A small knot of people had gathered in front of the tiny vendor’s booth at the Columbus Avenue Christmas Market in New York. On the wall facing me were shards of blue and white pottery, an old clay pipe, a bottle with a painted landscape and a bisque china head doll, all individually mounted.
But that’s not what had attracted this group of women anchored at the booth. They were fingering items lying there on the counter in front of them. As I inched closer, I saw more blue and white shards, misshapen and smaller in size, encased in vintage metal enclosures.
A creative and artistic “someone” had taken artifacts from the earth and made them into pendants. And the pieces were just beautiful. This was not an auction find, but the historical element inherent in each piece is what I find fascinating about auctions.
I’m sure many of the lookers at the booth were Christmas shopping for a unique item. Some – not seeing exactly what they wanted – asked the female vendor if she had others to show. One woman noted that she had bought a piece of jewelry last year and had searched this year for the booth. She and her friend took their time, looking over pendants on the counter and on a board where several hung, finding it difficult to choose between a lilac & cream or a blue & white.
Lying in a group there on the counter were also pendants made from the shards of vintage soda bottles like the ones I come across at auction. These bottles are usually snapped up eagerly by bidders – their thick glass cloudy, their dings and dents a mark of age. The best of them are found bottles, unearthed in somebody’s field, the contents long drank. Each with a story to tell.
Here, the vendor had attached a tag designating exactly where the shards and relics were recovered:
Soup Bowl. 1820s. Canal Street. Bowery. Manhattan.
Dinner Plate. 1820s. Bowery. Manhattan.
Soup Bowl. 1845. Brooklyn.
Dinner Plate. 1890s. Brooklyn.
The woman behind the counter told customers that they dug up these items from the ground, and were headed out soon to two other sites. It was good to hear that they got their hands dirty searching for their products and didn’t rely on some middleman to supply them. This made the pieces even more special because their history was appreciated.
The company’s business card gave its name as “New York Artifact Art,” which specialized in the “recovery of antique bottles and pottery restoration.” The owner’s name was listed as Scott Jordan. I didn’t get a chance to meet Jordan (He was a man with a gray beard wearing a top hat. as I recall. He appeared intermittently for a few short moments at the booth but seemed busy on other tasks).
According to his website, Jordan has been digging up New York relics since 1969, his first site being Governors Island where he came across pieces from Fort Jay dating from the War of 1812 to the Civil War.
His first artwork were collages made from dolls heads, watches, coins, bottles and pottery shards. He has recovered pieces from privies, cisterns, construction sites, landfills and home renovations from New York’s five boroughs, going as far down as 10 feet into the earth.
The jewelry – or wearable art, as he calls it on his website – is not all that this native New Yorker does. He also paints scenes on discarded bottles, a few of which were for sale at the booth. He recreates the drawings from period artwork in his collection or others he has come across, according to his website. He also has a collection of bottles.
Jordan became a full-time street artist in 1987, according to the website, and sells out of the Green Flea Market on Columbus Avenue and 76th Street in New York.
At the Christmas market, the pendants were selling for $35 up to $120. Buyers got the choice of a necklace made of antique metal, leather or sterling silver. The woman who had purchased a pendant the year bought another one. Her friend noted that they could also be used as a key chain or a chain pull on a purse.
I hadn’t thought of that. It’s amazing how one artistic endeavor can spark another. That’s the power of the imagination, and you don’t have to be a kid to have it. Just as Scott Jordan.
