Sometimes I see paintings I just can't figure out.

Gulp, this is a tangy one for sure. One of my art mentors the late Frank Stewart of Spencer, Indiana used to use the word "tangy" a lot to describe paintings that were the visual equivalent of biting into a lemon. This one ia that way for sure.

Was it done as a mural study, a set design for a play or a magazine illustration? Is it some guys contrived view of American history using pop culture figures to illustrate that history? It has WPA inspiration but isnt that old. See the factories, flappers, Lucky Lindy, Charlie Chaplin and the old Edison? It looks more like 1950's or 1960's to me. See Jack Dempsey and Mary Poppins. It is an original gouache on illustration board signed Alvin Gilbertson. Beyond that, I need to ponder it some more.

Dogs are man's best friend, and dog paintings, are an art dealers best friend.

Sorry, all sold.

Retro, 1970's, psychedelic disco light. Disco era stuff is pretty hot. This lady seems happy with her funky find.

A Vintage Life in The Chelsea Hotel.

As the long, slow death of the fractious, former bohemian enclave known as the Chelsea Hotel continues, Suzanne Lipschutz isn’t mourning much. She’s moving on.

One recent snowy morning, a reporter picked her way through the construction that has been ongoing for years at the hotel to the third-floor apartment that has been Ms. Lipschutz’s home for more than two decades.

Not that it looked that way. Chock-a-block with Persian furniture, Austrian pottery, Tibetan nesting tables, swags of tasseled damask and brocade, Tiffany lamps and pierced brass lamps and lamps made from armadillos (yes, armadillos) and more antique wallpaper, wainscoting and paneling than you’d think a two-room apartment could hold, the place appeared to have been put together back in the 1880s, around the time the Chelsea was built.

You can see why Ms. Lipschutz — whose store, Secondhand Rose, famous for its vintage wallpapers and once as much of a Manhattan icon as the Chelsea — would be reluctant, even fearful, to dismantle her distinctive habitat. She is among the rent-stabilized tenants, she said, whom the new owner has asked to relocate to another floor.

Before moving to the Chelsea, Ms. Lipschutz, now 73, lived all over the West Village, raising her son, Luke Joerger, in a series of lofts and railroad apartments that she won and lost in typical old-Manhattan fashion. Buildings burned down, rents tripled, but she wallpapered them all, sometimes even papering the floors and the furniture. Her store, which she opened in 1965 on Hudson Street with a busted Tiffany magnolia lamp she found in a junkie’s apartment and 19th-century furniture harvested from the street, ranged around the Village in various locations for two decades before settling in SoHo, then TriBeCa, then lower Fifth Avenue, riding the waves of boom and bust and an appetite, perhaps now waning, for period wallpapers. These days, vintage paper is much harder to find, she said, and her own appetite to do so is lessening: “I’d like to sell out my stock in the next few years. I’m not having as much fun anymore.”

In the ’70s, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were clients. So was Paul Simon, another Dakota resident, and Ms. Lipschutz’s neighbor Julian Schnabel, who liked to make paintings on her vintage linoleum, and with whom she bartered for work. She tried to barter with Frank Stella, too. Not that she knew who he was the day he wandered in, when she offered him furniture for his paint-splattered shoes.

“They looked like Jackson Pollock had made them,” she said. “I said: ‘Who are you? If you give me your shoes, I’ll give you anything you want.’ ”

William Wegman photographed her with Fay Ray and her daughter, Batty, atop an assemblage of gilded furniture. Frank Serpico liked hanging out in her Hudson Street store; when a pair of local thugs stole some Victorian quilts, he helped her track them down, she said, which wasn’t difficult because the burglars had made the quilts into pants and were wearing them around the West Village. For a few seasons in the 1980s, photographs of the store were part of the opening montage for Saturday Night Live. “Those were my salad days,” said Ms. Lipschutz, whose deep, husky voice is as ornate as one of her Victorian wallpapers. “People said it was the most beautiful store in the world. I thought it would never end.”

 When Luke went to college, she said, she wanted to downsize. The Chelsea, where many of her friends lived, was a natural ecosystem for someone with her florid tastes.

