A New England Pictorial Flask

When I …purchased "a historical flask" (described in the Old Antiques Store post) using the money from my fruit jar sale and the twenty dollar gift from my grandmother, in the fall of my seventh grade year, I realized the end of a two year trail and held that end in my hand. The trail began in fifth grade when I went, one Saturday morning, to the public library and encountered a newly placed glass display case set up in the lobby housing several antiques on display including a half pint cornucopia and urn American (New England) pictorial flask. I was entranced by the display and the case but was smitten with the flask. There was a vague label ("Historical Flask Bottle") with a local man's name as the lender. That's not what smittened me. It was the …thing. It wasn't, to my eye, a "bottle". It was lying flat on its side; turtle shaped, turtle size and turtle colored but made of glass and had a raised decoration on the visible side of a cornucopia. I stared at it and then viewed it from adjusted angles about the case. I did this for weeks. And weeks. I understood the object was "glass" and "old". I was entranced by it. Defining my entrancement in hide sight, it was the "glass", the color of this glass, the raise decoration that had been clearly and cleverly molded onto this once soft glass and that this same glass was now hard and brittle but one could still "feel" the molten elasticity in the molded decoration. Further, the form DID look like the box and painted turtles I found all the time only this was "OLD" "GLASS". I was smitten,

As a fifth grader, "FINDING OUT" about this "THING" was a long research road that ended up with the unsatisfactory position of… "FINDING OUT" the "what this is"… in a big thick book that …only had a tiny little drawing way in the back of it… among similar "flasks" and crummy black and white pictures of other "old flasks"… but not one like this one and … never getting nearer to the actual "IT" than rubbing my nose on the glass case… which disappeared after six months… and… enhancing this research by not mentioning to anyone my smitten entrancement. I don't even know how I found out about "the book" which was (and still is) the basic classic reference to American Historical and Pictorial Flasks: George P. and Helen McKearin, AMERICAN GLASS, Crown, NY, 1941. (One may easily find a copy of this classic reference.)


There was a brief blank period of… no flask in the library - research over. THEN …at the old antique shop (see post of that title)… an IDENTICAL FLASK appeared for sale for $65.00. AND I could handle it… all over… without ANY restrictions and even freely talk about it and KEEP ON handling it over and over and KEEP ON talking about it EACH and every time I went there. My learning curve LEAPED forward for the handling and the talking yielded a great deal of true facts about the "thing" and …deep, deep, deepest deep "feel" for the object. I was not only smittened and entranced but INFORMED… very quickly. Then, one day, the fruit jar saga took place and …wham - bang… the flask was in my bedroom.


This old bottle, correctly called a cornucopia and urn half pint American pictorial flask in olive green bottle glass, numbered GIII-7 mold pattern by McKearin and made in New England at either a Connecticut or New Hampshire glassworks between 1820 and 1835… still smittens and entrances me to this day.


For others… it does not.


Most of the others are "bottle" or "flask" collectors who consider this flask mold pattern and therefore all of the flasks made in this mold to be… very, very, very, very, VERY common. So common do they commonly consider it's 'so common' to be common that the flask, today as I write is a …nothing. Traveling up the cash value scale in the past forty years to a high of about $150., the flask has fallen back to a "findable at" price of my original $65.00 and even… fifty bucks. Most often one finds them "kicking around" in an antiques shop for "$125.00" and …not going anywhere fast. And that's it.


THAT LAST means that outside of the collector community …that is fully jaded… the little flask has no following. None. Except in old New England homes filled with old New England things that have "always been there" and "show good taste". Either one "knows" what it is or… does not. The latter means, in most cases, not even noticing it. To my eye it is STILL "HOW CAN ANYONE not NOTICE IT?". Even as I write this …with a specimen next to me… I ponder "HOW" can anyone NOT be… smittened and entranced.


