The “something” was that ubiquitous Cream of Wheat logo of the black smiling chef in his white coat and hat. I’d seen the image too many times – who hasn’t? – and it didn’t exactly appeal to me there on a shelf at the auction house.

A Cream of Wheat ad with a World War I theme.

It had not always been that way. I had a framed copy of a reproduction print of a Cream of White ad hanging in my house long before I discovered fine art by African Americans. I donated it along with some other items to a service agency that assisted families in need. I recalled that either the director or staffer liked it so much that one of them took it home (the staffers were also people in need).

This World War I framed ad at auction looked to be an original from a magazine, and was drawn by Edward V. Brewer in 1919. Click on the image above for a full view.

The Cream of Wheat chef is considered a derogatory persona, with his perpetual smile and subservient demeanor. He was supposed to evoke a feeling of wholesome goodness during a time when people who looked like him were not living a life made comfortable by a few spoonsful of hot white porridge. The makers of this image wanted white mothers and their children to feel protected by this benevolent man, and to eat their comfort food from his reassuring hand.

As I sat there waiting for the auction to start, I finally focused on the ad and thought about my old print. I knew very little about the chef himself (or even if he was real) or the product itself. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten Cream of Wheat or even had a box of it in my house.

The origin of the chef appears to be unresolved. The Cream of Wheat website says that Emery Mapes, a part-owner of the mill that started making the product in 1893 and the person who managed the advertising campaign, found among some old printing plates an image of a black chef holding a saucepan. Here’s a 1907 ad of a similar image.

Another story was that Mapes was in a Chicago restaurant where he saw a black chef and gave him $5 to pose for a picture.

Others repeated that it was actually an African American chef named Frank L. White who worked at a Chicago restaurant and was photographed around the turn of the century. White himself told neighbors in his hometown of Leslie, MI, that he was the featured chef, according to a Michigan man who researched the chef and got a headstone erected on his grave in 2007. White died in 1938.

Cream of Wheat called the man gracing their boxes and ads as “Rastus the chef,” choosing a racist and derogatory term used for African Americans. I had never heard the term before, but it apparently was as prevalent as the “N” word. In his autobiography, Malcolm X remembered being called it so much when he attended a white elementary school in Lansing, MI, that he thought it was his real name.

Several sites repeated the story that the NAACP urged the company to eliminate the use of the word, and it complied but kept the chef image.

A 1918 Cream of Wheat ad featuring a black boy.

Despite the image, the Cream of Wheat drawings from the start were meant to be art and not just throwaway advertising. Mapes enlisted some of the best and well-known artists/illustrators of the early 20th century, including N.C. Wyeth, Philip R. Goodwin,J.C. Leyendecker and Jessie Willcox Smith. Some of them had studied under Howard Pyle, and created covers for the Saturday Evening Post and other publications.

Many of the images were those of little white children enjoying the porridge, with the chef on a poster in the background, on a box or in the illustration itself. When black children or black people were featured – on the illustrations I saw – they were stereotypical.

What could have been a lovely drawing of a little black boy sitting on a crate eating a bowl of Cream of Wheat was marred by a discarded watermelon behind him. I had first seen the illustration as a black and white ad in a magazine called “Everybody’s Magazine.” The watermelons were not as distinct in black in white as they were in color.  The illustration, titled “A Case of Desertion,” was done in 1918 by Denman Fink. (Can’t the child eat his porridge in peace, without having a watermelon dogging him?)

The Cream of White ads were among the most recognizable images in advertising, and the company was among the first to license its products effectively. It heavily advertised the image on cups, bowls and children blocks.

At the auction, it was merely the ad – the first one I’ve come across before. The auctioneer suggested that it was both Black Americana and World War I memorabilia, hoping to boost interest. The appeal among us auction-goers was mild: The ad sold for $27.50.

Related posts:

1. Black child, 1919 Cream of Wheat ad, no watermelon?
2. Recipes, cooking & George Washington’s slave chef
3. Ice cream, soda fountains & the past

Four dolls were lying there on a tray at the auction house, along with a modern-looking plaque and a pin cushion with a little black boy on top eating a watermelon. How I hate those stereotypical images. Another doll wore a red band around her head, giving her the look of a Native American. The dolls appeared to be vintage.