“Stanley and I fell in love with each other,” she said of Stanley Bard, the hotel’s longtime manager and gatekeeper, who was ousted in 2007. “And that was it.”

He offered Ms. Lipschutz a one-bedroom apartment for $1,575. She stripped its layers of grubby linen paint and rubbed wax into the rich brown paneling and door frames until they glowed. She collaged the walls with period wallpaper and borders, and wainscoting she salvaged from a Brooklyn townhouse. She found a stained-glass door from the Aesthetic Movement at ABC Carpet & Home, and took it apart to make transom windows.

In the tiny kitchen, she added a 1930s kitchen cabinet, along with green medical cabinets from the 1940s and a mosaic of glass tiles that for years was a work in progress. When her son married, she persuaded him and his wife to move into the building, too, which they did for a few years until their children were school-age, living in an apartment on the ninth floor.

“We had so much fun,” she said. “If you were sad about something, you could get in your nightgown and go to someone’s apartment and cry. If someone was cooking, they’d share their food. It was the most wonderful place to live. You were never alone.” Now, Ms. Lipschutz is one of only two tenants on her floor, she said: “Those who didn’t have the strength to fight have gone.”

Zoe Pappas, head of the tenants’ association, said there are 83 tenants in 52 apartments at the Chelsea, 42 of which are rent-stabilized. The new owner, Ed Scheetz, has offered a few options to those tenants, whose apartments need to be gut-renovated to bring the building up to code: accept a buyout, be temporarily relocated to the Martha Washington Hotel while their apartments are worked on, or permanently move to apartments on lower floors. (The hotel has been closed to guests since 2011.)

“We gained something very important,” said Ms. Pappas, whose group won a lawsuit against the previous owners. “The right to live in the Chelsea until we want to leave, or die.”

At first, Ms. Lipschutz balked at all the offers. She couldn’t imagine that her belongings would be safe during a move, temporary or otherwise, and she couldn’t imagine leaving the building. But having shed her own skin so many times before the Chelsea chapter of her life, she began to realize the possibility and promise of renewal.

“I wasn’t going to move,” she said. “But you see the water damage from Stanley’s day. None of us ever complained, we just fixed it. You could have your boyfriend the electrician come in. Now, they are going to have to put in new heating, new venting, conduits for the wiring. By the time they are done, what have I got?”

As further incentive, she said, the apartment she was offered is across the hall from a friend, and the landlord has accommodated all her demands.

Threading her way through the wires, the dust and the racket of her hallway down to the new apartment, she pointed out the 11-inch baseboards that the landlord has already installed for her and the arched doorways he allowed her to enlarge. She described how the floor will be stained a dark mahogany and the walls painted with three coats of ivory paint.

“I’m going to have a clean, white space,” she said. “I will have my beautiful objects, and like every space before, it will evolve.”

Back upstairs, snow began falling gently outside the stained-glass windows and, for a moment, all was quiet. Then the cat swatted a teacup off the table, upended herself in a piece of Austrian pottery, and from the ceiling above, the power tools started wailing again. (courtesy N.Y.Times)

1960's Pair of Mallards by Ron Koch of Rivermoor, Wisconsin. Special order for the Sawbill Gun Club.

Wisconsin decoys and decoy carvers are worthy of an entire post, but for today I wanted to share this pair of mallards we sold in 2014. They were made by Ron Koch of Rivermoor. Ron is a carver, author and sportsman. Here is a snippet about him I found on Wooden-Decoy.com

"Ron Koch (Rivermoor, Wisconsin) is a renowned carver of gunning decoys whose work is featured in Loy Harrell's Decoys—Sixty Living and Outstanding North American Carvers. Ron (the "River Rat") is a regular contributor to Hunting & Fishing Collectibles, a historian of Wisconsin decoys (Decoys of the Winnebago Lakes), and the author of two popular books about duck hunting. His latest book, Behind the Back Shelf, tells the very funny stories behind his The Back Shelf page in Hunting & Fishing Collectibles magazine".

The Chicago Tribune did a great article on Mr. Koch on November 16, 2003. It talks about his approach to duck hunting and the great outdoors.