The brittle molded glass; light, and so elastically formed yet now HARD. The deep dirty but …crispy clear… green color… caused by heating molten glass with firewood in the New England woods. The mold blown decorative process… used in the New England woods second to it's …only… first usage… by the Romans. The lost-forever- NONCHALANCE- make of the single flask, one of thousands of surviving examples… by a glass blower MAN… who puffed one small controlled breath down his blowpipe to form a bubble of molten glass… and his BOY who closed that bubble in an iron mold. Then the MAN raised the raw molded flask from the mold. The BOY attached an iron "pontil rod" to it's bottom (with molten glass) and the MAN snipped the molded glass free from the blowpipe. The BOY "fire polished" this jagged …top lip of the flask by… sticking the flask (top lip first) back into the furnace "for a second" and then "finished" by… breaking the pontil rod off with a pop. The BOY turned to find the MAN ready with another bubble of glass ready for the mold. They did this all day, every day. The finished flasks were peddled and sold by the dozen as "general purpose containers" to …anyone who would buy any. They were then filled with anything and just about everything and … sold, used and… NOT thrown out due to their very, very obvious positive art qualities that are best summarized as "I LIKE IT". The abundant and therefore "common" qualities of this cornucopia and urn half pint flask are due to the abundant number made and the …"I like it" preservation of the flask… ever after… in old New England homes.


Discover all of this oneself, hunt one of these… glass turtles… down, buy it, handle it and keep it around. The positive art qualities, the old glass qualities, the legacy qualities and the simple "I like it" will last you the rest of your life and return all of your cash outlay in cultural and art discovery. If one is interested in early New England decorative arts, this old glass object is an open door into learning about them. As a single decorative glass object… in the New England home… one sends a knowing message when one displays this …very proper, very subtle and very classic New England pictorial flask.

Anything You Want

Baxter, a local picker, came into the yard last week; early afternoon and a day before the snow storm, with… five pick-up truck loads… he'd purchased from a long closed up colonial cape. I collected his story of the purchase during the delivery of the truck loads to our warehouse. He wouldn't let me go to the house until after the final load the following morning. Baxter is always coming around and first appeared in this blog with his pickle bottle find. Since then he's come around trying to find Mrs. Abbott's' chair but that's another story. I have tried to capture Baxter's purchase story just the way Baxter …spoke it… to me:

“I’M IN THERE NOW BY CRACKEY! I (Baxter) said.


"Actually I just said it to myself and made no noise. And very slowly pushed the first interior door forward.
Crackey by DAM-mit I been watch’en THIS ONE TEN YEARS plus. Lucky that’s all.


"I was coming out of one of the stores when this old bag caught me and wanted to know where “HE WAS” and pointed at the usually always open Old Books For Sale store next to the store I just popped out of with the “I JUST SOLD THAT” check in hand. I was leaving; going back to the sea of ANTIQUARIAN HUNT.
“Don’t know.” I said noting the no sign on the door saying WHEN I’LL BE BACK that he usually does. Crackey. So I said it was real unusual for him to NOT be open and to be closed NOW without a SIGN.
“Do you think he went to lunch?”
“Could have. But he usually leaves a sign”.


Bingo came next for one of the girls from another store down the street come out and lit up and started gesturing me so I went down leaving the old bag in front of the used book store. I add that by now I had found out she’d come to sell her books. Down the street I got bingo because the girl says “You know his mother just died”.
“Died?”
“About an hour ago. He was almost crying when he told me”
I turned back up the street to the old bag and said “I FOUND OUT WHERE HE IS! He’s gotta a good excuse.”
“BETTER BE!” she yelled back.
“His mother died.”
“Mother died?”
“Really. About an hour ago”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“That is a good excuse”.
“Devine intervention”.

So then we talked a minute and I looked at the books in her trunk and told her I didn’t want the books and she wanted some money so I hooked her to talking her house and I knew where the house was and I knew the neighborhood and suddenly had that mental light bulb that BELOW HER was THAT PLACE. So I said that. And she said yes. DID SHE OWN THAT? Yes. Want to let me in THERE?
“SURE”.


That simple after all these years. Of course I never could figure out how to get into there since it was abandoned with no clear access and hung on a ledge above the water with no dock. I had the NEVER FIGURED SHE’D OWN THAT since her “home” was uphill by a near acre. But she DID own it. So we went there. In tandem, parking at her “HOME” and me expressly clear that NO I DON’T WANT TO GO IN THERE (her home) since it looked like “NO HOPE” for a rare antique in neglect in there ever since I’d been eyeing it (her actual house) TEN YEARS AGO. Or longer.


And there was no trail down the hill. NOTHING. Just a slopping over grown acre with some rusted remnants and a distant back door, a roof line of an 18th century center chimney cape UNTOUCHED and the cold Prussian blue of the river above that. Two windows though; 12 over 8 with the wavy old panes. “Original.” I said to myself. And early. Suddenly here I was going down to it, ALL BY MYSELF, after all those years with the “LET ME KNOW IF YOU see ANYTHING YOU WANT”. I dropped the case of the “see” from her “SEE” squawk for I was using the words “GET IT NOW”.


