Antiques or Not—That is the Question

QUESTION: How do I find out if items I have are really antiques?  Do dealers need pictures to come look at my pieces? How do I find honest reliable ones?



ANSWER: Many people ask themselves these same questions. Unless you’re an antique lover and collector, it’s often hard to figure out what’s an antique and what isn’t. First, let’s tackle what is an antique.

To anyone who browses antique shops these days the question "What is an antique?" seems to have many answers. Side by side with ancient-looking furniture and old-fashioned china, you may find souvenir spoons and colorful carnival glass. The problem bewilders not only buyers but dealers, too.

In 1930 the U.S. Government ruled that objects had to be at least a 100 old to be classified as antiques, so they could be admitted duty free into the U.S. But that was a legislative  tax decision. Since then antiques have often been defined as objects made before 1830.

Here in the U.S., dealers and collectors count among their antiques both items made by machine as well as those made by hand. Most of these are later than 1830. That date does, however, serve as a dividing line between the age of craftsmanship and the machine age. As the 21st century moves on, objects from the early 20th century are now reaching the 100-year mark, thus technically making them antiques. But if you talk to a high-end antique dealer, he or she will probably consider them just used goods.

A fine antique comes with a provenance or written pedigree. This isn’t just what your Aunt Milly says is an antique. It’s proven to be one through a detailed history of its creation and ownership.

But while the personal associations of heirlooms add to their interest, they can’t be relied upon to place their date and source. Not every old piece has a pedigree or a maker’s mark or label, but every one has characteristics that identify it which make it valuable to someone else. The secret of where and when and by whom it was made is in its material, its design, and its workmanship. So an antique is what the collector knows or perceives it to be. Nothing more.

Collectibles are items that usually have a less-than-100-year history, although not always. You could collect Limoge porcelain boxes from the 18th century and consider them collectibles. But for the most part, collectibles are objects from popular culture—old detergent boxes with the soap powder still in them, old bottles, old souvenirs.

So begin by determining, if you can, what it is that you have that’s an antique or just a collectible. Do Image searches on Google for your items and see if any photos come up that are like what you have or similar, then click on the photos to go to the Web sites where the photos have been posted to learn more about the item. Go to your public library and check out an antique encyclopedia or other books that have pictures of antiques. See if you can find objects like yours.

Once you have a good idea of whether an object is an antique or collectible, take some good digital photos of it. And, yes, dealers really appreciate seeing a photo or two of an item before they’ll make the trek to your place to see it. This applies even more to dealers you may find online. Take an overall shot, perhaps several from different angles, as well as a couple shots of details—carvings, signatures, hardware, etc. If you’re going to make the rounds of local dealers, you’ll want to get your photos printed. Small 4x6-inch photos will do nicely.



Asking where you can find honest reliable dealers indicates that you assume all antique dealers are scoundrels. They’re not. In fact, most are honest, hard-working business people. They’re in business to make money, so don’t expect that any of them will pay top dollar for your pieces. The most you can expect to get is half the value, on a good day.

One way to tell a dealer who may be less than honest is to see if the pieces in his or her shop are priced. An antique store is a retail business and all retailers price their items for sale. A dealer who doesn’t price their items may be planning on taking advantage of you—deciding what to charge for an item on how you’re dressed or how much you seem to know about antiques. Avoid shops that are piled high with goods in which the shopkeeper says, “Have a look around and let me know what you like, and I’ll give you my best price.”

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 Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Tiny Collectibles from World War II

QUESTION: I love to go to flea markets and root around in the cases of small items that some dealers have on their tables. I never know what I’m going to find. A few months ago, I stumbled upon a bizarre brass pin in the shape of a gas mask with the inscription “Britain Can Take It” cast into it below the mask. Naturally, I had to have it but can’t find anything on it. Do you have any idea what this pin could have been used for and perhaps how old it is? Because of the gas mask design, I’m thinking it’s probably from around World War I.

