Each year lucky people clean their attics and basements and rediscover the paisley shawl, wedding dress, or christening gown that an ancestor packed away many years ago. These clothes can be worn or displayed and enjoyed.
Fashions in clothing, furniture, and pottery and porcelain change. Spatterware, majolica, ironstone, and moss rose pattern have gone in and out of fashion, but by the 1980s collectors and museums began to realize the artistry of some of the pieces.…
Until the eighteenth century, gems and jewelry were worn only by the wealthy. That changed in 1730, when “paste,” a glass that could be cut and polished to resemble gemstones, was invented. It was often backed with foil to make…
Dolls have been saved for many centuries. A perfectly preserved doll may appear in a box in the attic along with almost-destroyed metal toys or well-worn stuffed animals. Collectors have searched for and purchased nineteenth-century dolls for years. Now prices…
All kinds of Western collectibles are rising in value. Native American crafts, baskets, pottery, and beadwork, saddles, spurs, cowboy hats, clothing and pictures of cowgirls are selling for higher and higher prices. Even western inspired furniture, metal wastebaskets with pictures…