The Week in Review

    This week I have had off from work. Because of that, it appears that I have been off from writing. This past weekend was not a great silver hunting weekend anyway. We have been having a lot of storms so there are fewer sales to attend. Saturday I went to Purcell Oklahoma. This small downtown has about 6 antique shops, some of them quite pleasant some of them dubious. The problem is that Purcell is so close to where I live that I have been there dozens of times and the stock is not fresh or exciting to me. Still, compared to Guthrie which is supposed to be the best antiquing in Oklahoma Purcell is awesome.
    
   Monday I had to go to Oklahoma City for some business and went to a couple of shops that I had not visited before. One had never been open when I was in the city and it had a very nice selection of silver. What was strange was that in the two shops that I visited I saw three plateaus. They were not the grand plateaus of a manor house but small affairs that were perhaps a foot in diameter. They all ran about $ 150, two were in fair condition and one in good condition.  I did not pick them up but it struck me how sometimes I notice things in groups. I imagine it has something to do with selective attention. I should reread Kurt Koffka's principals on Gestalt theory.

     I did however find a couple of interesting things. One is a sterling spoon set marked Kitty. The second is a brides basket I picked up. I hope to give both the recent cake/brides/fruit baskets a good write up. The one I found on Monday was on a bottom shelf, covered in stuff in a booth that was having a 40% off sale. So I made out like a fat rat on this one.  It has some plate loss but it was still worth the pittance I paid.

     The only other thing of note this week was that a few select pieces of the collection went to be displayed for a drawing class at a local art center. They were borrowed for the purpose of creating still life scenes.

New James W Tufts Cake Basket

Sterling Marked Macie

 

My skills at photography are pretty poor and I lack the ability and camera at this moment to show great detail. This is one of the reasons why there are not better pictures of the gobs of flatware that I bring in and process. I just cannot get close enough to really show the extraordinary detail of some of them. This piece is one of those times where the camera has utterly failed to capture its beauty. 

I was talking to one of my favourite dealers at the local flea market, she usually has silver on hand and knows a bit about it. I had poked around on her table and there was nothing of real interest and on a whim I asked her if she had anything else. She reached in a box and pulled out this little thing. Its about the size of the palm of my hand, about half a dollars length. It was clear that it was sterling (from the mark on the back) and was stamped MACIE. The best part was that you could tell that it had been hand hammered. the hammer strikes are all over the piece but not purposely.  This is a piece you can tell that has been made by someone still learning the craft but getting better and better at it.

Every other little dip on the rim has a hand chased figure in remarkable detail. There are some worms with leaves, a small bird like a sparrow, a flower, a butterfly, some grapes, and a larger bird like a duck. Around the rim on the underside there is geometric chasing. The style looked Mexican thought there are no marks to that effect. The best I could track down was a really shaky report of a Macie silversmith in Mexico but with some pieces it may take years to know or you may never. Unfortunately this picture can not really do this piece justice. I got it for a song, and it is small but it already has a nice place in the display cabinet. Unlike a lot of my silver that is an industrial product and is beautiful for being a beautiful industrial product. This is a beautiful piece of silver made by someone moving towards mastery of an ancient craft.

Sterling Compote For the Melt

 

In Shawnee Oklahoma this weekend I also picked up this weighted sterling compote.  It is marked P.S.C.O. 151 Sterling weighted. As you can see in the picture the middle has some sort of blunt force trauma that occurred to it. This makes it useless as an object of beauty unless crumpled metal is your thing. The great part? It was a dollar. It will go into my box of trashed sterling that is waiting for the melt. My other thought was the I could cut a sheet from it and try my own hand at hammering a small object from it. A thimble perhaps? Or a smaller bowl? At any rate, for a dollar you can't beat that with a stick.

Leaf Dish from Wilcox Silver Plate

 

I also picked up this leaf dish this weekend. There is a seller at the local flea that bought out another seller and the organizer of the flea. He bought so much stuff and so much of it has been in storage for sometimes over twenty years that in order to sell it he pulls out boxes and anything in them gets sold for a dollar.

I am guessing that they go through the boxes very quickly before they get sent to the flea but I don't think that I can describe the condition of most of the stuff. Some of it has had rain on and animals living amongst it for twenty years. So you have to do some digging. Usually there is nothing. The last things I bought off of him were a creamer/sugar (late 1930's) both for a dollar after bargaining and a ten pound box of silverplate flatware for seven dollars.

