The Collecting Impulse

Newsman Jim Lehrer, himself a world class collector of bus signs and memorabilia, once said that there are important people and organizations working to preserve the “big things of life” like buildings and battlefields. It is left to the rest of us, Lehrer said, to preserve the other things.

But we would be kidding ourselves if we pretend that research and preservation are the only reasons for collecting. Lehrer himself has characterized the thrill of the “The Find,” the rush a collector gets when at last encountering that most highly sought item.

Scientists have studied the phenomenon and some concluded that the drive to collect comes from deep in the human psyche and may be almost as old as homo sapiens himself. Says Anthropologist David Given, “This focus on artifacts is a deep principle, and something that separate us from all other primates. Certain parts of our brain have specific areas that resonate to the features of human-designed products. We can’t get enough of them. It’s almost a compulsion.”

Throughout the ages pottery has had a special attraction for collectors. I am among them. In his book, A Tramp Abroad, American author Mark Twain announced himself as a “bric-a-brac” collector with a yen for ceramics. He said: “I am proud to know that I lose my reason as immediately in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it as if I had just emptied that jug.”

As Twain implies, there is something very primal about pottery. In the Old Testament Bible, for example, the potter’s art was extolled. Jeremiah, shown here in a medieval statute, in Verse 18: 1-8, was directed by the Lord to visit a potter: The Prophet, shown here in a statue, recounted his experience: “So I went down to the potter’s house; and there he was, working at the wheel. And whenever the vessel he was making came out wrong, as happens with the clay handled by potters, he would start afresh and work it into another vessel, as potters do.” A valuable lesson in pragmatism.

Writing in a more contemporary period the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, shown here, expressed this image of the potter creating from the earth: “No handicraftman’s art can to our art compare; we potters make our pots of what we potters are.” Or as it has been put more humorously: “If it be ashes to ashes and dust to dust; please, potter, handle my kin gently if you must.”

Speaking personally, the jug shape itself is highly attractive. I like to handle the items in my collection, to feel the texture of their surfaces and their roundness. It has been speculated that ceramic vessels that bulge at the bottom and constrict at the top as jugs do subconsciously signify shelter, self-sufficiency and “amplitude.” This may be just a fancier way of expressing the verse that appears on an American mini-jug:

“Nearer brown jug to me,
“ My lips pressed to thee,
“Even though thou art but clay,
“Close by thee I’ll stay.”

Still life artist Dennis J. Grafe once explained why he preferred to paint and draw jugs rather than landscapes. He explained that his purpose was to make his viewers throw off casual observation of their surroundings and really become aware of the distinct qualities of objects. “In the case of a jug,” Mr. Grafe said, “the viewer is exposed several qualities of this object which make it unique....shape, color, texture or weight.” In this view the pleasure derived is appreciating the individuality and authenticity of an item.

Collectable artifacts obviously range far beyond pottery. My collecting friends cherish bottles, vases, tiles, paperweights, watch fobs, match safes, trade cards, model airplanes, books, old toys and hundreds of other items. One only need look at eBay for a day to understand the vast numbers of different artifacts being collected by Americans.

Whatever an individual collects, whether of interest to me or not, I respect the impulse and pride behind the effort. While a particularly fine example of a jug may not be comparable to owning a Rembrandt painting of one, we collectors can be encouraged by the words of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes in one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Holmes tells his friend, Dr. Watson: “To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.” To which I would add: “Elementary my dear Watson.”

Blacks in Whiskey Ads - 150 Years

The depiction of African-Americans in whiskey merchandising over the past 150 years has reflected societal changes. The trade card “Essence of Old Virginia,” for example, has been dated from 1859, on the eve of the Civil War. It advertises “Wheat Whiskey” of the A.M. Bininger Co. of New York City. The obvious message conveyed is how happy Southern slaves are playing music and dancing for their white masters. The ad surely was scorned by Abolitionists.

The much reproduced Belle of Nelson Whiskey advertisement shows a black female slave serving the nude ladies of a Middle Eastern harem. According to the Library of Congress where an original resides, this image dates from 1883, not long after the end of Reconstruction in the former Confederacy. With the future of African-Americans much debated in both South and North, it likely was safer to depict blacks -- and nude women -- in an exotic setting.

In 1900 the Green River Distillery of Owenboro, Kentucky, began using the image of a grizzled black man leading a donkey with a jug of whiskey and an umbrella strapped to the saddle. The image reflected the idea of the faithful, submissive Negro in the South that had come to be accepted as a national myth. Note the details of his face.

