On the Lamm

 

QUESTION: My grandmother has been collecting fancy cups and saucers for several decades. Some in her collection are simple in design, but others are artistically decorated. Two sets have an unusual shape with pedestal cups decorated with ornate paintings. The mark on the bottom of the cup and saucer is a blue lamb with the word "Dresden" below it. Who produced these cups and saucers and when were they made?

ANSWER: Chances are that the two cups and saucers in your grandmother’s collection are from Dresden, Germany. Ceramic factories such as Rosenthal and Meissen produced blanks that were later decorated by independent studios. Ambrosius Lamm owned and operated one of the top decorating studios, producing consistently high quality wares. 

The city of Dresden became a leading cultural center in the 17th century. In the 18th century, the city became known as the "Florence on the Elbe" because of its magnificent Baroque architecture and its outstanding museums. Artists, especially  porcelain decorators, took up residence there.

Between 1855 and 1944, more than 200 painting studios existed in the city. The studios bought porcelain white ware from manufacturers such as Meissen and Rosenthal for decorating, marketing and reselling throughout the world. Ambrosius Lamm owned one of the top decorating studios consistently producing high quality wares.

Lamm operated a porcelain painting studio and arts and antique shop from 1887 to 1949. It was located at Zinzendorfstrasse 28 in Deesden. He had approximately 25 employees by 1894, which grew to about 40 in 1907. 

 studio became well known for painting in the Meissen, Vienna, and Copenhagen style. Lamm's specialties included Old Dresden flowers, Watteau and mythology, as well as decorated luxury and utility articles in the old and new styles. Lamm bought blanks from a number of manufacturing firms, including Meissen, Rosenthal, Hutschenreuther and Silesia.

Lamm used at least three different marks by Lamm, including a pensive angel with Dresden and Saxony, an L within a shield, and the most common mark, an outline of a lamb with Dresden underneath.

He also produced cabinet cups and saucers. Middle and upperclass Victorians often had display cabinets in their dining rooms in which they displayed fine decorated plates and cups and saucers. A set of six flared cups with scrolled handles, hand painted with French court beauties, such as Mme. Lebrun, sell for between $3,000 and 4,500.

Collectors can still find desirable cabinet cups, as well as sherbets and goblets can be found, decorated  on Rosenthal blanks with a gilt cutout star or flower inside the cup. Usually, well-painted portraits of men and women in period dress appeared on the outside with heavy gold paste work.

Lamm often used rich cobalt blue and luster glazes for his ground colors. His favorite decorative techniques were jeweling and beading. His studio was well known for using heavy intricate gold paste work on borders of plates and cups.

 also enjoyed painting cherubs or putti. Many of his pieces featured cherubs holding fruit, flowers, and playing musical instruments. He often portrayed them floating amid fluffy clouds.

His paintings on porcelain cups and saucers and cabinet plates rivaled the quality of Royal Vienna and Sevres porcelains.  For example, he pronounced a series of 12 plates portraying ones from various oil paintings displayed in the famous Scamper Gallery in the Zwinger Palace. These plates had cobalt blue borders with elaborate gold paste gilding.

Lamm’s excellent reputation as a top porcelain decorator encouraged wealthy families in Germany and abroad to commission demitasse sets and dinner services from his studio. These sets included the monogram of the owner in intricate gold work. Examples for sale today include dinner plates and serving items with one to four hand-painted courting scenes within medallions on the border.

 occasionally decorated dinnerware with the floral and gilt patterns typically used by other Dresden studios. But he preferred to be more creative in his designs. His studio produced a line of dinner and tea ware featuring bold, large vibrant flowers covering each piece. Lamm’s studio was particularly known for its artistic rendering of flowers.

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 militaria in the 2022 Fall Edition, with the theme "After-Battle Antiques," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Capturing the World in Bronze

 

QUESTION: Recently, I attended an antique show where one of the dealers had a modest collection of what he called Vienna bronzes. These little sculptures of mostly animals were like nothing I had ever seen. The prices of these bronzes seemed a bit high. What can you tell me about these little bronzes? How old are they, who made them, and did they really come from Vienna, Austria?

