BOOK REVIEWS "Page Advice" (long)
David Christenson
(Page Advice is a column of opinion which reviews price guides,
encyclopedias and other books about antiques and collectibles.
It is produced monthly in a booth in the no-smoking section of
Hoagy's Diner in downtown Hopkins, Minn. It appears here by
kindly permission of The Old Times, Minnesota's Premier Antiques
Newspaper (ratz...@delphi.com) and Omnibooks, The Collector's
Bookstore (612-937-8921).
A Christmas Column: To Grandmother's House We Go, Wolves Not
Invited
By David Christenson and Eileen Wegge
In our family, holidays always included a trip to Grandma's
house. There was always a greeting at the door by Grandma's
friendly dog, a crowd of cousins to play with, and a feast of
those odd ethnic foods that were only cooked once a year.
In the lull between dinner and gift exchange, while adults
dutifully scrubbed dishes, we kids always had time to admire
Grandma's collection of figurines and old clocks, or sneak
upstairs to rummage in the button box or build castles with old
wooden spools.
Pardon our reverie, a reminiscence brought on by viewing this
month's new book releases amid the first rush of holiday
planning.
"American Bisque" (Schiffer Books, $29.95) covers the sort of
colorful figural pottery that would have stood out from the
crowd on Grandma's shelves.
As antiquers, we see the products of this lesser-known company
all the time, and as antique dealers, we're constantly mixing
them up with other lines.
Author Mary Jane Giacomini sets out to remedy this unfortunate
situation with dogged scholarship, untangling the corporate
history of the West Virginia factory and associated potteries.
She also points out the identifying characteristics that
separate unmarked American Bisque items from other wide-eyed
characters made by Royal Copley, Hull, Shawnee and other
manufacturers, including counterfeiters.
When you see an antique buyer turning over a piece to check the
bottom, he's not just looking for marks, - not if he knows what
he's doing. He's checking the foot, the unglazed area upon which
the piece rests in the kiln. The foot will indicate how the
piece came out of its mold, and what happened to it afterwards
in glazing and the kiln.
The wide-wedge foot used by American Bisque is a telling
characteristic, and it is displayed in multiple examples in this
book. For that info alone, it deserves a place in our library.
Who else needs this book? Collectors of figural pottery - the
pigs herein are particularly poignant. Also, cookie jar
collectors - cookie jars are afforded 58 pages in this 180-page
book, amid the vases, planters, banks, "families" and miscellany.
This book should also be on the shelves of Disney aficionados,
because several world-famous mice, ducks, deer, rabbits and dogs
are represented in several pages of Leeds Pottery products.
Leeds was a Chicago distributor of Disneyana made by American
Bisque and other firms.
A good first effort at exploring American Bisque. And we love
the Popeye family cookie jars.
"Pottery: Modern Wares, 1920-1960" (Schiffer Books, $49.95).
It's a title that implies big ambitions; can any book hope to
cover such a subject in 240 pages?
No. So we wonder where this book is conceptually coming from.
It's a coffee-table-quality hardcover with Schiffer's usual
production values. But while the printing and binding are
spiffy, we suspect the original idea was somehow muddied.
Author Leslie Pina tries to narrow the focus for us in her
introduction, culling out porcelain and china "with a few
exceptions," and setting aside studio pottery in its own
category. She even attempts to tackle a definition of the term
"modern," although modernism breaks her tackle faster than Deion
Sanders rushing on first-and-goal.
"The intent," says Pina, "is to highlight select companies and
mention others whose modern work represents the tastes, the
techniques and the times." All well and good, but some of the
highlighted works such as Cowan Pottery and Fiesta tableware are
covered in more rewarding depth elsewhere, and the discussions
of neglected Glidden Pottery and French Longwy are insufficient
to justify the rest of the volume.
There are more specific problems. On page 96 appears a piece
that will be familiar to many collectors - a Red Wing pitcher
from the popular Town and Country pattern. Pina refers to it as
"an unmarked Fifties freeform pitcher with unusual handle on top
.. undoubtedly inspired by Russel Wright shapes ..." Not
evidence of scholarly toughness.