Can’t mess around when you hit the beach on D-Day and I’m going into that home. House? Home. Dead in the water it be for the past sixty-eighty-one hundred twenty years? “Yep” but still a home and the back door; the original back door, opened in without a fuss. Opened right in like it should for they never open out and into the fresh deep snow like they make’em now. “Ho, ho” and on to a dirt floor headed straight for the next door with a wood shed pile to my right. That’s in the dark for the one window is nearly covered. I stop and scan. I see wood pile with pile-on on top; old boards/boxes/bags/rope/wire/clutter affirming the SOMETHING-GOOD-IN-THERE look. Onward.


The next door is where I opened (this vignette) and BY CRACKEY I’m in there. Door opens in again and RIGHT up front the late morning light truly CASCADES in the two front windows to show me:

The plain wide pine floor.
The wainscot walls and piled up against it cram (noun).
The side window covered over with pile up.
The chairs and tables pushed back to the wall under the pack.
The traps, rope, boxes, buckets, floats, wire and heavy cotton duck
Gray from the mildew and salt,.
Mounded on top of the this and that,
All routed by a clear trail up the inner wall
To the front
There it turns left to the front door.

That’s all fisher/lobster/clammer gear; the piled on top. No problem for it ain’t in active use and be old enough to sell. Also there’s only enough for a one/two man endeavor; a small rig. AND:
My eye has moved on to THE TABLE just enough forward in the stack. JUST enough forward to have been paint-can-rest-on-it while “I PAINT” the floats and any other of the gear. THAT left about fourteen white enamel rings in the right fore corner on the top of a (not quite) knock out Hepplewhite taper leg bread board end totally original old red TAP TABLE.


I step to that and “good height” and skip my eyes around and don’t see any more cash cows so up to the front with a “look out the window at the river” glance and then to the front entry with front door closed but not locked and I open THAT inward and:


So suddenly that the light blinds me, the river breeze kicks me, the cold snaps me and the vista halts me. I am standing right out on the door sill with no more steps down and a ten footsteps to the ledge edge where the MIGHTY KENNEBECK FLOWS. The dock is gone. But did this place have river access or WHAT!

Blink, blink my eyes and then close the door and blink, blink again turning to find the anticipated boxed stairs up to the UP and so UP to a door again opening in and there I find dark turning dim with four panes of glass away at each end, the brick of the exposed center chimney to my front and a scattering of piled crud down both sides of the close quarters, unfinished “upstairs” and “UNDER THE EVES” of this “gotta be 1760’s” HOME. The rafters are pole logs with the bark still on ‘em. “Probably cut right here”. In 1750. The crud “LOOKS GOOD ENOUGH”. There’s a single small rope bed partially apart; a “hired man’s bed”. There a 1840’s one drawer stand. And crud. “GOOD ENOUGH” and back down stairs.


Into the adjoining front room. That door is partially open. More fishing stuff. Not too much and just piled around and two cheap 1880s oak pieces of furniture. Probably been more of that but “carried off” (stolen) “over the years”. Them takers rarely take the early stuff for it "don’t look antique”. Back through this room to the door at it’s rear. I don’t pay any attention to the giant fireplace; the original kitchen, nor the widows shedding shaded light. A wood stove pipe hole had been cut into the over mantle. The 18th century woodwork is natural finish; never painted. “JUST GREAT” but not likely something I’m gonna try and get. There’s an 1840’s drop-leaf table next to the door.


I open that door back on to me; see the step, am on dirt again and into another dim room with one window but whitewashed. Sparse, neat and tended this room shows only wall shelves with a here and there on ‘em and not much else except the AURA of I having just stepped into the UNTOUCHED “milk room” or “buttery" of old and I stop to take that in. A door to the right was once a window. That door is open. Beyond it an old ONE HOLE outhouse. It leans back; pulling, as a whole building, away from the main home. “Butted on” (literally) about Civil War. The bright light from the pulled-away crack obscures my view of the one-hole interior.