The inspiration for this image purportedly was a story told to the distillery founder, John McCulloch, a Kentuckian who had opposed slavery. According to the tale, a lengthy rain storm disrupted liquor supplies arriving at local tavern and it had run dry. Suddenly an African gentleman,braving the gale, appeared in town to deliver Green River Whiskey aboard his mule. Suddenly the rain stopped and a rainbow appeared. The thirsty crowd cheered and celebrated for days. Green River used the image in dozens of ways over the years.

As blacks moved North, generally to fill menial positions, their depiction in service roles such as waiters, porters, or bellhops were common. Note the ad for “Grant ‘63” whiskey from the Spang Distillery of Boston. This image appeared on an ink blotter issued about 1910. There may be some irony as well in the whiskey being named for General Ulysses S. Grant, who defeated the Confederacy and ended slavery in the South.

Extending from 1920 until 1934 National Prohibition meant no whiskey ads. With Repeal, surviving distilleries were quick to resume merchandising. The industry feared that during the hiatus consumers had forgotten how to make and mix drinks. Many distilleries in 1934 and 1935 issued “recipe” books, often with histories attached. One featured Irvin S. Cobb, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist who had been a leader in the fight against Prohibition. Cobb, whose reputation and career soon would fall because of his racist views, was featured in a booklet from Frankfurt Distillery and its Paul Jones brand. Among illustrations was one that stereotyped blacks happily mixing drinks for white “gentlemen.” Clearly this was meant to invoke nostalgia for the “Good Old Days” of the pre-bellum South.

The theme of African-Americans as servants of affluent whites carried over into the next decade as exemplified by a Norman Rockwell-drawn 1940’s ad for Cream of Kentucky Bourbon. This brand had used black servants in its ads at least since 1911 and Rockwell obliged with an image that was only fractionally better than the Frankfurt Distillery’s. The waiter clearly is cast in an “Amos and Andy” mode.

The prize for the most racist whiskey ad of them all, however, must go to the Brown-Foreman Distillers of Louisville, Kentucky. Depicted on its 1940’s match cover ad for “Old Polk” brand whiskey is an African-American straight out of a minstrel show. He has thick lips, big feet and a loud wardrobe. This insensitivity when viewed from a 21st Century perspective seems almost unbelievable. Interesting too, distillery advertising of Old Polk Whiskey before Prohibition featured the likeness of former President James K. Polk.

Today when African-Americans are depicted in whiskey ads, of course, the images are entirely different. They are shown enjoying drinks with friends, often with whites present or in family situations. The Nation, including American distillers, has come a long way in the 150 years since Bininger’s dancing colored boy, but obviously it hasn’t been an easy road.

Dogs Playing Poker

I well remember the day about 1947 that my Father brought home a framed picture of dogs playing poker, given to him by a dental supply company. An avid poker player himself, he was captured by the art and probably would have hanged it in a hallway had he not been backed down by my Mother. Little did any of us realize then what a cultural icon the picture and others like it would become in America. Nor at that time did we recognize its pedigree.

“Dogs Playing Poker” refers collectively to a series of oil paintings 
by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge, shown here. He was born in 1844 in Antwerp, New York to abolitionist Quaker farmers. Known to friends and family as "Cash,” Coolidge certainly knew how to turn his talent into cash. Although he had no formal training as an artist, his natural aptitude for drawing led him to create cartoons for his local newspaper when still in his early twenties. He gained national attention when he “invented” Comic Foregrounds, life-size painted cutouts into which one's head was placed and photographed, presumably resulting in hilarious effects.

When Coolidge was in his mid-50s, his creative imagination brought him to the attention of Brown & Bigelow, a St. Paul, Minnesota, advertising firm that wanted something new and different in an ad campaign for cigars. He obliged by painting a total of 16 pictures featuring anthropomorphized canines, of which nine showed dogs seated around a card table. The first three shown here are Coolidge’s work.

Like the Elvis or the Last Supper on velvet, Dogs Playing Poker have become derisively well-known in the United States as examples of low brow taste in home decoration. One critic has described Dogs Playing Poker as "indelibly burned into the American collective-schlock subconscious" because the images are so frequently seen.

In the current Disney/Pixar movie “Up,” a brief scene occurs of card-playing dogs. Coolidge’s creations also have had regular contemporary attention on TV programs like “Cheers,” and “The Simpsons.” In one recent episode of “Family Guy,” for example, the town mayor is discovered in the basement of the schoolhouse playing cards with dogs. The references go on and on.

