The Art of Knokhloma

 

QUESTION: For years I’ve been collecting decorative wooden bowls and utensils that someone told me were Ukranian. They look to be some type folk art but I’m not sure how old the pieces I have actually are.  I’ve never seen or read anything about them, but their bright colors and attractive designs  really attracted me. I found most of the pieces in my collection at garage sales and fleamarkets. What can you tell me about the pieces in my collection?

ANSWER: The pieces in your collection aren’t Ukrainian but Russian—there’s a difference. In fact, they originated in the Kovernino District of the Nizhni Novgorod province north of Moscow. The painting style became to be known as Khokhloma. 

, which first appeared in the second half of the 17th century, is known for its curved and vivid mostly flower, berry and leaf patterns. The Firebird, a figure from the Russian fairytale, can also be used.

A combination of red, black, and gold are typical colors for Khokhloma. When artisans paint on wood, they use mostly red, black, green, yellow and orange  over a gold background. This makes the wooden tableware look heavier and metallic.

The production of painted dishes in Khokhloma is first mentioned in 1659 in the letter of a boyar called Morozov to his bailiff, containing an order for 100 painted dishes and 40 painted wine bowls.

The handicraft owes its origin to the Old Believers, who, fleeing from persecutions of officials, took refuge in the local woods. Even earlier, however, local craftsmen had experience in making tableware from soft woods. But it was icon-painters who taught them the special technique of painting wood in a golden color without the use of real gold.

The craftsmen carved utensils and dishes out of wood, then primed them with clay mortar, raw linseed oil, and tin powder. They then painted a floral pattern on top of this coating. After that, they coated the pieces with linseed oil and hardened them in a kiln at high temperatures. 

Artisans used two principal wood painting techniques on the Khokhloma—the  "superficial technique," red and black colors over a goldish one, and the "background technique," a goldish silhouette-like design over a colored background.

One of the villages where the art of Khokhloma painting had originally been practiced in ancient times grew to become a trading post to which the local craftsmen brought their wares for sale starting from the 18th century.

But it wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that Westerners first learned of the Khokhloma painting style through an exhibition in Paris. But by the early 20th century, the style seemed to be fading away, only to be revitalized during the Soviet times. 

The Khokhloma craftsmen united into artels in the 1920s to early 1930s. In the 1960s, the Soviets built a factory called the Khokhloma Painter near the Khokhloma village and another one in the town of Semyonov. These two factories have become the Khokhloma centers of Russia and still produce tableware, utensils,, furniture, and souvenirs.

The three colors—red, black, and gold—used in Khokhloma painting had a profound symbolism for decorating the sacred church vessels and the dishes and cups used in the monasteries and nunneries, as well as in icon ornaments. The red color represented beauty, the gold color symbolized the spiritual heavenly light, while the black color signified the cleansing of the human soul. The religious symbolism of colors has long been lost in the Khokhloma art but the precise and solemn scheme of colors inherent in the festive design of the "gilded" dishes grew to be traditionally used for decorating all wooden Khokhloma articles and made them especially favored by collectors.

There are families in the region famous for Khokhloma art who have been keeping secret formulas of painting materials and techniques, transferring them from one generation to the next for more than three centuries. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Celebrating an Olde Fashioned Holiday" in the 2020 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Stringing Along

QUESTION: I like to browse thrift shops. There are several in my area in which I’ve found some unique antiques and collectibles. One of the most unusual has been the string holder. This kitchy item has an almost comic character. I’ve purchased several over the last few years but know practically nothing about them. Can you tell me how string holders originated and how long they were made?

ANSWER: String has been a common item in homes and businesses for a long time. But string can easily get tangled, so inventors came up with ways to keep string in line. During the 19th century, the traditional shape of cast-iron string holders was the beehive. Others were egg-shaped  with openings around their sides so storekeepers could see how much string was left.

People often associate string holders with general stores, when storekeepers wrapped purchases in brown paper dispensed from a roll mounted on a frame with a cutting bar. Then, the storekeeper secured the package with string or twine. The wrapping paper generally sat on its frame at the end of the counter, and the string holder was suspended from the ceiling right over the. counter. Some of these holders were elaborate, complete with a sign promoting some product, such as Heinz pickles. Others, were simply a cast iron hole tin frame that held a ball or cone of twine and fed the string through a hole in the bottom.