We also find Red Wing, plus Ceramic Arts Studio of Madison,
Wis., represented in the chapter, "Sascha Brastoff and Other
California Potteries." We don't want to believe that the author,
an Ohioan, would imply that everything west of Chicago might as
well be annexed to California, so we assume this is just an
organizational problem.
What might have justified this survey would be more commentary
on designs and trends to pull the elements of the effort
together. Pina, who heads a college interior design department,
provides surprisingly little analysis.
What's good here? Some of the information. Most of the photos.
We say "most," because a few of the shots are muddled by motion
blur or bad focus, just enough to make us squint. In a book at
this price level, even a few bad photos are not excusable.
The highest praise one can offer to a reference book is that it
is essential. "Modern Wares" has not convinced us.
Meanwhile, back at Grandma's house...
"Stangl and Pennsbury Birds" (Schiffer Books, $19.95) surveys
the perfect collectible for folks who love birds but who don't
want chirping at naptime or feathers in the casserole.
According to the account by author Mike Schneider, ceramics
engineer J. Martin Stangl based his fowl "very loosely" on
Audubon's "Birds of America," improving on the attractions of
the original paintings, brightening up the colors and adding a
few exotic birds from beyond Audubon's natural range.
These ceramic birds hold still, keep quiet, and look adorable.
They're pint-size (the book's cover illustration is close to
"actual size") and detailed enough so that Grandma locks them
behind glass, safe from little hands.
There are collectors who get their first Stangl bird for
Christmas, unaware that these cuties tend to multiply. The book
at hand has 120 pages of 'em, plus a chapters on other Stangl
animals.
Schneider's secondary motive for a Stangl survey is to
differentiate these species from the rival Pennsbury birds,
more scarce and no less valuable, and welcome additions to the
menagerie. They are covered in another 20 pages.
Keep in mind that
The all-color production is fine; the smaller (6-by-9-inch) size
is handy and appropriate to the diminutive subject matter; the
hardcover binding is appreciated; almost all the photos are
sharp, if not attractively lighted; and the indexes are
refreshing in a publishing field that tends to neglect such
amenities.
On another shelf at Grandma's, we can admire "Josef Originals:
Charming Figurines" (Schiffer Books, $19.95).
These collectibles, produced from 1945 to 1985, are the fun and
happy creations of Muriel Joseph George, a California designer
with a Minnesota connection - upon retirement, she operated an
antique shop in Canby, Minn., southwest of Montevideo.
Muriel Joseph George died in 1992. Her legacy bears a name of
slightly different spelling because of a last-minute typo, but
it's hers alone, and despite a certain Disneyesque quality the
Josef style is truly original.
The hand-high figurines were made first in George's own factory,
then in Japan. This book's price list does not reflect any
cessation of quality in the product.
This book appears thorough enough, and presents some fresh
collecting possibilities for admirers of, say, Ceramic Arts
Studio figurines or Hummels.
If Grandma gets fed up with our running around, and it's too
stormy to send us outside, maybe she'll give us something to
play with. And for this crowd of kids, what better than cast
iron?
"Figurative Cast Iron: A Collector's Guide" ($29.95) is yet
another release from Schiffer Books, a publisher which must be
wearing out the presses lately.
We've seen coverage elsewhere on doorstops, which occupy about
100 pages of this 176-page guide.
Nothing until now has crossed our desk with coverage of
doorknockers and bookends. Take it from book collectors: nothing
keeps books from toppling like a big chunk of cast iron.
Other categories sampled here: bottle openers, door knockers,
paper weights, pencil holders, string holders, banks, lawn
sprinklers and miscellany.
These are all practical items, to be sure, but good old American
ingenuity found ways of varying these forms in myriad images.
Black and Native American figures make an appearance; there are
crossover collecting possibilities for nautical, flower,
Christmas and character fanciers; and there's a whole cast-iron
ecosystem of dogs, cats, birds and other animals.
As author Douglas Congdon-Martin notes, cast-iron toys are
covered elsewhere, and need not appear here.
Many products by Hubley are noted, but many items are not
identified by manufacturer or dated. Perhaps a second edition
will relieve this problem. We're also less than enthused about
the organization of the price guide, which compounds the
difficulty of an alphabetical price key by failing to number the
pictured items. Prepare for lots of back-and-forth page-turning.
Photos are mostly clear, except for the images of some
poorly-lit items.