I leave. I go all the way around and back out the woodshed door. Total time elapsed has gotta be ten and no more than fifteen minutes since I left the TRUCK CAB. Up the hill, sun bringing the warm on my back. KNOCK on the door. Lady comes. I stand at the door:


“TWO fifty; TWO HUNDRED FIFTY DOLLARS for IT.” I take out the wade of money from my front jacket pocket and hold it out. “What I want down there: There’s wood and crap and fishing stuff. Clammers used it. THE FIREWOOD TOO! I want that. TWO FIFTY for what I WANT.”[1]
“Two hundred and fifty dollars. For in there?”
“Probably four truck loads. Maybe five with the firewood.”
“You’ll pay two hundred fifty for it?”
“Yes. Cash. Now and get it out. Probably can’t get it ALL today but most of it.”
She looks at me; my face. Then the wad of money. “It’s yours. Anything you want.”[2][3]

[1] Baxter's commentary on this purchase offering: "I could put a whole damn page about what’s going on here but do I need to? Keep it simple and FAST. No words like “HEPPLEWHITE” but lots of words like “FIRE WOOD” and “CRUD”. NO TIME SPENT dolling up what you see; SEE IT, MOVE ON, SEE MORE, ACT. Act means say concisely what you’ll pay based on one’s gut of how little be a “configure”, (while your moving onward) that one will the “has to pay” (can get away with LOW), show ‘em the damn cash and LEAP. Leap like a man. Or say home and watch TV if you ain’t got the right stuff; fear landing in the river and “LOOSING IT ALL”.

[2] The table? He got it out in the first load. Carried it up the hill on the second trip, by plan. Put it up-side-down in the back, piled the first load on top of it.

[3] In all five loads; four that afternoon, one to "get the firewood" the next morning with an extra “go back with you” go over the whole place to be sure nothing is left. Baxter is right in not "bringing you there" until he has finished for "anything can happen at any time" to "screw the deal".

Roughshod - Part One - "I Like"

Roughshod

Part One

"I Like"

            This is not about horses, riding, horseshoes, horseshoe nails or protruding horseshoe nails left protruding to gain traction.  It is not about traction.  Something has already gained traction and this does not need protruding nail heads to enhance its traction.

            This is about lines in the sand that are drawn by a roughshod traction that has been gained by first drawing a sand line and then stepping over that line in the sand to establish a next line in the sand with these lines being a ‘that may be denoted to be’ roughshod sand line; a line in the sand with figurative nail heads left protruding

            To gain traction.

            Stepped away from, it is a moving figurative sense of ordered direction that advocates a ‘roughshod’ way of discerning

            “Antiques”.

            This essay is about antiques and the roughshod directives of discerning them.  It is about old New England antiques and the effect of roughshod lines in the sand with protruding nail heads that have gained traction to...

            To what?

            To destroy them (old New England antiques).

            One may go to museums and see them; the destroyed old New England antiques, arranged in room settings.  The Concord Museum in Concord, Mass. has some.  The MET in New York has many.  No one goes

            To see them.

            Don’t tell me you do.  You don’t.  You visit the lines in the sand... with traction from protruding nail heads.  When you see that you feel you can do that ‘at home’ “too”.  You can.  You do.  It does look just like that; lines in the sand with protruding nail heads to gain traction that have all been... “done”... by... you.

            The ‘what that means’; the ‘result’, is that... you are over there doing that and the old New England antiques are over here doing

            Nothing...

            In their room setting displays that show a semblance of assembled historic design order purposely gathered to demonstrate lines in the sand of ... old New England antiques and their heritage (historic context)... too.  In most cases one has to pay admission to ‘get in’ to ‘see’.  That is not a roughshod line in the sand (paying admission).  It is a ‘way you do this’; “SEE” old New England antiques.  Do not worry that if one should “go see” a room setting displayed in a museum that one will be crowded out.  No... you will not be... crowded out.

            For myself... I find myself... “left alone”.  When I am viewing collected and arranged room settings of New England antiques.  In museums.  That I paid admission to view.  Many times... I have viewed the same museum room setting... many (“any time I’m going by”) times and... have yet to encounter “anyone else”.  There.  Fine; I like that.

            I expect that.

            I do.

            Don’t start a ‘going there’ because of me.

            Anyway... you’d fumble it.  Maybe not... if you “LIKE”... “BOUGHT” a modestly expensive BOOK about the room settings and the objects in them “IN” the museum’s room setting collection and

            READ IT

            BEFORE

            And after

            “YOU WENT” (the restrooms are down the hall on the RIGHT).

