The Ultimate in Danish Design

 

QUESTION: When I was a kid, I remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap in a very comfortable chair. It was designed like a big glove and swiveled on a chrome base with four legs. I don’t know what it was called, but I remember him referring to it as Danish modern. Can you tell me anything about this type of chair?

ANSWER: You were very lucky indeed, for you got to experience the ultimate in Danish design, the Egg Chair, designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1957. But before we explore this chair further, it’s important to know how this design style came into existence.

In 1924,. Danish architect Kaare Klint was asked to teach a newly class in furniture design at the Royal Academy's School of Architecture in Copenhagen. Considered the originator of the modern Scandinavian style of furnishing and furniture design which thrived from the 1940s to the 60s, Klint’s influence on even today’s designs is great. 

Using teak, which was plentiful in Denmark, the Danish Modern style began to emerge in the 1920s and soon gained popularity with cabinetmakers in Copenhagen.

After 1945, this unique style achieved worldwide recognition and by the mid-20th century, Danish modern had officially arrived.

The son of Peder Vilhelp Jensen-Klint, the leading Danish architect of the early 20th century, Kaare Klint studied painting and apprenticed to several architects, including his father, before opening an independent furniture design studio in 1917.

He became the first Danish designer to combine function with Danish hand-craftsmanship. His drawings revealed an attention to the needs of the human body, long before the science of ergonomics came into being.

For instance, in order that his sideboards would be the most efficient, he determined the average dimensions of the cutlery and crockery used in a Danish home. Klint then created a case containing the smallest space required for the maximum amount of cutlery needed by a household. Aesthetically, he allowed the unvarnished teak to speak for itself, maximizing its clean beauty by waxing and polishing. And so Danish designers began using natural finishes for their pieces.

Klint is known as the grandfather of modern Danish design. He, more than any other Danish furniture designer, felt that it was important to understand the craftsmanship of the furniture of the past.

He pioneered in anthropometrics, which correlates measurements of the human body to make furniture better suited to man’s physical characteristics, essentially the essence of today’s ergonomics. In 1933, he created a deck lounge chair, which he outfitted with a removable upholstered mat and pillow. 

America's initial fascination with Danish modern furniture was largely the result of Edgar Kaufmann Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned from Europe in 1948 with photographs of chairs designed by another Danish  architect, Finn Juhl. The interest in Juhl's furniture led to a collection designed by him for the Barker Co.

Presented in 1951, the collection introduced American designers to the structural and decorative combining of woods of various colors and grains. Highlights included a teak armchair.

Fruitful collaboration between designers and cabinetmakers led to more industrialized production. By 1950, a few factories in Denmark began producing furniture using purely industrialized methods. The new generation of designers included Arne Jacobsen, whose creations, while organic in nature, used materials such as light metals, synthetic resins, plywood, and upholstered plastics.

Graduating from the Royal Academy in 1924, Jacobsen soon demonstrated his mastery of both architecture and furniture design. With the completion of his Royal Hotel in Copenhagen with all its fittings and furniture in 1960, his talents became widely recognized.

Jacobsen's most commercial success was the Ant Chair, which was available in a number of materials, including natural oak, teak and rosewood veneers, colored finishes or upholstery. Inspired by American legends Charles and Ray Eames, this unique chair was considered revolutionary in 1952, having only three spindly legs, no arms, and a one-piece plywood seat and back. The design of this chair became the basis for the stackable chairs used in hotels and conference centers today. Jacobsen followed the Ant with Series 7, a chair that had four legs and optional arms. Initially designed in 1955, and still being produced today.

Most of Jacobsen’s designs were the direct result of his belief that architecture and furnishings should be totally integrated. Two of his commissions—the Scandinavian Airlines Terminal and the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen—resulted from the creation of the uniquely shaped chairs, the “Egg” and the “Swan.” Designed in 1957, these modernistic chairs featured hi-density, rigid polyurethane foam, upholstered on single-seat shell construction. Both are extremely comfortable while being ergonomically sound and pleasing to look at.

