Before and After: "The Sameness" - "So You're FOR Buttercups"

Before and After:  "The Sameness"

"So you're FOR Buttercups"

Seven years ago I started this antiquarian ‘writing down’ with a five post block presenting the antique New England pickle bottle.  I presented it as it is to me... now, then, back then, before, generations before, these days, those days and in my days... now. Where, when, how, who.  Too.  And... the constituent antique pickle bottle collectors, including their ‘must have – go to’ reference book... too.

            I have ‘gone back’ and read over the posts and so may anyone by pursuing the labels ‘old bottle’, ‘pickle bottle’ and ‘pickles’.  I did not change (edit) anything.  That I did not need... or want... to do.  I found the error that I had ‘occurred to me’ that caused me all this retro reading right away and then, too, found it to be a solid ‘error’ throughout all five posts.  The error is simple enough:  I never serve notice that the reason I choose old New England pickle bottles as the subject is because... it is easy.

            I felt then

            And feel now...

            I feel...

            That they (the antique New England pickle bottle) captures and encompasses all of what I have been writing down ‘ever since’ about New England antiques.  Their collectors, dealers and pickers.  The old New England homes, houses, homesteads, sheds, barns, outbuildings.  Stonewalls, ‘dumps’ and ‘hoard’.  Attics, cellars and summer kitchens.  Back stairs, windowsills, cellar stairs, woodshed windows, dirty barn windows.  Boys and girls playing in barns, sheds.  Wells and their well houses.  Old women and their preference for old pickle bottles in their windows.  Old men who tied bailing twine around a ‘pickle’s’ neck and ‘hung it’ in the center of a barn’s window.

             Dirty wooden boxes...and old cardboard paper boxes full of old dirty pickle bottles in the back of old rusted pickup trucks... hauling them to my yard to “SELL”

            “YOU”

            “THEM”.

            I never said why I picked that topic.  The old New England pickle bottle, when it is applied to my ‘subjects at hand’; the core directives of this blog; it is a very fine and easy choice...

            For it ‘covers all of it’ and

            “Never changes” too.

            In the original five posts I did, ‘pretty much’ cover... the all of it (about ‘pickles’)... without saying that; that ‘pickle bottle’ is an easy choice that covers.  The ‘never changes’ I bring in today.  To ‘bring in today’ I graciously say... in a reversing way... that the old New England pickle bottle

            Is not

            “Trending”.

            It stays where it is and that ‘stay’ comes from where it... was.

            As a candidate for exemplifying old New England decorative taste (“good taste”) of objects, designs, places, settings, inclusions, exclusions and... ‘sending the right message from the corners of the room’, the old New England pickle bottle ‘is that’.  In the posts, I notice the difference between the ‘cathedral’ pickle bottle and the plain pickle bottle as decorative preference and clout.  None the less... “BOTH” are “PICKLE  BOTTLES”.  Choose a ‘one’ or the other... or one ‘may have’ a ‘both’.  TOO.  Dirty in boxes in a picker’s truck.  Washed and “windowsilled” or “Manteled”.  The top of refrigerator is a popular spot too.  And there is too... the  old back stair’s hoard that I ‘grew up with’ in my grandmother’s home.  “That long ago” still stands today... and ‘started’ in the

            Civil War.

            Old New England pickle bottles were used as window decoration in the Civil War.  They were not ‘thrown out’.  They are a solid benchmark of ‘not trending’ ‘old New England’ decorative ‘taste’.

            The old pickle bottle is a shelter of old New England we may all ‘get to’.

            Today, all old pickle bottles and their various etiquettes are unchanged.  They are a little more ‘scarce’, a little more ‘hidden away’ in homes and collections, a little more expensive, a little more “not (for sale) today”.  A little bit more.

            Not a lot more.  No... everything there (“with pickles”) is ‘just fine’.  And no one ‘with pickles’ notices the ‘nots’.  No one brings their old pickle bottle that ‘came from my grandmother’ to ‘display’ at the Historical Society’s annual ‘Discovery night’.  The pickle bottle stays home... and guards the home.  They are still there when a ‘you’ gets back.  They are still there after an “I” (an antiques dealer) leaves the home... after a ‘visit’.  ONLY now and then when the inheritance is declared and the distributions ‘made’ do they falter and, briefly, ‘go in motion’.  I am always around to ‘catch them’ if they ‘fall’.

