The Crow's Nest 3

3

            My thirty year visit ritual was always the same.  I would follow the mother into the front parlor.  She would approach and seat herself at an opened Empire style fall front desk that was against the front wall of the parlor between the two front windows.  She would gesture for me to sit in a large Victorian Renaissance Revival walnut armchair that had been drawn forward from it’s permanent position to the right of the desk.  She always sat in the same older Greek Revival Empire arm chair in front of the desk. 

            Beginning with the first visit and continuing ever after, these were the fix positions of our business meetings.  The meetings were… for me to be offered, review and …presumably… purchase a scanty selection of items brought forth from within the home as “antiques” that I “would want”.  As the Mother had only a vague notion of “antiques” based primarily on what she herself determined was antique, this moment of the meeting always had a potential impasse.  The impasse was that my roving eye very quickly determined that the items brought forth for a meeting… did not make the antiquarian cut.

            The whole of the front parlor room had been the exact same for six generations of the family’s residence:  The exact same from the first day of it’s finished decoration.  The exact same until all of the family was dead and I sold all of the items from their fixed positions… in about ten minutes.  The left wall had a large and traditionally formed Empire “sofa” placed between two built-in bookcases with a very large 1830’s oversize gilt gold framed …portrait… of a free standing resurrected Jesus having his wounds inspected as he showed himself beneath his halo glow.  “Copied from one in the Lourve” was the standard and unchanging explanation of this “not for sale” “masterpiece”.  Well painted, perfectly framed, gigantic and flush with it’s palette of Empire tone opaque reds, greens and grays, the painting was most probably a Portland - Portsmouth – Boston (!) knock off job painting done for EXACTLY what, when and where this… “masterpiece” stood.  This painting, facing me and behind the mother as we transacted, loomed overall, forever.

            Behind me was a smaller transitional Victorian …horsehair covered “sofa” that was positioned forward of a long, long unused Empire Greek Revival fireplace.  I define the style to note that this was NOT a colonial hearth but, in fact, a rural Maine specimen of a bombastic white-gilt gold painted grand decorative inclusion with a black portal at it’s bottom for “a fire” and the top mantel crested with a …tipped slightly forward… oversize robust split turned gilt gold “MIRROR” (Empire looking glass) above… that did have... when after thirty years I did remove it from the wall… a Portland, Maine “maker’s” (read “vendor’s”) label.  It came to Portland by train and PROBABLY came to the home by TRAIN too.

            The mother, due to the exaggerated tipped angle of the looking glass could see herself and… the back top of my head… in the “MIRROR” “IT”S NOT FOR SALE” as we transacted.  To either side of the fireplace were… built in and painted in their original touch-of-gray off-white (that was the color of the whole of the woodwork and trim of the “front parlor”)…. bookcases.  Before these were a gathering of Empire and Victorian chairs and rocking chairs.  Upon the bookcases were …old books.  Upon and before these bookcases; on the tops of them, on the floor, to the sides extending into the corners of the room and… continuing off behind the Jesus painting sofa on the other side was…mounds of boxed, bagged, piled and…DUMPED… PERMENANTLY STORED for …over a century… “stuff” …heaped in just such a manor that an antiques dealer would FOREVER eye it “in hopes” that a treasure would be “seen”.

            The windows and the open and wide entry to this “front parlor” completed the time capsule by having GIGANTIC floor to TWELVE FOOT ceiling high heavy thick massive faded dust soiled for a century dark forest green and ochre earth toned yellow… “drapes” that were, had, and forever after remained “never touched” ever including their original and permanently poised Empire ties tied… .  When the home was sold, “THEY” went with it.

            The wall, aside from Jesus, had perfectly positioned “old framed prints” upon a scanty and subdued patterned, faded …but original… 1830 Empire style …rural-cheap… “wallpaper”.  Originally a bosomy rouge pink, it was now a pink-gray-brown water stained and pealing at the ceiling molding… yuck.

            In the center of the room, on the floor and upon the “cat destroyed” cheap Victorian carpet were, at each meeting, the items “for sale”.  Beginning with the first visit and continuing ever after, once seated there then began a three hour session of …Yankee dickering.