C'mon, folks! Lights! Focus! Smile, it's Christmas!
We've found Grandma's button box! At least, the prettiest of
Grandma's buttons are here in "Fun Buttons" (Schiffer Books,
$29.95).
Study this book, ye price-guide authors of lesser ability. We
hold it up as an example of inventive and appropriate design,
lively writing, intriguing theme and well-aimed niche marketing.
Buttons have been "done" before, most notably by the author at
hand, Peggy Ann Osborne, in the higher-priced history About
Buttons and the handy and affordable price guide, Button, Button.
This volume comes in at mid-range, price-wise, and focuses
solely on novelty buttons.
There are 144 fun pages here, organized in part by materials,
then by themes, including flora, fauna, vehicles, sports, and
fantasies.
This is a complex organizational structure, but you hardly
notice. There is also subtle service in the photo composition
here - buttons are arranged in patterns and combinations that
accentuate their design.
And we've looked and looked, and we can only find one (1) fuzzy
photo in this book! Excelsior!
When Grandma's Christmas feast is cleared, the table is
revealed. What are the chances that this table is a
Heywood-Wakefield? Not a bad bet, because the firm was one of
our biggest furniture companies, and its quality wood products
can be found in virtually any family.
The firm made the first production-line modern furniture in
1931, in a clean geometric style that borrowed from streamline
designs of the day. The look hit its heyday in the 1950s, but by
the mid-1960s, modern was passe.
The look is back, and it's about time somebody covered these
collectible products. "Heywood-Wakefield Modern Furniture"
(Collector Books, $18.95) does it in 352 pages bristling with
evident research.
We recommend this modestly-priced book thusly. As soon as it
arrived, we looked up our 1964 World's Fair breadboard
(Heywood-Wakefield was a presence at many World's Fairs, and
many World's Fair items are included here). We tried to look up
our dining-room set, to no avail (it's Old Colony, not Modern).
Our publishers grabbed the book to look up their sectional group.
We require no more evidence that this is a needed book.
Finally, it's time for the kids to open their presents.
"Collector's Guide to Novelty Radios" (Collector Books, $18.95)
is full of good gift ideas, not just for kids but for
gas-station and auto memorabilia collectors, advertising
collectors, space-toy collectors, sports collectors and
accumulators of other nifty stuff.
The advent of the transistor allowed radio innards to be packed
into just about any hollow space, be it paint-can shape, Pan-Am
jet shape, or Incredible-Hulk shape. This book touches on
hundreds of possibilities in its 223 indexed pages.
We thought we'd seen it all in regard to Star Wars, but there
were some robotic surprises here for us. For character-item or
toy collectors, this book may prove invaluable.
For collector kids with a talent for trading, here's "Comic
Cards and Their Prices" (Wallace-Homestead, $10.95).
We've seen some collector-card shops come and go, and one
contributing factor in such departures may be that proprietors
wouldn't widen their horizons beyond baseball. Comic cards are a
viable alternative. They have a history, making their first
appearance in the 1940s, and appear to have a future.
If we can paraphrase the introduction by author Stuart Wells
III, the current boom in comic cards began in 1987, when Marvel
Comics superheroes were rendered on a "Marvel Universe" set.
Comics collectors are primarily comic-art collectors, so the
high-quality collector's card is a perfect showcase, and a
natural extension of the field.
Most cards listed here hover in value from a dime to a dollar.
Thus, this first edition is as much a checklist as a price guide.
But who knows? Perhaps the current kid generation will someday
put high values on Todd McFarlane and Lion King cards, just as
current adults do with their 1960s Marvel Comics. Then some
smart collectors would have a merry Christmas, indeed.
In our "stuff received" category this month, here's a glimpse of
1995 via the "Old Cars Weekly" calendar, which depicts autos
from the motor pool at Krause Publications in Iola, Wis. What
other company would put its logo on a 1954 Chevy panel truck?
Cool calendar if you like old cars.
(Co-author David Christenson is a Minneapolis book collector;
send e-mail feedback to him via christ...@delphi.com.
Co-author Eileen Wegge is the proprietor of Omnibooks, The
Collector's Bookstore, which sells the better of the
above-mentioned books by mail-order; call 612-937-8921).