ANSWER:  Vienna bronzes are antique bronzes made by artists from Vienna. They became popular in the 1850s. Known for their extremely great detail, many were painted in beautiful colors. Many of the bronzes took the form of animals, such as dogs,, cats, pigs, and foxes.. Though Vienna bronzes come in all sizes, but are most popular with collectors in the smaller sizes due to their high cost. 

Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, but it can also be an alloy of copper and another metal. The word “bronze” originated from the Latin Word “Aes Brundisium” = ore from Brindisi, and came via Italian and French into the German language.

Franz Bergman, a professional chaser from Gablonz who came to Vienna, founded a small bronze foundry in 1860. It later became one of the most famous of the Vienna bronze factories under the leadership of his son, Franz Xavier Bergman, who based many of his designs on ones from his father's workshop.

The younger Bergman was an artist who became well known for the many sculptures produced at his foundry in Vienna. He inherited the foundry from his father but had such success with his work that he opened a second one in 1900. Often referred to as a sculptor by historians, Franz Xavier Bergman was actually a designer who hired other sculptors to carry out his ideas. He had his designs made in bronze and cold painted with many layers of vivid colors. The majority of his figural sculptures for sale featured Arab subjects, animals, mythological creatures, and figures in erotic poses.

He expanded the production by adding Art Nouveau objects, seals, and erotica. Bergman disguised sensuous poses of young women in the Art Nouveau style by a covering that revealed all when the viewer pushed a button or moved a lever. Often carefully sculpted animals, such as bears, could be opened to reveal an erotic figure inside. To avoid punishment by immorality laws  for his erotic sculptures, he signed them with either the letter “B” in an urn-shaped cartouche or produced them under the pseudonym Nam Greb—the name Bergman backwards. 

Franz Xavier’s son, Fritz, graduated from the Vienna Art Polytechnic Institute and took over the company in 1927. As did his father, he commissioned models from many Viennese sculptors and modelers and continued production during the economic crisis of the 1920s. The models survived World War II undamaged in the cellar of his house which had been completely destroyed. 

Stylized cats, frogs and dogs were Viennese specialties. They were treasures of the Biedermeier Era with their pleasure in caricatures, mockery and satire. Published political and satirical cartoons of the time had become very popular and also served as models for the bronzes. Today, the life-like statues of pets and forest animals are more popular with collectors.

After the turn of the 20th century, hunting had become accessible to the middle class. The passion for hunting made animal bronzes popular. In the early 19th century, Vienna residents could admire exotic animals in the Imperial Zoo, known as the Imperial Menagerie. In 1818 the first giraffe at the zoo caused a big sensation, and artists   spent hours in front of the cages to model wild cats, elephants, monkeys and parrots.

In the mid 19th century, when traveling was still a big adventure, the Viennese discovered their passion  for the mysterious Orient. Even if people didn’t dare to set out on expensive and dangerous journeys to far off Asia, they could bring a taste for the Orient right into their parlor with Vienna bronzes. 

Expeditions of Austrian explorers in the mid 19th century brought back early photographs of a new world. Due to the construction of the Suez Channel and the trip to the Orient of Crown Prince Rudolf, the Viennese enthusiasm for the Orient grew. The famous and remarkable “Turkish Room” of the Crown Prince's apartment in Vienna’s Hofburg illustrates the trend of fashion during that period. 

In the late 19th Century a number of Austrian bronze foundries situated in Vienna and the Austrian-Bohemian border began to specialize in the technique of “cold painted” processes. Women, working at home, achieved this naturalistic finish by painting the raw bronzes with several layers of special and secretive enamel colors called “dust paints,” which resulted in fine lifelike studies of the various models and sculptures. They often applied the paint when the cast was still warm, the natural shrinkage on cooling adding to the permanency of the color as it annealed the paint firmly into the metal. As the color was not ‘fired’ this process came to be known as “cold painted.” Unfortunately, the knowledge for mixing this kind of paint has been lost. 

