I was at a flea market recently and watched as a woman with her daughter, who looked to be about 12, walked up to a table. The woman spotted an item that she recognized, and…
Auction Finds Posts
Vintage seed packets as art
Posted in Art
I’m a gardener at heart. You should see my fuchsia and white peonies in the spring, and my phlox varieties in the summer. I don’t plant with seeds. It’s just something I never got into,…
Every now and then, I find packed among a $2 lot of glassware some interesting souvenir or collector’s plates. The ones inscribed with lovely scenes that are meant for display, not for food. I’ve picked up plates of…
Black Americana shelf sitter
Posted in Crafts
I was on my way to look over some vintage items in the cases at one of my favorite auction houses recently when one of the auctioneers stopped me. We have a nice old African…
On the hunt for fine china
Posted in Kitchen
My friend Fatimah is starting a catering business, so I’m helping her to find exquisite dinnerware at auction prices. That won’t be hard because lovely dinnerware come up for auction pretty often. Most of the…
Black soldiers and World War II
Posted in Photos
The group of photos were on a back table at the auction house against a wall, almost hidden among much taller items. They were black and whites of African American soldiers. Several showed 10 soldiers…
Alden House and the 1955 auction
Posted in Home
A couple months ago, I was about to leave an exhibit of Massachusetts furniture at Winterthur Museum when I came across a copy of a 1955 article from the Boston Herald. It was hanging on a wall,…
Fela, spirits and African masks
Posted in Music
I spotted it from across the room. An African mask, chalk-white, elongated face, hanging on a wall at one of my favorite auction houses on Sunday. I had seen several like it the day before,…
Frederick Douglass photo find
Posted in Photos
Last month, Swann Auction Galleries auctioned off photographs of Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. The three had been photographed by a man named Cornelius M. Battey. I went to the Swann auction in…
A paper trail to the past
Posted in Books, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
I have this thing for old documents. I can’t explain it, but whenever I see paper and other ephemera on tables at my auction houses, I instinctively head over and flip through them. I find that looking…