The number of knockoffs of the paintings is also impressive. Shown here last are two contemporary artists’ variations on the Dogs Playing Poker theme. Note that these figures appear more like humans with appended canine heads than actual dogs.

The question remains of why Dogs Playing Poker has remained so popular an American icon for more than a century. My thought is that the incongruity of so animated an creature as a dog keeping a “poker face” like the best Texas Hold’em crowd just plain tickles the funny bones of generation-after-generation of Americans whose taste for wacky comedy never seems to flag.



Coolidge died in 1934 but not before seeing his creations embedded in American popular culture. If, improbably, he had lived to February 2005, he also would have seen two of his original Dogs Playing Poker paintings selling at auction for a whopping $590,400. It proves once again that in this country schlock sometimes can pay off big time.

The Appeals and Perils of Appraisal

From time to time I am asked to look at an artifact, often a whiskey jug, and provide the owner with an idea of its value. It is always a difficult chore for me. Recently, for example, I appraised an item that its owner had just bought and hoped to resell right away. When I gave him my estimate he objected that my quote was the amount he himself had paid --and he obviously wanted to turn a tidy profit on the resale. I wished him luck.

Moreover in my articles and this blog I deliberately shy away from making personal estimates of the monetary value of items being featured. While recognizing the appeals of appraisal, I am ever conscious of the ever present perils.

That was particularly brought home to me a few years ago at the Freer Gallery of Oriental Arts, located on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Once a month curators there provide free appraisals of items of Asian origin brought to them by the public. Among their unspoken motivations is locating a museum quality piece that might then be donated to the Freer.

Having spent almost two decades traveling regularly to Asia, I had a small collection of artifacts that were personal treasures, many of them on prominent display in our home. After waiting four months, the day for my Freer appraisal arrived. Among the items I brought for inspection were the four shown here.

The first inspected was a Chinese blue and white ink stand that I purchased from a shop in Vietnam about 1970. I am fond of the object, finding its slightly skewed designs very attractive. The Freer curator had other ideas. “Where did you get this?,” she demanded. Vietnam, I replied. “Well just look at the second rate work the Chinese were foisting off on their colonies.” I gulped.

From there we went to a cloisonné vase decorated with storks that has been among my prized possessions. “Where did you get this?” she asked. An antique store in Beijing, I replied. “Well, she replied, this is not Chinese. This is Japanese. Shows you how little those Chinese antique dealers know about anything!” I gulped twice.

The third item offered up for inspection was a small wine jug with an attractive glaze that has greeted visitors to our home for many years. I had purchased it in Vietnam assuming it was a vintage Vietnamese ceramic. This object was met with similar disdain. The Freer appraiser identified it as a wine jug made in China, shipped to France where it was filled with wine and then shipped back to Vietnam for French colonial consumption. Another letdown. I was beginning to regard the Freer as the Land of Broken Dreams.

Just before leaving home, however, I had spied a small earthenware vase with a brown glaze, purchased at a flea market in Jakarta, Indonesia, for half a dollar and, for a lark, included it in my haul. It was the final item for appraisal. When the curator came upon it she stopped short: “Where did you get this?” I told her. Examining it carefully under a magnifier, she kept muttering under her breath. Then she called over her fellow curator and they began a low conversation.

When they finished talking, my curator returned: “We think someone is trying to fake a early Chinese glaze.“ “Why would someone do that and then sell the vase to me for fifty cents?” I asked. She ventured no reply. Then it occurred to me that I had seen a second jug with an identical glaze at the market. “When I return to Indonesia would you like me to purchase it for you?” For the first time all day the Freer lady was enthusiastic: “By all means.”

When I returned to Indonesia and visited the same market stall, the second vase had been sold. Back home, however, the little brown vase immediately began occupying a place of special honor in our living room. It has been there ever since -- a subtle reminder of both the appeals and perils of appraisal.

Discovering the Past in Cyberspace

William Gibson, the well-known science fiction writer and the man who first coined the term “cyberspace,” is fascinated with eBay. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Gibson said: “EBay is serving this very, very powerful function which no one ever intended for it. EBay in the hands of humanity is sorting every last Dick Tracy wrist radio cereal premium sticker that ever existed. It is like some sort of vast unconscious curatorial movement.”

The author goes on to say that eBay plus Google can allow an individual in some backwoods town “become the world premier info-monster about some tiny obscure area of stuff.” Gibson is dead right. While the archeologists unearth the past shovel by shovel, others of us drag it off the Internet.