Black Americana dolls sold at auction.

Each doll had a thin wire that twisted around the waist and extended out at least three inches. They apparently had been attached to something. But what? I was puzzled.

“What do you think they are,” I asked the auction-goer next to me. “Christmas ornaments,” he guessed, just as confused as me. “That’s just as good an answer as any other.”

He was right about that but wrong about what they were. These did not look like Christmas ornaments.

I tried Googling and found out about black Spanish-made Roldan and Klumpe dolls whose bodies were wire covered by fabric. One person was selling what was described as a “politically incorrect” Klumpe doll of a little girl – surprise – eating a watermelon. Another was selling a Roldan gardener who was a little more appealing, and another was selling a Klumpe golf caddy. I also found black dolls with barbed wire wings like an angel and dolls with wire hair but no dolls with wire around their waists.

Black Americana dolls sold at auction had twin wire tied around their waists.

When the dolls came up for auction, I didn’t bother to bid on them. The y were not that enticing to me, and although I love unique pin cushions, I could not bring myself to buy the stereotypical one of the little boy. So I let them pass.

A woman standing near me bought the tray of items of $6. I leaned over and asked her – assuming she knew what she was buying, other than the fact they were Black Americana. “What are they?” She had no idea, either. “They were attached to something,” she answered.

Do you recognize them? Are they pretty common somewhere and I just hadn’t heard about them or seen them before? Or were they unique to this particular maker? I’d love to know.

Related posts:

1. Collecting vintage black dolls
2. Lime dolls of the Dominican Republic
3. My own menagerie of faceless dolls

When did our written history – those paper artifacts that told a once-indifferent world of our accomplishments – become so important? I’m happy that it is finally being realized for its value, but I was a bit surprised.

A hand-made banner for the ministry of Father Divine, sold at auction for $30,000.

It has not always been so. I was at a preview of the African American manuscript auction at Swann Auction Galleries in New York last month when I struck up a conversation with Wyatt H. Day, the house’s expert on this genre. He recalled the year 1995 when he tried to get New York’s venerable auction houses to consider offering such sales. There was no market for it, he was told.

Swann was interested, he said, and he recalled that it was initially difficult to find the products. “I was starting from scratch,” he said.

Since that time, he has managed to rescue some important historical documents either from dumpsters or hiding in homes of families who didn’t realize their value. The tales of his finds are fascinating:

There was the well-known New York abolitionist family – which was involved in the Underground Railroad and is the namesake of a street in Lower Manhattan – with a library of 5,000 books at their home on Staten Island. “They (abolitionist books, the Fireside Poets) went to the town dumpster,” he said, but they were saved.

There was the family in Richmond, VA, which had a log book for a patrol boat outside West Africa.

That family directed him to another that had a rare slave manuscript – the stuff is “always in a shoebox,” Day noted. It had been written in Arabic and translated by missionaries. It was the personal manuscript of an Islamic scholar named Omar ibn Said (1770-1864), who had been kidnapped from Senegal and brought to this country to be a slave. In 1831, he wrote a narrative of his life in Africa and America.

“It was a treasure,” Day said. “We had it translated.” The missionary translation was “off,” he said, adding that the man had not happily embraced Christianity as the  translation had purported. “It was bought by an African American scholar,” said Day. “It went all around the world and  was exhibited at the UN. This is the kind of thing this sale has accomplished.”

There was the manuscript found among papers in a Florida home with the title “The Bondswoman’s Narrative,” written by a black woman in the late 1850s and considered the first. A narrative of the life of Hannah Crafts, it was purchased and authenticated by scholar, historian and editor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and published in 2002.

“Once again, something got rescued,” Day said. “Now I don’t have to make the academic pitch. The monetary pitch works to get stuff out of dresser drawers and attics.”

He also tries to connect to people “viscerally,” he said, to get them beyond the dollars and cents to the meaning of the manuscripts and their historical value.

An 1848 copy of Frederick Douglass' autobiography. It did not sell at auction.

A collector who’s done his share of dumpster-diving, Day owns one of those works. He says he has one of only five copies of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. An American Slave. Written by Himself.” One was up for sale last month at Swann.