The Crow's Nest 2

The Crow's Nest

2

            I began in the home with a telephone call from the mother.  Their telephone was a wall mounted crank telephone then.  A local operator assisted the call and the conversation.  As the era of the crank had vanished except in interior Maine, the operator had a singular relationship when contacting the outer world from the village especially with elderly people. 

            The wall mounted telephone was just past the door that lead to the “front part” of the house.  This position excluded the telephone from the living area of the home and defined it’s usage to the formal front business section of the home.  This formal front faced the street.  The door by the telephone marked the boundary of the house that defined the mother and the daughter’s usage within the whole.  Simply, they lived in the back and did their business in the front.

            This “front part” (their words) must be understood well.  The “living” part of the home was the older and original sections of the home dating from the 1780’s.  To this original home was added, in the 1820’s, a full, classic and New England grade perfect Greek Revival “addition” that was, in fact, a whole home… of the latest and most fashionable style.  So perfect and so formal was this abutment that it never was fully assimilated by the family as being part of the original homestead.  The… always closed… door from the older home into the newer addition forever represented a border line to the “front part”. 

            From the street, the front part began with the front door and it’s perfect Greek Revival Doric pillared porch.  This porch reach toward the main street of the village.  It was abutted by a full grown sugar maple tree on it’s left and a full grown American Horse Chestnut tree on it’s right.  Visitors such as myself were received at this front door… only.  Local visitors and family friends were received at the kitchen door.  These visitors walked past the front door, back into the yard and through the shed door open between the barn and the house to the concealed from view kitchen door at the rear side of the home… only.

            I would walk up a flat stone path to a single step onto the front porch.  I would walk two more steps to the front door.  I would push a primitive electric door bell button that would set off a loud buzzer while I faced… and never used… a beautiful cast iron Grecian door knock that had obviously been “there” “since it (the addition) was made”.  To my right were the perfectly poised requisite three New England style slat back “porch rockers” and a small companion table… all painted in an old and deep forest green paint.  Before them stood a row of large earthenware flower pots with their just modestly tended Geraniums.  Stylistically flawless, the whole porch was “just modestly tended” JUST PERFECTLY so as to assure that “these people are real local Mainers” who have lived “here” “forever” and not someone who moved here “from away” (out of state).

            The door bell would be answered very slowly.  I would hear the mother begin her expedition from her kitchen through the “living” house to the “front part” door.  I would hear this door open… and close.  I would hear her continuing up the “front hall” to the front door, hear her turn the key she kept in the door lock and this door lock unlock.  Then I would hear her turn the ancient door knob (that I would watch turn on my side), hear her pull upon the… slightly stuck at bottom… perfect large Greek Revival door… painted in old whitewash.  The opening door would pop and then very gradually recede to reveal her face peeking through a crack to assure it was me.  Then she would swing the door fully open.

            “Come in come in thank you for coming so promptly” was always said as one sentence and then IN I was following behind her “up” the “front hall” a mere twelve feet to turn right into a most… stunningly untouched circa 1825 Maine full Empire style decorated and never ever altered ever… front parlor.

            At this moment it must be denoted that two spaces need description; the “front hall” and “front parlor”.  This is not a tedious exercise.  This is part of the tale.  Way up above and at the very top of this “front part” of the home was the crow’s nest.  WAY, WAY up above the front door was a …perfectly proportioned, centered and matching Greek Revival window that looks out over all of the main street of the village.  Behind this window was … the crow’s nest.  It is the scale… and it’s perfectly preserved time capsule state… that must be conveyed to understand this home, the “front part”, the first floor spaces, the stairs ascending, the upstairs rooms, the stairs to the attic, the attic and, finally, the crow’s nest.

            We will wind our way there with description and tale merged.