For example, take the glass paperweight shown here. It is solid glass with raised letters that say “Remember Ungar’s Hungarian Hunyadi Arpad, Natural Aperient.” It looks as if it might have been made yesterday. A few years ago, coming on this paperweight, its provenance would have almost impossible to decipher. With the help of the Internet, however, today it is possible chart the history of the object with some precision and do it in a relatively short time.

First, the online Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “aparient” as a laxative. Good to know. Second, the Web tells us Hunyadi was the last name of a Hungarian hero known variously as John or Jonas or Jean, and sometimes as Johan Hunniad. A great warrior, in 1441 Hunyadi delivered Serbia from the Ottoman Turks and recovered for his native Hungary the region of Wallachia. In 1450 he vanquished another Turkish army and became renowned throughout Christendom. Returning to Hungary he was made governor of the kingdom. In 1456 a flotilla assembled by Hunyadi destroyed the Ottoman fleet. He died in the same year, a national hero. His tomb, shown defaced, is a place of pilgrimage even today.

Now the story jumps ahead four centuries when a Hungarian named Andreas Saxlehner about 1863 began bottling the waters of a well he owned within the city limits of Budapest. He adopted the name “Hunyadi Janos” for his product and trademarked it in Europe. Business was brisk for this bitter-tasting laxative water and Saxlehner eventually owned 112 wells. He soon was exporting it worldwide, including to the United States. His bottles bore a highly elaborate paper label for bearing Hunyadi’s likeness.

The success of this aperient, however, drew competition. A number of Hungarian springs were tapped and bottled -- and many of them used Hunyadi in their brand name, to the dismay of Saxlehner. Chief among his competitors was Hunyadi Arpad. This laxative water was bottled beginning in 1880 from a Budapest area spring owned by Ignatz Ungar. In his ads Ungar claimed that his product had been legally conceded by the Prime Minister of Hungary to be the best and strongest natural aperient. Saxlehner, asserting the Hunyadi name was proprietary, sued his rival in European courts -- to mixed results. He also financed ads claiming that his was the only genuine Hunyadi water.

Almost inevitably the watery conflict spilled over into the New World. Saxlehner had a partner firm that merchandised his aparient in the U.S. Ignatz Ungar had a brother, Joseph, living in New York who served as his agent. Between 1886 and 1893, according to import figures, 1,395,050 bottles of Hunyadi Arpad were shipped into the U.S. By this time eight other mineral waters with Hunyadi in their name also were being imported from Hungary.

The Saxlehners had had enough. In 1893 they bought out the Ungars and shut their water off. Then they went after their other competition. With their America partners they sued for the exclusive right to use the name Hunyadi in the United States. The case went through the Federal court system and all the way to the Supreme Court where the case was heard in 1898. The Supremes in a lengthy decision upheld a lower court verdict that Hunyadi was a name in general use for aperient water and that it could not be held exclusively. The Saxlehners were charged court costs.

Please recall that we began our quest with just a single glass paperweight. By investigating its origins through Internet sources we 1) learned the meaning of aparient, 2) discovered the exploits of the 15th Century hero John Hunyadi, 3) traced the origins and growth of Hungarian laxative water, and 4) ended with a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. This array of information and images could be assembled only because of the riches available through Google, eBay, and other web sources.

There also is a practical result. Because Hunyadi Arpad was imported here during only the eight years 1886-1894, we can estimate safely that my glass paperweight, despite its utterly pristine and contemporary appearance, is between 106 and 114 years old and a true antique. That also is something important to know.

Beam Bottles: A Sequel

At the risk of seeming to “beat a dead horse,” I return to the subject of Beam bottles, specifically decanters in its self-vaunted “Executive” series -- a subject first raised in my posting on September 3 of this year.

Recently on eBay four decanters in the Executive Series, shown here, were offered as a group with bidding beginning at $9.99. From left to right, they were “Charisma” issued by the Jim Beam distillery in 1970, “Flora de Oro” from 1976, “Reflections” from 1975, and “Regency” from 1972. All were attested to be in excellent condition.

Researching the values placed on these decanters in recent bottle price guides, Charisma by itself was worth $15, although by 2005 the Antique Trader guide had reduced it to $4-7. Flora de Oro warranted a $12 value from both. Koval set Reflections at $13 and Regency at $12; Antique Trader valued them at $8-10 and $7-9, respectively.

Using Koval’s as a guide, the total value of the four was $52; for Antique Trader the total was $38. Yet the opening asking price on eBay was $9.99 or approximately $2.50 each. Even at that that give-away price, there were no bidders. Nobody in eBay’s national audience was interested even at a bargain basement price.

