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?

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).

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.

 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?

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.