The Crow's Nest

The Crow’s Nest

1

             At the top of the attic stairs; at the very top of the home, there was a room.  This room was called “The Crow’s Nest”.  There was a homemade hand painted sign on the closed door that said “The Crow’s Nest”.  Several painted crows surrounded this title.  This painted sign had been made on an old stiff paper shirt board.  It was now warped and chipped from dangling from it’s single tack.  Eventually I removed the sign and sold it.  That was after a thirty year association with the sign and the room.

            The name; “The Crow’s Nest’s” came from the woman whose room this was.  She derived the “crow’s nest” from her mother who had once had a pet crow.  The pet crow’s name was Simon.  That name came from “Simple Simon”, the poem.  The Mother had named the crow when she was thirteen.  She had captured the baby crow, raised it and… exhibited it at a local northern Maine fair.  She exhibited Simon annually for over a half decade.

            Simon, although a docile and loyal pet, ranged free from the Mother’s family farm in northern Maine.  Coming and going as he chose, he excelled in one single passion; the gathering of small shiny objects.  No quality valuation contributed to Simon’s collecting passion.  Only shiny and size.  He had to be able to carry his discovery off and be able to hide it in his plunder trove.

            The plunder trove was the rotten hollow that formed a deep dish at the top of a large and tall corner fence post at the upper end of the back pasture near the gate.  From her childhood bedroom in the farm house the mother could see Simon tending and guarding his plunder trove.

            The varied objects Simon found and hid in the fence post top were a continuing saga and intrigue.  Most were rudimentary and unsatisfying such as a shiny new tack, a copper wire piece or a bottle cap.  Other objects were very intriguing and down right …evil.  Simon purloined a sterling silver thimble with someone’s initials on it.  One day a silver plated woman’s wristwatch appeared.  A silver bead necklace suggested that Simon hopped in the open widow of a home and hunted on a woman’s dressing table.  A silver watch chain and a tiny silver cigar clipper, it too with engraved initials, suggested Simon had no gender sensitivity in his collecting.  These finer items never ceased to entertain the mother when she inspected Simon’s fence post but also… they bothered.  It was obvious to the mother that Simon had stolen these items and that could only lead to trouble if he were found out  That consideration lead to a very ridged policy of the Mother never ever disturbing Simon’s fence post and that… was just fine by Simon.

            Simon met his end by purloining a small silver match case covering a box of matches.  He open the match box with his beak, pecked the matches and they blew up in his face, instantly blinding him, causing him to fall of the fence post and be found dead at it’s base by the mother.  She buried Simon at the base of his fence post, did not disturb his plunder and waited.  For the rest of her girlhood she would periodically check Simon’s plunder.  It was always the same.  Even after she’d grown, moved away, married, had growing children of her own and only rarely returned to home, she always would slip away and check Simon’s plunder.  On one visit home, the fence post top was empty.  Simon’s plunder was gone.

James Hutton's Goblets

“A very dull old gentleman,” he thought.
“I wonder what his goblets may be worth.”

(Stevenson, Robert Lewis: “A Lodging For The Night”. 1877. The last line of the story.)