            So... noting the above, no wonder that you can ‘do that’ yourself in your house and having it come out looking like

            You did that (destroyed them).

            Old New England antiques.

            Yeah that’s what you did:  You brought in a ‘chest’ you ‘like’ and ‘found’ and have no idea what, as an object of design “IT IS” or any sense of it ‘relative’ to any other chest OR room setting OR place in New England heritage... OR New England history at all except that you have announced that you “LIKE IT” and

            Have no notion that it is, at best, a crummy piece of used furniture

            AND YOU HAVE IT ON DISPLAY

            TOO.

            (Roughshod with protruding horseshoe nails to gain traction).

            The chest (of drawers) you “found” gains traction?  It does.  You “add to it”

            “I collect antiques”.

            “SEE?”

            “I see what I see and SEE THEN

            That I can

            See too when

            I CAN too

            Then.”

            It is potpourri and smells like that too.  It is devastating.  VERY neatly ‘professionally framed’ “I PICKED THEM OUT” arranged wall decoration containing

            Absolutely nothing (the framed object has no merit of art, antique, design, history or heritage) yet you smile at them:  “I did that” (framed and wall hung your emptiness).

            May you imagine how many houses I am “insisted” I go in to... “oh”.  The buffet in the dining room is full of glass and china objects and sets of objects that are, in total and ‘to say the least’, not easy to sell at yard sales and flea markets yet obsessively displayed as a something;

            Not a nothing.

            The buffet would be better shown EMPTY?  No; the buffet is ‘so bad too’ that “It should go... too”.  And does not.  No... they “STAND” full of that crap in the same dining room pose for sixty-five years... until a ‘someone’ “hauls” it “away”.

            No one ever knows anything about anything ‘in there’ ever; during the

            “Whole Time”.

            The ‘whole life’ goes by with the “same crud”.  Not a spark of critical sense; a notice of critique, is ever studied ... upon the whole... “in there”.  Yes that includes the set of four ‘bridge chairs’ and their ‘folding card table’ “stored” “in the garage” after they were “bought at the...

            Stored.

            “WE NEVER USE THEM”.

            YOU ARE USING THEM... as a display object displayed in place (their ‘room setting’) to convey (state) your ‘sense’ of ...ah... ‘design’ in the ...your old New England... no...:

            It is simply “YOUR HOUSE” “IN” “NEW ENGLAND”

            It (the house, the décor and its decorator) is a... ‘squatter’.

            Roughshod.

            Now that is not very much fun is it.  Why don’t you take all that crud outside onto the lawn and sell it (a “yard sale”).  No... you cannot.  The... ah... “HOUSE” would be “EMPTY”.  So come in from the rear.  Carefully travel about seeking a single old New England antique.  Established antiquarians do not expect you to ‘know one’ ‘if you saw one’.  Understand that.  Then apply that:  They will help you.  This (traditional New England decorative taste) is not about what you like.  It is about classic New England decorative taste as traditionally found in traditional New England homes in traditional New England home room settings as best shown by establish museum collections of traditional New England decorative arts often time arranged and displayed in room settings for

            You

            To

            Study.

            And then... “START”.

            With one “THING” and with that being a one thing that you ...collected... with the understanding that it is a traditional New England ‘antique’ of certain recognized (by museum collections) New England decorative design merit.  Starting simple... perhaps a classic ‘Boston area’ “D top” ‘Hepplewhite (American Federal 1790-1820) “card table”.  One table:  One thing.  A real thing in “original condition” (not “repaired, faked, made up”.  Just a real antique).  Tables like this ARE “around” and “FOR SALE”.  Their current prices are ‘modest’ if not actually “cheap” due to the

            Lackluster interest for them.  Most New England homes do not ‘know what one is’ or know too... that it is a classic furniture fixture of the old New England home.

            Either.

            It (these tables) is not past a line in the sand of roughshod nail headed tractioned collecting commonly titled “I like antiques”

            Antiques in the old New England homes are not about what “I like”.  “It’s about what museums like”.  They like old New England culture.  That last word again:  Culture.