The Bergman foundry normally stamped with a capital 'B' that is placed in a twin handled vase. They are also often inscribed “Geschutzt” which refers to the model/design being 'registered' or copyrighted, along with its mark.

The value of a Vienna Bronze depends on the detail and subject of the sculpture. It also helps if the bronze is marked Vienna or Austria. These marks usually occur on the side or bottom of the bronze. In addition to the country there may also be an artist signature. The Bergmans, most notably Franz Bergman, were the most popular bronze artists. Generally, his bronzes sell from $800 to over $10,000 each.

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 art glass in the 2022 Summer Edition, with the theme "Splendor in the Glass," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

The Original Cafe Chair

 

QUESTION: I recently purchased two bentwood chairs at an antique shop in a nearby town. Both have woven cane seats and the number “14" pressed into the wood under the rim of the seat. I’ve seen similar chairs in coffee shops and cafes, but I purchased these to use in my kitchen. The cane is in good condition and the chairs are stained a dark brown. Can you tell me anything about these chairs—who made them and how old are they? 

ANSWER: You made a great purchase. Your chairs are commonly known as “bistro” or “cafe” chairs, and while most people think they date from the early 20th century, they actually date back to the 1850s.

Michael Thonet (pronounced “toe-net”), a clever and creative cabinetmaker from Boppard am Rhein, Germany, invented the process for bending wood and as a result created the first pieces of bentwood furniture. He originally made your chairs in 1859, however, his company, which is still in existence, made over 50 million by 1930. So yours could date from the early 20th century. 

Thonet, the son of master tanner Franz Anton Thonet, started out as a carpenter's apprentice in 1811. Eight years later, he opened his own shop. In the beginning, he carved his pieces from European beechwood. 

In the 1830s, Thonet began trying to make furniture out of glued and bent wooden slats. His first success was the Bopparder Schichtholzstuhl, or Boppard layerwood chair, in 1836. The following year, he purchased the Michelsmühle, the glue factory that made the glue that he used. However, he failed to obtain the patent for his new process in Germany and England in 1940, so he tried again in France and Russia the next year, but again failed. 

The steam engine appeared on the scene around the time that Thonet's was experimenting with his bending process. He discovered that he could bend light, strong wood into curved, graceful shapes by forming the wood in hot steam. This enabled him to design elegant, lightweight, durable and comfortable furniture, which appealed strongly to style trend at the time. His pieces were a complete departure from the heavy, carved designs of the past.

At the Koblenz trade fair of 1841, Thonet met Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, who was enthusiastic about Thonet's furniture and invited him to his Vienna court. During 1842, Thonet presented his furniture—particularly his chairs—to the Imperial Family. On July 16 1842: Metternich granted Thonet the right "to bend any type of wood, even the most brittle: into the desired forms and curves by chemical and mechanical means." The Prince granted him a second, nonrenewable 13-year patent on July 10, 1856 "for manufacturing chairs and table legs of bent wood, the curvature of which is effected through the agency of steam or boiling liquids.”

When his first factory in Boppard establishment got into financial trouble, he sold it and moved his family to Vienna, where in 1849, he opened a new factory called the Gebrüder Thonet. In 1850, he produced his Number 1 chair, which he intended to sell to café owners.  

He received a bronze medal for his Vienna bentwood chairs at the London World's Fair in 1851, at which he received international recognition. At the next World's Fair in Paris in 1855, he received the silver medal for his new and improved bentwood chair design. In 1856, he opened a new factory in Korycany, Moravia because of the country’s ample supply of beechwood. 

By 1859, he developed his most famous chair—the Number 14, known as Konsumstuhl No. 14 or Vienna coffeehouse chair No.14—for which he finally received a gold medal at the 1867 Paris World's Fair. It became the first example of bentwood furniture. 

Furniture experts regard the No. 14 chair a design classic. It has been praised by many designers and architects, including Le Corbusier, who said "Never was a better and more elegant design and a more precisely crafted and practical item created." 

