Jennies Junque Store

Rare Item Find at an Antique Mall: Seymour Blair Campaign Goodyear Button

Every so often I like to browse through antique malls looking for the rare item that some antique dealer doesn't want to bother with.  This week I found a jar of buttons priced rather high, but I could tell there were a lot of very old buttons in it. So I bought the jar and went home to sift through them.

There were many very old beautiful victorian glass buttons. There were also many victorian picture buttons.  I even found some civil war era military buttons. But the button that stood out the most was a black button with the cameo of two men on it.

I know the history behind the goodyear buttons, and this button was labeled "Goodyear's N.R. Co. P=T" on the back. Charles Goodyear held the patent for hard rubber, and buttons made of hard rubber had his patent information before the patent expired.  The front was labeled "seymour & blair 1868".  The button was in very good condition and the cameos showed every detail. After a brief internet search I was able to determine that the button was a rare political button made of hard rubber.  There are apparently 3 known varieties.  One has two frogs on it, and another is of two other famous men.  This is the third, and it commemorates the Horatio Seymour who ran against U.S. Grant in 1868 for the presidency.

This rare button sells for about $150.00 to button and Civil War collectors.  I have seen a lot of jewelry made of buttons, and this is one case where it is good to know your buttons before you make them into jewelry.

Antique Recipe for Cleaning Greasy Stains Off Yellow Ware or Stone Ware

Today at an estate sale, I came across a 1903 edition of "Dr Chases Recipes or Information for Everybody".  It is full of antique remedies for humans and farm animals alike.  There are recipes for cold creams, and perfumes.  Directions on how to dye your faded garments.  And dozens more useful recipes for everyday.

One that seemed particularly useful was for cleaning the greasy stains off of stone ware or yellow ware dishes.

"To Clean Greasy Earthenware"----Stone pots or jars in which lard or fat has been kept, and yellow ware pie plates,may be cleaned by putting them in a kettle with ashes or sal soda, covering them with cold water, and allowing them to boil slowly an hour at least.  When boiled enough, take them off the fire and leave them in the water until it cools.

Another useful recipe was for a rose oil made from real rose petals.

"Attar of Roses, to Extract from the Flowers"-----fill a jar with rose leaves; cover with clear water. Set in the sun for several days.  The oil will rise to the surface and can be gathered with a wad of cotton tied to a stick.  Squeeze into a phial  It is very valuable.

I always love finding these old cookbooks with the odd recipes.  It is fun to compare the different natural recipes that our ancestors used around the house long before you could go to the store and buy it off the shelve. 

Alaska Sourdough Starter: An Antique Health Food

One of my favorite types of antiques is cookbooks.   I have some that are over 100 years old, and a lot of more modern church society cookbooks.

When I go to an estate sale, I look for old cookbooks first.  At the estate sale of a little 96 year old lady, I found a cookbook written about "Alaska" sourdough.  The author, Ruth Allman, who lived on the frontier of Alaska in the 1950s and survived mostly by using sourdough starter to cook protein rich foods.

If you google sourdough starter, there are numerous pages written on multiple variations of how to make some.  Amish friendship bread is similar, but does not use wild yeast as sourdough starter does.  If you google friendship bread, you come across fruit bread starters.  All of these enzyme rich starters are antique ways to add flavor to food.

Our ancestors relied heavily on these food stuffs when they were settling the frontier.  The starters use natural bacteria and yeasts that are always present around us, but in the starters they are given a chance to take over.  The by products of these bacteria add flavor to any mixture. They turn starch into protein, and are an antique way to eat organic food.

It was in the early 1900s that mass canning and pasteurization processes took over most of these natural processes, and people in the cities began relying on modern methods.  The modern way is safer, but the antique way of "starters" is much more fun.

Try it. Google sourdough starter, and make some of your own.

How Old Is My Brooch??? Victorian? Edwardian? Or Modern?

Many people wonder how vintage jewelry collectors can tell how old a brooch is.  Sometimes, there is no way to tell exactly how old a piece of jewelry is.  But most of the time, you can tell how old a piece of jewelry is by looking at the findings and the fittings.

The fittings and findings are the hardware on the piece, or the way the piece is put together.  They are the mechanisms used to place it on your shirt such as the pin, or the safety clasp.  For a necklace, it is the shape of the spring clasp on the chain, or the bale on the pendant.  For a brooch, it is the shape of the clasp.  In particular for this piece,  I will be looking at the clasp.