By the early 20th century string holders had come into the home. These were usually figural pieces that hung on the wall and had a compartment to hold a ball of string. A person could feed the string through a hole in the figure, typically through the mouth in  a face, where it could be pulled out for a given amount, then cut off for use. While some of the early examples date to the 19th century, these decorative figures became popular from the start of the Great Depression through the 1950s. Manufacturers produced string holders from a variety of materials, including cast-iron, wood, glass, and porcelain, but the predominant choice of material was chalkware, more commonly known as plaster of paris. Many string holder manufacturers used it because of its low cost and ease in which it could be cast.

Once it cured or hardened, workers removed the plaster holder from the mold and painted to give it strong eye appeal. It was a popular item sold in five and dime stores, and the designs seemed to be endless. More often than not, manufacturers produced a broad line of wall pockets, of which string holders were one of the line. Wall pockets were designed to hang on the wall and hold a variety of items, such as stamps, matches, flowers, letters, etc. Some of the better known manufacturers of`wall pockets and string holders include McCoy, Roseville, Weller, and other established firms.

One of the companies that produced unique string holders was Miller Studio of New Philadelphia, Ohio. Miller Studio made string holders from 1947 to 1958. Some of their early designs included Jo-Jo the Clown, a wormy apple that featured "Willie the Worm, Susie Sunfish, and a kitten on a red ball of yarn. In 1949 they dropped the clown and sunfish and added "Miss Strawberry" and "Little Chef." In 1952, Miller replaced “Little Chef” with "Prince Pineapple." Then a year later, Miller dropped “Prince Pineapple,” replacing him with "Posie Pig." Because of its short time on the market, “Posie Pig” is the most difficult to find today.

String holders came in a large variety of shapes and designs. Most collectors focus their collections on a single category. Fruits and vegetables have always been a popular design for producers. Collectors can find everything from apples and bananas to green peppers and pineapples to hang on the kitchen wall. Animals have always been a top selling category, from cats and dogs to birds of every description.

While the cartoon characters and animals have always been popular with collectors of string holders, some choose to focus their collections on people designs, which include black memorabilia,  girls and women, fairy tale figures, boys and men, chefs, clowns, and comic cartoon characters.

Another category popular with col tors are designs featuring cartoon characters or advertising icons, including Elsie the Borden Cow, the Coca Cola Kid, Aunt Jemima, Smokey the Bear, Popeye, Shirley Temple, Betty Boop, and a rare 1940s Mickey Mouse.




But beware of the many reproductions and fantasy string holders currently for sale online. This is especially true in the category of black memorabilia where many of the figures of chefs, mammys and other black character figures are being copied in off-shore facilities and are flooding the marketplace. Don't confuse these reproductions with the new limited editions crafted by various artists and sold as new.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the Victorians in the Winter 2018 Edition, "All Things Victorian," online now.  

A Clock for Everyone's Mantel

QUESTION: I fix up old houses. While cleaning up a house to resell recently, I discovered a heavy clock with pillars on the front that looks as if it had seen better days. At first I was going to toss it in the trash, but when I told my wife, she said to bring it home. When she saw it, she gasped, for it looked like one her grandfather had when she was a child. She loved hearing it chime when she went to visit. The clock needs some restoration, but generally the case is sound. I took it to a clockmaker friend of mine who told me that he could probably get it running and would restore it for several hundred dollars. I’d like to know what kind of clock this is, who made it, and how old it is. Also, would it be worth restoring or should I just look for another one for my wife?

ANSWER: From the photograph you sent, it looks like you have an Ansonia cast-iron clock from about 1904. The company, based first in Derby, Connecticut, then in New York, produced thousands of clocks, but their cast-iron models were some of their best sellers.

The Ansonia Clock Company was one of the major 19th century American clock manufacturers. It produced thousands of clocks between 1850, its year of incorporation, and 1929, the year the company went into receivership and sold its remaining assets to   the Amtorg Trading Corporation in Soviet Russia.

In 1850, Anson Greene Phelps formed the Ansonia Clock Company as a subsidiary of the Ansonia Brass Company with two noted Bristol, Connecticut, clockmakers, Theodore Terry and Franklin C. Andrews. Phelps had been operating a brass rolling mill, the Phelps, Dodge, & Company, which he formed with two of his son-in-laws. To help build up his brass business, Phelps decided to get into the clockmaking business as a way to expand the market for his brass products. It was a shrewd business move, for it allowed him to profit from the manufacture of a clock’s raw components and the finished product as well.