Thonet produced his No. 14 chair using six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws, and two nuts. He made the wooden parts by heating beechwood slats to 212 °F, pressing them into curved cast-iron molds, then drying them at 158 °F for 20 hours. The chairs could be mass-produced by unskilled workers and disassembled to save space during transportation—an idea used today by the Swedish company IKEA to flat-pack its furniture. By the 1870s, Thonet owned offices in almost 20 countries.

The firm’s later chairs used eight pieces of wood and also had two diagonal braces  between the seat and back to strengthen that particular joint.

Today, a No. 14 from the 1860s with a near-perfect seat can fetch about $1,000 at auction.

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 "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter 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.

To Restore or Not—That is the Question

QUESTION:  Hi, my father, who is 93, has a chest his grandfather brought over from Sweden. I'm pretty sure its a Biedermeier. It has some wood damage, and the desk flap needs repair,. If we have it repaired, will it lessen the value? I have always loved it and don't have plans to sell it, but don't want to take away from its worth either. Can you help me?

ANSWER:  Yes, definitely get your Biedermeier secretary restored. For the most part, it’s in excellent condition. Restoring it will only increase its value. Unlike what experts say about antiques produced before 1830, those made after that can often benefit from restoration. In this case, just make sure you use the best restorer you can find. I can’t emphasize this enough. Your secretary is worth a lot of money and will appreciate even more. This is because a lot of Biedermeier pieces got damaged from dampness and such when the style went out of favor. Many sat in barns for years until the veneer literally fell off of them. So there aren’t very pieces that have survived.

So why are Biedermeier pieces so valuable? Next to the Bauhaus, the Biedermeier style movement had perhaps the most influence on modern styles to come. This Neoclassic style  originated in Germany in the early 19th century and played a major role in furniture design. It spread throughout Europe from 1815 to 1848.

The style’s name derived from Ludwig Eichrodt and Adolf Kussmaul, who depicted the typical bourgeois of the period under the name "Gottfried Biedermeier"—from "Gott" meaning "God," fried" meaning "peace," "Bieder" meaning "commonplace," and meier" meaning "steward"—in their Fliegende Blatter, a Viennese journal of the day. However, people didn’t call it Biedermeier until 1886, when Georg Hirth wrote a book about 19th-century interior design, and used the word "Biedermeier" to describe domestic German furniture of the 1820s and 1830s.

Biedermeier furniture suited the modest size and unostentatious needs of comfortable bourgeois houses. And the secretary was the most popular piece.

The less severe appearance of Biedermeier furniture led to a less formal arrangement of rooms as a whole. Flowers, screens, worktables and knick-knacks of all sorts helped to give a sense of family life. The bourgeoisie began to form a personal style, thus creating what’s now known as interior design, making Biedermeier one of the first design movements to reflect it.

People arranged suites of furniture in the corners of rooms. They created areas for eating, chatting, reading, and doing embroidery. Each had a sofa, table and chairs, and some sort of storage cabinet. Biedermeier comfort emphasized family life and private activities, especially letter writing—giving prominence to secretary desks. These featured a central niche, a mirror, and secret drawers.

Most Biedermeier furniture is extremely geometric in appearance. As the popularity of the style grew, some pieces took on new roles—the table became the family table, around which family members could site  for evening activities. Or table tops could be placed against the wall in a vertical position. A portable piano had a drawer for sewing things, while the upper drawer of a chest of drawers might be converted into a writing desk.










Prior to 1830, mahogany appeared in Viennese furniture and gradually replaced walnut. The adoption of this imported wood, which was often given a light finish, caused some craftsmen to apply matching stains and finishes to pieces made in walnut, pear wood, and Hungarian "watered" ash.

Attention to economy meant that local timber was mostly used, especially walnut veneers over a soft wood frame. Inlay served as the main decorative element, featuring the patterned graining of walnut and often reduced to a light-colored border. Sometimes, craftsmen used black poplar or bird's eye maple and colored woods such as cherry and pear became popular.

Cabinetmakers decorated their furniture with black or gold paint, and often employed less expensive stamped brass wreaths and festoons rather than bronze for decorative effect and gilded wooden stars instead of the elaborate metal ornaments of the Empire style. They designed furniture to be seen from the front and concentrated most of the decoration there.