There was a period of time in the middle of the 20th century when Danish designers were the world's most admired. Some of the most talented earned prizes at major competitions, and their works were quickly acquired by top European interior designers and collectors. Today, American designers see them suited to many different kinds of interiors.

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 "Antiques of Christmas" in the 2021 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.

The American Look of Danish Modern

QUESTION:  My wife’s mother bought this piece of furniture around 1976.  It seemed to be an antique back then. The label on the back says it’s from Meier & Pohlman Furniture Company.   I looked online and haven’t found anything quite like it with a curved top. I’m interested in knowing more about this piece?  Can you lead me in the right direction?

ANSWER: I can do better than lead you in the right direction. I can take you there. But first, you need to know more about what style your cabinet is. This china cabinet is a form of Danish Modern, an American version in fact, that was originally part of a suite of dining furniture. The Meier & Pohlman Furniture Company made it in the early 1950s.

Danish modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmarkthat originated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based on an understanding of classical furniture craftsmanship coupled with careful research of materials, proportions and the requirements of the human body. With designers such as Arne Jacobsen and Hans Wegner and associated cabinetmakers, Danish furniture thrived from the 1940s through the 1960s. Adopting mass-production techniques and concentrating on form rather than just function, Finn Juhl contributed to the style's success.

Adopting the Functionalist trend of abandoning ornamentation in favor of form, he nonetheless maintained the warmth and beauty inherent in traditional Danish cabinet making, as well as high-quality craftsmanship and materials. His use of teak wood added warmth to his pieces.



The development of modern Danish furniture owes much to the collaboration between architects and cabinetmakers. Cabinetmaker A. J. Iversen, who had successfully exhibited furniture from designs by architect Kay Gottlob at the Paris World Exhibition in 1925, encouraged further partnerships. In 1927, with a view to encouraging innovation and stimulating public interest, the Danish Cabinetmakers Guild organized a furniture exhibition in Copenhagen which occurred annually until 1967. It fostered collaboration between cabinetmakers and designers, creating a number of lasting partnerships including those between Rudolph Rasmussen and Kaare Klint, A. J. Iversen and Ole Wanscher, and Erhard Rasmussen and Børge Mogensen.

Following World War II, Danish designers and architects believed that design could be used to improve people's lives. Particular attention was given to creating affordable furniture and household objects that were both functional and elegant. The fruitful cooperation ensued, combining Danish craftsmanship with innovative design. Initially, the furniture was handmade, but recognizing that their work would sell better if prices were reduced, the designers soon turned to factory production. Interest in Danish Modern in the United States began when Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. from the Museum of Modern Art purchased some items for the Fallingwater home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This ultimately led to mass-production in the United States, too.

The scarcity of materials after the Second World War encouraged the use of plywood. By the 1940s, the development of new techniques led to the mass production of bent plywood designs by Hans Wegner and Børge Mogensen. They used beechwood for their furniture frames with a teak overlay.

From the beginning of the 1950s, American manufacturers obtained licenses for the mass production of Danish designs while maintaining high standards of craftsmanship. Later, they altered their designs to suit American tastes and introduced American parts  to reduce costs. One of these furniture manufacturers was the Meier and Pohlmann Furniture Company of St. Louis, Missouri.



From 1891 until 1959, the Meier and Pohlman Company manufactured fine wooden furniture. The company's original factory stood close to the Mississippi River, on Second Street. By 1874, when John Meier and John Pohlmann founded their company, lumber yards, saw mills, and other woodworking establishments already crowded this area. Here they had easy access to the rafts of white pine logs floated down the river from Wisconsin and Minnesota. The depletion of the northern forests, however, forced St. Louis furniture makers turned to other sources of wood by the beginning of the 20th century. Meier and Pohlmann, for instance, increasingly relied on rail shipments of oak from Missouri and the Carolinas.

