Mid-century Chemcraft Chemistry Set and vintage university microscope.

We sold this set-up pretty quickly from our Etsy Shop but its what happened afterwards that made us smile. We got an email from one of the producers of the hit television show Pawn Stars. They said they really liked the kind of stuff we sold and asked if we would like to come out for a taping of the show. They said we could bring whatever cool items we wanted...on our dime.

Here are some more photos of the chemistry set and microscope:

Hot item alert: Portable record players from the 60's and 70's.

You may not know it, but music on vinyl is making a huge comeback. Young people are listening to old long playing albums and many record labels are offering new releases on vinyl as well as digitally. If you are looking for vinyl visit Inner Sleeve Records here in Wausau.

We sell every portable record player we get in almost immediately. I am not talking about small ones from the 1950's for 45's. The ones we sell the most of are larger, beefier ones for lp's and are from the 1960's and 1970's. If you find these old sets buy them but again, they must work and condition must be near mint to get the best price. Thrift shops, antique malls, flea markets, garage sales, Ebay and Etsy are great places to start looking if you need one. Here are some of the ones we have sold recently. Big brown console record players we cant give away but these babies are hot.

Mara and her friends in an Eames style, mid-century, 3 place settee by Krueger Metal Products of Green Bay.

SOLD. Krueger Metal Products article on midcenturymodernist.com

Syncromism.

A short-lived but important movement in American modernism was called Synchromism. It helped American abstract painting become appreciated internationally.

Per Wiki: Synchromism was an art movement founded in 1912 by American artists Stanton MacDonald-Wright (1890-1973) and Morgan Russell (1886-1953). Their abstract "synchromies," based on an approach to painting that analogized color to music, were among the first abstract paintings in American art. Though it was short-lived and did not attract many adherents, Synchromism became the first American avant-garde art movement to receive international attention.^[1] One of the difficulties inherent in describing Synchromism as a coherent style is connected to the fact that some Synchromist works are purely abstract while others include representational imagery.

 Stanton MacDonald-Wright 1948 Archive of American Art

Portrait of Morgan Russell 1918 by Amedeo Modigliani. The Athenaeum.

Synchromism was developed by Stanton MacDonald-Wright and Morgan Russell while they were studying in Paris during the early 1910s.^[6] From 1911 to 1913, they studied under the Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart, whose color theory connected qualities of color to qualities of music, such as tone to hue and intensity to saturation.^[7] Also influential upon MacDonald-Wright and Russell were the paintings of the Impressionists, Cézanne, and Matisse, which heavily emphasized color over drawing.^[8] Russell coined the term "Synchromism" in 1912, in an express attempt to convey the linkage of painting and music.

The first Synchromist painting, Russell's Synchromy in Green, exhibited at the Paris Salon des Indépendants in 1913. Later that year, the first Synchromist exhibition by Macdonald-Wright and Russell was shown in Munich.^[9] Exhibitions followed in Paris in October 1913 and in New York in March 1914. Macdonald-Wright moved back to the United States in 1914, but he and Russell continued separately to paint abstract synchromies.^[10] Synchromism remained influential among artists well into the 1920s, though its purely abstract period was relatively brief.^[11] Many synchromies of the late 1910s and 1920s contain representational elements. At no time, though, did Macdonald-Wright or Russell achieve the level of critical or commercial success they had hoped for when they introduced Synchromism to the United States. It was not until after Russell's death and late in Macdonald-Wright's life that extensive museum and scholarly attention was paid to their highly original achievements. Other American painters who experimented with Synchromism include Thomas Hart Benton, Andrew Dasburg, Patrick Henry Bruce, and Albert Henry Krehbiel.^[12] 

The earliest extended discussion of Synchromism appeared in the book Modern Painting: Its Tendency and Meaning (1915) by Willard Huntington Wright. Wright was a literary editor and art critic and the brother of Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and the book was secretly co-authored by Stanton. It surveyed the major modern art movements from Manet to Cubism, praised the work of Cézanne (at the time relatively unknown in the United States), denigrated "lesser Moderns" such as Kandinsky and the Futurists (and, of course, the Orphists), and predicted a coming age in which color abstraction would supplant representational art. Synchromism is presented in the book as the culminating point in the evolution of modernism. Willard Huntington Wright never acknowledged that he was writing about his own brother's work.^[13]

Three other extended treatments of Synchromism can be found in the catalogue by Gail Levin that accompanied a major traveling exhibition organized the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1978, Synchromism and American Color Abstraction, 1910-1925, in Marilyn Kushner's catalogue for a 1990 Morgan Russell retrospective at the Montclair Museum, and in Color, Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism by Will South, a catalogue-biography published in conjunction with a three-museum exhibition of the artist's work in 2001. Levin and South are the two art historians most responsible for
attracting scholarly and public attention to Synchromism, a movement that has often occupied a minor place in twentieth-century art-history textbooks.