            The plain pickle may be the best ‘starter’ for the ‘home’.  It is a little less of a dollars and cents commitment... though that price gap has narrowed... so that ‘good ones’ ‘shadow’ the price of the cathedral pickle bottles.  These days.  I remember being ‘undone’ by a sixty dollar price on a ‘plain pickle’.  Now I encounter ‘one (hundred) twenty-five’ “stickered can you believe it?”.  Yes I can believe it.  That is cheap for a true ‘shelter of old New England’.  And it is too... a shelter that may be ‘passed down’ for generations.  One may count on doing that.  I already stated:  Old New England pickle bottles are not trending.  Neither is old New England.  In case you haven’t noticed.  Old New England is just as crouched down behind its stonewalls and Indian (chimney) stairs... as ever.  Old New England continues to ‘escape capture’.  I know because I fight in this war everyday

            Of my whole life.  I notice lots of old pickle bottles in this war.

            A strip mall based mowing – landscape ‘lawn care’ (weed whacking, leaf blowing, [“bark”] mulching and round-up defoliation) services with “HEY GUYS” guys riding the mowers, whacking, blowing, dozing the mulch, and squirting the ‘killer’ pose as the semblance of order standard for the

            New New England .  Semblance of order.  Pose.  Taste.  Declaration of taste.  Demonstration of taste.  Etiquette of taste.

            “If it runs on gasoline they have to have one”.

            “We just don’t do any of that”.

            “So your FOR buttercups?”

            That does not seem to have a lot to do with an old pickle bottle hanging by its neck in a shed window?  This is right.  It does not.  An old pickle bottle hung by its neck in a barn window is an old way of old New England decorative use of an old pickle bottle.  MOST ALL of those old pickle bottles have been taken down from their window and sold.  It is very rare to encounter ‘one hanging’ ‘anymore’.  But the “LAWN” is “PERFECT”.

            In old New England

            So to speak.

            And so is the pickle bottle.  If there is a ‘stoic’ and a ‘suggestion’... the old pickle bottles make them.  Are them.  Welcome to the eye and only ‘spotted’.  If one sees one then one is ‘a message from the corner of the room’ receiving.  If you do not see it... it is not there.  One must look for a ‘better spot’ and ‘try again’.  All this will make sense when one does see one ‘in the (old New England) wild’.  Stop and compare it to the ‘one’s I have at home’.

            If everything I do (with old pickle bottles) is done over and over... then I never have to do it ‘again’.  Over and over I have ‘old pickle bottle’ my life.  Fours years old.  Seven years old.  Thirteen years old.

            Now over six decades have passed.  Pickle bottles have not passed.

            Or changed.

            Not even slightly.  They are an absolute of old New England ‘sameness’.  No:  Not even ‘utterance’ has come from them.  To me.  Simple only... ‘sameness’.  Ever even where they are; on a windowsill... a china cabinet’s top.  A box in a truck.  Tied by its neck and hung in a window.  “LET ME WASH THEM FOR YOU.”

            “No”

            I want them dirty with their old dust dirty bailing twine nooses.  Soldiers in a war hung until dead from

            Spying

            From their barn window on every caller greeted at the front door.  Caller greeted at the shed door.  Even the barn’s door.  “USUALLY WE KEEP THE DOOR OPEN BUT THE NEIGHBORS CAT’S BEEN CATCHING THE

            BATS”.

            Didn’t think there was going to be a tomorrow did they.  I was going to take them down and let them breath again?  No... “NO... NOT TODAY I GUESS.  I WOULD MISS THEM YOU KNOW”.

            “How long do you think they’ve been (hanging) there?”

            “Oh those were there when I was a boy”.