Terry and Andrews thought it was a good business decision for them as well, giving them ready access to large quantities of brass for use in clock movements. They agreed to sell Phelps a 50 percent interest in their clockmaking business in exchange for cheaper brass clock parts and moved their entire operation to Derby, Connecticut— a portion of which was later named Ansonia after Anson Phelps—where Phelps had his brass mill.

By 1853, the firm had begun to produce cast-iron clocks to meet the needs of middle class families for clocks that looked elegant but were affordable. That same year, Ansonia exhibited their cast iron cased clocks, painted and decorated with mother-of-pearl, at the New York World's Fair in Bryant Park. Only two other American clock companies exhibited at the fair, which opened on July 4, 1853—the Jerome Manufacturing Company of New Haven, Connecticut, and the Litchfield Manufacturing Company of Litchfield, Connecticut, known for its papier-mache clock cases. (Learn more about papier-mache products by reading “Beauty and Strength from Paper” in The Antiques Almanac). Unfortunately, Phelps died a rich man a month after the Fair closed.

Ansonia created their cast-iron clocks to imitate elegant ones being made in France. Their clocks, however, because they made them of cast-iron, were less costly to produce, thus less expensive to buy, making them affordable to middle class homeowners. The paper dial used on this type of clock gave the impression of more expensive enamel ones very convincingly. While some bases were left sold black, others had the look of faux marble, simulating the French ones. Ormulu figures and mounts, on those clocks that had them, had a Japanese Bronze finish. The clocks had an eight-day movement, meaning they only had to be wound every eight days.

An antique cast iron mantle clock with gold gilt accents, manufactured by the Ansonia Clock Company of New York, circa 1904. This elegant mantle clock features a frame inspired by Greek architecture with a top cornice that has a gold bow and ribbon motif in the middle and two reeded columns on each side of the clock face, also with gold gilt details to the top and bottom. The central clock face is white with black roman numerals and hands, which is marked with the maker’s mark near the bottom and is then surrounded by a gilded border with an egg and dart design. The entire clock sits on a solid rectangular base.



This clock is what Ansonia named the “Boston Extra.” Made in 1904, it was a mantel clock with a visible escape movement, enabling the owner to watch the clock ticking, and chimes on the hour and the half hour. It features a pie-crust bezel, four green, full rounded pillars on the front and is very heavy, weighing in at 24 pounds. In 1904, the Boston Extra sold for $11.15 to $14.25. Today, one of these in good condition can sell for over $600. So, yes, it would be good to have it restored.

Learn more about clocks by reading #TheAntiquesAlmanac's Glossary of Antique Clock Styles.

 To read more articles on antiques, please visit my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 18,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the Victorians in the Winter 2018 Edition, "All Things Victorian," online now. 

Captured in Silhouette

QUESTION: I found this delightful little silhouette at a recent antique show. I’ve seen them in books but know nothing about them. What are the origins of silhouettes and how did people make them?

ANSWER:  Silhouettes were popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries before the invention of photography. Named after Etienne de Silhouette, Louis XV's controller-general of finances, known for his hobby of cutting profiles from black paper, they eventually turned into an art form.

But silhouettes actually date from classical Greece where they graced Greek and Etruscan pottery and ancient Egyptian frescoes. Their fame came much later when they re-emerged during the 17th century as the "poor man's portrait."

There was a real need for accurate and affordable likenesses of loved ones that didn’t require lengthy sittings and could be produced in duplicate. The solution was the silhouette. Neo-Classicism caught hold in the early 19th century, further cementing the popularity of the silhouette and giving it artistic prestige.

The process of making silhouette portraits was simple. Using the light of a candle, the maker threw the sitter's profile as a shadow against a sheet of paper and traced it with a pencil. He or she then transferred the outlined profile to a piece of black paper, then cut it out or transferred it to a white card, filled in with black ink and then applied it to a white board. Though simple to make, silhouettes weren’t limited to amateurs.

Professional silhouette-cutters, known as profilers, thrived, particularly in Europe where a distinctive and subtler style of silhouette portraiture evolved. Basic black British and American silhouettes had little adornment. Profilers from the Continent, particularly France, used colored and metallic inks to add highlights to the portraits and give them an illusion of being three-dimensional.

The golden age of the profiler occurred during the early 19th century when they achieved the same notoriety as painters.

By the 1830s, professional silhouette artists had abandoned free-hand techniques and started to employ devices such as specially designed "sitting" chairs, scaling tools, and the camera obscura in attempts to achieve accurate likenesses of their subjects. These mechanical aids enabled the operator to achieve almost photographic likenesses, but at the expense of artistry. Although most profilers signed their free-hand silhouettes, few of the later works produced using these mechanical techniques bear their maker's signature.