ANSWER: You happened on a very unique collectible from World War II—a piece of war relief jewelry. Most people have never heard of it, let alone seen one. This particular pin was a fur/dress clip produced around 1940 by Silson for Bundles for Britain.

Jewelry, started in 1937 by Victor and Jack Silberfeld, both Britains, who later changed their last name to Silson and their company name to Silson Inc. of New York, produced two of the most emotionally charged war relief pins---the "Britain Can Take It" gas mask brooch or dress clip and the 'Battle of Britain" bomb fragment pin. Both pins seemed calculated to bring the reality of "the European war" home to the American public. They mainly produced costume jewelry for the American market. Victor was the main designer, but George Stangl and Samuel Rubin also designed pieces for Silson.

Silson manufactured the first pin, shaped like a British gas mask, in both sterling silver and copper-painted pot metal versions. The company made the second pin, sold an behalf of BAAC, of an actual bomb fragment, gilded or painted black, with "Battle of Britain" engraved across the front. Both of these brooches are rare and highly valued by RAF and British home front collectors. Silson made costume jewelry for a little over 10 years.

Jewelry makers like Cartier, Coro, and Accessocraft produced World War II war relief brooches to fill both political and humanitarian needs. Politically, buying and wearing a war relief item showed support for the Roosevelt Administration's anti-isolationist stance. As Hitler's Blitzkreig continued to devastate one European country after another, humanitarian agencies began popping up in the U.S. to help the victims of Nazi aggression. They began by sending money and food through the Red Cross. Soon, refugee children and women’s knitting groups began producing first sea boot liners for British sailors, then sweaters for civilian bombing victims.

Various means, from penny-a-punt contract bridge parties to glittering benefit halls, funded these relief efforts. Many organizations produced "emblems,” made into brooches or attached to compacts, which local chapters and better department stores sold to the public. Depending on the item and the organization, 10 to 90 percent of the purchase price went directly to relief work.

Dealers and collectors often mistake these emblems for European pins, as they incorporate patriotic images from the country they support. The pins can he found in rhinestones and vermeil—gold plate over sterling—as well as brass and enamel. The brooches produced toward the end of the war used cheaper materials and construction methods because brass, silver and gold were necessary for the war effort.

In early 1940, the Allied Relief Fund asked Cartier to design an emblem for them. The company responded with a gold-plated brooch featuring the ram-pant lion of England against an elaborately enameled Union Jack shield, bearing a banner showing the organization's name. When the ARF joined the British War Relief Society in December 1940, Cartier changed the banner on the brooch to reflect this. The Allied Relief Fund version is rare, since they were manufactured for less than a year.

The British War Relief Society and Bundles for Britain were the most successful sellers of war relief jewelry. The British war relief emblem, based loosely on the coat of arms of the British royal family, depicting a rampant lion surrounded by the phrase Dieu et moo Droit (God and My Right) and hacked by bunting. An early use of  the "branding" concept so popular in marketing today, it was reproduced on everything from press releases to playing cards.

Accessocraft made the jewelry, which was sold at benefits, local branch workrooms and Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. The brooches are commonly marked "Official BWRS and BB by Aeeessncraft," BWRS and BB indicating British War Relief Society and Bundles for Britain, respectively. They sold for $l for the small one and $2.75 for the large. Accessocraft also manufactured pins in a number of other designs for these organizations.

War relief pins with the initials of the Royal Air Force were particularly popular with the public and are among the items dealers, and even World War II jewelry experts, most often misidentify. The RAF section of Bundles for Britain commissioned a wing pin from Monet. It is 24k gold-plated and was produced in three varieties. The BWRS had a gold-plated RAF wing pin created by Accessocraft in two sizes. The brooch sometimes he found with a chain to connect it to another pin, a popular design in the 1940s. The


British American Ambulance Corps was perhaps the most prolific of the RAP pin sellers. Coro produced wings for them in two versions—the larger of brass, the smaller of sterling silver—and various color combinations.

