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.

Figural Cookie Jars Still Hold Delicious Delights

QUESTION: I’ve come across two old cookie jars when cleaning out my parents home and wondered if they are worth anything. Are they collectible?

ANSWER: Cookie jars don't have to be old to have substantial value since collectors determine a jar’s value  by design, rarity and condition more than its age. Though the British used covered jars of cut glass and silver made especially to hold shortbread biscuits during the 19th Century, thus the name “biscuit jar,” it was the American pottery jar that first caught the eye of collectors.

The first American cookie jars, either glass or pottery, gained popularity at the start of the Great Depression in 1929. Shaped like covered glass cylinders or pots with screw-on lids, these early cookie containers were more utilitarian than decorative although they were often painted with floral or leaf decorations.
                                   
The Brush Pottery Company of Zanesville, Ohio, produced the first ceramic cookie jar, in green and with "Cookies" painted on the front. The company marked their jars with “Brush USA.”
By the mid-1930s, stoneware became the predominant material for American cookie jars.

As the end of the 1930s decade dawned, most manufacturers followed the move to molded pottery, and designers became more innovative as they began to produce cookie jars in figural shapes resembling fruits, vegetables, animals, and other whimsical characters such as Goldilocks.

The golden age of American cookie jars got underway in 1940 and lasted until 1970, with several manufacturers rising to prominence, including the Red Wing, McCoy, Brush,. Hull, Regal China, Metlox, Shawnee, and Robinson-Ransbottom companies. Many of these companies located in the clay-rich Ohio River Valley. By the mid-1940s, cartoons and comics inspired many makers to reproduce the popular characters of the day–Superman, Winnie the Pooh, Dumbo, Mickey Mouse, and Woody Woodpecker, to name a few.

Collectors love McCoy cookie jars. The company, based in Roseville, Ohio, produced cookie jars from about 1939 until 1987. Their first jar–the “Mammy” cookie jar–is today one of the most valuable.

American Bisque of Williamstown, West Virginia is recognized as another top U. S. manufacturer, beginning in the mid-1930s. They’re particularly well known for the cartoon characters which they translated into cookie jars, and they marked them “U.S.A.” on the bottom.

Other well respected U.S. manufacturers are known for particular cookie jars or series, such as Metlox of California, maker of the highly sought after Little Red Riding Hood jar, and the Abingdon Pottery of Illinois, maker of the Mother Goose jar series.

Today, with the advent of Zip-Loc packaging and plastic, air-tight containers, the cookie jar, for the most part, has gone the way of the horse and buggy and the Ford Edzel. But the nostalgia lives in on the cookie jar collections of hundreds of admirers who long for those good old days and the delicious homemade cookies found inside these jars.

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.

Punch to Win

QUESTION: My grandfather ran a corner bar. Every afternoon, as men and women would come in from work for a drink before heading home for dinner, he would lay out several punchboards on the bar. For the price of a penny to two bits (25 cents), a player could take a chance to win up to $500. Using a stylus, the player pushed the punch completely through the foil to dislodge a paper message through the back of the board, which the player read, then collected his winnings, but more often than not, discarded in disgust. What can you tell me about these punchboards? Where and when did they originate? And why don’t we play them today?

ANSWER: Punchboards were an early form of lottery game boards used in the 18th century. Though lotteries were as popular back then as they are today, they required a large number of players to be profitable. To enable one or several people to play, a local tavern owner would construct a game board out of wood eight inches square and half an inch thick, then drill small holes in it and fill them with small rolled pieces of paper on which he had written a number. He then covered the holes with paper. After a customer bought a chance at the punchboard, usually for a penny or a nickel, he would puncture one of the hole's paper covers with a nail and retrieve the piece of paper with a number on it. If the number matched those posted, the customer won a cash prize.

As time went on, tavern owners got greedy and realized they could punch the holes with the biggest prizes and keep the money for themselves since they had made the boards. If anyone asked who won the big prize, he would just claim that it was a stranger and put a new board up the next day. Some tavern owners went a step further and didn’t put any winning numbers their boards. Players eventually caught on to this and stopped playing punchboards.