The Pickle Bottle Lamp

In a northern New England home… may be found one last form of cathedral pickle bottle; the pickle bottle lamp. This is an electric lamp made from an antique pickle bottle. The form first appeared in the 1920's, flourished through early 1960's and, as manufactured conversions, has been on decline ever since. The lamps themselves are not on decline. They command a premium.
In the most simple formula preferably two close matching ("a pair") large and tall and, preferably, cathedral style antique pickle bottles are… "drilled" (meaning a hole is drilled through the glass at center of the bottom) and "electrified" (meaning an electric wire with a plug on the outer end is run up through the hole to a mounted lamp socket at the top of the bottle. The pair of lamps are then divided and placed on side tables, most often at the sides of a sofa and used as "lights". "Everyone" "likes them" is their ever after.
Today the antique market place seeks high quality early conversions (pre-1965). Later conversions, due to collector appreciation of the pickle bottles and … the decline of the availability of high quality professional converters… are not as popular for they are a touch… tawdry. The better quality the old pickle bottle "drilled" (meaning tall perfect form and strong glass color destroyed for collector's by this drilling) mounted with a professionally done handmade quality base and lamp socket mount (that are difficult to "get done" these days for a craft person doing this work well are scarce)… and preferably a pair (thereby doubling all aspects)… the better or best. Late conversions LOOK like late conversions; a sort of cheap 1970-80 hardware casing around an often times NOT drilled pickle bottle (a cork plug socket mount). This last, with the dangling cord at the bottle top means "can tip over" as well as a "visible" cord. The former means "a cheap look".
One needs only brief contact with an early conversion to be ever able to sense those qualities and pass by the later conversions. This early conversion market is competitive and …ever nudging up… pricey. Today the cost of the actual antique pickle bottles merged with the cost of a fine quality conversion then "Mr. Wallet" again with a … quality lamp shade… easily establishes a base cost in one's mind eye that is prohibitive to execute. As the actual look of the lamps is New England home traditional-classic AND ever popular with even the least antiques eyed home decoration viewer AND has a strong salt and peppering of "old money" - "from my grandmother" too… the intersection of object and cost is well defined. The rule is… if one wants… and one sees for sale and… BUY IT. These early conversion are bought, used and stay in use for decades. MAYBE they "are sold" when "they die and they clean out the house". THEN they are promptly purchased and start that exact cycle over right away. The lamps don't appear at flea markets often. They usually are found in better antiques shops in …better communities of … better homes. Expect them to be priced accordingly. A blind luck find is stumbling on a pair inherited by a friend who "hates them" (meaning they "don't know" and have "bad taste"). BUY.
I had to scamper to purloin a pair to photograph. This pair is not an actual cathedral style pair but is the… very usual to encounter… octagon style with a fine late 1950's conversion that includes the hand soldered brass & wood base, the brass mounted socket at the top and, notably, a internal ribbed clear plastic tube hiding the steel shaft inside. This "pair"… although the color match is a little weak and the actual lamp shade height is slight taller on one… indicating that originally the pair was positioned separately in a home… is a very acceptable find these day. They are actually being used to decorate a trestle table… upon old oriental rug… in the center of a book collector's floor to ceiling bookshelf lined collection room. "Everyone loves them".
A classic cathedral pair in matching deep color would be "better" but this set is amplified by the notably fine old conversion. Even the …still works perfectly and are safe… old cords with their frayed covers… sends the "from my grandmother's" message very well.

Zumwalt (On Pickles)