One of the BAAC's RAF pins is an enameled roundel pin produced in conjunction with their "Thumbs Up Cavalcade" fund-raising campaign. The roundel is the bull's-eye mark that identifies the nationality of a plane. Neither is marked British American Ambulance and so are commonly misidentified as RAF uniform or sweetheart pins.

Also on behalf of the BAAC, Bloomingdale's sold a set of sterling silver pins shaped like garden tools with the theme "Gather the Tools of Victory." The set cost $1.50, with 10 percent going toward relief work. Today, these tool pins are rarely found as a set and, as was common with many of the war relief items, their identification as such was only indicated on the backing card.

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 Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Symbols of Tomorrow

QUESTION: Many years ago I purchased a snowglobe from the 1939 New York World’s Fair that contains a miniature Trylon and Perisphere. What’s unusual about this snowglobe is that the snow in it is black. Have you seen one like this?

ANSWER: I get almost as many questions about souvenir items from the 1939 New York World’s Fair as there were items sold or given away at the Fair. Well, not really, but pretty many.

This snowglobe, featuring the Trylon and Perisphere, is one of the rarer souvenirs from the Fair. Originally, the snow inside the snowglobe was blue and orange, the colors of the State of New York, but over time, they reacted to the water and turned black or brown.

The Trylon and Perisphere were two monumental modernistic structures designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux that together were the Theme Center of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Harrison later went on to design the United Nations Headquarters.

After considering many different designs, the Fair Committee chose the Trylon and Perisphere to represent the Fair’s futuristic theme.

They chose the name "Perisphere," combining the Greek prefix peri-, meaning "all around", "about", or "enclosing" and the name "Trylon," coined from the phrase "triangular pylon." The simple structures could be seen from mid-town Manhattan as the Trylon was the tallest structure in Queens at the time.

Adjacent to it stood the Perisphere, a tremendous sphere 18 stories tall and 180 feet in diameter, connected to the 610-foot spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator. The Perisphere housed a diorama by Henry Dreyfuss called Democracity which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow," depicted a utopian city-of-the-future.

The exhibit took up a space more than two-times the size of Radio City Music Hall. After paying 25 cents, visitors viewed the exhibit from two rotating balconies, dubbed “magic carpets,” that encircled the model while a multi-image slide presentation appeared on the dome of the sphere. Every six minutes a recorded narration extolled the wonders of this utopian city, and the lights dimmed to mimic nighttime as phosphorescent paint made the buildings look like they were lit from the inside. The theme song “Rising Tide” by William Grant Still accompanied the narration.

After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a 950-foot-long (290 m) spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere. The 18-foot-wide Helicline had a mirrored underside.  Since it was one of the highest locations at the fair, the Helicline became a popular spot to take in views of the fairgrounds.

It took 2,000 cubic yards of concrete and reinforced steel, more than 7,000 individual pieces, to create the Trylon and Perisphere. Their combined weight came to approximately 10,000 tons. In order to test the durability of the design, models were subjected to 70-mile an hour winds in a test tunnel.

Originally, the designers planned for the Perisphere to be covered in a smooth and seamless layer of concrete. However, due to the high cost of that material, they decided to use gypsum instead. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts to smooth it out, the gypsum created an uneven texture and had visible seams. Also, surrounding fountains damaged the fragile coating and their arches of water had to be lowered.

The design for the Perisphere called for eight relatively small hidden support pylons,  giving the illusion that the sphere was floating. Strategically placed fountains and mirrors covering the supports enhanced the effect. At first, the fountains didn’t provide enough coverage, but the Fair engineers increased their pressure and added additional ones to create the desired effect.

At night, projectors with custom designed batteries and the largest long-focus lenses ever commercially made projected moving images of clouds and other things onto the Perisphere from nearby buildings using specially designed glass-mounted slides. Since the amount of light needed to project the images would have burned through regular film, the exhibit designers enclosed the slides in glass.