C.A. Brewer and C.C. Scannell of Chicago patented the modern punchboard in 1905.These new punchboards, made of cardboard, had paper covering both the front and back of each hole to help prevent operators from cheating. They came with a metal stylus and became popular purchases at drugstores, bars, and barbershops, much like today’s lottery tickets sold at convenience stores.

Although punchboards had been around for many years, they had never been so available or so portable. Brewer and Scannell created their punchboards so that one customer could play a lottery, with no contribution necessary from anyone else. This enabled the punchboard's owner/operator to sell chances to one customer at a time, and to immediately tell how much he had won, without waiting for all the punchboard numbers to be sold.

The invention of board stuffing machines and ticket folding and plaiting machines in the late 1910s allowed punchboard manufacturers to produce them cheaply. From 1910 to 1915, over 30 million punchboards were sold.

The concept of the punchboard had been around for many years before 1905. Many bar and pool hall owners making their own punchboards, drilling a few holes in a wooden board, then stuffing small pieces of rolled paper into each hole. Unfortunately, the customer only had the punchboard owner’s word that there was a winning number in at least one of the remaining non-punched holes, a fact that often just wasn’t true. Too often the owner/maker of the homemade punchboard would punch out the winning hole for himself, or he wouldn’t even have bothered to put a winning number in any hole. Profits from these homemade punchboards were very high.



Many people soon realized these homemade punchboards were probably fraudulent, thus the popularity of punchboarding declined. It took the invention of punchboard manufacturing machines, which could cover both sides of the board with a sheet of undamaged paper, to convince customers to return to punchboard gambling.

The mass-production of punchboards led to a general standardization of shapes and a standardization of the themes that helped identify different manufacturers' boards. Although most boards were rectangular in shape, their themes were unique. Some of the successful themes featured drawings of shapely pinups, and titles that implied that certain boards offered big payoffs, such as Win u Ruck, Barrel of Winners, and Sweepstakes Parley. Some punchboards had themes featuring racy drawings and titles such as Easy Double, Big Gusher, and Lady Your Fat is Showing.

Some punchboards had as many as 10,000 holes, and some as few as 25. Some paid out prizes instead of money, such as cigarettes, and some guaranteed that everyone was a winner. But they all had one thing in common—their calculated average gross profit or what the board's owner could expect as his profit when he sold all the holes and gave out all the prizes.  Not had, in an era when lunch cost 25 cents and a gallon of gas cost 10.

Punchboard sales declined significantly after WWII, as many states made them illegal.  Many manufacturers attempted to disguise the gambling nature of the boards by stating that prizes were "for trade only" and not redeemable for cash. Cigarette, cigar, and beer companies used punchboards as an advertising medium, featuring packages of cigarettes or bottles of beer as prizes on their punchboards instead of cash. While some of these boards were operated as advertising gimmicks, most were still played for cash.

Despite the millions of punchboards produced, it’s difficult for collectors to find non-punched or unusual punchboards because most were simply thrown away when their original owner felt the board would no longer sucker another coin from an unwitting player.

 prices range from a couple of dollars far a board with dog-eared edges and faded colors, up to several hundred dollars for a non-punched board in pristine condition. As with most collectibles, condition is important in a punch-board's cost. And  some punchhoard themes have remained consistently more desirable, therefore more costly.

Though there have been numerous lottery-type games invented over the years, non fired the imagination o f gamblers and collectors like the punchboard.

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.

Monopoly---The Early Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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


Learn more about the game of Monopoly by reading "Pass Go and Collect on Early Monopoly Games" 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.

The Whimsy of Murano Glass

QUESTION: My mother had this colorful little glass owl, and I had it sitting downstairs for many years on a shelf and had forgotten about it. Actually, I never liked it. But I knew nothing about it. I've tried and tried to find out about it online, but discovered nothing that would help me identify it. Do you know anything about it? Is it from the 1960s or 1970s?