OMRO, Wis. — The old duck hunter huddled low in the cattails on a cold, bright afternoon, the 25-m.p.h. wind twisting and bending the tall grass like so many rubber hoses. It was a narrow point of land at the mouth of the Fox River where the water bleeds into Lake Butte des Morts--and a splendid place to wait for ducks.
The temperature was 28 degrees, and faint-of-heart hunters were home tending fireplaces despite a welcoming blue sky. It was just the old duck hunter here with his dog Augie, a brown American water spaniel, and a 12-gauge Browning pump shotgun.

"I like to hunt alone, mostly," Ron Koch said. "I'm kind of a lone wolf."
Gray-haired, slightly built and wearing a uniform of full camouflage, Koch, 64, recognizes he is in the autumn of his duck hunting career after 51 years of working these waters and nearby marshes. He estimates he has put in 2,300 days on the hunt, but the days are getting shorter and accommodations to age are in order.
Now his wife makes him take along a cell phone, just in case.
Resting on his knees, Koch paddled his 40-year-old fiberglass-hulled skiff most of the half-mile from home to claim this spot. Part of the way he used a two-horsepower motor to help tow a visitor in a second skiff.
"When I was young," he said, "I hunted all day. Now, after three or four hours, I'm done."
The old duck hunter grew up in this area and always has lived in one of the towns on the outskirts of Oshkosh. His father took him duck hunting when he was 13, and it was a treat. Then it became a passion. His wife Connie, his children, the job as a rural letter carrier from which he retired, the Green Bay Packers and duck hunting. Those are the things that have defined his life.
Perhaps 1 million ducks have flown overhead. Mallards, pintails, redheads, mergansers, gadwell, canvasbacks, wigeon, teal, bluebills, buffleheads. It has been ducks unlimited. How many thousand shots has he taken? How many dinners of grilled or roast duck have been cooked, accompanied by mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie?
The skiffs were parked. One was disguised in the water by trees and weeds. One was lifted onshore and became a bench in the cattails.
"Be still if anything comes," Koch said. "Make like a stump."
It is not just the hunting time--the equivalent of more than six years in the field--fueling the old duck hunter's ardor.

Vintage store display items.

An interesting area of collecting is in giant, oversize display items from retail stores and schools and the like. The most common are things like giant pencils, pens and slide rulers but I have seen tons of other cool "giant" stuff. Baseball bats, golf clubs, tents, fishing poles and reels, you name it. If they were sold in a retail store, there were probably big display versions of the objects. The neat thing is they dont have to be really old but the older the better.

Here are a couple items we have that are pretty neat. The first is a Bjorn Borg tennis racquet from the 1970's. It is a giant version of the real thing, even down to the gut strings. It is 53" tall x 18" wide x 3" thick at the grip. It is available here.

The second item is a giant Airwalk shoe from the 1990's. It is 28" long x 11" wide x 7" tall and is available here. They would display wonderfully together. The perfect gift for the sportsman or woman.

Highlight from 2014 sales.

Dr. Walter Morgenthaler (1882-1965) and Adolf Wolfli (1864-1930)

Early today I gave a lecture on the early, European roots of outsider art. It was part of the Center for the Visual Arts lunchtime lecture series. It is important to understand the 19th century roots of the movement before it evolved into art brut and later outsider art

These roots centered around the work of Drs. Hans Prinzhorn and Walter Morgenthaler. These psychiatrists were contemporaries and both explored the use of the visual arts combined with psychotherapy to help the insane patients they treated in sanitariums. They were the fathers of what we now refer to as art therapy.

Morgenthaler wrote the textbook for Psychiatric Nursing that is still in use today. He also developed the Rorschach Technique but his contribution to art history was the 1921 publication Madness and Art: The Life Works of Adolf Wolfli. Besides being an MD, he was also an art historian. Morgenthaler encouraged and documented Wolfli's artistic body of work.

Raw Vision put it like this "Dr Walter Morgenthaler published the first study of a single psychiatric patient's work, Adolf Wölfli, a patient at his Swiss asylum. Wölfli worked for thirty years in a small cell at the Waldau Asylum, producing hundreds of huge drawings which he bound in vast tomes accompanied by a dense script recounting his exploits and calculations, a depiction of a whole alternative reality from his tragic life".