The copies apparently belonged to Douglass, and Day surmised that he may have taken several with him when he parted ways with abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison around the mid-19th century. “It was him reclaiming himself,” Day said. The book was missing the frontspiece (or cover) portrait of Douglass, just like all the others, he said. The autobiography was first published in 1845 and this one had a publication date of 1848.

The starting bid on the Douglass book was $13,000, but there were no takers. Other Douglass memorabilia did sell, including several copies of the Douglass Monthly newspaper – from $1,500 to $4,400 (excluding the 15 percent auction-house premium) – and a carte-de-visite card with a photo for $6,000.

Many of the other manuscripts went for thousands of dollars. This was my first Swann manuscript sale (I have come in the past for the fine art auction), and it was an enlightening experience. Several of the works were purchased by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, set to open in 2015. The museum is building its collection, and in January, it invited people to bring in their heirlooms for appraisal and possible donation.

Here’s a sample (minus the 15 percent premium) of the prices for other items:

Aaron Douglas stenciled placard for the Wallace Thurman play “Harlem” at the Apollo Theater in 1939. $15,000.

Huey P. Newton in a wicker chair with spear in one hand and gun in another. $16,000.

“Honor King: End Racism” placard from an April 8, 1968, march in Memphis days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. $17,000.

Transcript of the first trial of the Scottsboro Boys, April 6, 1931. The transcript was found in a dumpster in Huntsville, AL, about 30 years ago. $17,000.

A 1937 photo of the Scottsboro Boys and two NAACP attorneys, sold at the Swann Auction Galleries auction for $10,000.

Group photo of the Scottsboro Boys with attorneys Juanita E. Jackson and Laura Kellum of the NAACP. Jackson was the first African American woman to pass the bar in Maryland. Kellum was with the Birmingham NAACP youth council. The photo ran in Crisis Magazine in January 1937. $10,000 

Marcus Garvey pen and ink portrait with a written statement by him, 1922. $26,000.

Poster from the first Malcolm X film in 1972. $14,000.

A Night-Club Map of Harlem by E. Simms Campbell. It was a centerfold in the Jan. 8, 1933, issue of Manhattan Magazine, its first issue. $14,000.

Large Father Divine handmade banner in purple and white felt, 54″ x 53″. $30,000.


Related posts:

1. Advertising art with African American faces
2. Playing cards with true African American images
3. African American natural hair as art

I wasn’t going to buy any – most were ”mammy” images – but I was curious about how much they’d sell for. There were about 30 of them, and I saw them all sitting behind the auctioneer – sold.

They were among a lot of more than 850 cookie jars from two collectors. Looking at them lined up on long tables, I was amazed at the breadth of these collections. They were all sizes and shapes – from people to animals to castles to Little Red Riding Hood – and bore some familiar names – McCoy, Red Wing, Metlox, Shawnee.

From what I could see, they were in remarkably good condition and very clean. These cookie jars were loved.

“There’s a cookie jar for everyone,” a woman sitting next to me said. She was right. I watched as she bought a couple of them. Among the most popular were the Red Riding Hood jars, one of which went for $155. Many of the cookie jars with no-names sold for as low as $1, including Babe the Pig (which prompted the auctioneer to recall that silly Geico “Wee, Wee Wee Wee” piggy commercial).

But I was there for the Black Americana jars. At one point, I noticed that winning bidders had begun to walk up front behind the auctioneer and start toting away their buys. One was a black man with a cane carrying a cookie jar toward the back. I had seen him when I came in; he was the only black person among the 50 or so people at the auction.

Later, I turned and saw a grouping of the black cookie jars on a table in a back room. When I investigated, I found that they belonged to the man with the cane. He had bought most of the jars, paying from $85 to $170, he said. He’d keep some (he’s a collector; his wife had given him cookie jars as gifts) and will sell some. The photos on this post are the jars he bought at auction.

Fascinated, I wanted to know more about him. His name was Larry Whyte, and for 30 years he had been an auctioneer, he told me then and later in a phone interview:

Whyte, 65, and his wife, Barbara, 64, have a booth in the red barn building at Antique Village in Strasburg, PA, where they sell Depression glass and other antiques. Married 31 years, they both like antiques.