James Hutton is a different sort of picker than (the previously blog posted) Baxter or Lane Cooper. The latter two physically charge old New England homesteads and barns. Hutton visits them. I, as a picker, visit them too but my picking is methodical compared to Hutton. Hutton wishes to be served well prepared tea while he purchases, most nominally, the tea table it is served on. To him, purchasing the content of a garret and removing that same, is tedious. He prefers a solid silver teapot, purchased as plate. Excepting these differences, we all, as New England pickers, join together in opposition to the generic pickers that now have recognition through television programming. We seek fine New England decorative arts from …fine New England homes.
James is only fine New England decorative arts, while I am an "every bedroom, every bedroom dresser, every bedroom dresser drawer" "empty". I arch to the archeology of the Fine New England Home. James stays with "the decorative art only".
At the time of Baxter's pickle bottle find… that I then sold to Peggy (Abbott)… where upon she sold me her Connecticut ladder back chair that …was her mothers… and …had always been in the family… I: Knew that the chair should not have been sold by Peggy, that her mother would find out and that I would be called upon. The only gap was that… only I saw the chair. Baxter did not. BUT he did hear from Peggy that she had sold me "that old chair". Right away he visited me with no purpose… once. Then again. Both times he nosed around but mentioned nothing. I knew he was looking for the chair. He paused his visits and then appeared twice more without purpose. Evidently he did not see the chair… for sale. After this fourth visit, James Hutton arrived for a visit. Baxter had told him about "a chair" and Hutton, also familiar with Peggy's estate, knew exactly what chair it was. He seated himself at the barn door in an old Boston rocker and rocked slowly in it while looking at me.
"Where is Peggy's chair?" he asked.
"Chair?" I said
"That chair. Her mother's. The ladder back. The good one."
I stood up and stepped three steps to the far side of the barn, reached behind a stack of old lumber and… behind a bench covered with old Staffordshire china that was covered with an old table cloth and… lifted Peggy's chair from darkness into light.
"That chair." Said Hutton.
"My chair." I said.
"HER MOTHER will kill her WHEN she finds out". Pronounced Hutton knowing full well that I was already aware of this.
"How will she?" I said.
"OH!"
"Yes? YOU go tattling?"
"OH!" (pause) "How much is it?"
"Not for sale yet. Cooling off."
"How much THEN?"
"What do you want that for?"
"I collect things from that family. You know that."
"So do I".
Hutton looked around the barn, rocked back and forth, looked at the chair then looked at me. "This isn't the first time she's done this you know."
"Probably not." I said "I know I've come close before; things the mother gave her that she didn't want either. But. I believe this is my first no-no.
"The KEEP THIS UNTIL YOU DIE!" stated Hutton. Then he laughed.
I smiled. We both know this border line well. It is a fine border as long as the object is "no good". It is painfully difficult when the object is "good". The "painfully difficult" usually ends VERY promptly after "YOU DIE": A family tussle. Cash. Ends. It may end in the dealer's favor if they are… still alive.
"Your not going to keep that until YOU die are you?"
"No. Just wait it out. Your telling Mother?"
"I only tell Mother what I want to buy from her. She still has quite a bit you know".
