Features

Curated articles that explore the rich intersections of history, craftsmanship, and collecting culture. These long-form pieces are your gateway to learning something new, seeing the familiar in a fresh light, and connecting with the past meaningfully.
/ Boba Fett, Boxing, Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers, Condition, factory sealed, Features, Packaging, Pokemon, Pop Culture Collectibles, Travis Landry
1983 Kenner Star Wars’ Return of the Jedi 65 Back-A Boba Fett sold April 20, 2019, for $875 photo: Bruneau & Co.

Boxed Perfection

by Travis Landry, Bruneau & Co. Auctioneers When it comes to the world of Pop Culture collectibles, whether it be ...
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/ Features, Kary Pardy, Secret Compartments in Antique Furniture
Example of one of many ways to create and access secret storage. photo: woodsmith.com

Secret Storage: Exploring the Hidden Side of Antique Furniture

by Kary Pardy Consider the humble blanket chest: a piece of furniture that might travel with its owners across an ...
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/ America's National Museum, Features, History of the Museum, P.T. Barnum, Peale’s American Museum and Cabinet of Curiosities, Scudder's American Museum, The Smithsonian
The original Smithsonian Institution Building, commonly known as the “Castle,” was designed by architect James Renwick and constructed between 1847 and 1855. The Castle houses the Smithsonian Visitor Center and administrative offices, as well as the James Smithson crypt.

Museums: Containing Collected History Over Time

by Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher Museums, in their many forms, are a universal experience shared by most people in this country, ...
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/ Features, Melody Amsel-Arieli, Miss America, Miss America History, Miss America Pageant
Pageant Poster from 1925 with the accompanying trophy and a photograph of Miss America 1925, Fay Lanphier, who came to the title by way of being Miss Santa Cruz 1924, the 1925 Rose Queen, and then Miss California 1925. 

Celebrating Miss America

by Melody Amsel-Arieli In 1921, Atlantic City, New Jersey offered East Coast vacationers far more than sun, sand, and sea ...
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/ Features, History of Boardwalk, The Atlantic City Boardwalk
Atlantic City Boardwalk, 1920s

The Atlantic City Boardwalk: A Wooden Walkway to the Sea

by Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher Atlantic City, New Jersey is home to one of the most famous and oldest boardwalks in ...
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/ Donald-Brian Johnson, Features, souvenir collecting
Boot Roy Rodgers

Collectomania! Savoring Those Souvenirs

By Donald-Brian Johnson A lady of my acquaintance collects souvenirs with a vengeance. If she’s seen it, visited it, or ...
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/ Features, Guide to Vacationland, Here’s New England!, Works Projects Administration, WPA
Heres New England Cover

Here’s New England! On the Road with the WPA

By Erica Lome, Ph.D. In the 1930s, no road trip across America was complete without a travel guide from the ...
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/ Features, postcard history, Postcards, vintage postcards
Above: Wallace News Stand in New Orleans in the summer of 1908

The Artful History of Vintage Travel Postcards

by Zoë Peate Who doesn’t love to find a postcard from somewhere far away, waiting for them inside their mailbox? ...
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/ American Roadside Motel, auto tourism, Features, Motor Hotel, Road Trip
The Stars Motel, Chicago, Illinois

The Rise and Fall of the American Roadside Motel

by Maxine Carter-Lome In the first decades of the 20th century, nothing was more novel than the automobile. The idea ...
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/ collecting pottery, Features, Jessica Kosinski, Kiln, Potters Wheel, Pottery, Pottery Decorating Techniques
Ceramic vessel remains, bag-shaped jars made some 20,000 calendar years ago discovered at the Xianrendong Cave in China. A total of 282 pottery sherds were recovered from the oldest levels of the cave. They have uneven thick walls between 1.4-1.5 inches, with round bases and inorganic (sand – mainly quartz or feldspar) temper. The paste has a brittle and loose texture and a heterogeneous reddish and brown color from uneven, open-air firing. They appear to have been made with two different techniques: sheet laminating or coil and paddle techniques. photo: Thought & Co.