ANSWER: Your owl vase comes from the Island of Murano in the Venetian Lagoon. While Murano glass has been made for several centuries, collecting antique pieces may be a bit over the budget of most people. However, pieces like this one from the 1960s are much more affordable and do pop up at flea markets from time to time.

Murano glass objects have gone up in price in recent years. Those items made in the 1950s are especially popular because of their reasonable prices. Typically, Murano pieces are low bowls and ashtrays with abstract shapes. Some are rounded or blobbed, kind of like an amoeba. Others have pointed "fingers" in the design which reach outward or up in many directions. A few stand higher, with fingers reaching upward to form a handle for a basket. There are also bud vases. All are have deep, vibrant colors, and all are heavy and have polished smooth bottoms.

Murano is a series of islands linked by bridges in the Veneto, or Venetian Lagoon, less than a mile north of Venice. Today, it has a population of over 5,000 and is famous for its glassmaking. This reputation as a center for glassmaking came about when the Venetian Republic, fearing fire and destruction of the city's mostly wooden buildings, ordered glassmakers to move their foundries to Murano in 1291. The glassmakers of Murano have specialized in fancy glasswares ever since.

They developed or refined many glassmaking technologies, including crystalline glass, smalto or enameled glass, goldstone or golden glass, mullefiori or multicolored filement glass, lattimo or milk glass, and imitation gemstones made of glass. Today, the artisans of Murano still use these centuries-old techniques, crafting everything from contemporary art glass and glass figurines to Murano glass chandeliers, as well as tourist souvenirs..

Murano glassmakers eventually became the island’s most prominent citizens. By the 14th century, glassmakers could wear swords, enjoyed immunity from prosecution by the Venetian state, and had permission for their daughters to marry into Venice’s most affluent families. But there was a downside. Glassmakers weren’t allowed to leave the Republic. Anyone caught exporting professional glasmaking secrets was put to death. Many craftsmen took this risk and set up glass furnaces in surrounding cities and as far afield as England and the Netherlands. By the end of the 16th century, three thousand of Murano island's seven thousand inhabitants were involved in some way in the glassmaking industry.

The late 19th century saw a resurgence in the art of glassmaking on Murano. By the turn of the 20th century, they only produced special pieces for La Biennale di Venezia, the Venice Biennale, an international art exhibition that began in 1895.

Following World War I, the glassmaking factories began normal production of non-traditional pieces. By the 1930s, they began producing pieces in the Art Deco style. This continued until the Biennale of 1942, at which the Murano glassmakers outdid themselves by exhibiting pieces in exciting shapes and colors that brought a lift to war-weary Venice.

Some of Murano's historical glass factories, including De Biasi, Gabbiani, Venini, Salviati, Barovier & Toso, Pauly, Berengo Studio, Seguso, Formia International, Murno Gladst, Simone Cenedese, Alessandro Mandruzzato, Vetreria Ducale, Estevan Rossetto 1950, remain well known brands today,. The oldest glass factory is Antica Vetreria Fratelli Toso, founded in 1854.

Overall, the Murano glass industry has been shrinking as demand has waned. Imitation works from Asia and Eastern Europe have stolen an estimated 40-45 percent of the market for Murano glass, and public tastes have changed while the designs in Murano have largely stayed the same. The difficult and low-paying nature of the work has decreased  the number of professional glassmakers in Murano from about 6000 in 1990 to fewer than 1000 today.

Today, about 50 companies use the Artistic Glass Murano® trademark of origin.  Regionale di Veneto Law Numero.70, passed in 1994, introduced this trademark and continues to regulate it. While glass factories on Murano aren’t required to apply for the trademark and many choose not to, works that bear it have their authenticity guaranteed.

One of the main characteristics of Murano glass is its bubble-free quality. By adding fluxes and stabilizers such as soda and lime to silica sand, glassmakers can melt the glass at a lower temperature, making the glass homogeneous and bubble free. While basic Murano glass is colorless, the addition of small amounts of minerals, oxides, and chemical derivatives to the base composition of the glass powder gives it its brilliant colors.

