Grandmother's Old New England Pembroke Table

Looking At

Grandmother’s Old New England Pembroke Table.

Understanding it and Proving to be a

Worthy and Gracious Guardian of it.

            This is not going to be a swell feel-good essay.  No.  It is about negligence and abandonment.  It is about ‘not seeing’ and bad taste.  Too.  It is about the cheap, the crass, the tawdry, the self importance and the flaunting of these as a proper etiquette.  It is about turning the back.  On.  It is about dithering and walking away while babbling at a smart phone.  It is not about being blind for that negligence is too ‘don’t know’.  One does ‘know better’ one would feel.  But that proves to be abysmal too.

            When I first see the old table, I am twenty steps away in the daylight at the head of a garage bay.  The table is back against the rear wall in the moist gray light.  I know exactly what it is.

            Exactly.

            And I am not there to be shown that table.  I am there to ‘look at’ ALL of the “stuff back there”.  The “car” had been moved out to allow my ease of viewing.  I pretend to care about all of this and, especially, the desire to ‘have the space back’ and that space “all cleaned out too”.

            I don’t care.  If it wasn’t for the old table, once a seven generation family anchor now about to be jettisoned in a burial-at-sea ‘cleanout’... I would not have

            Stuck around.

            But, of course, I know better.  I have better taste and... a better historic eye.  A better art eye.  A better sense of (old New England) heritage.  And... a better sense of (old New England) romance.  When I look at the old table.  Twenty feet away.  In the moist gray garage bay light.

            I say nothing about this.

            In less than an hour the old table is in the back of the truck with the... ‘rest of the stuff’ from the garage bay.  The bay is empty until the car is ‘parked back in there’.

            What is an antique table from twenty feet away?  It is a sensation; a physical nervous tingle merged with an art based mind-to-eye notification seconds later becoming affirmation.  All twenty feet away.  In the moist gray light.  “Back there”.  So not only do I say nothing but I, too, do nothing.  The table (once a “grandmother’s”) is jettisoned; buried at sea.  In the back of my truck.

            The table top has a large... from-planted-pot... water stain on the ‘its top’.  Grandmother created that?  Or was it her grandmother.  This doesn’t take long to figure out. And... nothing is said or mentioned of it; the plant pot stain OR the table.  Anyway.  But I figure it out in seconds

            See here now the what I see is that the old table of Grandmother’s is a “has been refinished” sometime along the time.  That refinish was ‘professionally done’ too for it is a good (uniform) job removing the old original ‘Indian red’ painted surface.  That refinish too had a new ‘good quality’ Hepplewhite style drawer pull ‘put on’ where once there was none excepting a tiny brass pull.  That is long lost leaving only its tiny hole... under the new hardware... on the old drawer front.  The drawer was originally designed to be open by the pull of fingers reaching the chamfered pull slot at the bottom of the drawer front.  But no one knows that is there now... just as it has always been there... except me.  I pull the drawer out from there just slightly only to ‘let me know’ (the drawer is ‘straight’; ‘all original’ and works).  This is all too much for you already-anyway isn’t it:  And done in ‘not noticed’ too.  Better off checking your txt messages... darling.

            So the ‘refinish’ is probably 1950’s but possibly dating earlier to be 1930’s.  So... it is just grandmother’s potted plant stain.  Not HER grandmother’s stain.  But it is HER grandmother’s table... that she discovered and ‘professionally refinished’.  Not the smartest antiquarian move but does ‘show she cares’ (about the table).  And cared.  Then she died (passed on).  The table was a ‘still here’ after that.

            Before that; grandmother’s - grandmother’s table, was a grandmother’s table before that for... how many generations?  Lived in that house?  With the table always the ‘still here’ generation after generation until generation after generation... finally... moved the table out of that house to be... ahhhh.... ‘stored’ at the back of the garage bay to be... ahhhh...... jettison it as burial at sea.  Okay with this and I am still twenty feet away from the table too?

            Maybe if someone (that’s a very large body of people) knew what the old table “is” or... “WAS”... maybe.  Right?  Yeah:  Just like that... everything is gonna be okay.  Why?  Because I get the table and I know what it IS and it IS in the back of my truck and I am driving away with it after seven generations of ‘grandmother’s table’ all pass before everyone’s eyes... in the moist gray back of the garage bay.  “See?”

            Now... what is it; this grandmother’s table?  It is a... taper leg Hepplewhite fold leaf Pembroke table with a drawer; a style of English origin very popular in, and too, made in New England between 1780 and 1820.  This table is made of New England Birch wood.  It (the New England and ‘made’) is gussied up to be titled ‘New England Federal period taper leg Hepplewhite style Pembroke table with drawer’.  The ‘Pembroke’ comes, vaguely, from ‘Earl of Pembroke’ (England) ...vaguely.  The whole is a ‘foundation grade’ New England style and taste furniture classic.  Hence the ‘twenty feet away’.  It is so classic one may possibly note it at FORTY FEET AWAY.  If one cannot do this (note it at all)... one’s (New England Wasp) ‘taste’ is “crude” (bad).

            I restate this again:  If one does not know what this table is when one sees one then one has... bad taste.  Don’t wave your finger at me.  Seven generations of your grandmothers are waving their fingers AT YOU.

            How does this be the ‘comes to be’?  Because I “grew up” with these tables in the houses; antique New England Pembroke tables in old New England seven generation homes.  You did too.  You just ‘don’t know’.  Or notice.  They are there.

