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Antiques of the Week: Fenton Glass

August 24, 2012 in Antiques of the Week, Glass by admin | No comments

Fenton Carnival glass amethyst pitcher, Fluffy Peacock pattern

Fenton Carnival glass amethyst pitcher, Fluffy Peacock pattern

One of the most common questions in the antiques marketplace is, “What’s hot right now?” At Prices4Antiques, we always see huge numbers of searches in our glass category. Fenton remains near the top of the list each week, with this week showing searches for a Fenton amethyst carnival glass pitcher in the “Fluffy Peacock” pattern, a Fenton plum opalescent hobnail basket, a Fenton San Toy etched iced tea set, a Fenton dark ruby glass egg, and a Fenton jade green cat figurine. These were the top five items viewed in our glass category’s Fenton section this week, but people searched for thousands of other antiques and collectibles at Prices4Antiques.

 

Mountain Music: Collecting Appalachian Dulcimers

August 20, 2012 in Music by admin | No comments

Edd Presnell Appalachian dulcimer

Edd Presnell Appalachian dulcimer

I love summer festivals, especially the music.  I grew up going to Appalachian festivals and on summer evenings, I get homesick thinking about wandering around the old bank parking lot in the humid dark of a river town, stuffed with funnel cake and lemonade, listening to the various jam sessions in progress – fiddles, guitars, mandolins, and, of course if it’s mountain music you’re after, dulcimers.

The dulcimer is actually a pretty misunderstood instrument, not least of all because there are two very distinct instruments that share the name.  The hammered dulcimer, a trapezoidal board with strings stretched across it that is played with, as the name suggests, hammers or little mallets, is much older – perhaps as much as 2,000 years old – and is thought to have originated in the Middle East (although they too were made in Appalachia).  Despite being a much newer arrival to the music scene, the Appalachian dulcimer has far more nebulous origins.

Appalachian (or sometimes “mountain”) dulcimers (like the one pictured above) cropped up among the Scotch-Irish of the southern Appalachians, but this is puzzling, as the instrument doesn’t appear in Ireland, where the Scotch-Irish came from, nor further back in their ancestral homelands of England or Scotland.  It does show some connections to now-obscure Continental instruments though, and the end product might well be the result of incorporating some of those elements in an attempt to make an instrument that resembled a violin.  Even today, the instruments vary considerably in terms of shape, material and even the number of strings, but regardless of the exact origins, the Appalachian dulcimer is clearly an American instrument.  With such humble and jumbled beginnings, it’s no surprise that a variety of styles are applied to playing as well.

With few known examples surviving from before the last quarter of the 19th century, I’m particularly excited about a local exhibition at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio.  Appalachian Strings, which runs through September 9, 2012, offers dulcimers as well as a variety of other handmade instruments (fiddles, banjos, and even “make-do” instruments crafted from household objects).

-Hollie Davis, Senior Editor, p4A.com

Reference & Further Recommended Reading:

To search the Prices4Antiques antiques reference database for valuation information on hundreds of thousands of antiques and fine art visit our homepage www.prices4antiques.com

Antiques of the Week: Sports

August 9, 2012 in Antiques of the Week, Sports by admin | No comments

Winchester starter cannon

Winchester starter cannon

One of the most common questions in the antiques marketplace is, “What’s hot right now?”  At Prices4Antiques, with the Olympics in full swing, we’re seeing lots of searching in our sports category.  We’ve recently seen searches for a Winchester starter cannon, an English lignum vitae bowling ball, an Ad Topperwein silhouette shooting target, a granite curling stone from Scotland, and a bicycle polo mallet.  These were the top five items viewed in our sports category’s miscellaneous section this week, but people searched for thousands of other antiques and collectibles at Prices4Antiques.

To search the Prices4Antiques antiques reference database for valuation information on hundreds of thousands of antiques and fine art visit our homepage.

Antiques of the Week: Native American Indian

August 3, 2012 in Antiques of the Week, Native American by admin | No comments

Northern Plains Cree beaded hide knife case

Northern Plains Cree beaded hide knife case

One of the most common questions in the antiques marketplace is, “What’s hot right now?”  At Prices4Antiques, we always see lots of searches in our Native American Indian category.  This week we’ve seen searches for a Cree beaded hide knife sheath, a Nez Perce dress beaded with cowrie shells, a Lucy Lewis Acoma pottery bowl, Comanche beaded hide moccasins, and a Navajo ceremonial hide rattle.  These were the top five items viewed in our Native American Indian category this week, but people searched for thousands of other antiques and collectibles at Prices4Antiques.

To search the Prices4Antiques antiques reference database for valuation information on hundreds of thousands of antiques and fine art visit our homepage.

Taking the Plunge: Niagara Falls in the 19th Century

July 30, 2012 in Ephemera, Photography by admin | No comments

Full plate ambrotype of a honeymooning couple at Niagara Falls

Full plate ambrotype of a honeymooning couple at Niagara Falls

The only thing better than doing dogged research is profiting from someone else’s.  (Okay, maybe not….)  But this is still what I was thinking last month while my husband was off teaching his morning course at the Chautauqua Institution and Nora and I were enjoying our breakfast while looking out the bay window at Lake Erie.  It was a lovely week and a respite from the heat (not to mention another reason not to complain), and while we were so close, we decided to take Nora to Niagara Falls for the day.  (“Mama, big water!  See BIG water!” was Nora’s oft-repeated account of the visit.)

Tourism is, I’m happy to report, alive and well at the Falls, but that’s really nothing new.  There’s great debate over the first European to see the Falls (various candidates visited the area throughout the 1600s), but generally, Pehr Kalm, a Swedish-Finnish naturalist, is credited with offering the first scientific account of their wonders around 1750.  Sketches and various artist renderings of the Falls region began to appear, and it didn’t take long for Niagara Falls to start appearing on everything from needlework pictures to wallpaper, transferware plates to lithophane lampshades.

Over roughly the next one hundred years, tourism at Niagara blossomed and by 1848, a footbridge was constructed.  (A footbridge.  In 1848.  Who needed to be a Wallenda….)  Fortunately, the 19th century also brought John Roebling (perhaps better known for his work on the Brooklyn Bridge), whose suspension bridge was completed in 1855.  Several years later, as the Civil War ended and the Victorian era hit full swing in the United States, tourism, made especially attractive through rail travel, exploded, and Niagara Falls earned its reputation as a great honeymoon destination.  This boom also ushered in the era of a new kind of Niagara Falls souvenir – the photograph.  Today, there are dozens and dozens, probably hundreds, of large-plate daguerreotypes and ambrotypes of newlyweds, like the one pictured above, or family groups posed in front of the Falls.  The daguerreotypes, particularly full-plate images, can be very valuable.  I’m pretty sure the same will never be said of Nora’s souvenir t-shirt….

-Hollie Davis, Senior Editor, p4A.com

Reference & Further Recommended Reading:

To search the Prices4Antiques antiques reference database for valuation information on hundreds of thousands of antiques and fine art visit our homepage www.prices4antiques.com

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