A Shed Door Is Open

"WHOA! WHOA! Whoa, whoa, whoa! BACK UP! THAT SHED DOOR IS OPEN! ….I ain't ever seen it open in twenty years… BACK UP! … GOOD!" said Lane (Lane Copper) and he got out of the truck.
We were coming down the mountain into an interior Maine village after a house-call-gone-bad …back up the mountain. Lane regularly takes me "on a call". Only about half ever produce purchased antiques. BUT I do get to spend the day riding around in the middle of nowhere with Lane AND do, half of the time, "buy something". Today's call… they "didn't want to sell". We headed home. We'd gone about four miles.
As I got out of the truck Lane was already rapping on the shed's door frame with his fist and yelling into the shed doorway "HEY ANYONE IN THERE ANYONE HI? IT'S LANE COPPER COMING BY THIS MORNING AND I GOT A FELLA HERE FROM THE COAST BUYING OLD TRUCK TODAY I SEE YOU GOT SOME TO SELL HE'S PAYING CASH!". An older man; an "old duff" (Lane's term) back in the shed started to appear from that interior looking just as blasted as you the reader after having that verbal barrage land upon him. He appeared to be putting away some cans of white house paint. "SELLING ANYTHING? YOU GOT ENOUGH I SEE!" Then "COME UP HERE!" he yelled to me waving his… old and ripped safety orange hunting sweatshirt covered arm… at me even though I WAS "here" and leaning hard on the door frame with the other arm while… the old duff kept coming to that door. "YOUR FULL AS MARTHA WASHINGTON'S ATTIC IN HERE SO LETS DO AH THIN'EN OUT… Jesus… CAN'T EVEN GET IN… DAMN TOOLS. HOW MUCH FOR THOSE?"
"I not selling THOSE" the duff said looking hard at Lane. " I USE THOSE. Do I know you?"
"THAT OLD TROUGH. TWO YEARS AGO. I BOUGHT THAT FROM YOU." shouted Lane.
"Trough?"
"BOUGHT IT CASH SHOW HIM YOUR MONEY!" he says turning to me. I promptly displayed a roll of cash with a rubber band around it… that… JUST HAPPENED to pop off right then… and… the cash dropped to the ground and… started to spread like …blowing leaves. "JESUS!" said Lane and started to grab twenty dollar bills including TWO right down in front of the duff as HE started to bend for them. "SEE HE GOT CASH WE'RE PAYING CASH FOR TRUCK LET'S SEE WHAT YOU WILL SELL HOW ABOUT THAT BASKET TWO DOLLARS CASH!"
"I USE that basket. My SEED basket."
"HOW ABOUT THAT ONE TWO DOLLARS"
"That one's BROKE! See. HOLE in the bottom."
"TWO DOLLARS".
"Two dollars? …You have that one."
"GIVE HIM CASH!"
I did.
"FOUR FOR THAT CHAIR!" pointing to a chair sitting on a bale of hay.
"No. I sit in that.
"UP THERE on the HAY? YOU AH CHICKEN? WELL TWO DOLLARS FOR THAT ONE NO ONE'S SITS IN THAT!"
"I used to… when I was a kid." The old duff said looking at a chair lying on it's side on a woodpile in front of a window. "Two… for that one… ….well … I guess so… take it"
"PAY HIM CASH!" Lane said to me pulling the chair off the woodpile. He set it outside the shed. Another basket fell off of the woodpile when he did this, along with a couple of cardboard boxes. He'd already handed me the first basket and it was on the ground behind me headed toward the truck. "ANOTHER BASKET TWO DOLLARS FOR THAT ONE TOO" Lane shouted. The duff picked up the basket, looked it over and handed it to Lane. I handed the duff two dollars. The duff looked at the, now, six dollars cash in his hand, squared it, folded it, put it in his shirt pocket and… looked up at Lane who immediately said "NOW THOSE WOODEN CRATES ONE DOLLAR EACH FOR AS MANY AS YOU SELL ME". The duff turned to the stack of crates just visible in the dim light back in the shed. We all stepped toward them… inside the shed.
An hour and one hundred and forty-seven dollars "CASH!" later we were …headed back down the mountain again only this time the truck was full. Lane was happy. Happy, HAPPY, happy; "a day's pay". "GIVE ME SUMP-THUN GIVE ME SUMP-THUN GIVE ME SUMP-THUN GIVE ME SUMP-THUN!" he was saying like he always does. I started handing him twenty dollar bills from my shirt pocket… as I drove. "THAT'S NUFF!" he said "You GOTTA MAKE SUMP-THUN DIDN'T DRIVE UP HERE FOR FREE GOOD DAY THOUGH… GOOD DAY YOU KNOW WHAT I'M KEEP'EN DON'T YOU TELL JAMES (James Hutton, the antiques dealer Lane is suppose to work for) YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS I'M KEEP'EN YOU DON'T TELL… YOU'LL GET IT ANYWAY AFTER I DONE LOVE'EN IT JAMES DON'T WANT IT IT'S BROKEN AIN'T IT A COCKER NO ONE ALIVE EVER BEEN IN THAT SHED IF THAT IN THERE NO ONE ALIVE I THE FIRST ONE WATCHED THAT DOOR TWENTY YEAR I TELL YOU NEVER SEEN IT OPEN.
One should be able to deduce that a day with Lane is a real antiques hunter's day. He found a decorated redware pie plate in the shed. Early (1820 or earlier), very authentic and having a very old and early chip out of it, he'd grabbed it right up and made me pay the "ONE DOLLAR BROKEN TOO BAD". He will keep that a year or two. Please notice that regardless of what one may feel toward Lane, he not only knows the antiques well but truly loves them.