Synchromism is based on the idea that color and sound are similar phenomena and that the colors in a painting can be orchestrated in the same harmonious way that a composer arranges notes in a symphony.^[2] Macdonald-Wright and Russell believed that, by painting in color scales, their visual work could evoke the same complex sensations as music. As Macdonald-Wright said,"Synchromism simply means 'with color' as symphony means 'with sound.'"^[3] The phenomenon of "hearing" a color or the pairing of two or more senses--synesthesia—was also central to the work of Wassily Kandinsky, who was developing his own synesthetic paintings, or "compositions," in Europe at approximately the same time.

The abstract "synchromies" are based on color scales, using rhythmic color forms with advancing and reducing hues. They typically have a central vortex and explode in complex color harmonies. The Synchromists avoided using atmospheric perspective or line, relying solely on color and shape to express form. Macdonald-Wright and Russell were among a number of avant-garde artists at work in the period immediately before World War I who believed that realism in the visual arts had long since reached a point of exhaustion and that, to be meaningful in the modern world, painting needed to sever any ties to older ideas about perspective and to literary or anecdotal content.

The earliest Synchromist works were similar to Fauvist paintings. The multi-colored shapes of Synchromist paintings also loosely resembled those found in the Orphism of Robert and Sonia Delaunay.^[4] MacDonald-Wright insisted, however, that Synchromism was a unique art form and "has nothing to do with Orphism and anybody who has read the first catalogue of Synchromism ... would realize that we poked fun at Orphism." The Synchromists' debts to Orphism remain a source of debate among art historians. Their approach more clearly owed something to Cubism. The Synchromists made use of the broken planes of the Cubists, but their lavishly colored areas of paint sometimes looked, as the art historian Abraham Davidson has described them, like "eddies of mist, the droplets of which collect to form parts of a straining torso....To find anything like this in American painting one has to wait for the color-field canvases of Jules Olitski in the 1960s. All images courtesy Wiki Images 

A highlight of 2014 for Hazel Home Art and Antiques was the acquisition and sale of this period Synchromist painting. It was only initialed and dated 1957 which is a bit late but it is still mid-century. 24 x 18, o/c.  As you can see, it is almost completely non-representational with just hints of birds in the painting. The palette is heavily influenced by the works of MacDonald-Wright and Russell.

1940's gun metal gray, art deco style desk lamp with brass decorations.

This just came in today so I thought I would let you know about it. All of this old, industrial style, lighting is popular with collectors these days, but the condition must be exceptional and functioning. Always check to make sure the plug and cord are in good shape before plugging it in. These kinds of desk lamps can be found very affordably. This one was made by Moe Lighting in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin and is available for purchase here

"Old Wausau" by Lisa Downing Lanier 2015. Commission for Thrive Foodery, Wausau.

"Old Wausau" 2015, 48 x 36, mixed-media, collage, encaustic painting.

Thrive Foodery is a new restaurant in Wausau. Housed in an old industrial building it offers a great selection of craft beers and an ever changing Nouvelle Americana menu. Their mission statement is simple: "Chef Owned-Community Driven"

We were delighted when they ask us to supply the artwork. We placed these paintings and sculpture for the Grand Opening on New Years Eve 2014. Think of us when you visit Thrive.

Bay Area figurative painting ca 1960's.

"Brooklyn Train Yard" by Emily Strong

"Blues for Malcolm" by Harold Smith

"Keith Haring Cow" by Rick Hall

One of the coolest things is when someone comes in the door with a couple of cigar boxes under their arm.

Watches, gauges and little boxes.

Collection of 19th century pottery marbles.

Stuff from a boys room 1950's.

Swizzle sticks, matchbooks and pinbacks.