“My family went to a lot of auctions when I was young,” he said. ‘I decided to go to auctioneer school.”

He got his auctioneer’s license from the Mendenhall School of Auctioneering in High Point, N.C. He never had his own auction house, but instead conducted auctions around where he lives in Lancaster County, PA. Five years ago, he sold consignment items out of a 2,000-3,000 square-foot building. He’d sell mostly on Mondays, Wednesdays or Thursdays (which, he said, was a good auction day because folks don’t have much else to do on that day).

Not only was he an auctioneer, but he was also a real estate salesman and property manager (at one point, he managed up to 97 properties). “I did a lot of real estate,” he said. Was it lucrative? “Yeah, if you get it sold.”

Two years ago, while riding his motorcycle, he was involved in an accident that left him hospitalized for three months. “I almost died,” he said. When he was released from the hospital, he couldn’t walk. Now, he walks with a cane.

He stopped auctioneering: “I can’t do that kind of work anymore.” He’s sold off his 14-foot trailer (thought he’d get $500 for it, but instead got $1,350) and his auction tables (sold them to another auctioneer). A friend is expected to sell his 18-foot trailer.

Now he buys, sells and collects. He has four china cabinets full of items, including his Black Americana collection. His basement, he says, is crowded with stuff. “I like old stuff,” said Whyte, who signs his emails as the “Antiques and Collectibles Man. “I like black stuff and I started collecting that.”

 He’s sold Aunt Jemima pieces in the past and has seen the prices drop. Pieces that were selling for $500 a pop bring in only about $100 now, he said.

As for his cookie jars, he’ll sell some of them in his booth. One of the jars was made by a potter named Rick Wisecarver. On the auction sheet, the jar was listed as “Mammy with Churn, Wise Carver.” The Wisecarver cookie jar is the one to the far left among the cookie jars in the photo above. Next to it is a photo of Wisecarver’s maker’s mark.

In Googling, I found that Wisecarver was a painter and potter who made cookie jars with images of both blacks and Native Americans (these are said to be the most collectible). He lived in Roseville, OH, and started out as a painter before moving over to pottery-making at the suggestion of his mother, who owned a ceramics shop. He also made vases and other items. Wisecarver died in 2002.

Several sites warned of reproductions of his works, urging buyers to look for his marks: “Wilhoa’s Originals (a combination of his family and partner’s names), Cookie Classic, Rick Wisecarver, Rick W, the initials YW (for his mom) that is incised in the pottery, R Simms (partner) and RS. The number of the edition is often found, as well as the name of the actual jar,” according to the website about.com.

Whyte seems to have at least one major winner on his hands.

Related posts:

1. Black Americana toys & more
2. Mason fruit jars and canning
3. Black Americana folk-art dolls

Whoa! I said in my head, and took another look. The thing that was disturbing about them was the ham-sized thighs on the women and some of the Jezebel-like poses. Among the figurines were a nurse, a Flamingo dancer, a woman in a bathtub with bubble bath, a basketball player and a cocktail waitress.

There was nothing flattering about them or their poses. To me, they seemed to be a source of ridicule. There was something a bit offensive about their exposed bodies, especially at a time when obesity among black women is a major health issue. Sometimes, I’m reluctant to post these types of images because I don’t want to be a party to our degradation. But I think we as black women should see how we are portrayed.

Once I got to the auction house the next day, I looked around for the items on a table. And there they were, just as in-your-face in person as they were on the website. The auctioneer described them as “Rubenesque lady figures.” Rubenesque referred to the plump full-figured women in the works of Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). He was known for his movement, color and sensuality, and apparently loved to paint his wife and white models with ample and dimpled hips.

The Urban Dictionary noted:

“The women in Rubens paintings were often very plump, with large round hips. While it was once a compliment, now it [is] often a criticism or back handed compliment.”

At the auction, I stood around just to see who would buy the pieces and for how much. One thing I’ve found is that Black Americana sells at auction houses. I rarely buy any of it, unless it shows us in a favorable light. Rubenesque or not, these did not appeal to me.

They appealed, however, to one black female bidder.