Careless and Callous - Accumulation of Inherited (Antiquarian) Art - Part Five - "Ample"

Careless and Callous:

Accumulation of Inherited (Antiquarian) Art

Part Five

"Ample"

            I do not

            Worry about it

            Much

            Anymore:

            The “keep”

            Or the abandonment

            Of inherited (antiquarian) art

            In the home.

            The pattern is established to my eye and the formula of that pattern has been shown to you (Parts One through Four) so

            More often then naught I am a ‘merely’ “again” looking over and through some other old antiques picker’s craft and slight of hand.  “Okay” I say to all that and noting that “markets change” (in their short terms) for the various ‘old things’ but the classics and standard bearers of the realm of ‘good’ ‘antiques’ has not faltered.  And does not.  Tawdry users of the that word; “antiques”, continue the old school traditions of beeline value valuations (careless and callous) and ‘don’t know’.  The ratio is about the same as from when I started all this (antiques hunting) now fifty years ago.  I would like to say I find it vulgar... that in this day and age they be so that; ‘careless and callous’ but... I don’t.  I find it pathetic and amusing.

            The ‘ample’ of my now long work experience ‘in the houses’ and with the keepers of the keep... or the their abandonment of the ‘their things’ is

            As natural as puddles after rain.

            So natural is the domestic domain of the variable of careless and callous and the resulting ‘keep’ or abandonment... that I harvest the singular result that is “I cannot fail”.  So much ‘is in there’; the old New England private homes... in such disarray... and in the handling-of-all-this... beeline value... that it (the contents of the old homes) has more often become a messy baby’s diaper.  It is so messy that one, alone, ‘cannot change it’.

            I don’t do anything about that.  I do not try to be reasonable about that.  I do not even ‘get in the way’.

            Usually, when I finally do arrive on the scene, it has taken a while for the true ‘careless and callous’; the established pure décor (Part Four), to be bandied in its wholeness to message the principals (heirs and executer, etc) that their special needs... need me.  I am speaking of a ‘really’; the décor of true careless and callous; the depth of that (Part Four), that is ‘so that’ that... oddly... I do get ‘in there’.  After dispersing the less experienced (and less professional) rabble; the “I want to be” and “I CAN DO THIS” (they cannot), I soon find myself alone ‘in there’ wrapping cordage around drawers full of ‘not looked at’ and “getting it all... out of there”.

            That may take years; decades.  That is the part most hidden in a careless and callous décor distribution.  It all just does not ‘get dumped’ in one swoop.  No.  It is ‘pieced’.  I do that: the ‘pieced’.  Everyone enjoys that; it is not a bumpy road or a violent rip.  It is not a scream, a horror show, a trashing or a crass rummage.  In fact, managed amply, ‘rummage’ is ‘never’ ‘anything’.  Even the worst (a TV table, for example) leaves on ‘fair terms’ with no screaming and, often, a friendly pat.  The drawer may be tied shut and never looked in but ‘amply’ is a satisfactory ‘carry out’ the front door.

            The first time I purchased (purloined?) a true ‘careless and callous’ estate’s contents, I, after a period of mired in abundance, discerned that ‘one may live off these’ estates for years.  That is what is ‘done with them’.  If I don’t get (by contents purchase agreement) the estate contents all up front, the estate contents usually becomes ‘a mine’ that I ... mine... for decades.  The heirs may ‘do that too’.  Mining; a mining operation.  Over decades.  There is that much stuff... ‘in there’.  Long term mining is easier on everyone; a flock of small decisions are easier than a ‘battle plan’ clean out that often, in fact, requires an army and precise maneuvers.  I know of what I speak.  Well.

