said. “He had some friends living in Holland at the time. They encouraged him to come over.”

Now Keep the Status Quo, March '60.

He managed the Friends of the Free Library bookstore until the early stages of Alzheimer’s began to appear more than a decade ago. ”He’d come home with books that cost 25 cents,” she recalled. She has sold off most of the books, which had taken up residence in bookcases lining the walls of their living room. He was also a jazz aficionado, amassing a record collection to match his books.

Sheila says his works are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the African American Museum in Philadelphia; the Bibliotheque Royale de Belique in Brussels, Belgium; the Concertgebouw De Doelen graphics collection in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and the Studio Museum of Harlem, among other collections.

The Ghetto, 1971.

During the 1970s, when he seemed to be getting a lot of press, Ayers’ art was described as “surrealistic” or “magically surreal.” “Each drawing is an expedition: for the artist, who finds new directions as the piece develops, and for the viewer, who discovers evidences of magic and purest whimsicality as (s)he looks deeper into the intricate detail of the drawing,” wrote a reviewer in a Philadelphia College of Art magazine in 1974.

“I see myself as a radical,” he said in a magazine article in 1976. “Some people tend to see the differences rather than the similarities between themselves and other people, or between themselves and the environment. Western culture has chosen to be an opponent of nature rather than a part of it.”

As Sheila continued the artistic tour of their home, she came across several pieces of art that were so different from Ayer’s usual drawings that they could’ve been done by someone else. What they showed to me were the stages of one artist’s life.

An oil on canvas, no date visible.

What stood out in his pen and inks were the faces, most of which were African American. His works are “earthy, human, because of the faces,” Sheila said.

She called his “piece de resistance” a finely detailed “Tree of Life” that he drew for her 60th birthday in 2000. “I watched this grow,” she recalled. “He would sit on the sofa at night and do these meticulous strokes. It’s a magnificent piece. … He’s showing the earth. He’s showing how the tree has all these roots of life.”

Tree of Life, a gift to his wife Sheila on her 60th birthday.

Sheila has many portfolios of Ayers’ pen and ink drawings, showing an artist who was both prolific and uniquely expressive. The details in them are amazing and the subject matters varied. There were a few collages, which he started assembling more than a decade ago. I had seen some of the collages at an auction house a few days earlier.

In the 1977 newspaper article, he said that his works were unplanned. “It just happens,” he said. “It is natural to me. Most of my drawings show outdoor scenes because I think of nature as having a oneness, and you cannot show that without showing lots of plants and animals and mankind.”

Watercolor or gouache, 1962.

Click on the first photo to view the slideshow below.

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[View with PicLens]

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Related posts:

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As big as it was, though, I had not noticed it until an auction-regular asked me if I had seen it. The tub was invisible to me as I crazily moved from a room full of antique dolls to another with the regular supply of paintings, glassware and other knickknacks and another with cheap box lots. On this day, there was too much stuff to preview.

An Image Spa hot tub for sale at auction.

A metal tag on the tub bore the label “Image Spa.” The tub was encased in a wood surround that was missing a few vertical slats here and there. A wide gray water-stained cover, folded in half, was propped against one side.

Once I saw the tub, it was not to be missed again. It didn’t attract many admiring eyes, though, likely because none of us could figure out how to get the thing home if we bought it. But that wasn’t all.

The tub and its cover were filthy. One section on the inside of the tub was thick with dust and dirt, and I’m sure the filter was just as bad. “You’d think someone would’ve cleaned it first,” one auction-goer said to me. He was right. That may have made it much more appealing.

In the middle of all the dirt lay a small travel-size bar of Dove soap in an unopened box. It would take a million of those to lather up this thing up to clean it.

Dove soap inside the tub.

The auction for the hot tub didn’t occur until later in the day during the furniture sale. About 20 or so people stood with the auctioneer around its perimeter.

This tub is worth $1,000, the auctioneer said, and just to give buyers a break, he started the bidding at $500. Not a soul took a nibble. Then he dropped the price and kept dropping it until he stopped at $50. One man called out $30, and the auctioneer accepted the bid. He tried mightily for a $35 counteroffer but he only got silence.

Finally, he gave up and sold that huge hot tub for $30. Then he and his troop of buyers moved on to the next item of furniture – a three-piece bedroom set.

I wondered how the buyer would get the tub home. He’d take it apart and move it in pieces, he said. I found that a bit strange, since the largest piece was the deep tub itself. It made me wonder if he had thought through the purchase before making it.

There were some small areas of the tub that escaped the thick layer of dust.

Apparently, his female companion (who may have been his wife) wondered the same thing when he called out to her that he had bought the monstrosity he was standing next to. She was seated comfortably in a cushioned chair far away from the furniture auction. She was incredulous, wondering why he had bought such a thing. If she’d bought it, she said, he’d think that she had lost it.

A few minutes later, I overheard the buyer telling another man – one of several who engaged him about his purchase - that he had bought it for his sister’s back yard.

I watched as the buyer examined the tub. He tried to open what looked like a door but wasn’t. He pulled aside the dirty gray cover, and spider webs were attached to the wood. This tub seemed to have been out of service for a long time.

The hot tub cover was water-stained and dirty, but seemed to be in good shape.

In Googling later, I found free Image hot tub manuals that made setup and care of these spas seem like a chore:

When filled, they can weigh up to 2,000 pounds.

You should check your local building codes before installing it outside.

The tub must be near an electrical outlet. The power cord must be plugged into a grounded circuit (at a particular amp), and should not be buried in the ground. Don’t use an extension cord.

The tub should be near a water source. You’ll need a garden hose or some other device for filling it.

The water pump must be primed (there are instructions) each time you refill the tub or clean the filter. You must test and treat the water.

Keep electrical appliances – radios, TVs – and metal objects away from the tub.

Don’t allow water temp to exceed 104 degrees. Do use a thermometer to gauge it.

The hot tub appeared to have been out of use for a long time.

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