When the auctioneer got around to the table with the pieces, he unabashedly lifted one of them up and looked at the bottom, where you’ll normally find any previous price and origin. They were hand-painted in Italy, he said. They cost $1,100 each.

Then the bidding was on. For the first round, he asked for bids per piece. As usual, the actual bidding got started at $5 per figurine. It ended at $65. The black female bidder took four of them.

In the second round, each went for $35. She took two more. Next, the auctioneer sold the remaining seven as one lot but by the piece. They went for $15 each to a new bidder.

Total for all: $435.

The auction moved on to the next items. That’s the way it is at auction houses, nothing much causes a stir – except in people’s hearts, at least – because this is a business without sentimentality.

I’m very curious about who made these figurines. They appeared to be mass-produced, with very little or no artistry. Were they supposed to be a compliment or a slap? What do you think?

Related posts:

1. Plying the trail of black & female pirates
2. Wringer washing machine leads to black female inventor
3. Female, black magicians: Still a rarity

I can’t say the same about “Precious.” I’ve only seen the previews and they haven’t enticed me to go see the movie, which has been the subject of much controversy over its unflattering depiction of black people in general, especially black women and men. Watching the previews gave me that sick feeling I get each time I see a black Mammy figure on an auction table or a black child eating watermelon on an old postcard. We are much more than that.

I see too many awful stereotypical images under the guise of Black Americana to force myself to pay $10 to see us portrayed as pathological again.

I’m sure that I’d find the movie depressing, and I know that there is nothing depressing about black life. My friends and I love being black, and we love life. So why can’t Hollywood do movies about us being well-adjusted – well, as well-adjusted as human beings can be.    

So, today I want to show you why I won’t go to see “Precious.” I’ve seen her too many times before in books and on auction tables. I’ll let writer Ishmael Reed speak. He does it eloquently. 

From left: Mandy Struts Old Maid card (1940s or 1950s); Mammy jar; black woman dubbed “Mammy” on a postcard; Aunt Esther from TV show “Sanford and Son.”

From left: Bisque heads of man and woman; Hattie McDaniel in “Gone With the Wind”; stuffed doll and knitted potholder; Aunt Jemima.

I came across this piece by artist Betye Saar with a different take on Aunt Jemima. Not the docile one we’ve seen through the years but a “take-no-prisoners” one. It’s called “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” (1972).

Related posts:

1. Long road to a black (Disney) Princess

At first, I didn’t understand what he was saying, but acknowledged his tip. When I went over to the shelves near the wall, I saw what he was talking about. It was a piece of Black Americana, a male figure perched on the edge of a shelf, left leg crossing over the right, hat and head tilted to the side, a metal hook standing in for one hand. It appeared to be made of plaster or bisque.

This was a dapper figure in jacket, vest, open-neck shirt and tie in bold coloring. It was late 19^th century, polychrome composition, 24 ½” tall, according to the auction house’s description. There didn’t appear to be any markings on it. To a large degree, the colors on the garments were still distinguishable.

Most of the shelf sitters I had come across were small bisque or ceramic boys and girls, some made in Japan (around the 1940s or 1950s). By Googling, I found shelf-sitting animals, mermaids, Santa Claus, fabric dolls, couples, pixies and more, all for sale.

Shelf sitters are exactly what the name says. They are made in such a way to allow you to prop them on a ledge, shelf or even a chair, their legs hanging over the side. I have seen others designated as shelf sitters that don’t sit on the edge. You can use them for decoration, for fun, for inspiration, for whatever strikes your fancy. I came across two modern ones recently, a black boy and girl, made of flat tin with painted features, their bodies shaped in the outline of a chair.

At the auction, I was reluctant to commit to the Black Americana piece because it was so badly damaged and caked with dust. There were so many chips and nicks that the piece looked mottled. One foot was missing. One hand was chipped. The shoulder had a crack. It looked as if someone had beat it up (or had poorly taken care of it).

I decided not to bid on the shelf sitter, which went for $110. Its history apparently made up for its appearance.

For some reason, the piece conjured up an image in my head of a man with drumsticks dancing around and tapping the old nursery rhyme “This Old Man Came Rolling Home.” Can’t get it out of my head and can’t seem to recall where that image is from.