The firm's relocation to Fourteenth Street in St. Louis in 1891 reflected the general westward movement of people and industry in the neighborhood while its tremendous success mirrored the growth of the furniture industry in St. Louis at that time. By 1906, the city ranked first in the country in terms of the volume of furniture produced and its market extended across much of the American West. Initially, Meier and Pohlmann recruited skilled cabinetmakers from Germany to work in their factory. The sons and grandsons of these original workers comprised a large part of the labor force well into the 20th century. Contracts with Sears, Roebuck and Montgomery Ward gave the company a national market for its fine dining room furniture after 1938.

Unfortunately, a dramatic increase in shipping rates and a shift in the public’s interest to the new Mediterranean style, ultimately led to the company's closure in 1959.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Article section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the other 24,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about vintage games in the 2019 Holiday Edition, "Games, Games, and More Games," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Listen to That Radio, Mister

QUESTION: I’ve been going through old boxes filled with junk that have sat in my attic for years. In the process, I came across several old transistor radios, all of which work. Are these collectible? And are they of any value?

ANSWER: Transistor radios were the first common electronic device to be downsized. Today, we take miniaturization for granted and have radio broadcasts and music at our fingertips on multiple devices. But when transistor radios first came on the scene, the modern age for many had begun.

Once a worthless, "modern" radio, the transistorized radio has become the foremost radio-related collectible. In the late 1980s, most transistor radios would be left on a dealer's table for $25 or less. Today, many of those same sets cost $50 to $250.




The Regency TR-1, the first transistor radio, introduced for the 1954 Christmas season, could have been bought in 1990 for about $100. Three years later, most TR-1s sold for about $300, and certain rare colors sold for several times that amount. But the market for transistor radios can be volatile. The Zenith 500H, a larger radio from 1957, sold for about $125 to $200. Not only is the styling of the 500H interesting, but the sound is better than many tube-type radios. However, quite a few 500H radios surfaced, so 500H radios often go unsold or for very low prices.

Novelty transistor radios, those shaped like an item or product, started the transistor collecting  craze, but few have ever broken the $200 mark. Most sell for $10 to $50 while early transistors have at least doubled in price.

If you’re considering collecting or dealing in novelty transistors, you can find early generic examples from the United States and Japan, like the derringer, rocket ship, and owl, or you can look for product-specific transistors like the Tropicana Orange, Mork from Ork TV-inspired set, and the Planters Peanuts can. Generally the typical bottle-, can-, and animal-shaped radios sell for under $25, while the early and interesting household item-shaped sets sell under $75.

You can assemble a good collection consisting of about 50 radios in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors and types can be put together for under $1,000. These can be easily picked up at flea markets, antique malls and shops. While many collectors look for 1960s-made sets in interesting shapes, don't ignore the 1970s and 1980s product-type sets, especially if they’re clean or boxed.

New novelty radios in the box are often twice the price of clean, but used, sets. Manufacturers made most of these novelty radios within the last 30 years, and sold or gave away tens of thousands of each variety, so selection and availability shouldn’t be a problem. You should wait and choose only the best examples of novelties, unlike the early transistor radios, which appeared over 50 years ago and often saw considerable use. People considered transistor radios to be disposable and threw many of them  away when they no longer worked.

If you’d like to start picking up the early transistors, experienced collectors agree that you should look for nicely colored, clean and complete sets and those that are small, pocket-sized if possible, usually with a plastic or nylon case. Few of the leather sets are popular, although some of the smaller, shirt-pocket sized leather radios from 1955 and 1956 are bought and sold. Look for civil defense markings on the dial. Most collectors choose AM-band only sets, although some AM/FM sets can have a nice look.

A collection of about 40 to 50 early transistor sets with some important radios included, may cost you well over $2.000, unless you spend a lot of time looking for bargains. However, if the sets are clean and complete, they should be worth more than the typical asking prices of today, that is if you hold your collection for a few years before deciding to resell. Regardless of your interests, early and novelty transistor radios are “hot,” and getting hotter and are a great item to collect.


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.  

The Quest for Artistic Furniture

QUESTION:  I inherited this chair from my mom but have no information on it. The only markings on the chair are “AT2-232” written with a marker on the bottom of the seat and “678” stamped into the wood on the bottom of the seat. Can you provide any information on the chair?