Today, the island of Murano is synonymous with glass. Everything imaginable is made from Murano glass: wine goblets, vases, candlestick holders, miniature animals, paperweights, chandeliers, lampshades, dinner services, tiny pieces of glass candy, beads, and every kind of jewelry you can imagine. There’s tremendous variety in quality, price, and style. When it’s quickly turned out for a cheap profit among the tourist trade, it can look hideous. When it’s well done, Murano glass is exquisitely beautiful.

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.

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.

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And Away We Go!

QUESTION: Now that I’m in my fifties, I look back nostalgically on those cold winter days when snow piled high all around our house and school was closed. Those were the days when I got to spend the day sledding, or as my boyhood friends and I called it, “coasting.” Recently, I picked up this old sled at a flea market. It’s in pretty poor condition, but I’d like to bring it back to life. Can you tell me anything about it? Also, do you have any suggestions for its restoration?

ANSWER: What you purchased isn’t just any typical sled. It’s one made to hold an infant or a toddler or two. It’s also a non-steerable pull sled, unlike the one you probably used on those snowy days, known as a racing sled or Flexible Flyer.

But to really understand where this one came from, it’s important to go back and take a look at how sledding got to be such a popular pastime in America.


The neat thing about sleds is that everyone could enjoy them—young and old, rich and poor. They were quintessentially All-American. To a boy, a sled was his ticket to cheap and exciting wintertime fun. During the 1950s, coasting, as boys dubbed the sport, became the winter pastime of hundreds of thousands of kids living in the northern states.

Though sledding existed in the US since Colonial times, it really didn’t gain popularity until the late 19th century when downhill sledding became an organized sport and sled design a sophisticated art. Racing was what it was all about. Early sleds bore names like the Comet, Reliance, Thunder, or Flying Cloud.

With the invention of the Flexible Flyer, the first steerable sled, by Sameul L. Allen in the late 1880s, sledding drastically changed. Allen’s prominent Philadelphia Quaker parents sent him to the Westtown Boarding School in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as age 11. After graduation, he moved to the family farm in 1861 near Westfield, New Jersey, half-way between Moorestown and Riverton, where he married and became a farmer. Soon he established a company to manufacture farm implements. But since this was seasonal, Allen needed a product he could make in the summer and sell in the winter. He decided to make sleds.

Allen’s first sled, known as the "Fairy Coaster," was a double runner bobsled that held three or four adults. Light and folding easily for transport, the sled’s runners and supports were made of steel with plush seats. But at $50.00, it cost too much to sell in quantity. He began testing his sleds at Westtown School (also known for its part in the development of the game Monopoly), his alma mater.



It wasn’t until he came up with the ideas for a T-shaped runner and slatted seat, both new concepts at this time, that he made any progress. After it was proven, Allen called his sled the “Flexible Flyer,” an appropriate name because the sled was fast considering its weight and size and the only steerable sled at the time.

Allen eventually convinced two great department stores, John Wanamaker in Philadelphia and R.H. Macy in New York, to sell his Flexible Flyers. By 1915, he was selling 2,000 sleds a day.

By 1917, sled manufacturers like Casper H. Oermann of The American Toy and Novelty Works in York, Pennsylvania, built their sleds with hardwoods and nickel plated steel bumpers and grooved runners.

 B. Garton, who began making his sleds in 1879, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, made his sled decks from a special weather resistant five-layered plywood imported from Finland. He then silk screened colorful designs, using a brilliant red paint known in the trade as "Garton Red," on each deck.

Sleds came in two basic types–clipper and cutters. Designed for boys and perfect for belly flops, the long and low slung clipper sled had its deck mounted directly onto low, "squatty" wooden or metal runners which ended in a point. The rider threw himself on the deck and sped down the hill head first. Speed was most important.

The Standard Novelty Company of Duncannon, Pa, produced The Racer and Sno-ball, both nonsteerable sleds, and the Lightning Guider. By the 1920s, it had produced more children's sleds than any other American company. Today, the factory operates as the Old Sled Works, a museum, antique, and craft center.