Between… Baxter's antiques picker find in Missy Adams' shed of the shelf of plain pickles together with the barn soiled cathedral pickle …and… Mrs. Abbott's very appropriate Maine coastal home decorative assemblage of three cathedral pickle bottles… one finds a third active critter; the old bottle collector... refined to the …old pickle bottle collector.
Generally young middle age males NOT decorative in impulse (excepting the intervention of "the wife") but outstandingly appreciative and sensitive to the "old glass" qualities of an old pickle bottle… the weight of their "Mr. Wallet" as collectors rests steady upon any cathedral pickle bottle. They "collect". They "keep". They "find". They "SELL". Constantly. Mrs. Abbott's three are their regular quarry. "Common" but "good", "saleable" and… "my wife likes them", these collectors defer to a select group within their number who actually …very seriously… "collect". Behind THESE collectors is a single book that guides them; "ZUMWALT", so stated.
Betty Zumwalt's KETCHUP PICKLES SAUCES 19TH CENTURY FOOD IN GLASS, Mark West Publishers, Fulton, CA, 1980 is THE reference book for old pickle bottles. Collector focused and comprehensive in scale, the tome obsesses to record every old pickle bottle there is, carefully describe it and, for most, crudely picture a specimen. The core of the book is an alphabetical compendium of letter embossed old (pickle) bottles. The NOT letter embossed bottles (such as Baxter's and Mrs. Abbott's) are given short space at end of the book. This does not diminish interest in these bottles or their value. For example, a non letter embossed AMBER colored cathedral like Baxter's, perfect, with a rough glass pontil… would be priced at six to ten thousand… or more and see very, very, very strong collector interest. (Mrs. Abbott's interest would be nowhere in sight.) Should that bottle be letter embossed… even more cash value. And even more, more; if that bottle be as described but NOT recorded by Zumwalt ("not in Zumwalt") and… (a must) be (uniformly acknowledged by all collectors without ANY qualifying) "AMERICAN"… even more, more cash value. But the word for this post is ZUMWALT.
Baxter knows "ZUMWALT" and did not need to refer to a copy for he knew that without letter embossing… his find had a DEAD SERIOUS cap on it's cash value. I did not need Zumwalt for the same reason. Mrs. Abbott doesn't even know Zumwalt exists and wouldn't care except to say something like "OH ISN'T THAT A NICE BOOK" if one ever bothered to show it to her. But: HER Mrs. Wallet is the one that …rests steady on the classic cathedral pickle bottles we have amplified in these posts. She IS the market top.
This book; "ZUMWALT". is valuable to these posts as a "should know about"; should know that the word "ZUMWALT" carries "must have" clout among old pickle bottle collectors and… know that the actual book is out of print, only found in the secondary market, sells for between $30.00 and $50.00, is high quality attractive hard cover in dust jacket and… should consider that the book may actually have an odd "Wow NEAT!" - one cannot go wrong - conversation starting - coffee table - back of the toilet decorative display value …in a northern New England home.

Old Pickles In The Window

I took Baxter's box of the plain pickle bottles and set the bottles on the board to take their picture. Mrs. Abbott watched and then said "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"Taking their picture" I said.
"WHY?"
"I like them."
"WHY? They're DIRTY. WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THEM! I DON'T LIKE THEM." She walked away and spent the next hour touring our gardens with my wife. That's what she means when she said she "wants to look around".
Her "I don't like them" and my "I like them" provides a concise example of an irreconcilable gap in Northern New England decorative taste. "I like them" because the first pickle bottles I ever saw looked just like these, including being dirty. They were lined up in a window "up the back stairs" in the back L of my grandmother's house. I walked by them on the way to my bedroom. Other homes had these plain pickles in windows too; in the home, the sheds and the barns. It was at least a decade after noticing my grandmother's (at about age three) before I ever saw a cathedral pickle bottle. The reason for that was that they were "valuable" and if one found one, one sold it. This action included my grandmother. My learning curve was the same; I take the row of plain dirty pickle bottles in the window as a standard Northern New England domestic decoration and absolutely sell a cathedral if I find it.
The plain pickles lined up in the window are a classic and affordable northern New England decorative statement. So are the cathedral pickles. The difference, that is irreconcilable, is economic. Mrs. Abbott may afford a row of perfect cathedral pickles decorating her home. Her northern New England taste is splendid but… she is "from away" (moved to Maine and brought her money with her). She never saw a row of plain dirty pickles in a shed window from where she "comes from". Indigenous Mainers decorated with the row of plain pickle bottles in the window. This too is splendid taste. Should they possess a cathedral and they glimpse it, they see dollars. Selling that cathedral is too much to resist for their decorative impulse can make do with just plain pickles… in the window.
The smaller plain pickles may be found at flea markets for $2.00 to $12.00 and more. The big fat one on the left will cost a lot more these days; $75.00 to $125.00 with a chance find for much less ($25.00). The tallest bombay swell pickle to the right is very popular and an easily spotted form but are usually $75.00 to $125.00 also. They are possible to find for a bargain but one must be vigilant and act promptly.