The Fair Committee licensed the image of the Trylon and Perisphere for use on an estimated 25,000 different products, including this snowglobe. In 1939, licensing was a  new concept, but it still earned the Fair $1 million in the first season alone.

Every visitor took home some sort of souvenir, from small toys to three-legged folding cane/seats to wallets, bracelets, woman’s compacts, and thousands of pins—all with the image of the Trylon and Perisphere on them.

Learn more about 1939 New York World's Fair souvenirs by reading "Souvenirs from the 1939 New York World's Fair Highly Collectible" in #TheAntiquesAlmanac.

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 Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Marriages Made in Hell

QUESTION: I have inherited a cookie jar from my mother's estate, our family home outside Philadelphia. The cookie jar is marked on the bottom “Goldilocks #405 Patent Pending.” I see on the Internet that there are plenty of these jars in the marketplace. However, my cookie jar doesn't look like the one's I found with this mark. The design I have is slightly different. After a bit of research, I wondered if my version is a 'blank' that was simply uniquely printed or perhaps its just a rip off reproduction.  I have no clue. Can you help me solve this mystery?

ANSWER: What you have is the bottom of a Goldilocks cookie jar and the top of a Little Red Riding Hood cookie jar. The former was made by the Regal China Company and the latter by the Hull Pottery. Goldilocks has a blue hood and a little bear while Little Red Riding Hood has a red hood and a basket of flowers. The tops and bottoms of these cookie jars, though different in design, are interchangeable. What must have happened is that the top of the Goldilocks jar got broken and someone replaced it with the top of a Little Red Riding Hood jar. In antiques, we call this a marriage.

As in real life marriages where both people must work together to form a perfect union, antiques marriages can be either really good or terribly bad.

In the world of antiques, marriages are somewhat of a curse, especially when it comes to furniture. Here, a dealer joins together two different pieces of furniture worth significantly less than the original to form one piece that could be worth much more than the original. Novice antiques collectors could easily be fooled into spending more for a married piece than it’s actually worth.


Some unscrupulous antique dealers would no doubt try to pass off a married piece as an original while others marry parts together and literally make antiques. This is especially prevalent in the middle market where profit margins aren’t as high in the fine antiques one. This is especially true of antique furniture from the 17th to the 19th century. However, pieces made during this time often came in sections.

Back then, transporting large pieces of furniture was difficult. Pieces had to be transported in carts, and they had to be light enough that a small team of horses could pull them and two men could lift and carry them. So cabinetmakers produced furniture in pieces so that it could be easily transported and then assembled on site.

Of course, furniture that can be easily assembled is just as easy to disassemble. This meant that the end user could easily replace a broken or worn-out part of a piece of furniture without having to buy a new one. For example, if the table top splintered, the owner could simply keep the base and have a new top made. These combinations of old and new became the first married pieces of furniture.
But how does a novice collector know when a piece is a marriage? The more knowledgeable a collector is, the less chance he or she will have of getting taken.

Marriages are often easy to spot. First, look for any clash of styles. Cabinetmakers would not have combined furniture styles since most used style books to help them fashion their pieces. Second, check to see if there are any unusual proportions. Does one part seem larger than it should be? Third, does the wood used to make the piece match. While some cabinetmakers used less expensive wood for the frames, most used better wood for the exterior. Fourth, is the overall finish even. If not, this means parts of the piece have been finished at different times, such as a new table top. And finally, does the hardware match. Unless the owner couldn’t replace drawer and cabinet pulls with the same style, all the hardware on a piece should match.

Unfortunately, antiques marriages are contrived to deceive the buyer. A lot of this goes on in England where the market for antiques is always hot. Visitors especially usually have no idea what they’re buying and usually fall for marriage or even fake antiques.