With pieces of furniture as valuable as Biedermeier ones, it’s important to get them appraised by a certified antiques appraiser who specializes in European furniture. While getting an appraisal may appear costly, the cost is well worth it if the piece is damaged or sold. It’s also important to research former owners of the piece to create a provenance.

 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," coming this week.

How About a Cuppa?

QUESTION: My mother collected cups and saucers from dinnerware sets for years. She was also a great tea drinker. Recently, she died and now I have her collection. I don’t collect much of anything but I do like the variety she amassed in her collection. Why did she get so much pleasure from collecting all these different cups and saucers and what did that have to do with her liking tea?

ANSWER: Cups and saucers have a deep and historic connection to drinking tea. For collectors, they’re one of the easiest items to collect in all price ranges. Some people collect them from different makers, others collect different designs, and still others collect historically significant ones. Whatever the reason, cups and saucers are one of the most popular collectibles.

To understand how they are connected to tea drinking, we have to go back to 1800 when Joseph Spode invented the formula for bone china, a delicate but durable white porcelain to which he added finely ground animal bone. Spode decorated his first bone china teabowls (handleless cups) and saucers in brightly colored enamels and often gilded them. He copied many floral, figural, and landscape designs from the Chinese.

The earliest tea sets were copies of Chinese ones. Since the Chinese drank only lukewarm tea, the user could grip the cup, thus no handle was necessary. Cups from early tea sets had no handle. At the beginning of the 19th century, people began “saucering” their tea, or pouring some into the saucer to cool, then sipping it from the saucer. But eventually, this method went out of style. After that all cups had handles.

The English are great tea drinkers and created the daily ritual of “afternoon tea.”  An important part of this ritual is the cup and saucer, the more beautiful and delicate the better.  The need for these vessels encourage the production of numerous cups and saucers by English potteries. Many of them produced bone china dinnerware and exported  their products to the United States and Canada. During the 19th century, It became fashionable for young brides to collect sample cups and saucers from different sets.

Royal  Crown Derby richly gilded its "Imari" pattern and decorated it in the reds and blues of Japanese Imari ware. Minton produced beautiful hand-painted ring handles and butterfly handled bone china teacups highly prized by collectors. Doulton's Burslem factory made fine bone china cups decorated in gold with elaborate designs. Other companies, such as Aynsley, Foley, Crown Staffordshire and Royal Albert, produced bone china dinnerware with colorful transfer decorations.

Highly treasured by advanced collectors are the exquisite cabinet cups and saucers made by the leading porcelain factories in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. Women considered these lovely cups and saucers to be works of art and proudly displayed them in their cabinets.

Sevres produced magnificent cabinet cups and saucers with hand-painted portrait panels and richly gilt border designs, many in the "blue roi" color. Vienna Company developed a similar color in the 18th century, and today this cobalt blue shade is still a favorite with collectors. Both Vienna and KPM decorated their cabinet cups and saucers with magnificent reproductions of paintings by famous artists, such as Kauffman, as well as with beautiful florals and much gilding.

Cups and saucers from the elegant dinnerware services of the 19th and early 20th centuries are lovely to collect and offer good value. "Top-of-the-line" are cups and saucers from Meissen dessert sets, many with reticulated borders and multicolored hand-painted flowers. The best known and most copied porcelain decoration created by Meissen is the Blue Onion pattern, first designed in the early 18th century. Meissen based it on a Chinese pattern from the Ming Dynasty, and it got its name from a stylized peach that resembled an onion. More than 60 European and Oriental companies used this decoration, and many cup and saucer collectors hunt for examples of the different "onion" styles.

The most popular dinnerware in the mid to late 19th century was Limoges porcelain. Limoges was the center of hard paste porcelain production in France, and many companies exported dinnerware to America. Collectors actively seek cups and saucers from these sets because they offer a tremendous variety of shapes and decoration and are usually very affordable. Collectors look for the hand-painted examples. Floral decor, especially the rose, is the most frequent decoration followed by fruit themes, game birds and fish. Some cups and saucers have deep, vivid colors, while others, especially by Theodore Haviland, have delicate pastel coloring. Collectors prize many of them  because of their rich gold embellishments.