"I'm sure she does. They always do. Most of it never unpacked no doubt. The old family teapot… up attic in a box. Down basement in a crate. The box unopened since packed. Professionally. By the movers. Now two decades ago. EVEN THOUGH she still regularly mentions JUST THAT TEAPOT as if it were in the dining room waiting for tea. A nightmare. Actually a classic New England estate nightmare these days."
"She DOES unpack a box every now & then. That's when I go by. I see her. She mentions a platter or "crockery" as she calls it; English Rockingham. She has a ton of that. I go over. I always buy something. She knows her stuff too. Always the best is set aside displayed. Or going to Peggy. "Peggy will want that" she says.
"Peggy doesn't know what that is I'd say".
"That does no good. Just let her give it to her. Then SHE'LL sell it. As we've have here". Hutton turned to the chair. "Mother had that painted. You can tell. New seat too. Professionally painted. She'd never do that herself. It's really quite well done. Cost a fortune these days."
"Cost a fortune then. It's awkward to sit in" I said.
"Who cares. It looks great. Very proper."
"I'll price it, but not yet. It will not be cheap".
"Neither are mine." Hutton replied and catching eye contact.
"Chairs? Like this?" I said.
"No. Goblets." He replied. He got up from the rocker, walked to his car, took a small box out of the trunk, returned to the rocker, sat the box on the barn floor in front of his foot and then pushed it across the floor toward me.
I bent from my chair, pulled the box over, opened it, removed a paper wrapped ball, unwrapped it and held up… a single heavy, vigorous, free blown and cut lead glass goblet with a cut thumbprint style pattern covering the exterior, a cut fluted stem below and a wide flair ground pontiled base. Holding this base I struck the rim of the goblet to release it's characteristic bell tone ring. The goblet was perfect, probably "English", circa 1815. "Nice" I said.
"There's four. One's broken. But that's why I own them." Hutton said. I looked up and he continued. "Mother gave her those and told her NEVER SELL THEM. And never use them. And never break them. She obeyed. The cleaning lady broke one. She called me about repairing it. I told her the best, fastest, cheapest way to repair it was to sell all four to me and be rid of them. She did that but not without hysterics, a promise to never tell and …still ALWAYS mentioning… do-you-still-have-them."
"How much?" I asked and unwrapped the rest including the broken one. They were still as packaged by Peggy. Hutton had done nothing with them. Even the little flakes from the broken one were carefully wrapped.
"I don't mind selling them to you because I will tell her I did and then she may pester you about them for eternity. Or you can return them to the mother. You may have to do that." Hutton said. He paused and rocked then said "I want ninety dollars each for the perfect ones. You can have the broken one. English, right?"
Ninety dollars each, from Hutton, was a big price with a little professional (read: intimidation) discount: He figures one hundred each but discounts to me at ninety. He probably paid fifty for the whole box. He expects resistance and, probably, no sale. That is fine with him for he'll spar with me for months.
"Ok." I said.
Hutton paused then said "English right?".
"Probably Irish actually" I said.
"That's a lot" he said.
"In general yes. But these"
"THESE WHAT!"
"Are seriously fine. Look at the form. The heft. These were for -at table-. These were used. With that base they'd never tip over. What did she do: Bust it with the vacuum cleaner? Smacked it off the sideboard? Feel the glass! As for the pattern; you can't fail. You can drink anything out of them."
"That's it?"
"Two twenty-five each".
"NO!"
"Oh please. You should never have sold them."