One of the most common marriages is in 17th and 18th-century secretaries. The bottom desk is often married to a bookcase top from a different secretary. These two pieces may be orphans and when matched often look fairly good together. With the price of 18th-century secretaries in the six figure or more range, it’s no wonder that dealers try this. The easiest way to spot a marriage of this sort is to check the backboards. Those on the top and bottom must match, including nails. The quality of the wood must also be the same.

For chests and highboys, comparing a drawer from the top with one from the bottom should reveal the same dovetailing—all of which cabinetmakers did by hand—as well as linings.

Another popular marriage is an antique wrought iron sewing machine base that’s married to an antique table top. While this may look quite fine, it has little value.

But antiques marriages aren’t limited to furniture, although that’s where most of them occur. As with this cookie jar, like fitting pieces of ceramics or glassware can be married together. This usually falls into tops for bottoms as well as lids to jars and other containers.

Not so honest antiques dealers can deceive customers in many ways. A newer painting of a scene done in an old style can be mounted in an antique frame, for example, then sold as an antique.

But the most common marriages occur in higher end furniture where a piece that may not have sold for much or not at all is married to one that together forms a different piece that can sell for a whole lot. Don’t be fooled. Do your homework. And ask plenty of questions. The more you ask, the better chance of tripping up an unscrupulous dealer.

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 Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Watt's It All About?

QUESTION: I have been doing research on some antiques I have, as I plan to open a booth in a local antique mall soon. I have a Watt oven ware bowl that doesn’t have a number however, it has a clear mark on the bottom that looks normal except the part that appears to say “Watt Ware.” I have never seen this before and haven’t been able to find it online. Also, the blue stripe doesn’t look correct or is faded. What can you tell me about this bowl?

ANSWER: Your pottery bowl came from the Watt Pottery of Crooksville, Ohio. It’s an early rare pattern of oven ware that’s highly collectible today. The color of the stripe looks odd because the pottery had problems with some of its decorative glazes earlier in the 1940s.

W.J. Watt founded the Brilliant Stoneware Company in Rose Farm, Ohio, in 1886. It began as a family business and continued so through its several transitions until 1965. The pottery made mostly stoneware jugs, crocks, and jars and jugs which it sold in general and hardware stores throughout Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Indiana. Watt sold the company in 1897.

Watt then went to work for the Ransbottom Brothers Pottery in Ironspot, Ohio, owned by his brothers-in-law, until 1921 when he purchased the Globe Stoneware Company in Crooksville, in Perry County, Ohio, and renamed it the Watt Pottery Company. The firm opened for business in July, 1922, and once again, it was a family affair, employing  his sons, daughter and a few other relatives.

Through the remainder of the 1920s and into the early 1930s they made stoneware butter churns, crocks, jugs, and preserve jars, which they marked with an acorn or an eagle  stamped in blue, plus how many gallons the vessel would hold marked in a circle on the bottom.

Watt managed to make it through the Depression, keeping his employees working 40 hours a week. By the late 1930’s into the early 1940’s, cooking technology was changing. Porcelain self-igniting stoves began to replace cast-iron cookstoves while electric refrigerators replaced the old ice boxes. To meet the new demand, Watt created ovenware that could withstand very high temperatures.

Cooks wanted to take a container from their new refrigerators and put it directly into their new ovens. Stoneware just couldn’t do this, so Watt discontinued its stoneware line and pursued the more lucrative production of ovenware.



The lightweight cream clay body, consisting of a percentage of feldspar and whiteners which prevented the clay from discoloring after firing in the pottery kilns, also made it resilient enough to withstand the extremes in temperature. The whiteners also gave the Watt’s pottery its brightness, especially when over painted with brightly colored motifs featuring apples, cherries, roosters, and flowers.. This became known as yellow ware.

In 1949, the Watt Pottery began hand decorating its wares using simple patterns in bright colors on an ochre-colored clay base. Workers glazed kitchen ware in solid colors with patterns called moon and stars, arcs, loops and diamond and grooves. Collectors, not the company, adopted these names.

