America’s Catalog (1888-2010) By Ian Moody The Sears catalog – once a four-pound, 1,400 page colossus featuring a staggering 100,000 items – has been tossed into the dustbin of history, but is still appreciated today by collectors. More than a century before Amazon’s grinning boxes would adorn the fronts of homes everywhere, there was a […]
Category Archives: Features
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Mar
Mar
By Judy Gonyeau It is hard to shop anywhere that does not have some form of a rewards program in place. Even in the earliest times, shopkeepers looked for ways to keep buyers coming back for more. The “Bakers Dozen” is considered the earliest form of a buyer’s incentive to buy more, when buying a […]
13
Mar
Mar
by Jessica Kosinski Today, we are all familiar with home parties such as The Pampered Chef, Touchstone Crystal, Jafra, PartyLite, and more. But who can forget those great vintage home parties like Tupperware, Mary Kay, and Stan Home that brought great products to the home and that we are all chasing after today? You may […]
05
Mar
Mar
The World of Washday Collectibles by Donald-Brian Johnson Some folks collect teacups. Or thimbles. Maybe even swizzle sticks. Tiny treasures that are compact, easy to display, and even easier to store. Other folks collect washing machines. And dryers. And washer-dryers. These are definitely not tiny. Displaying (or even storing) them requires a generously-sized (and otherwise […]
25
Feb
Feb
By Melody Amsel-Arieli Fans of fine cigars, like Cuban Habanos, Dominican Republic Alcántaras, or Mexican Gloria de Colóns, may not smoke them right away. Instead, many prefer to save them to celebrate special occasions like parties, birthdays, or anniversaries. Yet these rolled bundles of tobacco leaves, along with cigarettes and pipe tobacco, are produced in […]
19
Feb
Feb
Invention • Function • Art By Ben Rapaport To open, tobacco was native to the Americas as early as 6,000 B.C. The uninterrupted consumption of tobacco in a variety of forms in almost every corner of the civilized world for more than 400 years—the custom of pipe smoking is at least that old—spawned a plethora […]
06
Feb
Feb
Recently the British Library uploaded over one million images to Flickr from scans of books published in the 17th-19th centuries – including children’s books. The Huffington Post recently shared this information, positively gushing about the children’s book images in particular; and who can blame them? These illustrated tomes may have come late to the library […]
05
Feb
Feb
By James Dawson For this article, I thought it might be interesting to look at not only how a gentleman’s library had changed through the years, but perhaps how the gentlemen have changed as well. So let’s look at some gentleman’s libraries in the 1700s, 1800s, and now. Back to the 1700s Of the several […]
13
Jan
Jan
by Maxine Carter-Lome The term tôle, derived from the French tôle peinte, meaning “painted sheet metal,” refers to the decorative process of applying paint and lacquer to tin, initially as a way to prevent common household objects from rusting but later as a form of embellishment. In the antiques and collectibles marketplace, toleware refers to […]
07
Jan
Jan
Reproduced with permission from Art&Object.com Before there was Normandy in northern France, there was Gaul, under provincial rule in the Roman Empire from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD, and remains of this centuries-old society still rest under the earth. On a spring day in 1830, a farmer named Prosper Taurin was […]