Bringing an old sled that has seen better days back to life isn’t difficult. But it does take time and effort. To restore any sled, first sand all the metal parts with coarse sandpaper, then medium, then fine. Give the metal parts an undercoating of RustOLeum paint, followed by a second coat of RustOLeum in whatever color you choose. For the most part, these sleds would have had bright red metal parts.

Next, sand the wooden parts with medium sandpaper until smooth, then wipe down with a dampish cloth, preferably an old washcloth. Repeat the process with fine sandpaper. After wiping down the wood a second time, give it two coats of coat of glossy polyurthethane varnish. You may wish to stain the wood using an oak stain first. Of course, you could choose to paint the desk and surround, but these sleds would have had natural finishes.

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.

Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

QUESTION: I have the opportunity to purchase a collection of about 30 snow globes. Are these collectible, and if so, is this a wise investment?


ANSWER: While many people call these little snow wonders snow globes, others call them
water domes, water balls, snow shakers, snow storms, snow scenes, blizzard domes, and snow domes. They have delighted children and adults for more than a century.

In the late 1930s, Hollywood drew attention to snow globes by featuring them prominently in a number of films. In the movie “Heidi, “ starring Shirley Temple movie, the curly-haired child peers into a snow globe of a miniature cabin. And in the film classic, “Citizen Kane,” Charles Foster Kane drops a snow globe with a replica of the sled known as Rosebud onto the floor as he dies.

Collectibles experts believe French glass paperweight makers first crafted them during the early 19th century. They were basically decorated glass paperweights filled with water and white powder. But they didn’t catch on until they appeared at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1878.

Snow globes containing a miniature model of the new Eiffel Tower became a much sought after souvenir at the International Exposition in Paris in 1889, thus becoming the first souvenir snow globe. These snow-filled domes also became popular in Victorian England. By the early 1920s, they made their way across the Atlantic to the U.S. where the Atlas Crystal Works produced many of them from that time period.

The U.S. Patent Office granted  Joseph Garaja of Pittsburgh a patent for new method of manufacturing snow globes. His process required assembling the globes under water, thus eliminating trapped air. His invention allowed the snow globe industry to go into mass production, dramatically lowering the prices of snow globes. His company, Modern Novelty of Pittsburgh, supplied plastic-based snow globes in every size and shape to retailers around the world for several decades.

In the 1950's, one manufacturer decided to add antifreeze to his globes, so they wouldn't freeze during shipping. However, public outcry against this procedure forced the company to abandon it.

Today, most of the world's snow globes, made mostly of plastic, come from China. But before World War II, the Germans and Austrians made them mostly of glass. The snow found inside has been produced from many materials, including bone chips, camphor and wax, ground rice, pottery flecks and porcelain.  In time the glass became thinner, so manufacturers began to use flecks of gold foil. Currently, makers use white plastic or metallic glitter for snow. In addition, each globe contains distilled water mixed with a little glycol to slow the movement of the flakes.

Today, you’ll find snow globes combined with a wide variety of souvenir-type items, including  drinking glasses, salt and pepper shakers, sugar containers, soap dishes, ashtrays, calendars, thermometers, banks and pencil sharpeners. They can feature landmarks, World's Fairs and other  historical events, as well as famous and even infamous characters from the past.

Snow globes are usually inexpensive, however, they have sold for as high as $1,000. Vintage souvenir snow domes sell for a modest $8 to $25. And while some collectors might mix old and new snow globes, most prefer vintage ones from the late 1930s through the 1970s. Souvenir snow globes from the 1960s and 1970s hold their value best, so if the ones in this collection date from that period, you should have a good investment, provided you don’t pay too much for it.

You also need to see the potential of adding to this collection. You can get a head start with it, but only you will be able to judge what direction you want to take it. Buy only vintage ones. Make sure the water is high and clear and that any decals that may be attached to the base of the snow globe are securely attached and in one piece.

To learn more about snow globes read "A Look at the Wintry World Inside" 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.