The first designs didn’t fare too well as they used raised decorations that either discolored or had rough edges. Watt hired a professional artist who taught 15 people at different stations how to hand-paint designs.



The first hand decorated patterns are called the "Classic Patterns" and were produced from 1949 until about 1953. They are: Rio Rose, Moonflower, Dogwood, White Daisy, and Cross-Hatch.

To minimize the cost of producing these wares, teams of three decorators used as few brush strokes as possible. The housewives of the 1950s loved the country charm of these wares. And because they were so inexpensive to produce, Watt wares began appearing as premiums in grocery and department stores. And because the pieces were all hand-painted, with no two  exactly alike, this makes them highly collectible.

Altogether, Watt Pottery produced wares decorated in 16 patterns, including four variations of the Apple Pattern, introduced in 1952, one in the Cherry Pattern, two of the Tulip Pattern, six in various flower patterns, plus Autumn Foliage and Eagle Patterns.

The last new pattern was the Kathy Kale Royal Dutch pattern introduced just before a fire in 1965 that destroyed the manufacturing plant. Only a few pieces were manufactured and they were sold through Kroger's stores.



Most pieces of Watt Pottery ovenware featured large marks, often covering the entire bottom of each piece. These markings usually consisted of one or more concentric rings deeply impressed into the bottom of the pottery. Although the company didn’t mark all of its wares, the bottom mark associated with 1940s Watt ware is an impressed: "MADE IN U.S.A."  Pieces may also be marked: "Oven Ware" or simply have the bowl size impressed, usually in a circle. Most pieces also have the mold number impressed in the center, making identification easy.

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 Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Fulfilling the Need for Warmth and Comfort

QUESTION: On a recent road trip through the Southwest, I stopped at a flea market in Arizona where I found an old Indian blanket in black and white on a red background which I purchased for my bed back home. It looked to be in good shape and the price was right. Can you tell me which tribe may have made it and perhaps how old it is?

ANSWER: While your blanket may look like it had been made by one of the Native American tribes in the area, it actually wasn’t. Contrary to what most people think, blankets like this—known as American Indian trade blankets—were commercially machine-woven for the Native American market. Prior to the production of these blankets, Native Americans provided  warmth for themselves using natural materials and traditional weaving techniques.

Native Americans had long engaged in intertribal trading for useful items, but it was the colorful European goods that caught their attention. Over time, traders upgraded their goods from beads, looking glasses, and fish hooks to more practical items such as metal axes and cookware, flintlock rifles, and blankets. To trade a beaver skin or two for a durable woolen European blanket seemed fair to 18th and 19th-century Native Americans. Making a robe from an elk, deer, or buffalo hide was a time consuming, labor intensive process.

It was the French traders who began trading blankets as a result of their insatiable need for beaver pelts in the early l7º-century in the St. Lawrence River area. By 1780, the British Hudson's Bay Company soon followed suit.

Blanket trading soon spread across America. The Hudson's Bay Company shipped hundreds of blankets to St. Louis, the last supply outpost for those venturing westward in the 1820s and 1830s. While those heading to the Rocky Mountains trapped their own beavers, those going north into the Upper Missouri region traded for beaver pelts with the Native Americans

The early Hudson's Bay Company trade blankets were a solid color with a wide darker band near each end. They sold their thick, striped blankets to trappers who, in turn, traded them to the Blackfeet and Northern Plains Indians.

Like any successful product, Hudson's Bay Company trade blankets attracted imitators. While some copied the Bay's blanket style, especially the bright multicolor pattern introduced around 1820, other companies duplicated geometric Indian designs.

By 1845 there were dozens of woolen manufacturers in America, but only 11 who made blankets, and just one, the Buffalo Manufacturing Company, which made Indian-style blankets.

The introduction of the Jacquard loom in the 1880s created a boon to the blanket business. It enabled blankets to have two sides and launched what historians and collectors call the 'Golden Age" of the American Indian trade blanket that lasted from 1880 to 1930.