            The steady hand on the helm of the old New England ‘careless and callous’ ‘accumulation of (antiquarian) art’... allows the whole to slip through the shallow harbors, avoid prying eyes, avoid ‘dock fees’, avoid consumer disclosures and, taking the last a little further, avoid inventory of... and lists of... “anything”.  Presented properly below radar, a careless and callous ‘old New England’ estate contents is one of the richest ‘surface deposits’ of undistributed assets... in old New England.  But again; note the ‘steady hand on the helm’ phrase.  I do not need or want a dizzy wrecking ball yabbering about ‘VALUE’, ‘MONEY’ and... “ME”.

            Around.

            Usually, the historic tradition of the contents; its careless and callous strength, and the maturity of the heirs in the community (a sixth sense) allows the steady hand process.  Annual distributions from the contents (“mining”) over... several decades... is a “the best way”.  Eventually it gets down to ‘the dregs’?  Reminding of “THE (kitchen) DRAWERS ARE FULL” (Part Three) state and the “rich enough” clause (Part Four), one may denote that any ‘dregs’ may well be ‘way above’ in quality from comparison with ‘any old average’ estates kitchen drawer contents.  If the contents is as it should be; a true careless and callous contents, then ‘there are no dregs’ in there.  The mine... is gold.  Commercially, ‘it is all good’.

            If sterling silver butter knives are scattered in the closed drawers of the estate’s furniture... after once being called to serve to ‘pry open’ or act as if a screwdriver... now “bent” and tossed into a closed drawer...:  If one discerns that... and has that status complimented by the discernment of scattered sterling silver teaspoons... “here and there” too... one may take that train of discernment for a very inclusive grasp of the... logical... deductive... status of the whole (true careless and callous old New England estate contents).  And bet on that.

            Again:  And bet on that.

            Yes, that is right:  Gamble.

            If the careless and callous estate’s qualities are symbolically represented by old bent sterling silver butter knives ‘tossed’... then one may take that to show the wealth and quality of the whole estate?  Then turn with that informed deduction and

            Buy it all

            By gamble (“sight unseen”).

            This very last is where the “you” are not “there” and only a scattered few “I” show up with the abilities to market this gamble.  If... one has actually seen those butter knives in a careless and callous décor as I describe... then, possibly, “you know”... but may still be hesitant to gamble.  If one ‘has not seen this’ (tossed sterling silver butter knives)... then all of this will probably appear to be a vague confusion that would, at a ‘least’, “require” you look it over (examine the contents carefully; the beeline value valuation noted earlier).  That alone; consideration of doing that, in my realm, takes you out.  The “they” of the estate rarely want a “you” “doing that”.  I am saying I put my money down, tie the drawer shut and carry it all (the estate contents) off ‘without looking’.  Most ‘would never’ (have the... well... ‘bone of back’ to) ‘do that’.  And... THAT

            IS THAT.

            Now that I have spoken (in five blog post chapters) of and about ‘careless and callous inheritance of (antiquarian) art, I feel confident that I have, at the least, taken this estate setting to an expanded definition of its neglect.  I have too... turned this estate form back on itself to show it as a true state of estate contents wealth; a singular and notable ‘rich peoples’ way.  Between these two realms one finds very little wiggle room if one is trying to squeeze through the ‘door opened a crack’.  Most visitors have only an accidental and momentary ‘peek’.  Others have the residue gleanings of

            What ‘they’

            “Got”  (“From my mother’s house”)

            that they “think is good”

            And want to “SHOW THAT TO YOU” (me)

            Yuck.

            I prefer the pure strain... and pursue only that.  Messy inheritance with the ‘come and go’ distribution... assures a hurried and definitively stated “I WANT” then taken out and... taken away... leaving

            “The Rest”.

            This ‘the rest’ is so dense and of such consistent quality that my “I” (eye) needs only a blurred view, rapidly ‘walked through’ to, these days, assure a ‘gamble’.  It is little gamble I suspect the reader now discerns.  Simply that much, that good, that dense and I get it all... ALL... out.  Too.  I don’t talk about it:

            The “careless and callous accumulation of inherited (antiquarian) art” and

The estates from whence it comes.

            This is the first time I have ever spoken or written of it at all.