Recall that this series was touted by early Beam Bottle guides in glowing terms. A 1967 example of the hyperbole about the Beam Executives: “Decanters in this series are highly sought after by collectors today and will surely be tomorrow’s treasured antiques! Most everybody, even non-collectors it seems, cherishes these bottles. Consequently the empty bottles are very seldom seen offered for re-sale.”

Wrong! They come up for sale all the time. Just after the Beam quartet failed to find a buyer, the 1965 “Marbled Fantasy”, shown here, was offered in original box at $25. Again no bidder. This item was valued at $27 in 1967 and $42 in 2005. Same result as earlier: no bidders.

I have only one Beam item, purchased more than 20 years ago. It is a small stoneware pitcher issued by the Milwaukee Jim Beam Club that imitates the bark of a white birch tree. I have kept it not because it will be “tomorrow’s treasured antique,” and someday hope to make a bundle on it, but because it is from a town to which I have emotional ties and because it has a highly unusual motif.

There is one final indignity to relate to Beam bottle collectors. The Executive Series quartet shown here subsequently was relisted on eBay. This time their owner asked $24 for the lot on a “buy it now” or “best offer" basis. Again, there were no takers. Once touted as tomorrow’s treasures, Beam decanters instead are today’s duds.

Sherwood Brothers: Under the Radar

Almost two decades ago, I wrote an article entitled “Who Made America’s Whiskey Ceramics?” At that time I was convinced that most, if not all, of the fancy jugs and bottles were made in Scotland or England and shipped to our shores. Alan Blakeman, the leading guru on British bottles, disagreed. He argued that the U.S. must have had
pottery firms with the capability of designing and executing even intricate transfer designs. Alan was right.

I saw the proof for myself in 1998. It was a small stoneware crock, a salesman's sample for the Sherwood Bros. Pottery of New Brighton, Pennsylvania. Shown here in a detail, the crock is drawn with an elegance and precision equal to anything the “Old World” could produce. The ad copy on the item offers to provide underglaze transfer printed items of equal perfection to Sherwood Brothers clients.

With about 7,000 population New Brighton is nestled in the western Appalachian mountains not far from Pittsburgh. Founded in 1815 and shown here in an 1883 sketch, the town is situated on a bluff on the west bank of the Beaver River. Because of good clay sources in the region, the town spawned a number of ceramic manufacturers. About 1879, the Sherwood brothers, G.W. and W.D., founded their pottery. By 1895 they were employing as many as 140 workers and had the capacity to produce two railroad carloads of pottery per day. Their success extended into the 20th Century.

For most of its existence Sherwood Brothers had a highly skilled force of pottery workers and artisans. Unlike other American potteries of the time, this firm had mastered the art of the underglaze transfer. This process requires great skill and precision. Sherwood Brothers boasted of its “Sherwood Ware” as a “decidedly superior line, made up in a decidedly superior way.” Its transfer work, the company said, was accomplished “from fine designs cut in copper, bringing out patterns than cannot possibly be reproduced by a rubber stamp.” Stamping was a more commonly used, and cruder, method of inking a design or label on pottery. The firm bragged about its workforce: “Sherwood artists, experts who devote all their time to this work, are constantly producing some strikingly beautiful results.”

A catalog from early in that period shows Sherwood Bros. Company offering a wide range of stoneware items, including whiskey jugs, stoneware bottles, inks, canning jars, jelly crocks, mugs and steins, pitchers, teapots, stacking bowls, cuspidors, match scratchers, and water coolers, chicken watering fonts, ice tubs, butter and preserve jars and -- not to be overlooked -- chamber pots. Shown here are examples of their jugs.

Because a major component of the firm’s trade was whiskey containers, the arrival of Prohibition in 1920 was serious blow to its business. This shock was compounded by the onset of the Great Depression a few years later. Business directories indicate that by 1931 the number of employees had dwindled to 40 and by 1935 was only 35. About 1939 Sherwood Bros. went out of business.

Other defunct potteries such as those in Red Wing, Minnesota; Knowles, Taylor & Knowles in East Liverpool, Ohio; and White’s of Utica, New York, have continued to attracted the attention of generations of collectors to their ceramic containers. Sherwood Brothers, perhaps because they did not always mark their products, consistently have flown below the collector radar. As America’s foremost transfer printing pottery of the 19th and 20th Centuries, they deserve a much better fate.