ANSWER: Your chair is made in the Art Nouveau style. It would have been a dining or desk chair in its day since it doesn’t have a padded seat. The number 678 on the bottom is probably the manufacturer’s model number. Many pieces of Art Nouveau furniture were mass-produced even though your chair looks as if it was handmade.

Art Nouveau or Jugendstil is an international philosophy and style of art and applied art—especially the decorative arts—that was popular from about 1890 to 1910. Art nouveau literally means "new art" in French.

Those two names came Gallerie Maison de l'Art Nouveau in Paris and the magazine Jugend in Munich, both of which popularized the style. Maison de l'Art Nouveau, or the House of New Art, was the name of the gallery opened in 1895 by German art dealer Siegfried Bing that featured exclusively modern art. In 1900, Bing produced an exhibition of color-coordinated modern furniture, tapestries, and objets d’art at the Exposition Universelle. Because his decorative displays became so strongly associated with this style, the style, itself, took on the name of his gallery, "Art Nouveau."

Inspired by natural forms, such as flowers and plants, Art Nouveau was a reaction to academic art of the 19th century and artists used lots of curved lines in their designs.

Though the Art Nouveau movement was innovative, it didn’t last long. It was important in American furniture history, however, because it heralded the end of the dismal darkness that was the close of the Victorian era. Rebelling against the overembellished furniture that flooded the furniture marketplace of the late 1890s, some European designers developed new ideas that found immediate approval with wealthy collectors. They began designing furniture and accessories with simple, flowing, fluid lines, taking their cues from nature, with its motion, curves, and endless cycling. Fairylike tendrils wove in, out, and around the leaves and stems of flowers, fruit, and nuts. The entire effect was one of delicate sensuality and naturalness, with faint overtones of sentimental decadence.

The Art Nouveau years found their greatest expression in accessories, not furniture. This was the era that fostered the whirlwind careers of Louis Comfort Tiffany and others who worked in glass, china, pottery, and metal. Those substances were far easier to shape into the undulating styles of the time than was wood. Most wooden furniture during this period was custom-made and therefore usually of good quality and fine woods, featuring asymmetrical lines, as well as stylized animal and plant forms.

Art Nouveau is a "total" art style, embracing architecture, graphic art, interior design, and most of the decorative arts including jewelery, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils and lighting, as well as the fine arts. Artists desired to combine the fine arts and applied arts, even for utilitarian objects, such as tableware, cigarette cases, and silverware. Art historians consider it an important transition between the eclectic historic revival styles of the 19th-century and Modernism.

Three international art exhibitions—the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1888, the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris, and the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa Moderna of 1902 in Turin, Italy— showcased an overview of this modern style in every medium.

Like most design styles, Art Nouveau sought to harmonize and modernize forms of the Rococo style, such as flame and shell textures. Artists and designers also advocated the use of stylized organic forms as a source of inspiration, and expanded their use of natural forms with seaweed, grasses, and insects.

But unlike the craftsman-oriented Arts and Crafts Movement, the artists of the Art Nouveau Movement  used new materials, machined surfaces, and abstraction in their designs. The stylized nature of Art Nouveau design made it expensive to produce, therefore, only the wealthy could afford it. Unlike furniture handmade by the craftsmen of the Arts and Crafts Movement, that of the Art Nouveau Movement was produced in factories by normal manufacturing techniques. Finishes were highly polished or varnished, and designs in general were usually complex, with curving shapes.

Several notable designers of Art Nouveau furniture were also architects who designed furniture for specific buildings they had also designed, a way of working inherited from the Arts and Crafts Movement. One such designer is Antoni Gaudí, who produced many notable buildings in and around Barcelona, Spain.

The Essence of Comfort

QUESTION: when I was a kid, I remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap in a very comfortable chair. It was designed like a big glove and swiveled on a chrome base with four legs. I don’t know what it was called, but I remember him referring to it as Danish modern. Can you tell me anything about this type of chair?

ANSWER: You were very lucky indeed, for you got to experience the ultimate in Danish design, the Egg Chair, designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1957. But before we explore this chair further, it’s important to know how this design style came into existence.