There are three stages to the clasp that can help you quickly date a piece to either the victorian, the edwardian, or the modern era.  I consider the victorian era to be from 1870 to 1910, the edwardian era to be from 1890 to 1920, and the modern era to be from the mid 1920s to now.  The earliest form of clasp on a brooch was the "C" clasp. It was called the "C" clasp because it is the shape of a "C" if you look at it from the side.

This victorian brooch as a "C" clasp which is the oldest form of clasp.  It is still being used today, but modern "c" clasps look less well made.  As you can see, there is very little to keep the pin from coming out of the hook and the brooch could easily fall off.  Early attempts to fix this were a separate pin attached to the brooch by a chain.

In the 1890's a new safety clasp was invented which used a locking lever on the "C" clasp as shown in the next photo.  The "c" clasp has a lever added to the front of it.  When the lever is pushed up, it bars the pin from coming out of the "c".  This was in common use from the 1890s to 1920.  It is shown here on an edwardian era brooch.  But this version of the safety clasp still did not provide enough protection from falling off.

The next evolution of the safety clasp is the "modern" version we see most often today.  It has the rotating disk that secures the pin in place.  The one shown on this art deco 1920s necklace is an early one with a flat bunny eared disk revolving around a tube.  This safety clasp has been the most successful at preventing brooches from falling off.

The first clue in dating a brooch is to see whether it has a "C" clasp, or the early lever safety clasp.  If it has either one of these clasps, then the brooch should be examined further because it has more value due to it's age.  For additional information on these clasps please visit  the "Jewelry Whatz It" site.

Making Vintage 40s 50s Hats From WWII Pattern Magazines

    This week I was sorting through some old pattern magazines, and I cam across this one published in 1942 at the beginning of World War II (WWII).  Inside are many ways to conserve scarce materials.  It gives instruction on altering existing garments to make them look new, and how to use household materials to make over your old clothes.  For instance, there are several pages with directions on how to cut out childrens clothes from your husbands old shirts.  But the most interesting pattern I found was for several different styles of hats.

    There are two pages full of different styles of 1940s WWII hats with directions on how to make them.  They are cute and unusual, and shown on real live models with current 1940s hairdos.  I found this booklet to be a window back to another time when materials were scarce, and people had to make due during the war.

    There are large bows, skimpy pixie looking things, large wide brimmed hats, and snoods.  It seems that with a little yarn and some felt, you could create something cute to wear on your head.  Below are the photos of the finished hats.  It is interesting to see how they looked on true WWII 40s hairdos.

                                

Old Family Stories and Myths: How Ancestry.com Helps Debunk Some

From my earliest days I can remember my father telling outrageous stories about his childhood.  One features riding a horse 5 miles to school during a Nebraska blizzard.  I never knew if it was true, but it is repeated off and on at family gatherings.  Some of the best stories come from families passing down what they have heard, but many times the story has probably morphed through the years.

When I was a young girl my father told me his family was from Germany, and that "Rock" was an old German name.  Years later, I found my fathers family at ancestry.com, and his great great grandfather had immigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1864.  I was able to track the family from their original homestead in Braidwood Illinois, where they mined coal, to the Nebraksa farm outside St Libory where some of the family still lives.

Since finding out this useful information at Ancestry, I have kept my subscription and used it when I come across a box of old letters, or a tapestry labeled with someones name and date of birth.  I have been able to verify that a civil war charm was authentic, and that some lovely lady never married the man she corresponded with during World War II.

My greatest find was an old inkwell purchased from the family that started the "Rice-Stix" department store in St Louis.  The top of the inkwell was engraved with the words,  "Uncle Wm. From: Charles", and it was an old heavy glass victorian inkwell.  When I bought it at the estate sale, the lady of house told me that it had belonged to one of the Stix ancestors of her late husband who had started the Rice-Stix store in St Louis.  She was referring to William Stix  who began business in Memphis, and later moved to St Louis.  I used ancestry to look up Charles, and found out that Charles was a nephew who was raised by William after Charles father died.  Charles went on to found his own department store, "Stix Bauer & Fuller" in St Louis.

In my opinion, ancestry.com is a wealth of information that is very easy to use.  If you aren't an antique dealer, it is worth a visit to find out the origin of odd names.  My husband's surname is "Yingling", and he didn't know it is an old respected German East Coast name.  The original spelling was Yuengling, and one branch of his family started the "Yuengling Brewery".

