I was at an auction in New Jersey a couple months ago digging through rows of boxes laid out on the ground in back of an auction house. In the fourth row, I came across several boxes of wooden craft items. The box that caught my eye was full of rubber stamps.
I’m not a crafter or a rubber stamper, but I was struck. There were so many of them! I always see lovely rubber stamps in craft stores, but it never occurred to me that someone would have such a large lot. That’s a collector!
I couldn’t go through all of them at the auction so I decided to bid on them. So did someone else. I ended up paying $32 when the bidder finally realized I wasn’t giving up.
The box contained Christmas and Halloween stamps, small Zodiac stamps, botanical monograms (fancy letters with flowers wrapped around them: “W” for wisteria), fruits and vegetables, cats, birds, stamp pads, books. There was also a catalog from Personal Stamp Exchange/PSX, a major manufacturer that has gone out of business. The stamp-makers included Inkadinkado (I love that name), Comotion, Cynthia Hart/Rubber Stampede, Hampton Arts Little Classic and Laura Burch.
My favorites were the Halloweens, poinsettia, monograms, the cute little Zodiacs and the block quilt.
Most of the stamps were from the 1990s, but several I learned later were retired and are no longer being produced. All of the stamps were wood-mounted (a word I learned though my research), while others were foam-mounted. They were used and unused.
Through Google, I learned that the hoard I found wasn’t unusual. Some crafters have hundreds of rubber stamps for all occasions. Like any collector, when they see one they like, they usually buy it. There’s even a convention for rubber stamp collectors and makers – the Heirloom Rubber Stamp Convention, organized by a company called Heirloom Productions in Oregon. I couldn’t find an organization of rubber stampers, but I’m sure there’s one out there.
Here’s what else I found:
– A giant red FREE stamp was erected in Willard Park in Cleveland in 1991. It was created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, and donated to the city as a gift from what later became BPAmerica.
In 2005, the San Francisco Center for the Bookheld an exhibit of rubber stamps – vintage and contemporary – from the collections of artists L. Scott Helmes and Picasso Gaglione. Helmes has been collecting stamps since 1974, and Gaglione has been manufacturing rubber stamps for 20 years, according to the center.
According to a 2003 article on the website AuctionBytes, a stencil salesman began creating rubber stamps in his shop in Baltimore in 1865. He learned the technique from an inventor. Rubber stamps became popular as a hobby in the 1980s, the article said.
On one site, I found tips on how to set up a rubber stamp collection, urging buyers to keep in mind how much they want to spend and where to store all those things. Another site offered some rubber-stamping ideas, including using them on gift boxes, greeting and Christmas cards, and flash cards for your kids.