In 1924,. Danish architect Kaare Klint was asked to teach a newly class in furniture design at the Royal Academy's School of Architecture in Copenhagen. Considered the originator of the modern Scandinavian style of furnishing and furniture design which thrived from the 1940s to the 60s, Klint’s influence on even today’s designs is great.

Using teak, which was plentiful in Denmark, the Danish Modern style began to emerge in the 1920s and soon gained popularity with cabinetmakers in Copenhagen. After 1945, this unique style achieved worldwide recognition and by the mid-20th century, Danish modern had officially arrived.

The son of Peder Vilhelp Jensen-Klint, the leading Danish architect of the early 20th century, Kaare Klint studied painting and apprenticed to several architects, including his father, before opening an independent furniture design studio in 1917.

He became the first Danish designer to combine function with Danish hand-craftsmanship. His drawings revealed an attention to the needs of the human body, long before the science of ergonomics came into being.

For instance, in order that his sideboards would be the most efficient, he determined the average dimensions of the cutlery and crockery used in a Danish home. Klint then created a case containing the smallest space required for the maximum amount of cutlery needed by a household. Aesthetically, he allowed the unvarnished teak to speak for itself, maximizing its clean beauty by waxing and polishing. And so Danish designers began using natural finishes for their pieces.

Klint is known as the grandfather of modern Danish design. He, more than any other Danish furniture designer, felt that it was important to understand the craftsmanship of the furniture of the past.

He pioneered in anthropometrics, which correlates measurements of the human body to make furniture better suited to man’s physical characteristics, essentially the essence of today’s ergonomics. In 1933, he created a deck lounge chair, which he outfitted with a removable upholstered mat and pillow.

America's initial fascination with Danish modern furniture was largely the result of Edgar Kaufmann Jr. of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He returned from Europe in 1948 with photographs of chairs designed by another Danish  architect, Finn Juhl. The interest in Juhl's furniture led to a collection designed by him for the Barker Co.

Presented in 1951, the collection introduced American designers to the structural and decorative combining of woods of various colors and grains. Highlights included a teak armchair.   

Fruitful collaboration between designers and cabinetmakers led to more industrialized production. By 1950, a few factories in Denmark began producing furniture using purely industrialized methods. The new generation of designers included Arne Jacobsen, whose creations, while organic in nature, used materials such as light metals, synthetic resins, plywood, and upholstered plastics.

Graduating from the Royal Academy in 1924, Jacobsen soon demonstrated his mastery of both architecture and furniture design. With the completion of his Royal Hotel in Copenhagen with all its fittings and furniture in 1960, his talents became widely recognized.

Jacobsen's most commercial success was the Ant chair, which was available in a number of materials, including natural oak, teak and rosewood veneers, colored finishes or upholstery. Inspired by American legends Charles and Ray Eames, this unique chair was considered revolutionary in 1952, having only three spindly legs, no arms, and a one-piece plywood seat and back. The design of this chair became the basis for the stackable chairs used in hotels and conference centers today. Jacobsen followed the Ant with Series 7, a chair that had four legs and optional arms. Initially designed in 1955, and still being produced today.

Most of Jacobsen’s designs were the direct result of his belief that architecture and furnishings should be totally integrated. Two of his commissions—the Scandinavian Airlines Terminal and the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen—resulted from the creation of the uniquely shaped chairs, the “Egg” and the “Swan.” Designed in 1957, these modernistic chairs featured hi-density, rigid polyurethane foam, upholstered on single-seat shell construction. Both are extremely comfortable while being ergonomically sound and pleasing to look at.

There was a period of time in the middle of the 20th century when Danish designers were the world's most admired. Some of the most talented earned prizes at major competitions, and their works were quickly acquired by top European interior designers and collectors. Today, American designers see them suited to many different kinds of interiors.