Tale of the Kennebec, a Rare Maine Book

Lurking behind the lurid front wrapper cover graphics, alluded to by only one word on the title page and further hidden from a knowing eye by a “DIME NOVEL” pedigree is a… remarkably scarce and obscure Kennebec River, Maine, 1756 set, Seven Years War (Colonial French and Indian War 1754-1763) “ten cent novel” that is generally unknown to Maine rare book enthusiasts…but should be.
THE DARING BACKWOODSMAN, MUNRO’S TEN CENT NOVELS, No. 67, George Munro & Co., New York, 1865-1866, may be easily traced to Mr. Munro’s partnership and independent break with his former employer/partners, the Beadles, to become, with them. the top producers of the “dime novel” …genre. Genre it be for today, a century after collector attention was first remunerated and 150 years after the publishing style’s innovation, the WHOLE block of dime novels languishes within a… closed door collector-only… advanced collector valuation critique (cash and literary, in that order) with …an occasional scholar discovering “one” “of particular interest” to THEIR… particular interest. We are a close ratio to that here except that the Maine rare book interest reaches well beyond the state border AND… Maine is in very short supply of actual old rare books that touch the subject of Maine and the colonial wars… particularly in a NON-scholarly way. Here we find that critter.
CHEAP writing printed on CHEAP paper making a CHEAP production of a pamphlet “throw away” style book that is called a “novel” but is more accurately a story with a highly stylized frontiersman woodcut on the outer front wrapper and again appearing as a frontis to tempt the ten cent BUYER who will READ… this “trash”. Dismissed as trash… such writing cannot be accepted in… accepted… literary circles and must be read in… secret. This sort of book was read in secret over and over and over again until pamphlet fell apart. Why? Because readers liked the trashy story.
But… that cheap hack writing… when critiqued TODAY will be discovered to be just worded historically correct enough to catch a Maine rare book collector’s attention AND suggest very strongly that the author; “J. Springer” was very familiar and informed in Maine history himself at the 1865 date. Who the author was we do not know. THAT the book has “KENNEBEC” in it’s “THE DARING BACKWOODSMAN. A TALE OF THE KENNEBEC” title grabs the Maine history sleuth’s eye. That single word is very promptly followed by three opening pages setting the scene as… on the river below Fort Halifax and above Fort Western, “in the summer of 1756” with pioneer farmers, fur traders and Norridgewocks Indians AND… having that setting salt & peppered with Maine history words like “Father Rasle. Woolrich, Cushnoc and even “Bishop Burgess” from Gardener.
The story is in the shadow of James Fenimore Cooper and close to the Green Mountain writer D. P. Thompson… and all the better for it. The author wraps his Indian raid - pioneer cabin burning plausibility with name drop style historical fact. JUST enough name drop allusion to create the illusion that “this really happened”. A little check-it-out will find no identical Indian raid there-then BUT it will find numerous there-then at the 1750’s dates with the same number of Indians raiding the same sort of pioneer farms including the details of cabin burning and… even Indian ambushes at the prominent point on the river between the two forts. Although the story is a spun yarn, the spun of that yarn …has it’s history well tended.
The devil is NOT in the detail but just the opposite. The supreme specimen of this type of Americana gone to full glory is the 1830’s DAVY CROCKETT ALMANCS, wherein lurid woodcuts and spun yarn reign supreme and …historical facts must be hunted like kernels of dried Indian corn on a forest floor. THAT rare book is Grolier 100 Americana (#39) and THIS rare books is Maine's own match to it. To Cooper. To Thompson. To the …true portrayal… of Maine’s Seven Years War.
Sappy details that must be noted include: A romance that is… pleasingly… forced to cut to the chase because the book … is not very long. A horse-in-the-Maine-woods usage issue that the author repeatedly addresses. A pioneer hiding hole under the cabin that equals and emulates the hiding secrets used by the other pioneer writers we have named. Abundant boy - man - Indian loyalty, language and fighting …to the death …that includes a single mercy shot to “finish off’ and a pretty descriptive & nasty knife fight. Before the reader knows it the story is over. It is painless to read and is put-a-smile-on… tidy.
The throwaway pamphlet novel… is, again, a MAINE …French and Indian War… historical saga… found in a splendid ephemeral format designed to be read by Maine farm boys in their Maine farm bedroom when “no one knows”. But it does, effortlessly, include Maine historical clarity. Even the woodcut holds to …Maine historical clarity. Look at the backwoodsman's weapon. It’s an early French and Indian War period halberd… the type that makes one quiver to see when shown in historical excavation reports and …similar to museum specimens "found in Maine".
In the photographs I have included I show the two copies we have in stock. The reason for this duplication is to show-off… but not clarify… edition variants. This sort of printed production often has a very varied printing history making it very hard to determine a "true first" edition (first edition, first printing). Conservatively, I cannot say that either of the photographed specimens are "first editions". What I do denote and show in the images is that… one copy (the one WITH the rear wrapper present) is printed in NY, vended by a Boston publisher, has an inner front wrapper advertisement for the very next (#68) dime novel BUT has an "1866" copyright. The second copy is printed in NY and from a NY vendor but with a later #87 very next dime novel (suggesting it's a later printing than our first) BUT has an… "1865" copyright. The two offerings become… the classic rare bookman's enigma of "what is a true first"… with a classic "go figure" answer. One would need to have a dozen copies side by side to try to sort out a "true first" …sappy detail. This first edition detail we deem "sappy" for… a true LAST detail removes all the sappy and leaves just one aspect: Try to find a copy… any copy …of this rare Maine book.

The Respectable Old Fruit Jar.