You can easily add to your mother’s collection. But before you do so, you should take an inventory by studying the marks on the bottoms of the cups and saucers. Try to see if she collected cups and saucers from certain companies or whether she collected them by design. Then decide how you would like to collect them. Don’t be afraid of selling or giving away pieces that my be slightly damaged or not in styles that you like. And while your mother may have left you her collection, it’s your collection now.

Bent Into Shape

QUESTION: I recently purchased two bentwood chairs at an antique shop in a nearby town. Both have woven cane seats and the number “14" pressed into the wood under the rim of the seat. I bought them to use in my kitchen. The cane is in good condition and the chairs are stained a dark brown. Can you tell me anything about these chairs—who made them and how old are they?

ANSWER: You made a great purchase. Your chairs are commonly known as “bistro” chairs, and while most people think they date from the early 20th century, they actually date back to the mid 19th century.

Michael Thonet (pronounced “toe-net”), a clever and creative cabinetmaker from Boppard am Rhein, Germany, invented the process for bending wood and as a result created the first pieces of bentwood furniture. He originally made your chairs in 1859, however, his company, which is still in existence, made over 50 million by 1930. So yours could date from the early 20th century.

Thonet, the son of master tanner Franz Anton Thonet, started out as a carpenter's apprentice in 1811. Eight years later, he opened his own shop. In the beginning, he carved his pieces from European beechwood.

In the 1830s, Thonet began trying to make furniture out of glued and bent wooden slats. His first success was the Bopparder Schichtholzstuhl, or Boppard layerwood chair, in 1836. The following year, he purchased the Michelsmühle, the glue factory that made the glue that he used. However, he failed to obtain the patent for his new process in Germany and England in 1940, so he tried again in France and Russia the next year, but again failed.

The steam engine appeared on the scene around the time that Thonet's was experimenting with his bending process. He discovered that he could bend light, strong wood into curved, graceful shapes by forming the wood in hot steam. This enabled him to design elegant, lightweight, durable and comfortable furniture, which appealed strongly to style trend at the time. His pieces were a complete departure from the heavy, carved designs of the past.

At the Koblenz trade fair of 1841, Thonet met Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, who was enthusiastic about Thonet's furniture and invited him to his Vienna court. During 1842, Thonet presented his furniture—particularly his chairs—to the Imperial Family. On July 16 1842: Metternich granted Thonet the right "to bend any type of wood, even the most brittle: into the desired forms and curves by chemical and mechanical means." The Prince granted him a second, nonrenewable 13-year patent on July 10, 1856 "for manufacturing chairs and table legs of bent wood, the curvature of which is effected through the agency of steam or boiling liquids.”

When his first factory in Boppard establishment got into financial trouble, he sold it and moved his family to Vienna, where in 1849, he opened a new factory called the Gebrüder Thonet. In 1850, he produced his Number 1 chair, which he intended to sell to café owners. 

He received a bronze medal for his Vienna bentwood chairs at the London World's Fair in 1851, at which he received international recognition. At the next World's Fair in Paris in 1855, he received the silver medal for his new and improved bentwood chair design.   In 1856, he opened a new factory in Korycany, Moravia because of the country’s ample supply of beechwood.

By 1859, he developed his most famous chair—the Number 14, known as Konsumstuhl No. 14 or coffeehouse chair No.14—for which he finally received a gold medal at the 1867 Paris World's Fair.

Thonet produced his No. 14 chair using six pieces of steam-bent wood, ten screws, and two nuts. He made the wooden parts by heating beechwood slats to 212 °F, pressing them into curved cast-iron molds, then drying them at 158 °F for 20 hours. The chairs could be mass-produced by unskilled workers and disassembled to save space during transportation—an idea used today by the Swedish company IKEA to flat-pack its furniture.

The firm’s later chairs used eight pieces of wood and also had two diagonal braces between the seat and back to strengthen that particular joint.

Today, a pair of these icon chairs with a table is selling on eBay for nearly $1,000.