Related posts:

1. Black Americana folk-art dolls
2. Black Americana cookie jars
3. Black Americana toys & more

 Unfortunately, they were in stereotypical poses, which shouldn’t have been surprising. The cards were made by Whitman Publishing Co., and although neither deck had a date on it, they appeared to be from the 1940s or 1950s.

The first deck I found was all white characters with caricatured names and poses, but not caricatures themselves. The two black figures in the most recent deck were named Agonizing Sue, a woman in a pink dress with pink lips. The worst was Jazzbo Jackson, a man in a green suit, red-rose corsage and some missing teeth. Very demeaning.

Seeing these cards got me to wondering about what other derogatory figures were in the Old Maid decks. What images did game-makers like Whitman, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley and Russell use to show black people as ignorant and that people now sell as “Black Americana” collectibles? (Did you know that Old Maid was derived from a drinking game where the loser bought the next round of drinks. I didn’t.)

The term “Black Americana” feels like a misnomer to me. It seems to make what’s ugly sound palatable, as if it’s okay to sell this stuff on Ebay and other sites because, you know, it’s part of American history, no matter what it represents. I have no problem with selling the positive images as collectibles, but I cringe at most of what I see online and at auction.  

I searched Ebay and other “collectibles for sale” sites for Old Maid Black Americana cards. Here’s what I found:

Old Maid Improved Couples Round The World. One pair of cards showed a man and woman in Victorian clothing dancing the Virginia Reel (a folk dance that I had never heard of, and know now that it’s the dance I’ve seen in movies about the colonial period). He had big lips, she was overweight and another man sat on the floor playing the banjo.  

Old Maid Jolly Game. Someone from Singapore was selling this Parker Brothers game on Ebay. The description mentioned that there was a black couple among the cards. There were no photos to see, so I’m not sure if they were the same as the Improved Couples cards.

Old Maid with Little Black Sambo cards. Two companies – E.E. Fairchild Corp. and All-Fair, both out of New York state – manufactured decks with this figure. The All-Fair card was circa 1932. Interestingly, the drawings were complimentary.

Old Maid with a black boy and black girl (circa 1940). The girl, Honey Pie, had pigtails. The boy, Seedy Sambo, was eating a watermelon. Take away the watermelon and they would’ve been cute. From Whitman.

Old Maid with Melon Moe (another little boy with a watermelon!) and Lily White, a little girl playing with a doll. From Russell Mfg. Co.

Old Maid with Mose Snow, Mandy Lou and Smoky Sue. The Ebay description indicated they were Black Americana. The photo was blurry so I couldn’t tell. From Milton Bradley.

My findings didn’t stop there. I also came across similar games in other countries. A few sites talked about a Dutch game called Zwarte Piet (or Black Peter), named after a Christmas character. In the Netherlands and some other countries, Zwarte Piet was St. Nicholas’ (or Sinterklaas) helper, who – depending on what you read – either passed out candy to children or was mean to them if they’d been bad.

My Google search turned up many people in the Netherlands donning blackfaceto celebrate the pair’s arrival in early December. Some accounts said Black Peter was a chimney sweep and the blackness was from soot, not a reference to Africans or Moors. Who knows? Blackface is still out of place in 2009. 

An Old-Maid-like game in Germany is called Schwarzer Peter or Black Peter. France’s version is Le Vieux Garcon (translated Old Boy, who is the Jack of Spades).

Black characters started showing up on game cards with the creation of a game by a Massachusetts woman named Anne W. Abbott for the company of W. and S.B. Ives. The card game was called Dr. Busby, manufactured in 1843, its black characters shown with dignity. By 1905, the caricatures were awful.

In an essay reprinted on the website of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Michigan, Denis Mercier wrote that the early black figures in Dr. Busby were non-derogatory. He went on to say in his essay, “From Hostility to Reverence: 100 Years of African-American Imagery in Games,” that the popular Old Maid game offered a ”veritable encyclopedia of derogatory stereotypes.” He also mentioned other games that were even worse.

My research turned up card games based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, produced by the Ives company in 1852. They weren’t the only one: Another game based on the book was called “Uncle Tom & Little Eva.”