Eventually, five major woolen mills began making Indian trade blankets in the United States during the latter part of the 19th century—J. Capps and Sons, Oregon City Woolen Mills, Buell Manufacturing Company, Racine Woolen Mills, and Pendleton Woolen Mills. Another, the Beacon Manufacturing Company of North Carolina, made Indian-style blankets for the American consumer.

Of the above makers, Pendleton is the most familiar label. It’s also the only one still in existence. The company credits its early success to marketing its blankets directly to Native American reservations through trading posts and producing colors and designs acceptable to specific tribes.

By the late 19th century, most Native Americans had settled on reservations. Trading posts became the distribution points for food, jewelry, clothes and, of course, blankets. Through the trading posts, the English and American woolen mills found a built-in market for their blankets, the quality and designs of which Native Americans appreciated. Eager to please their Native American customers, many mills sent designers to live among the Indians in order to learn what designs and colors would appeal to the different tribes and pueblos across the United States and Canada. From the beginning, Pendleton produced high-quality blankets that eventually became the favorite among Native Americans.

Unlike Europeans, many native people became bonded with their blankets day and night. The fact that they were made by someone else made no difference.

They gave blankets as gifts to celebrate births, marriages, and christenings. They also used blankets to pay off debts, to show gratitude, or to indicate status. And some used them to provide temporary shelter, as curtains or awnings, or for warmth and adornment. Native Americans cradled their babies in blankets, danced in blankets, and were often buried in blankets.

The name Pendleton became a universal and generic name for any of these distinctively patterned blankets, even those made by other mills. Today, collectors seek out pre-World War II blankets for their light weight and warmth.


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 Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," 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 Sad Truth About Sadirons

QUESTION: Recently, I purchased an old iron at a local flea market. On the top of the heavy iron base is molded the word “sadiron.” Was this the brand name or a name people called this type of iron?

ANSWER: A flatiron pointed at both ends and having a removable handle is commonly referred to as a sad iron. First used in 1738, it became a regular household item by the mid-18th century and continued in use until the last decade of the 19th.

From research, historians know that the Chinese started pressing cloth using hot metal before anyone else. At the same time, Viking women used simple round linen smoothers made of dark glass along with smoothing boards to iron cloth. Others used hand-size stones which they rubbed over woven cloth to smooth it, polish it, or press it into pleats. And while some may have dampened linen first, it’s unlikely that these women heated their “smoothers.” Later glass , called slickers, slickstones, or slickenstones, had handles. It wasn’t until the late Middle Ages that blacksmiths began forging smoothing irons, heated by a fire or on a stove, for home use.

People began to call these flat smoothing irons “sad” irons, based on the Old English word “sad” meaning heavy, dense, or solid. Although most of these irons were small, they were very heavy, thus women looked forward to ironing day with some distain, knowing the drudgery it entailed.

On Mondays, women washed both clothes and bedding. They reserved Tuesdays for ironing, a chore that took all day and tired them as much as washing.

At home, ironing traditional fabrics without the benefit of electricity was a hot, arduous job. Women had to keep their sadirons immaculately clean, sand-papered, and polished. They also had to keep them away from fireplaces to avoid getting soot on them and had to regularly grease them lightly to avoid having them rust. Beeswax, applied to the underside of an iron, prevented it from sticking to starched cloth.



Women needed to own at least two irons—one for ironing and one for re-heating—to make the sadiron system work well. Large Victorian households with servants often had a special ironing-stove on which to heat the irons, fitted with slots for several irons and a place to set a water jug on top.

With no way to control temperature, women had to constantly test to see if their iron was hot enough by spitting on its heated underside. They learned the right temperature by experience—hot enough to smooth the cloth but not so hot as to scorch it. So they wouldn’t burn their hands, they had to grip the handles of their irons with a thick rag.