The chap who works the booth is an employee of the chap that owns the goods and I am a good customer of the chap that owns the goods antique stores and know his daughter. In fact before I knew him I was the first customer in his new antique store the day it opened one town over. Plus as it turns out I also know his sister. But back to the dollar booth. 

I dug around a bit and out pops this (which was crustier at the time) so I paid a dollar for it. It appears that someone had been using it as an ash receiver. I am not in particular love with the piece but it is marked as Wilcox Silver Plate and I have a soft spot for that maker.  It is Wilcox after the formation of the International Silver Co. I know that because it is also marked International Silver Co.

It should polish up nicely and perhaps I will use it for something outside the kitchen. It is a weird shape for table service and I have plenty of pieces for that. Today I was reading about pin receivers and shirt button receivers so it may go towards that purpose. I had not done much reading on "silver novelties" or dressing table silver until recently and a couple of weeks ago I passed up a hair receiver that I am sort of kicking myself for not picking up when I had the chance. But there is always another time.

Star Pattern Juelep Strainers from 1890

 

Did I mention I was not done showing you all the wonderful things from this weekend? No? Well how remiss of me. These are two julep strainers I picked up in a pile that included a First Colony (1975) pie server, a Meadowbrook plate and some sort of stainless steel knife that I have now consigned to the garage. (sometimes in silver lots you get stainless I have a bag in the garage that I will eventually take to the thrift shop) 

These two beauties are what I really wanted. Though I do have a box of Meadowbrook (1936, Wm A Rogers A1 Plus) that is second only to my Queen Bess surplus. Simply because of the mass of it is the plate of any interest unless I could find a rich collector of Meadowbrook that wanted to take all of it off my hands. What I really wanted were the julep strainers. They are pretty rare as far as serving pieces go and there they were in perfect condition. The cap would only sell as a lot, he would not sell separately. This is unusual because I always try to bargain cheap by buying the lot and most sellers want to sell by the piece. This chap would not sell by the piece but I bargained with him until I got the whole lot for less than I was willing to buy the pieces for, so in a way it was win win for me as I paid less than what I had offered for the piece for the lot. 

Still, these are wonderful pieces and I was happy to slip them into my hunting bag and move on before the seller figured out that he had just underbid himself. This is the Star pattern made by 1847 Rogers Bros. They were only made in the Julep Strainer so if you have this pattern you have a julep strainer or something made by someone else. The date for the Star pattern is 1890. They are great little pieces and unfortunately for them I drink precious few juleps. I have julep cups and plenty of mint but it just does not seem to come up that often.  

El Unico Orange Knife

This advertisement from The Century magazine from 1894 shows another Victorian way of dealing with the orange.  The knife is steel and is silver plated. The handle is sold in ivory, pearl, celluloid, sterling and silverplate. It "has a fine saw edge" and can "cut orange and grapefruit smoothly without releasing any bitter oils from the skin".

Other than this advertisement I have never heard of El Unico of St. Augustine Florida. Rainwater nor any other of my references mention this maker. It is possible that they are a reseller. However, te blade is stamped with their mark. To be honest again if someone brought me this knife I would probably confuse it with a cheese knife which it closely resembles. 

Holmes & Edwards Silver Company Advertisement for the Waldorf Pattern

This is a advertisement for the Holmes & Edwards Silver Co. Waldorf pattern. It appears in The Century in 1894. It is an Easter advertisement urging surprise on the morning of  or surprising that "particular friend".  One of course wonders what that is a euphemism for. 

J.H. Johnston & Co. Advertisement 1894

This is an advertisement for the J.H. Johnston & Company for a variety of silver novelties.  They have their offices in Union Square New York and show a wide variety of silver goods. This advertisement appears in The Century magazine in 1894.  My favourite piece here is the "Cleopatra" pen rest in the shape of a snake and I am guessing an asp. The advertisement also features an ink eraser.

Spaulding & Company Sterling Silverware Advertisement

This is an advertisement in The Century magazine from 1894 from Spaulding & Company Inc. for their sterling flatware. They claim addresses in Paris and Chicago.