I was scouting out an auction house that sells lovely and sometimes unique furniture when I spotted a painting of a white-haired man slightly bent, his gaze intent. As I neared the piece of furniture…
Author: sherry
For 17 years, Stewart Paul hauled around his handcrafted wooden tables, boxes and cabinets to craft shows in a big 1971 Plymouth station wagon. He dragged them around so much that they took as much…
Readers seek hat stretcher & Prohibition medical prescription
Posted in Clothing, collectibles, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Personal items
Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources to help them determine the value of their items. Sometimes I get inquiries from readers who want to buy items I…
Hefty price for a small dragonfly perfume bottle
Posted in bottles, collectibles, and Glassware
The bidding started innocuously with a price that was not unheard at the Decorative Arts sale. So when the sweet little amber perfume bottle with the gilt (gold leaf on metal) dragonfly started at $375, I…
I first came across the name of the artist Etelka J. Greenfield on a program for a 1948 exhibit at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia. The club had been formed a decade earlier as a…
Antique embalming machine that’s unnerving
Posted in collectibles, Death, and Medicine
The machine seemed to have a twin. I had seen a contraption like it two months earlier in another room during a special sale at the auction house. Is it possible that two of these…
I had spent much of my time at the preview of the museum exhibit of African American art looking at the works on the walls. I recognized most of the artists, and had seen some of their works…
Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources to help them determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do…
’64 newspaper article on deaths of Miss. civil rights workers
Posted in Black history, civil rights movement, and history
The big bold headline on the framed yellowed newspaper told me plenty about what the editors of the Baltimore News American considered the most significant on Aug. 5, 1964: “U.S Bombs North Vietnam PT Bases,…