Pre-Victorian silhouettes concentrated on providing only a head and shoulders portrait. They have provided an accurate record of fashionable couture—hairstyles, wigs, ribbons, jewelry and laces. The style of silhouettes changed in the 1840s to include half and full-length portraits, making them even more useful for indicating what was in vogue for the Victorians. Silhouette portraits became so plentiful that they were exchanged much as a calling card would be used later in the 19th century.

By the mid-19th century the popularity of the silhouette had begun to decline. In an attempt to revive it, artists developed a variety of techniques to make them richer and more attractive, including the introduction of color, gilding and fancy backgrounds. But the silhouette's strength was in its simplicity. This fad, combined with the popularization of photography, helped to bring on the demise of the silhouette. The art form became nothing more than a fairground novelty where it has remained ever since.





            

A Tiskit, a Tasket, a Strong Shaker Basket

QUESTION: My great grandmother passed down a rectangular basket that, according to family legend, she purchased up country from a Shaker woman. The basket is in good condition and has been in our family for years. How can I tell it’s a Shaker basket?

ANSWER: Shaker baskets were one of the first American "signature"baskets—from a known maker or  group of basketmakers—to come onto the antique market. A combination of style, materials, weaving technique, rims and handles alert collectors to authentic Shaker baskets. But it takes a trained eye to separate a $10,000 Shaker basket from similar styles of Native American and country baskets valued in the $300–500 range. What isn’t widely known is that the Shakers sometimes bought locally made baskets for utilitarian use which has led to the misidentification of many Shaker baskets.

The Shakers designed each of their baskets for a particular task. For those meant to be used indoors, they labeled them for their use or where they intended to store them. For example, rectangular baskets stored efficiently on shelves without wasted space, so the Shakers created them to use to store folded laundry. They often labeled the basket for the room and shelf on which they placed it. The material used to construct this type of basket would be of the same pounded ash wood but lighter in weight, again pointing to the efficiency of the Shaker design. They places wet laundry, however, in stronger round baskets made with heavier pounded ash to support the extra weight. The style they chose for this basket was fluted rather than cylindrical, making it easier to stack the empty baskets after they finished with the laundry.

Despite the variety of utility baskets, the Shakers were most famous for baskets that they made to be sold. They referred to these baskets, made mostly for aesthetic appeal, as "fancy" baskets, which they sold as souvenirs to wealthy travelers at railroad stops and in the gift shops of grand hotels throughout the United States and England during the late 19th century. The Shakers named these fancy baskets for their style rather than their intended use. For example, when a person turns over a "cat-head" basket, the bottom resembles the shape of a cat's head.

Since the Shakers produced many of their baskets at their more numerous communities  in New York and New England, they used local materials. They preferred pounded splint from black ash trees for the horizontal material because it had stronger fibers and was more pliable to work with, as well as for uprights supports. Shaker craftsmen bent and drawknifed local hardwoods for handles and rims. Weavers wove the baskets with a continuous pattern that required an odd number of uprights. But the Shaker's need for uniformity and precision in design of their fancy baskets made it impossible for them to consider using an odd number. So Shaker fancy baskets have an even number of uprights.

Once a particular type of basket had been properly designed, it would always remain the same. Although styles varied from community to community, there was always uniformity within any one community. To achieve this, the Shakers used identical molds, allowing for basket components to be made by different hands and still fit together precisely. One person never made an entire basket. Instead, they used an assembly line approach.

Fancy basket styles can be found in various conditions for $1,500 to more than $10,000 on the open market, and the working styles are sometimes seen, although rarely, for less than $3,000 if in fair condition. Collectors will pay well over $10,000 for a documented good-condition working basket. So it pays to have a potentially Shaker basket appraised by someone who is an expert in them.

The Master of Inks

QUESTION: I recently began to collect old bottles. I found and bought an old blue glass bottle with what looks like a spout at a flea market. Do you happen to know what this might have been used for?

ANSWER: It sounds like you discovered a master ink bottle. Master inks could be found everywhere—at universities, in town halls, in schools, and even at Civil War campsites, to record the horrific events and write letters home to loved ones.  Without masters, much of history wouldn’t have been recorded.

People used master inks to fill smaller ink wells. Many survived because they could be reused. People often threw smaller ink containers away after use. Unfortunately, there’s little information about them available.