The World & The Potter

by Jessica Kosinski For as long as there have been people on the Earth, hand-crafted goods have existed. People have ...
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/ blacksmith, Features, Iron Works, Melody Amsel-Arieli, Metalworking
The Village Blacksmith by Thomas Hovenden (American (born Ireland), Dunmanway 1840–1895 Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania

The Blacksmith

by Melody Amsel-Arieli Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large ...
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/ American by Craft: The Furniture of Olof Althin, American Swedish Historical Museum, Antique Marketplace News, Erica Lome, Features, Olof Althin, Vintage Living
Dressing table made by Althin, 1900-1913 photo: private collection

Crafting a Legacy: The Life and Work of Olof Althin

by Erica Lome, Ph.D. Today, few people outside of the antiques trade recognize the name Olof Althin (1859-1920), a Swedish-born ...
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/ Features, Kary Pardy, pattern antique glass, Pitkin Glass
Rare Pitkin reverse swirl inkwell and flask

The Power of Pitkins: An American Classic Uncorked

by Kary Pardy If patterned antique glass has ever caught your eye, you’ve likely appreciated the flowing lines and swirling, ...
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/ Features, Glass Beads, Millifiore, Sarah Turnbaugh
West African peoples have adorned themselves with Venetian millefiori beads, intermixed with locally-made jewelry (left to right): blue-and-white “sand beads” made from powdered glass Vicks and Milk of Magnesia jars (Krobo and southern Ghana groups); reddish-brown bauxite, or aluminum ore, beads (Ghana); cast bronze bracelet (Baule); and cast bronze beads (Ashante).

Millifiore Glass Beads Glass: Gardens of “A Thousand Flowers”

by Sarah Turnbaugh Millefiori beads made in Venice, Italy, reached lofty technical and aesthetic heights in the late 1800s to ...
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/ Features, Jacquard Loom, Tapestries, Tarkhan Dress, weaving
A carpet loom by Carl Engel with a Jacquard machine on top, ca. 1860. Photo by Dmm2va7; CC BY-SA 3.0

A World of Weaving

by Mike McLeod Just imagine a world—if you can—in which the process of weaving was never discovered. Without weaving, people ...
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/ Features
Pacific “Elite,” New Zealand, 1934

Industrial Design and the Radio – When Art Met Industry

By Peter Sheridan When it comes to radio design, the years from 1930 to 1940 presented a pocket of opportunity ...
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/ Features
Amy Beach featured on the cover of Etude magazine in November, 1929.

Amy Beach: A Composer of Musical Firsts

by Maxine Carter-Lome, publisher “It has happened more than once that a composition has come to me, ready-made as it ...
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/ Features
An example of the Hohner Marine Band harmonica

The Harmonica: Musical Phenomenon of the Century!

By Judy Gonyeau, managing editor What do you think of when you see a harmonica? A blues player with hands ...
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/ Features
Reality … What a Concept, 1979 At the age of 27, Robin Williams was already considered comedy’s darling. He had just finished season 1 of Mork & Mindy and was on the cover of TIME magazine.

Vinyl Laughter

by Maxine Carter-Lome Some of the earliest albums recorded for commercial distribution were comedy albums. Various collections of humorous short ...
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/ Features
The first cover by Rea Irvin (Feb. 21, 1925) establishing the personification of the New Yorker as Eustas Tilly

Writing With Images: The Creation of THE NEW YORKER Humor

by Judy Gonyeau with heavy reference from Defining New Yorker Humor by Judith Yaross Lee Launched in 1925, The New ...
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/ Features
BOZO the CLOWN!

Wowie Kazowee! It’s BOZO the CLOWN!

by Maxine Carter-Lome In 1946, Capitol Records writer/producer Alan Livingston introduced Bozo the Clown to the world via a children’s ...
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/ Features
The cover to MAD No. 50 (October 1959), illustrated by Kelly Freas. While Mingo could produce endless identical versions of the Alfred E. Neuman face, Freas’s Alfreds were more impish and had much more expression.

Long Live The MAD-ness

by Grant Geissman By the spring of 1952, artist/writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman was exhausted from researching, writing, laying out, drawing for, ...
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/ Antimacassars, Erica Lome, Features, Victorian Age
Single example from one of two pairs of lace chair arm covers. Rectangular with lightly scalloped side and back edges and larger scalloped front edge. Inner rectangle with foliate decoration. Original to Castle Tucker (Wiscasset, ME). photo: Historic New England

Antimacassars: Then and Now

Erica Lome, Ph.D. "Necessity is the mother of invention.” This adage certainly applied to many of the domestic objects produced ...
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/ Features
At Nuttinghame, Comfort and a Cat

Wallace Nutting: Come Into The Parlor

by Mike Ivankovich The parlor was traditionally a gathering room where family members and friends would meet, eat, socialize, and ...
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/ Features
This gold charm bracelet of Elizabeth Taylor’s charts the milestones of her extraordinary life and sold at Christie’s for $326,500 in 2011

Charmed, I’m Sure: Big Dreams, Love, and Luck Come in Small Packages

by Judy Gonyeau, managing editor Evidence has been brought to light that charms were perhaps first formed as far back ...
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