An awesome retrospective and virtual exhibition documenting the relationship between Morgenthaler and Wolfli can be found here. I encourage you to check it out.

Wölfli was born in Bern. He was abused both physically and sexually as a child, and was orphaned at the age of 10. He thereafter grew up in a series of state-run foster homes. He worked as a farm labourer and briefly joined the army, but was later convicted of attempted child molestation, for Bern, Switzerland, a psychiatric hospital where he spent the rest of his adult life. He was very disturbed and sometimes violent on admission, leading to him being kept in isolation for his early time at hospital. He suffered from psychosis, which led to intense hallucinations.
which he served prison time. Sometime after being freed, he was arrested for a similar offense and was admitted in 1895 to the Waldau Clinic in Bern.

 At some point after his admission Wölfli began to draw. His first surviving works (a series of 50 pencil drawings) are dated from between 1904 and 1906.Walter Morgenthaler, a doctor at the Waldau Clinic, took a particular interest in Wölfli's art and his condition, later publishing Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (A Psychiatric Patient as Artist) in 1921 which first brought Wölfli to the attention of the art world.

Morgenthaler's book detailed the works of a patient who seemed to have no previous interest in art and developed his talents and skills independently after being committed for a debilitating condition. In this respect, Wölfli was an iconoclast and influenced the development and acceptance of outsider art, Art Brut and its champion Jean Dubuffet.

 Wölfli produced a huge number of works during his life, often working with the barest of materials and trading smaller works with visitors to the clinic to obtain pencils, paper or other essentials. Morgenthaler closely observed Wölfli's methods, writing in his influential book:

 "Every Monday morning Wölfli is given a new pencil and two large sheets of unprinted newsprint. The pencil is used up in two days; then he has to make do with the stubs he has saved or with whatever he can beg off someone else. He often writes with pieces only five to seven millimetres long and even with the broken-off points of lead, which he handles deftly, holding them between his fingernails. He carefully collects packing paper and any other paper he can get from the guards and patients in his area; otherwise he would run out of paper before the next Sunday night. At Christmas the house gives him a box of coloured pencils, which lasts him two or three weeks at the most."The images Wölfli produced were complex, intricate and intense. They worked to the very edges of the page with detailed borders. In a manifestation of Wölfli's "horror vacui", every empty space was filled with two small holes. Wölfli called the shapes around these holes his "birds."

His images also incorporated an idiosyncratic musical notation. This notation seemed to start as a purely decorative affair but later developed into real composition which Wölfli would play on a paper trumpet.
In 1908, he set about creating a semi-autobiographical epic which eventually stretched to 45 volumes, containing a total of over 25,000 pages and 1,600 illustrations. This work was a mix of elements of his own life blended with fantastical stories of his adventures from which he transformed himself from a child to 'Knight Adolf' to 'Emperor Adolf' and finally to 'St Adolf II'. Text and illustrations formed the narrative, sometimes combining multiple elements on kaleidoscopic pages of music, words and colour.
Wölfli eventually died at Waldau in 1930 and his works were taken to the Museum of the Waldau Clinic in Bern. After his death the Adolf Wölfli Foundation was formed to preserve his art for future generations. Today its collection is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern. (courtesy Wiki)

Sales highlight from 2014. Store display size Skookum.

A Skookum doll was a Native American themed doll, sold as a souvenir item in the early 20th century. Although considered collectible, they are not authentic Indian dolls, as they were designed and created by a white woman, and quickly mass-produced.
The dolls were made in a variety of sizes, ranging from small babies about 2" long, with an attached mailing tag, up to 36" high store display versions. Early versions had wigs made of human hair, while later, the wigs were made of mohair. In most cases, the eyes were looking to the right, but rarely, they were looking to the left. The dolls did not have arms or hands, as they were always wrapped in felt blankets reminiscent of Hudson's Bay point blankets, Pendleton blankets or Navajo blankets. Accessories included strings of glass or wooden beads, buckskin headbands^, and drums. The dolls were often packaged in distinctive boxes, with the slogan (Bully Good), and were described in marketing materials as "The Great Indian Character Doll".
The dolls were costumed in stylized garb of many different tribes, including the Pueblo, the Sioux, the Apache and the Chippewa. (Courtesy Wiki)

Orange is HOT, HOT HOT.