Peggy's Cathedral Pickle Bottles

At mid morning (8:30 AM Maine time) I called Peggy (Mrs. Margaret Bacon Abbott) who I call "Mrs. Abbott" even though she's a decade younger. "Peg" or "Peggy" collects antiques following the heritage of her mother and grandmother. She and family moved to Maine from South Chatham on Cape Cod. Her mother came to me first. She told Peggy I was "ok". That critical appraisal, common to my experience, means I know about and sell the right kind of antiques. The right kind of antiques are the antiques that Peggy's mother's mother told the mother "are good". "Are good" means traditional, classic and understated decorative arts made in New England prior to 1840. One's old Maine home is decorated with these objects and …NOT TOO MANY of them. It should NOT look like one collects. It should look like one inherited all of them. The actual collecting is the ever continuing musical chairs style upgrading where a single item is replaced by a better specimen and the former… sold. Some objects (almost) NEVER are sold, replaced or even moved because they actually were inherited.
I told Mrs. Abbott about the pickle bottle critically noting that it was "tall" and "fancy" and would compliment the pair I had sold her nearly a decade before. "It will sit well between them" I said. "I will bring it down for you to inspect".
"I'M GOING INTO TOWN RIGHT NOW AND I'LL COME BY I WANT TO LOOK AROUND ANYWAY" she shouted into the telephone and hung up.

Two hours later she arrived with her two pickle bottles. We put our new bottle out, her bottles out, put them all side by side and took pictures of all of them. Mrs. Abbott's pair of cathedral pickle bottles are a large and deep colored pair of classic cathedral pickles. They are a "THE CLASSIC PAIR". We found them in an estate in Phippsburg, Maine. They were being used as decoration in the living room. I sold them to Mrs. Abbott who lives six miles away. She uses them as decoration in her living room. "THEY ARE NICE TOGETHER" she said. "I WANT IT". We hadn't discussed price.

As I packed her pickle bottles with Baxter's pickle bottle she went to her car, opened the hatch back and pulled out an old chair. "I DON'T WANT THIS ANYMORE DO YOU WANT IT" she shouted. I looked at the chair. I knew the chair. It is a Connecticut style four slat sausage turned ladder back side chair, circa 1760, with fine tall finials, a rewoven rush seat and a mid 1950's black painted and Hitchcock style gold stencil decorated surface. She had it a back hallway alcove next to the new kitchen. It was her mother's. The mother probably got it from her mother. The family was originally from Connecticut. Mrs. Abbott's mother probably paid to have the seat replaced and the painting done by a professional on the Cape. "YOU HAVE TO TAKE THIS BECAUSE I DON'T WANT IT BECAUSE I TRIP OVER IT AND SO DOES EVERYONE ELSE".
"How much?" I queried having been along this trail before.
"ONE HUNDRED NO… EIGHTY…NO… SEVENTY" She shouted from the car's back and started moving the chair toward me.
"I can pay a little more" I said.
"NO".

Baxter's Cathedral Pickle

Baxter's Cathedral Pickle

I would have made the first post yesterday but I had to dig up the septic tank for a maintenance pumping first thing. It was still dark when I'd cleared the cap and freed it. A truck went over the hill and I recognized the lights and sound as Baxter's. He's an older local picker and always comes first thing in the morning when he's found something. He finds the something the day before, makes his wife research it on the internet (to the best of their combined abilities) in the evening and sells at dawn. His truck pulled up next to me.
"WHAT …are you DOING?"
"Digging up the septic."
"WHY?"
"Maintenance pumping."
"Now?"
"Now."
He looked at the tank cap, looked at me, look straight out the windshield and turned the truck off. "I GOT SOMETHING YOU WANT!" he said and got out of the truck. That's his usual sales pitch but was a little louder suggesting a concern that my attention might not be centered on him.
He took a wooden box full of bottles out of the truck bed and set it up inside my barn door. He went back to the passenger cab and retrieved another bottle. Waving it at me in the dawn light he said "THIS IS IT". He sat that on the very front of the barn doorway.
I saw right away the bottle was a large cathedral pickle bottle; a tall one. I walked up, picked it up, held the dirty bottle to the dawn light, turned it over and said "How much?"
"Two fifty. Its perfect"
I said nothing, rolled it again and sat it back down, but back from the edge, just inside the barn.
"GOT ALL OF THEM from MISSY ADAMS' PLACE."
We stepped to the wooden box and looked down. They were all old, but plain, pickle bottles. "How much are those?"
"ONE HUNDRED."
I said nothing.
"That one has GOT to be worth two hundred" he said.
"Is that the price?"
Baxter gave me a look I'd seen before. He gets so excited about his find and researching the object's value that he falls apart at selling. That look means that he cannot remember what price he'd quoted me the minute before. He'd been rehearsing the price all the way over in the truck but couldn't recall what he'd actually quoted. "Well… I guess so" he said.
"I'll buy it" I said.