Why Etsy Is Fabulous & Ebay is Stodgy

Why is shopping on Etsy so fabulous, and shopping on Ebay so stodgy?  Because landing on the Etsy home page is like walking into a luxuriously decorated designers apartment with surprises and turkish delights waiting for you, and landing at the Ebay home page is like being put on bread and water rations while you wait for transportation to nowhere.

Anyone who shops at Etsy knows it is like walking through an enchanted garden sprinkled with pixie dust.  The items for sale are truly unique, and presented in a color coordinated tapestry of wonder.  On the very first page, you realize you have come to some wonderful new place where mass merchandise can't survive.  Each item presented is unique and unusual.

Perhaps Ebay was once this way too, but it is now a stodgy buying experience.  Each day brings new changes to the platform that only highlights how awkward it all truly is.  The blaring advertisements for typical electronic equipment, or movie stars discards just creates heartburn.  It is like going to the restaurant everyone is talking about, and finding out the food is luke warm and tasteless.

Etsy is the site everyone loves to be part of, and Ebay is the site everyone loves to hate.  I have a penchant for underdogs, and feel sorry for Ebay.  They are trying very hard to become something hip and new, but stodgy just seems to cling to them.

The Memory Keeper's Customers: The Stories Behind The Antiques

I love the stories of people's lives, and the things that surround them.  When I was in college, I worked several jobs to make ends meet.  One of my favorite jobs was in the University Libraries Archive Department.   We were responsible for sifting through letters and memorabilia left to the library by the alumni.   It was fascinating to see the things that people had kept to remind them of their years at University.  We sorted letters, clothes, and books into categories and decided which had historical perspective for the University.  We threw away what we thought didn't matter.

As an antique dealer, I believe everything matters.  I no longer have to decide what to keep, and what to throw away.  I keep it all.  If someone loved something enough to keep it for decades, then it is important to me.  That means my life is crowded with a lot of other peoples memorabilia, and I sometimes think of myself as a memory keeper.

For example, one day a sweet little lady came to my store with a box of carnival glass tumblers and a matching pitcher.  The set was in pristine condition and a lovely blue green color with grapes and leaves clustered all over it.  She explained how she had wrapped each piece carefully in newspaper the day the last of her children left for college.  Sure enough, the newspaper wrapped around each glass had early 1970s dates.  She went on to talk about other items she had at home including her husbands record collection.  I found out about how she and her husband had met.  He gave up a career as a musician in Memphis to come to St Louis and marry her.  He played with many famous musicians in Memphis.  But he knew she would never leave St Louis, and moved to suit her.

Another customer brought a box of memorabilia into my store, and told me of how she had made a living teaching piano.  There was all her sheet music, and a ruby flash souvenir glass from the Illinois 1930 state fair.  She told me how her father had bought it for her because she said it was beautiful.  I looked at the very sprightly lady and realized she must be well into her 80s to have a glass etched with the year 1930!

There is a long list of customers in my antique store who have stories surrounding their beloved items.  I cherish every story I hear because my customers cherish them.  When I resell one of these items, I tell the person buying it the story that the original owner told me.  I hope the stories survive along with the item, and I hope I am keeping some memories alive.  I hope for this because each antique, and each story, is the artifact of a long and fruitful life deserving of someones full attention.

An 1884 Love Letter From Deadwood "Friend Gertie"

This is the first in a series about a set of love letters I found at a Nebraska antique mall several years ago.   They were discovered in the wall of a very old mansion that was being torn down.  They are written to a "Miss Gertie Carpenter" in Omaha Nebraska.  There are about 50 love letters in pretty rough condition.  Many are asking if Gertie will be available when they come through Omaha, or they ask if they can meet her in Chicago, or Wisconsin.  One of her lovers was a well to do owner of a bottled water business in Waukesha Wisconsin.

Gertie must have been very beautiful and wild to have so many beaus. The letters span the years 1879 to 1884.  I was able to find Gertie in census records.  By 1890 she had married a widower with two children who was many years older than she was.  She had one son, and moved to Hollywood after her husband died in between 1910 and 1920.  Her son was a purchase agent for a hollywood movie studio according to the US Census Records.

This love letter was posted from Deadwood Dakota to Omaha Nebraska on Aug 14th, 1884. It was sent to Miss Gertie Carpenter in Omaha Nebraska from "Zach". I can find no last name. This is one of several letters from several lovers that "Gertie" kept and hid in a wall of the house she lived in. This is the only letter from Deadwood, and Zach.

