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.  

Monopoly Way Back When

QUESTION: I recently purchased a box lot at a country auction. In it I discovered a piece of oil cloth on which seems to be drawn a game board much like the one used for Monopoly. However, the names of the streets aren’t the same. Can you tell me anything about this?

ANSWER: What you’ve uncovered is an old game board from the early days of Monopoly.  Before Charles Darrow of Philadelphia commercialized the game and sold the rights to Parker Brothers, people made up their own game boards and used odds and ends for playing pieces.

It all began when Elizabeth (Lizzie) Magie Phillips created a game called “The Landlord’s Game” in 1904. As a proponent of the economic ideas of Henry George, she designed her game to teach the single-tax theory as an antidote to the evils inherent in monopolistic land ownership. It caught on with college students who played it in their dormitory rooms. But since they were often low on cash, they made their own boards.

The Landlord’s Game came in two parts: The first was like Monopoly, a game in which there’s only one winner. But in the second part the game employs the same capitalistic principles but mixes them with a healthy dose of tax reform, to prevent the evils of monopolistic ownership, and then transforms all the players into enlightened winners.

While the game board resembles the one for Monopoly, the names, drawings, colors and the like used on it are different. It’s painted with blocks for rental properties such as "Poverty Place" (rent $50), "Easy Street" (rent $100) and "Lord Blueblood's Estate " (no trespassing - go to jail). There are banks, a poorhouse, and railroads and utilities such as the "Soakum Lighting System" ($50 for landing it) and the "PDQ Railroad" (fare $100). And, of course, there’s the famous "Jail" block. Players could only rent properties on Phillips's board, not acquire them. Otherwise, there’s little difference between The Landlord’s Game and the Monopoly of today.

After Phillips published her game in 1923, it became popular as a grass roots movement. One of the people who became addicted to the game was Ruth Hoskins, a young Quaker woman from Indiana who went to teach at the Atlantic City Friends School in the Fall of 1929. Earlier that year, she learned to play a version of the Landlord's Game, called Auction Monopoly, from her brother, who learned it at college. Early in 1930, Hoskins taught it to her fellow teacher Cyril Harvey and his wife, Ruth, and the Harveys played it with their friends Jesse and Dorothea Raiford. It was Ruth Harvey who drew the first Atlantic City Monopoly board with Atlantic City street names.

The Harveys lent their games to Quakers staying at Atlantic City hotels and also taught their relatives, Ruth and Eugene Raiford, who, in turn taught their friend, Charles Todd, a manager of one of the hotels. Todd then taught the game to his hotel guests Esther and Charles Darrow.

Darrow liked the game so much, he enhanced the design and made 5,000 sets by hand in his basement. He sold these to Wanamaker’s, a highly regarded Philadelphia department store, as well as F.A.O. Schwartz, New York’s famous toy store. A friend of Sally Barton, the wife of the president of Parker Brothers, told her about this new game and the rest, as they say, is history.

The royalties from sales of Monopoly soon made Darrow a millionaire and newspapers touted Darrow as the inventor of Monopoly. And while he made lots of money from it, all he did was organize the game and sell it. Since Phillips had actually created a different game, albeit similar, she had no rights to the game of Monopoly, which had been developed by many people over time, much like the Linux operating system for computers.

For more information, read Pass Go and Collect on Early Monopoly Games.

Those Romantic Winter Scenes

QUESTION: I have two George Durrie prints I'm trying to find out about. I know that One is called “Home to Thanksgiving” and the other one is “The Road-Winter.” What can you tell me about George Durrie and his prints?

ANSWER: George Henry Durrie’s work has often been confused with that of Currier and Ives. He dealt with the same subjects, mostly rural winter themes, and his style is very similar. This is no accident, for while Durrie painted on his own, Currier & Ives marketed his work after their firm became the premier seller of hand-colored lithographs.

Born in Hartford in 1820, Connecticut, Durrie began studying with portraitist Nathaniel Jocelyn in New Haven in 1839. After mastering his painting skills, Durrie traveled throughout his home state of Connecticut and then through New Jersey doing paintings on commission. Although he gained a reputation for his rural landscapes, he also painted still lifes and scenes from Shakespeare to be used as illustrations.

Durrie became especially known for his snow scenes which earned him the nickname “the Snowman.” The paintings this person inquired about above are two of his more famous ones. Like Natanial Currier, Durrie was a meticulous artists, including fine details in his scenes, providing an record of 19th-century rural life. He paid special attention to the foliage and animals in his paintings, making them all the more realistic. But his method was more stylistic than realistic, catering to nostalgic images of farm life that people liked, rather than brutally realistic ones. Pioneers who had traveled West from New England especially liked them.

Though he began painting New England summer farm scenes, he soon discovered that if he added snow to them they became more appealing to the public. Durrie has been credited with adding the “snowscene” into American painting, creating a wintry ambiance that can be found on many Christmas cards today.

Durrie’s reputation preceded him and soon Currier and Ives knew that they had discovered a winner. They had gained success marketing hand-colored lithographs, and his landscapes matched their style of quiet country motifs. Even after his death in 1863, Currier & Ives continued to use his paintings for lithographs, eventually producing 10 lithographs of his work. Among his most popular prints were Cider Making, Winter in the Country, Getting Ice and Winter Morning.

He painted "Home to Thanksgiving" in 1861, only two years before his death. Currier and Ives published the large-folio print from it in 1867. The print originally sold for $1.50. Today, an original of this print sells for many times that. The emphasis here is on an “original” 18x27-inch lithograph in good condition with uncut margins, not a reprint of it.