Old New England Glassware in the Home - Part Thirty - "Wild Card"

Old New England Glassware in the Home

Part Thirty

"Wild Card"

            Difficult... to garner...

            Appreciation for

            Is my return

            To the ‘follow along’ survey of the decadence and decline of

            Old New England glassware... in the home

?

            Re-marking... the notation... that I have now comprehensively established the habitat of the glassware within the ...old New England home with its (the home’s)

            Now comprehensively expostulated upon decadence and decline

            Through the impacts of Industrialization, the economic expansion of the middle class AND...

            The rhapsody upon these two of... ‘material opulence’ merged with

Material abundance...:

“OH WHAT A SHIT PILE!”

Came the old New England home...

            And its glassware

            To be

            ?

            I ‘learned’ as a young antiques picker (age sixteen) that ‘that kind’ of glassware (‘late’ “VICTORIAN” EAPG) (glassware of the decadent decline) was ‘no good’ and

            “NOT REALLY”

            “old New England glassware” at all IF

            “YOU ....  KNOW” (early New England EAPG).

            “Ok.”

            And that was this “Ok” because “you can’t sell it”.

            “But Sir... I did (do)”.  (‘sell it’)

            “Oh.”

            So there was a problem...

            “With that”.

            Not that anyone cared.  Or noticed.  Or... remarked  (‘re-marked’) so...

            THAT WAS (in fact therefore) a HOLE in the “THAT WALL” (‘can’t sell it’).  And it was really very lowbrow in scope.  I didn’t... when working as a picker... with other pickers... and couldn’t (“could not”) “LEAVE ANYTHING BEHIND” including... any... thing... “I COULD SELL (that) ANYONE (would) BUY?”.  Yes... pretty simple and NEXT came...

            After ‘getting’ (buying very, very, very cheap) SELLING IT TO WHO?  You say.  I don’t really remember.

            Or do I?

            I do.

            She was always home; in her house on the main route next the house that had all the hubcaps for sale in their front yard:  The shiny clean hubcaps always for sale.  And she was

            Up from the little roadside garage that had the spotless 1963 Rambler American ‘kept in it’.  On sunny days the garage door was open.  Cloudy... rain... and/or snow:  The door was closed.  She

            Didn’t ever mention either; the hubcaps or the Rambler.  We would pull in and go to the front door and she would crack that open and, smiling, “I know you”.  My pal... I just call him that... already knew the secret and learned me it too:

            “She collects Egg in Sand”.

            “Egg in Sand” is an eighteen–eighties (1880’s) ‘later’ ‘Victorian’ EAPG ‘pattern’ of ‘pressed glass’ that looks like little Easter eggs tilted one way on one row with the next row having the eggs tilted the opposite way... set in a pin prick deckled background (“SAND”) over the whole ‘pattern area’ of a ‘piece of (early American) pressed glass’ in that pattern.  Pitchers.  ‘Sweetmeat’ dish (‘relish tray’)... goblets... made up the “WATER” or “Lemonade” “SET”.  I’ve, after hunting “IT” (‘egg in sand’) for forty-five years... “AH...” “Never found a sugar (bowl) or a... ‘like that’... salt shaker.  YET.”

            Who cares:  No one cares.  But anyway:

            SHE COLLECTED

            “EGG in SAND”

            And that’s what we did ‘there’; sell her the ‘egg in sand’ we “FOUND”.  The problem there was the “FOUND”.

            It was not

            AROUND

            To be

            FOUND.

            “So, like”:  I maybe went there, like, six times in two decades before she got

            “Looney”

            And they moved her “OUT”.

            Specifically what ‘was’ was that my pal and I... and then just ‘I’... would

            “CAME BY”

            And get the six bucks for the “WHATEVER GOBLETS... and/or ‘relish trays’ and, like, LEAVE... always with I dutifully noting to myself that ‘there is nothing in there’ meaning she ‘had’ or ‘collected’ NO ‘antiques’ that I ‘considered good’.  “SHE HAD” “JUST” “Victorian” “IN HER HOUSE”.  I didn’t have a problem with this.  Also... since “LIKE” she went to every “YARD SALE and such in the area... there was always a chance “MAYBE” (she’d found something [“a good antique”]).  This never happened but:  She was nice... in a limited art background way... and ‘likes antiques’ in a ...limited art background way.  OK?  I’m just telling you the truth; she didn’t have Chippendale ‘in there’ and didn’t know ‘one could’.

            So we’d goof on her behind her ...rather large butt... about her passion for

            “EGG in SAND”.  And LOOK:

            I was in High School.  OK?