Attention pickers, flea marketers, thrift store shoppers, antique dealers and decorators. The color we sell the most of is ORANGE. Not matter what the object is, orange ones sell first. Just a tip.

This guy is now officially the boss. He has the hat and revolver to prove it.

1946 advertising calendar for Anderson & Ogg, Quality Groceries and Meats, Duluth Minnesota.

Just picked this up today and boy is it in nice shape. Never used, the whole year 1946 is intact. Great illustrative sporting art too. Minnesota ephemera. You can buy it here

From the "this must have happened while I was sleeping" department. Pyrex is going crazy.

When I was a kid, and I bet most you were the same way, your mom or grandmother had simple, utilitarian glass mixing bowls, measuring cups and pie pans on the counter or in her cupboard right next to the Crisco. Most likely these were made by Corning Glass and they were called Pyrex. They probably looked like these examples: 

Pyrex is a brand introduced by Corning Incorporated in 1915 for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. Borosilicate glass was first made by German chemist and glass technologist Otto Schott, founder of Schott AG in 1893, 22 years before Corning produced the Pyrex brand. Schott AG sold the product under the name "Duran".

In 1908, Eugene Sullivan, director of research at Corning Glass Works, developed Nonex, a borosilicate low-expansion glass, to reduce breakage in shock-resistant lantern globes and battery jars. Sullivan had learned about Schott's borosilicate glass as a doctoral student in Leipzig, Germany. Jesse Littleton of Corning discovered the cooking potential of borosilicate glass by giving his wife a casserole dish made from a cut-down Nonex battery jar. Corning removed the lead from Nonex and developed it as a consumer product. Pyrex made its public debut in 1915 during World War I, positioned as an American-produced alternative to Duran. (courtesy Wiki)
In the late 1930s and 1940s, Corning also introduced other products under the Pyrex brand, including opaque tempered soda-lime glass for bowls and bakeware, and a line of Pyrex Flameware for stovetop use; this borosilicate glass had a bluish tint caused by the addition of alumino-sulfate. In 1958 an internal design department was started by John B. Ward. He redesigned the Pyrex ovenware and Flameware. Over the years, designers such as Penny Sparke, Betty Baugh, Smart Design, TEAMS Design, and others have contributed to the design of the line. (courtesy Wiki).

After World War II, joy and happiness swept the Nation and people wanted bright, fun objects in their homes, and specifically kitchens. Throughout the 1950's-1970's Pyrex kept up by producing some amazing colors and designs. These are the items that have skyrocketed in price. Some rare patterns and colors are into the 4 figure price range and are as desirable as some fine art. There are hundreds of books, websites and social media pages devoted to these rare objects. Try Pinterest pages like here or here. Christy Jordan's website Southern Plate is a great source for Pyrex collecting information. Her article "Confessions of a Pyrex Hoarder" is here. This is Christy with just a small portion of her collection.



Now for what you have been waiting for...the high-dollar stuff :) These are courtesy of "Ask The Ebay Queen".

 

Very Rare PYREX Cloverberry Casserole Dish w/lid & cradle 475 Holy Grail! Sold $1375.00  by eBay Seller pyrexlove 

Very Rare Pyrex Early American Americana Blue Gold Casserole Bowl Dish Turquoise Sold $945.00 by eBay Seller mikeandstephstuff

 

NOS NIB Vtg HTF Promotional 60s Pyrex Starburst Space Saver Casserole 2 Qt. 575 Sold $799.99 by eBay Seller rockposterchild

 

RARE HTF SUNFLOWER PYREX BOWL DISH TURQUOISE AQUA 442 1 1/2 QUART FLOWER UNKNOWN Sold $637.77 by eBay Seller mikeandstephstuff 

 Rare Vintage Pyrex 2 Quart Baking Dish Milk Glass Blue Aqua Clouds Stars HTF SOLD $515.00 by eBay Seller tbytime

Think before you ditch it or donate it. 

 Courtesy here