On April 4,1871, an enterprising women named Mary Potts of Ottumwa, Iowa (Yes, that’s right, the place where the fictional character, Radar O-Rielly, hailed from on the hit T.V. series, “M.A.S.H.”), received a U.S. patent for a lighter sadiron with a detachable wooden handle, which remained cool while ironing. Women could purchase several iron bases which could all be heating on the stove while she ironed. Women loved the idea.

She received another patent for an iron with a hollow body which could be filled with a material that didn’t conduct heat, such as plaster of Paris, clay or cement. In her patent, Mrs. Potts claimed that these materials held the heat longer so that women could iron more garments without reheating their as often.

Mrs. Potts exhibited her new sadiron in the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. She prominently featured her picture in advertising for her new iron.

Learn how sadirons were cast by reading "Iron--The Material of the Industrial Age" in #TheAntiquesAlmanac.

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.

Going Retro

QUESTION: I recently purchased a one arm chair that has a metal stamp that says “The B.L. Marble Chair Company, Bedford, Ohio.” It’s a cool mid-century design and is walnut and leather. Do you know anything about this chair and what it may have been used for?

ANSWER:  Barzilla L. Marble founded the B.L. Marble Chair Co. in 1894, after working at several other chair comp. His grandfather operated a chair factory in Marbletown, New York, and others in his family likewise made chairs, so it was natural for Marble to do so. He formed a brief partnership with A.L. Shattuck in 1885, but struck out on his own nine years later.

His company produced fine wooden chairs made for comfort and elegance that were made to last. Up until 1910, it produced chairs for the home, but during World War I, Marble added a division to make wooden aircraft propellers for the military.

By 1921. Marble’s company had outgrown its small wooden buildings and construction began on new brick buildings which had more than four acres of floor space. After Marble died in 1932,  A. D. Pettibone became president of the company and part owner. In 1953 Pettibone sold his interest in the Marble Chair Company to a group of local investors. Eventually, another man, also named Pettibone but not related to the first, bought the company, and it became extremely successful.



The company produced one-arm “modern” chairs most likely in the mid-60s under the second Pettibone owner. Furniture makers intended one-arm chairs, both originally in the 1870s and then in the 1960s as chairs to be placed in a corner. Today, most people would refer to these 1960's chairs as “retro” in style.

But exactly does retro mean? According to the Oxford University Press Dictionary, it means,”imitative of a style from the recent past.” Retro is a culturally outdated or aged style, trend, mode, or fashion, most likely from the 1940s through the 1960s. Currently, eBay offers over 468,000 different retro items.

People born between the 1940 and 1950 became teenagers during the 1950s and 1960s. And because those two periods provide memories for many of them, anything retro is in, whether it’s furniture, accessories, clothing, and collectibles, especially those related to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Life in the 1950s was conservative, but changes were about to take place. Such innovations as Velcro, Tang, frozen foods, transistor radios, Frisbees and the hula-hoop began to appear. Bill Haley and the Comets rocked around the clock while jukeboxes filled every burger joint and ice cream parlor with the sounds of the young.

Furniture and accessories, especially the ubiquitous pole lamp, featured streamlined styling in   avocado and gold. By 1957 there were 47 million T.V. sets in America’s homes, four times the number of seven years before. Families began to watch T.V. shows like “I Love Lucy” incessantly. They even ate in front of the T.V., thus necessitating the invention of the T.V. tray and comfortable casual furniture without frills.

Later on in the 1960s, the space race captured everyone’s attention as astronauts walked on the Moon and teens danced the twist to the music of Chubby Checker and sang along to Beatles’ tunes. More innovations such as lava lamps and electric knives caught on eventually providing the retro movement with lots of collectibles.

Coming up in #TheAntiquesAlmanac in October will be a special edition dedicated to the Retro style. In the meantime, enjoy the 2020 Winter Edition with the theme “The Wonders of the Industrial Age.”

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.