Ugly Ducklings

QUESTION:  I inherited a couch with a matching chair from my grandparents. I have tried to do research online, but the multitude of antique items is overwhelming. This set appears to resemble the Chippendale style, but not exactly from what I have seen. My grandmother said the set was already over 100 years old when she purchased it in the 1960's to 1970's. I’m trying to gain knowledge about these pieces. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Sorry to say, but someone gave your grandmother misinformation about her living room set. It’s not uncommon for dealers in used furniture to do this because they really don’t know how old the pieces they’re selling are and just want to sell them.

This couch and chair date from the 1920s or 1930s. They’re a great example of pseudo styles that manufacturers created to fill the need in the early to mid-20th century middle and working class markets. At that time, most people were looking forward and didn’t want “old” furniture in their homes. To buy all new furniture was a big deal, especially during the Great Depression. It was a way people impressed their friends and neighbors. If you could afford to buy new furniture, you were definitely going places. So manufacturers produced some truly ugly, ostentatious pieces to fill this need.

There were truly only four officially recognized furniture styles during the early 20th century.  The first was Art Nouveau, a style based on a movement that began in Paris in the late 19th century and lasted into the 1920s. Designers of the time developed this furniture as a revolt to the styles of Victorian times. Heavily influenced by natural forms, it featured stylized images of grasses, irises, snakes, dragonflies, and a myriad of other animal and plant forms.

Another style, Arts and Crafts, or Mission as it became known in America, was a style, originally developed in England, that defied the overly decorative and mass produced pieces of the latter part of the 19th century. Designers went back to the simpler times before the advent of the steam engine when cabinetmakers made furniture by hand. The Mission style became a direct result of the American Arts and Crafts Movement led by such designers as Gustav Stickley.

In 1925, an exposition in Paris showcased modern designs in furniture, jewelry, and architecture. An offshoot of this exposition was the birth of the Art Deco style in which furniture makers employed stainless steel, aluminum, and inlaid woods to fashion sleek, ultra modern pieces with bold geometric patterns and abstract forms.

The roots of the fourth style, Modernism or Arte Moderne, grew out of pre-World War II industrialism. As an outgrowth of Art Deco, this furniture style used little or no ornamentation and a function over form concept. Influenced by Scandinavian, Japanese, and Italian designs, it featured industrial materials such as steel and plastic.

What all of the above styles had in common was that they were mostly produced for those that could afford them. Newly wealthy industrialists, bankers, and merchants wanted furniture that was in fashion and were willing to pay great sums for it. However, the common person couldn’t afford such luxuries and ended up with mass-produced pieces that didn’t cater to any taste in design.

What ordinary people wanted was their own form of luxury—comfortable couches and chairs that they could fall asleep in after a hard days work but that would also impress guests. They wanted just enough decoration to make the pieces seem elegant but not so much as to make them hard to care for. These needs resulted in overstuffed chairs and sofas with springs in their cushions to give added comfort, extremely stylized shallow carving that was easy to clean, and generally little decorative woodwork since using more added to the cost of the piece. Manufacturers could use cheap woods to build the frames which they then covered with upholstery.

Unfortunately, while a few pieces of furniture from this period have some charm, most do not and no amount of restoration or reupholstery will transform these ugly ducklings into beautiful swans.

Welcome to My Antiques Blog

Welcome to my blog about antiques and collectibles. I’ve been collecting them for nearly 30 years and writing about them for the last 16. In that time, I’ve covered the gamut from Chippendale to cookie jars, Renaissance Revival to ruby glass. Visitors to my antiques Web site,The Antiques Almanac, send me questions about all sorts of items–some they’ve inherited, some they’ve had for years, and some they’re considering purchasing. All these questions have two things in common: What are they, and how much are they worth?

In this blog, I hope to answer the first question about a variety of antiques and collectibles. In this modern age of multiple-use objects, we take for granted all the different little things our forefathers used in everyday life. I hope to shed some light on these.

The second question is a bit harder to answer. Generally, I don’t give valuations. I leave that up to professional antiques appraisers. The Antiques Roadshow has made everyone aware of the value of everything around them. But as I’ll show in this blog, just because something is old doesn’t make it valuable.

If you have a question about a particular item, please send it to me by E-mail.  Who knows, you may just see the answer in this blog one of these days.