Uncle Sam Collectibles

How national symbols are chosen is often a mystery. Uncle Sam is not our oldest symbol. There were two other figures that represented our budding country during the Revolution. They were Yankee Doodle, the British slang name for the disheveled colonial soldiers inspired by the song and Brother Jonathan, a smart, rural man who was […]

Unusual Beds

Did you know someone has invented a self-making bed? It requires special covers and sheets, but with the push of a button, they curl up into the “made” position. Quite an improvement from the first known bed, 77,000 years ago, when the whole family slept on one thick pile of plants. The ancient Egyptians had […]

Ceramic Pot Lids

This is not a plate. It is the lid to a ceramic pot that held Bear grease, shrimp paste, cold cream, shaving cream, tooth paste, potted meat, beef marrow, salves and many other cosmetics and foods that would have fit into the small, 3-to4-inch-diameter pots. The pots were used in England and later, in the […]

Porcelain Decorators

Ceramic artists mentioned in auction descriptions or reports are almost always the ones who shape the piece, a dinnerware designer or an artist who creates unique pieces by modeling clay or developing unique glazes. But that wasn’t always true. In the 1700s and 1800s, there were artists who decorated porcelains with paintings of gardens, flowers, […]

Huntley & Palmer Tins

No, this is not a bookshelf full of books. It is an antique tin box that held cookies (called biscuits) in England about 1905. Grocery stores in the past were very different. The use of the automobiles, starting about 1910, changed the way folks shopped. Before 1900, grocery shopping was at a street where farmers […]

Football Lunch Box

Vintage collectibles, especially those related to sports, sell quickly at auction perhaps because not all are expensive. Sometimes they are not noticed by the dedicated sports collectors and sell at bargain prices. This metal lunch box was made in 1976. It is decorated with the helmets of the National Football Conference on one side, and […]

Kentucky Derby Humidor

A reader sent us the picture of an item in an auction catalog that looked like a cookie jar decorated with racing horses, but it had a strange lid. What else could it be? Why horses on a cookie jar? The lid and the size, 7 inches high, are clues. The jar is a humidor, […]

Indiana Tumbler and Goblet Company Glass

History repeats itself, and collectors who research their collections are often surprised by the findings. In 1892 a group of businessmen in Greentown, Indiana, invested in a company that was attracted by the newly found fuel—natural gas—that had been discovered. Two years later, the Indiana Tumbler and Goblet Company had attracted workers and changed the […]

Teakettle Inkwell

Many won’t understand what this strange bottle was used for. Although it is called a “teakettle” by bottle collectors because of its shape, it is actually an antique ink bottle. A quill pen made from a sharpened feather was used to write before a better pen was invented in the early 1800s. After the ink […]

Elephant Head Service Bell

Although we have gone to hundreds of antiques shows, shops and auctions, we are sometimes baffled by what we see. So the six-inch brass elephant head was a mystery. It wasn’t an inkwell, although we have seen inkwells that size and shape. It had a tusk that could be pushed down, so it wasn’t a […]