This research was an eye-opener for me. I’ve seen stereotypical toys in books and at auctions, the mammy cookie jars and post cards, but I’d never thought about card games. We couldn’t catch a break, could we?

Related posts:

1. Black child images on playing cards
2. Missing: Vintage black baby greeting cards
3. Playing cards with true African American images

We sat in dumb amazement at one point when the bidding skyrocketed on a 3-carat diamond ring set in a 14-karat yellow gold Florentine band. Bidding started at $3,000. Then it gradually increased as the auctioneer waited patiently for bids via the phone. $4,750. $5,500. $5,750. $6,500. $7,000. $7,250. $7,500. The bidding ended, and the auctioneer moved on.

 
A little later, the owner of the auction house hurried to the auction floor. The buyer of the diamond ring, an absentee phone bidder, had bid on the wrong piece of jewelry. He thought he was bidding on the David Webb 18-karat fur clip with diamonds, coral and onyx. The bidder was very very angry, said the owner. The winning bid was rescinded.

The David Webb clip - total weight of diamonds= about 1-carat, 54.6 pennyweight, with its original suede pouch - had been sold a few minute before. “David Webb, need I say more,” the auctioneer had announced just before the bidding started at $3,000. The clip went for $4,000. The poor phone bidder could have had it for less than the $7,500 he paid for something he didn’t want.

I had never heard of David Webb, which wasn’t unusual since I learned later that his jewelry sells in the high thousands of dollars. I felt sorry for the phone bidder. The fur clip, which looked like an early piece, was a bargain compared to some of the prices for Webb’s jewelry that I found through Google.

David Webb was one of the foremost American jewelry designers of the 20^th century, and is best known for his enameled animal themes. His elegant jewelry is and has been worn by the rich and famous, including Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, Princess Grace, Jackie Kennedy, the Duchess of Windsor and Doris Duke.

Actor Morgan Freeman wore Webb’s diamond and crystal shirt stubs and cufflinks when he accepted his Oscar for Supporting Actor in “Million Dollar Baby” in 2005.

Webb, who was born in North Carolina, died in 1975 of cancer. The company he founded in the late 1940s with Nina Silberstein filed for bankruptcy this year. David Webb Inc. has stores in New York and Beverly Hills.

Webb’s jewelry is highly collectible. Carol Elkins, senior vice president for jewelry at Sotheby, said in Washington Life Magazine earlier this year:

“Savvy U.S. collectors are looking at mid-20th century jewels ‘on trend’ with current tastes for fashions from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. David Webb’s signature enameled animal bangles and textured gold jewelry have re-emerged as the ‘look’ for a new generation of collectors, for example, a coral and diamond elephant bangle bracelet by Webb brought $95,500.”

Sotheby had a sale last week of what it called “important jewels” that included designs by Webb. Here’s a sampling.

Abalone pearl, cultured pearl, diamond and emerald brooch, $41,250.

Ruby, diamond and green enamel frog bangle-bracelet, $23,750.

Pair of gold and diamond earclips, 6,250.

White enamel, emerald and diamond leopard bangle-bracelet, $32,500.

18 karat gold and coral pendant-necklace, $31,250.

Cabochon ruby and diamond ring, $33,750.

18 karat gold platinum and diamond ring, $4,375.

What I found most interesting about the Sotheby auction and the one at my auction house is that the bad economy is not hurting everyone. As I whispered to my auction buddy, “Somebody has money.” Those who do still invest in their collectibles, perhaps knowing that paying a recession price now may bring a big profit in the end. Or maybe the Webb jewelry was purchased to be worn: Some of the pieces are magnificent.

As for my auction buddy and I getting lucky, we didn’t. She had her eye on a set of four 19^th century miniature bronze figures, no more than ½” to 1” tall. They were a Black Americana black boy, a Black Americana dancing couple, a hen on a nest and a devil on a pig. They went for $160. At our regular sales, she probably could have gotten them for $20.

For me, I wanted the 18k Wedgwood abolitionist pin, which sold for $325.

Related posts:

1. The glow of aurora borealis jewelry
2. The jewelry of Art Smith
3. A costume-jewelry necklace hidden away