Following on from the last post, my formal relationship with The Old Fruit Jar began with the discovery and sale recorded there. A quarter of a century and 1000 fruit jars later I was standing in the basement of Maine's most prominent antiquarian fruit jar vender's store viewing a DEXTER JAR with the fruit ring around it. "Oh so long ago" thoughts turned into a spur of the moment purchase of that… very fine and prefect… Dexter and two equally fine and perfect FRANKLIN DEXTER FRUIT JARS. These are the jars in the photographs. This fruit jar dealer was not always a fruit jar dealer and way, way, way back I had "bought" (purchased with my own money earned from the paper route and lawn mowing… a single bottle; a very tiny "Major's Cement" bottle, from this same dealer when he was but a… small table of "old bottles" he'd found out by the street in front of his home.
We reminisced this transaction and juxtaposed that with the tidal wave wash away of subsequent transactions that brought each of us to stand as we were then standing. I said "I will make a commemorative shrine" of the three jars in honor of the antiques trail they started me on. Then we discussed the jars, the fruit jar as itself (the object), the fruit jar collector, the state of the collecting interest and collecting market and… did not get misty eye but found real value.
The real value IS that, when overviewed, the old glass fruit jar has several tiers of "respectable". The old fruit jar is available and accessible. This is because the collector boom has long ago stabilized into a at-the-very-top rarity based… moderately small… group of advanced collectors. This small world fights it out over advanced collector rarities. THAT causes old, fine, attractive and charming truly antique fruit jars to sort of "sit there" in the market. The jar type I am noting is NOT the bottom-feeder ATLAS-BALL-LIGHTING-MASON classic yard sale and flea market jar. It's the ladder rungs of collectable above these focusing on the …middle rungs. Perfect, pretty, precious, popular, pleasing, proper and …postulating (putting themselves forward)… these particular old fruit jars be. They also …be available and do not cost very much. For the latter, for example, a DEXTER may be found "pretty and perfect" for $80-$150. The FRANKLINS: $30.-$85. with a $110. for "SUPER CRUDE" one (meaning clear aqua wobbly bubble filled old glass). The LOWER priced jars of this type have the odd market ratio of being found at the best price from the best fruit jar dealers. A chance find of an old odd jar by a general dealer will usually be priced "too much" compared to the price of the same jar in the hands of a …top fruit jar dealer… who is very, very, very, VERY familiar with what I have written. Buying fruit jars that are, to the decorative eye, the seven P's above is a sure bet if bought from a fruit jar pro.
That established, I change the subject to those P's. Simply place one's purchased jar out on display and… DONE. It will be admired. Saying that you don't know anything about it but just liked name (such as "THE QUEEN" or "THE EAGLE", for example) will defer the need to explain ANYTHING about "old glass" …and that IS the obvious positive art quality an old fruit jar purveys. Let the jar do that. Let them handle the jar. Let them unscrew the lid. Let them screw it back on. If it is an odd closure, let the viewer fuss with it to their hearts content. YOU already will have done that and know the necessity satisfaction that comes from this.. round lid on round top… skill builder. All this play will make the guest viewer all the more covetous… after the jar is set back down in it's display space. They won't forget it.
The next time YOU are THERE, THEY will… have one? This is the tiered respect blossoming. The nasty neat message is proclaimed… in clean, clean, clean antique glass. The fussbudget eye catcher is handled by the "closure" (the lid). The "obvious antique" is there and often affirmed by a clear date ("1865"). There is no mess. No large amount of space required. A clear "don't break this" message is included with no actual notice needed. And… above all… the "nice"; old fruit jars are "nice". Not pushy, not arty, not pretentious, not poison, not weird. Nice.
For the curious beyond "nice", there is the Bible of the subject: Douglas M. Leybourne, Jr. "THE COLLECTOR'S GUIDE TO OLD FRUIT JARS RED BOOK" with the latest edition having the highest number after "RED BOOK". One does not need this book nor need the most current edition to "do fruit jars" (just use your art eye). I had #1 when it came out. I use and picture #8. Trust me; the subject is covered. I show two pages listing the Dexter. One should be able to get the idea. Every fruit jar there is… is in the book. And fruit jars quickly become mind boggling in tiny print. But "NEAT!" the book is and will stand alone on one's coffee table suggesting to anyone that …you do "know" fruit jars IN ADDITION to being a book that… all will thumb through… especially if one… displays nearby… a respectable old fruit jar.