Zach's love letter is hand written on "office of the county clerk", "Lawrence County, Dakota" , "Deadwood, Dakota" letterhead. The county clerk is listed as J.S. Tracy, and the commissioners are J.W. Garland, JNO. C. Ryan, and Samuel Roy.

In Deadwood during 1884, Sol Star was mayor, and Seth Bullock was hunting for "Crazy Steve". Seth found "Crazy Steve" that year in the company of Teddy Roosevelt, who was also hunting "Crazy Steve", and they became lifelong friends.

The letter reads as follows:

Friend Gertie,

Through my brother in Omaha, I hear that you are still in Omaha. I wrote you about two years ago, but heard nothing from you. Thinking perhaps my letter never reached you, I have concluded to send you this little note through my brother. I would like very much to hear something from my old friend Gertie. Have thought of you so often since I came to this country, and many times have I looked at the tintype of you and I which has always served to bring up remembrances of the happy hours we spent in our walks to Redick Grove, or hunting trip here. I am doing well. Please write me, and I will then tell you the history of my doings since I came to the Black Hills. Let me know how to address my letter so that you will be sure to get them. (That is if you care to hear from me.)

Many kind regards to your mother, Yours truly, Zach

Box 310

Deadwood DK 

It is wonderful when you can play history detective and find information that fills in gaps about the antiques we love.  I will be posting other of "Gerties Letters" in future posts. This letter is for sale at my website www.jenniesjunque-n-it.com.

Jennie

What Happened To Stinky Grocery Stores? The Evolution of Kitchen Gadgets

One of my favorite Cary Grant movies is the 1951 "People Will Talk".  Cary Grant plays a doctor who falls in love with a much younger lady who is dealing with an unwanted pregnancy.  Pretty racy stuff for 1951!  In a particularly memorable scene Cary Grant is reminiscing about the smell of groceries stores.  He states that "grocery stores just don't smell anymore".  You used to be able to go into a grocery store and your nose was assaulted by all the different smells of the meat, cheese, vinegars etc.  He feels that the modern 1951 grocery stores have become overly sterilized, and slightly inhuman with all the pasteurization and homogenized foods.  If you stop to think about it, food preparation processes were undergoing  a lot of evolution during this time.  He misses all the natural smells of fermentation.

During the early 1900s there were still many farms where all food for the family was raised, slaughtered and preserved by the family.  Vinegar was made by putting left over fruit juices in a crock and waiting for it to naturally ferment.  My mother made butter in a butter churn on Sundays on the farm after milking the cows.  Cottage cheese was also made at home, and there is nothing like the flavor of homemade cottage cheese.

In early American food preparation, most women didn't use recipes because they used a pinch of this and a handful of that. They had their ingredients and amounts memorized.  The work day was long, and there wasn't time to experiment with alternate ways of preparing food. But, by the 1960s most people purchased their foods already commercially slaughtered and preserved.

With the advent of grocery stores, and the sterilization techniques, time wasn't being spent planting, picking and preserving anymore.  In addition, so many foods were being sprayed with preservatives that many old recipes just didn't work anymore.  For example, I have a very old cookbook with a very simple recipe for cherry preserves.  It says to put some pitted cherries in a jar with a pinch of salt, and some sugar.  You leave it to sit for a few weeks, and when you come back you have cherry preserves that go well with ice cream.  A later edition of the same cookbook states that this recipe won't work with cherries purchased from a grocery store because of the preservatives in the store bought cherries.

Many early recipes required the fermentation of bacteria to preserve the food, and this created an abundance of healthy aromas that are missing from todays food.  Vinegars were homemade, soda pop was made at home, ketchup was prepared and bottled at home.  That didn't leave much time for experimenting with recipes or the use of gadgets.  Most kitchens had a few larges pots, crocks, and a good cutting board.  Blenders were an unnecessary luxury because you could do all the mixing by hand.

Now the modern kitchen is a gadget encrusted space where food preparation is mostly accomplished by the grocery store.  There are multitudes of pre-prepared and partially prepared foods for the working mother, or father.  The necessary gadgets include a refrigerator, mixer, coffee maker, convection oven, microwave, and for the truly adventurous, a pasta maker.

Can't help feeling that we are missing out on something now that all the exotic fermentation and preservation smells are gone from our kitchens.

Jennies