Prior to the 18th century, ink came in the form of a cake or powder, which the user would mix with water. It was only in the late 18th century that liquid ink in wide-bottomed bottles became widely available. This was a black or blue-black writing fluid that the user dipped a pen made from a goose quill into a small container. Different makers used a variety of recipes, but the most common types were Gall ink, deep black Indian ink  and blue-black ink. P& J Arnold of London was one of the pioneering companies in the ink industry in Great Britain. Other well known English ink companies included Stephens, Price and Hyde, and Cochrane. In the U.S., Sanford and S.S. Stafford were two of the earlier companies. As the ink industry grew, so did the need for ink containers.

Ink bottles differ from inkwells in that makers designed the bottles to serve a purely utilitarian purpose—to hold ink. Inkwells, on the other hand, were often more decorative, the sort of thing you’d want people to notice on your desk. Consequently, inkwells were more expensive than ink bottles.

No single manufacturer had the monopoly on ink bottles. Indeed, just about any company that produced glass dabbled in ink bottles at one point or another. Generally, manufacturers made master inks of glass, ceramic, or pottery. They came in several varieties , including “pourer” inks, used to top off ink wells, and the bulk type used for filling the inkwells.

Master inks are highly collectible. Their larger size allows collectors to display them more prominently than the smaller inks. They also came in a wide variety of colors, and as with all glassware, color is paramount to collectors. The most valuable colors are unusual ones like yellow and purple, while colors like aqua and clear are more common. Embossed bottles or ones with intact labels also increase an ink bottle’s value.
Signs of wear and color variants affect the quality. Some examples carry the residue of stains that still remain. Collectors usually categorize master inks by makers, countries of origin, and age.

Prices for master inks vary greatly from a few dollars for the more common ones and to hundreds of dollars for some of the rarer ones. Great examples from different ink makers can be found from $50-100.

Hess Toy Trucks--Everyone's Favorite Holiday Collectible

QUESTION: I have a complete collection from 1988 through 2008 including every truck (2 1996), most packs of batteries with Hess logo and several Hess truck bags. I have recently gotten married and have no room for them with my other collections. How can I sell them and where can I sell them without giving them away?

ANSWER:  It’s Thanksgiving time once again and that means Black Friday and, for the last 45 years, Hess toy trucks. And you don’t even have to get up at 2 AM to beat the crowds because the Hess Corporation has pushed back the start date to a week before Thanksgiving. For many years, people lined up at Hess Stations on Black Friday morning to get their hands on the coveted toy “truck” of that year.

Starting in 1964, the Hess Company wanted to thank their loyal customers by making small replicas of their trucks as a token of appreciation for their business throughout the year. The company was the first one to manufacture toy trucks that had working lights and sound. Hess gas stations along the East Coast sold the "B Model Mack  Tanker" in 1964 and has continued that tradition each year since. Because the company produced these trucks in limited quantities, they limited each customer to two of them. That first truck sold for $1.29, and today can sell for over $2,500. Over the last 15 years, the value of some of the older Hess trucks has doubled. But there is a catch.

More than half the value of each truck depends on the condition of its box. If the truck, itself, is also in perfect condition, then it’s considered to be “MIB” or Mint-in-Box.  Most people have trucks they bought to give to their kids for Christmas. Unfortunately, their children played with the trucks and now they’re worth a fraction of the mint ones.

Plus values of these toys tend to fluctuate, depending on who’s buying them. While dealers pay the lowest amount and then double it to sell them, some collectors will pay just about anything to get the truck they want. In fact, I heard of one guy who drove four miles to meet a woman in a rest area on an Interstate highway just to look at a truck she had for sale.But before you get dollar signs in your eyes, understand that the true value of your collection is whatever anyone is willing to pay for it or individual pieces.

Of course, values can be different, depending on which price guides or Web sites you consult. A truck listed for $300 on one site might be listed at $400 in a current guide. And since Hess Stations operate on the East coast, collectors in the West will usually pay more.

While the first trucks were tankers, succeeding ones ran the gamut from transports to fire trucks and car carriers.  In 1966, Hess deviated from its line of trucks by producing an ocean-going tanker, but it wasn’t until 1993 that the company offered a police car and in other years sold a helicopter carrier, monster truck, and this year, a race car. However, the price has gone up from that first truck selling for $1.29 to $24.99 for this year’s model race car.

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To find the retail value of your Hess Truck, check The-Collections.com