            Well... “OK”:

            It created a “PROBLEM” for my art eye that I

            Have never been able to ‘shake’.  The problem was that I (eye) came to be the “SPOT” “EGG in SAND” “PATTERN” from... like... FIFTY FEET... on a table at a ‘holiday’ church sale and EVERYWHERE else in the ENTIRE UNIVERSE.  And so:

            I came to ‘know’

            “EAPG Victorian Pattern Glass”; what ‘it’ ‘looks like’ meaning that I ‘got too’ (“FOUND”) a lot of “TOO BAD THAT’S NOT EGG in SAND” ‘old New England “VICTORIAN” glassware

            Too.

            I... came to be a... “I didn’t leave that behind” of this ‘design form’ of “EAPG”.  This carried ‘into’ the ‘homes’ and the ‘cupboard bottoms’ and ‘the attics’ and... therefore, the whole natural habitat... of old New England glassware...

            As I went along... “being a dealer” (picker).

            I wouldn’t call it ‘smitten’ but

            I was

            Smitten.

            By it; old New England VICTORIAN glassware in the home.

            And have always been since

            Therefore.

            I, now, “LIKE” egg in sand.  I like

            “FINDING” (“a piece”) of

            Egg in Sand.

            AND ANY... old New England “Victorian” ‘pressed pattern’ glassware and

            I promise you

            Nobody cares... at all.

            Almost sort of.  NOW of any day by happenstance I do get a “those ARE nice” utterance from a ‘stumbled across’ someone “LOOKING AT” a “GLASSWARE” “Like I WANT TO GET SOME OLD GOBLETS”.  Don’t worry; Egg and Sand is still a “Too advanced for them” pattern.  I get, at best, a ‘Huh.”.  Should I choose to show ‘it’ off.

            Cool huh?

            As a Victorian EAPG pattern...

            It really is; way out there with the eggs in the sands.

            Want to go really ‘wild card’ on... old New England VICTORIAN glassware

            In the Home?  Come on:  TRY IT.

            Everyone understands now (2015) that there was a ‘bottle digging fad’ or ‘hobby’ in the 1960’s that continues to this day among a much more tech savvy professional “DIGGERS” set of ‘OLD BOTTLE DIGGERS’.  But back at the get-go the game was played by following the ‘old stone wall’ ‘out behind’ the back door of an ‘old house’ and ‘sure enough one is going to find that old house’s ‘throw out’; its “DUMP”.  And ‘dig that’ “DUMP” and “COLLECT” all the “OLD BOTTLES”.

            And it came to be that almost every ‘old dump’ in New England has been ‘dug’ and its (whole) old bottles ‘collected’.  So there; a done deal.

            Well not so fast for every ‘old-old’ bottle digger’ STILL stops dead while ‘walking’ the stone wall when they “just take a look out there’ along the wall and ‘hit’ the dump.  And they “it’s been dug” ...pokes it... and even fidgets a few broken pieces and

            STOP RIGHT THERE... students of EAPG; old New England glassware ONCE in the home but now, too (two), found.. BROKEN... “in the dump” “to that place” (HOME).  OK so when I’m standing there after poking and ‘collecting’ the PIECES of an ‘old New England glassware’ that is broken and been ‘pitched out’... I stand there

            And, with the pieces in my hand... sort of fitted together

            Sort of, I

            STAND THERE LOOKING BACK FROM THE WALL at the HOME and

            I say to myself that ‘them people in there; that home, used this here pieced together “YEAH” ‘Good Luck’ or ‘Horseshoe’ pattern EAPG glassware (goblets) in that house in 1876 and I know that from these pieces in my hand “SEE?”.  I touch this base and head for home.  “NEAT” and when I’m home I ...have been known to... ‘tape’ the ‘pieces’ together with duck tape... “just for the Hell”... of it. 

            Now... to my fixated ‘eye’ (‘I’)... doing the ‘this’ is even a ‘can be’ better than rummaging the cupboard bottoms in the home’s dining room.  I mean... I am outside up pasture from the home on the stonewall ‘at the corner’ ‘at the dump’ looking back down past the Red-Wing Blackbirds flitting about and the little breeze, not too hot, in the shade by the old sunny pasture so

            The pieces to the old New England glassware goblet... in the dump from this HOME... is, like...

            I’ll call it ‘special’; a ‘special’ way to “appreciate” old New England glassware... in the home.  OH YOU CAN ‘collect it’ (EAPG) this way TOO.  Like I said; it is a

‘Wild card’.