The Saco River Valley

For the antiquarian and antiques hunter, the Saco River Valley is a difficult critter. It is easily identified in full length on a map. It may be reached with ease. Once reached though, it vanishes. Oh the valley is there and one is there too; in one's auto and on "The Right Road" and in the right villages with the Saco River always just "over there" and: From the very ocean tip entrance to the river at Biddleford Pool onward, inward and "up" the river to Fryeburg, North Conway and the Presidential Range of the White Mountains is a vast… modernized, commercialized, re-civil engineered and atheistically… tacky… mess… of landscape, towns, third rate shopping centers, residential development and abandoned 20th century nothings that… rarely give a hint of antiquarian anything. "Wading through" this is the best term for what the antiques hunter does. Around each bend is not a colonial cape farm homestead undisturbed but, more likely, a crummy halfway there and half empty… strip mall… plopped down right where "the cellar hole used to be" but appearing to be in a sandy soil nowhere. Side roads, pieces of old road and village centers do not hint of colonial pioneer settlement. It is only at the Fryeburg upper end that the villages begin to be villages and not small gatherings of buildings driven by at fifty-five. Lost heritage… except to the keen and trained eye… is what one finds and sees when touring the "Saco Valley Settlements".
Oddly, the weight of the lost heritage is offset by the weight of the best book on the subject: G. T. Ridlon's SACO VALLEY SETTLEMENTS AND FAMILIES. HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, GENEALOGICAL, TRADITIONAL, AND LEGENDARY. Published by the author, Portland, ME, 1895. This bible size doorstop of a tome… 6 ½ pounds and 1250 printed pages… truly gets under the soil and into the river of the heritage of the whole valley AND may also be used a guide book for the colonial settlement of the rest of Maine (to 1790). The photographs of the book I have included with this post make the tome appear manageable. It is not. The bulk of the actual book is further bulked up by the bulk of the contents being a mind boggling weave of family names, dates and places that, unless being pursued for a one-family great, great, great grandfather's French and Indian Wars homestead family heritage… will overwhelm the reader. One will never understand the tome if one …attempts… the tome from a causal genealogical impulse. The best proof of this is that a great deal of the family data is available in modern single family name off prints taken verbatim from the book and published by the, now closed, Tuttle Co., Rutland, Vermont.
I have three copies of the whole giant book; one for sale in the rare book stock, my copy and… my grandmother's copy. She lived in Bethel, north and "up the notch" from Fryeburg. As an antiquarian there, she "HAD TO HAVE A COPY". That is where I first saw "it" or "one". She kept hers out like it was a Bible; flat on the dining room sideboard top often open to a page she was reading or examining …thereby making the appearance as if she was reading a Bible. If one looked at the page she was "on", one would see that it either related to the general history of the settlements up the valley OR the general history of the things (objects), tales or legends of the valley. THAT, as described in the title as "TRADITIONAL, LEGENDARY" is the true user value of the tome. Between and before the genealogical iota IS SCATTERED hither and thither fine antiquarian reading and antiques hunter tidbit. One would not suspect such fine scattered reading and one must "poke into" the book to discover it but once denoted, this scattered reading is found and followed with delight. A "In A Pillow Case to Dry" antidote, a "A Gineral Meetin" chapter, a "Garter-Loom" description and a "Colonial Relics" photographic illustration is what my grandmother "USED" the book for. Today this book is just as useful and… CHARMING… for the antiquarian as it was for my grandmother… and ME when I first "read it"; that is… "read around in it" like I STILL DO. The key word is charm.
Yes, yes we may all find modern expertise, clear color photography and "every fact is correct" assurance in our …a little too good "current material on the subject". THIS TOME is from the oldest era when there was no expertise and, at the 1890's date, antiquarians were "curiosity" collectors and their reference heritage just a little past the "I REMEMBER", "MY GRANDMOTHER" and …the garrets were still full of …"it". Charming for the book captures the charm of THAT view of "antiques" and never anticipates in any way the modern two lane fast lanes of "EXPERT" and "COMMERCE". Nope, old Ridlon just kept gathering hand written notes on any old Saco Valley anything he liked… for a quarter century… and then… paid to have it printed himself. Charming that is too for it leaves us with a singular reference book that DOES scratch the antiquarian's itch in a most pleasing way. It gives the Saco Valley it's heritage as if it is the music of a valley breeze.
There is no reprint of the whole book and it will never be cost effective to make one. Old copies are vended in the $250.-350. dollar range. Most people don't know the book exists and those that do are unaware that it has fine "old school" antiquarian content. The core interest in the book for the past fifty years has been it's rich genealogical lists.