            Ours wasn’t in the kitchen (a ‘kitchen’ or ‘breakfast’ table) but a lot of them are.  Ours was not.  No.  Our kitchen had an old handmade-on-the-farm sawbuck table painted in an ochre yellow paint that was the same size as a New England Pembroke table... that we’ve all used as our breakfast table for seven generations.  I still have it and use it.  For this generation it is a ‘my table’.  My Aunt carved her initials on the end of the top during her generation of usage.  Because of this table our ‘grandmother’s old New England Pembroke table was somewhere else in the house.  That is common; for these tables to be ‘around’ “somewhere else”.

            Ours was ‘under’ the double windows in the... you call it a ‘living room’... where around three walls of that room are seating and tables all facing the fourth wall with that being the old fireplace.  Seating is ‘center – left side – right side’ ‘before the fireplace’.  This room, the original main room of the original Federal period built home ...that is now just the ell of the whole home after the Greek Revival addition was added to the front of the Federal homestead in 1832 relegating the old fireplace as ‘old’... this room... is where our family sat.  And sits.

            There, on the left side below the double windows is our family’s ‘grandmother’s Pembroke table’ “with drawer”.  It is arranged so that the ‘drawer end’ (the end with the drawer in it) faces left onto my grandmother’s (sewing) chair... where she always sat.  She died in 1982.  It is just the same there; the table with ‘her light’ on it.  Her “sewing” chair.  The drawer on the table pulled slightly open with her sewing in it.  Her sewing bag behind the chair.  With the... old light olive green glass demijohn that she was filling with old postage stamps she cut off of the mail... whatever that was about... it’s just the same.  We called the Pembroke “grandmother’s sewing table”.  She called it “my grandmother’s sewing table”.  That’s as far back as anyone ever commented.  It was always there.  I guess.  Everyone knows what it is.  No one has ever mentioned moving it, jettisoning it or having it buried at sea.  It has never been in the moist gray light at the back of a garage bay.

            That table... is the ‘first one of those’ I ever really looked over hard.  As a budding antiquarian I found out about the form; New England Pembroke, and... studied it.  Study means I ‘looked’ my grandmother’s sewing table all over.  I even took the drawer all the way out, with its contents still in it, sat it on the floor and peaked ‘all underneath’.  My grandmother was there for that.  She kept talking about her grandmother and used the word “Pembroke” at least a dozen times.  The whole result of this council about the table is that

            I had this (antiquarian) form

            Down.

            Since then it’s just been one old New England Pembroke table...

            After another.

            I’ve been finding them... and purloining them... for years (decades).  No one has ever stopped me.  Often someone says “nice table” or “I love the leg” or “It DOES have a drawer doesn’t it”.  Say stuff like that... with a knowing inflection.  One is pretty advanced with the New England Pembroke form when one encounters the knowing inflection realm of knowing about these tables.  That little world is ‘most of the time’ a ‘blow by’.  That’s how that table that day had traveled to the moist gray lighted garage bay.  It had become ‘blow by’.

            I don’t ever expect anyone to know about old New England Pembroke tables.  I mean “why bother”.  You either know or don’t know.  “Sort of know” that a Pembroke is an ‘old table’ doesn’t bring one along.  No.  That’s where that plant pot stain comes along.  That’s real; grandmother’s plant pot stain.  She did that.  Grandmother did that... for you... to remind you of her... for the eternity... of the ‘her table’.  If you try to fix it... it will look like you ‘mucked with it’.  So just LEAVE IT ALONE.  Just put a doily over it and set the electric lamp on that.  If anyone ever asks, which they will not... just say that’s your (greatest-great) grandmother’s ...old New England Pembroke table... and that she did that; stained the table... with her potted plant.  Since they don’t have such a Pembroke table themselves... like... what are they gonna say?  “MINE HAS A STAIN LIKE THAT TOO!”.  It would really be just so cool if that is what happens.  It’s never happened to me yet.  In fact no one has ever said anything about any of the old Pembrokes I’ve recovered from the sea. 

            That is really what one gets out of this:  An old New England statement of good (understated) taste.  The tables are not rare.  The form is not rare.  Conditions vary noting two hundred years of New England domestic usage.  Cost of specimens are ‘easily affordable’ down to downright “cheap” when found... with fair regularity... at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores and even ‘antiques shops’.  That is because ‘nobody knows what they are’ or ‘cares’ ‘anymore’ “they say”.  That’s not the way I know it though.  I see the tables all the time acting as guardians of old New England homes.  I will even say that without a Pembroke... an old New England home is ‘empty’.  And it is very possible for you to already have a true antique ‘grandmother’s Pembroke’ in your home and ...not know it.  Wouldn’t THAT be a surprise.  But, these days, people’s ‘taste’ is “just that foolish”.

"Zipper" Harris. Part One. "Stumble Blocked".

"Zipper" Harris

Part One

"Stumble Blocked"

            “AVE been TALK’EN bout AUCTION for THREE generations that I can remember.  POTTERS place and they NEVER SHUT-UP.  That Ellen Potter didn’t MARRY until LATE.  KEPT her SILVER SPOONS where the sun don’t shine I told her.  LOT OF HER where the SUN don’t  shine.  If you know what I mean.

            “I’VE been in there off an on now forty YEARS.  I figure.  Them spoons is still in there somewhere too nears as I KNOW.  Lot of things in that dark in there.  I figure I just keep showing up.  MRS. Potter but now I’m ELLEN.  Been that many years. Ellen won’t you SELL ME TODAY.  I been in-shed.  I been in the barn.

            But I ain’t been in the bed.

            YET.”

            “Zipper” Harris is a local longtime antiques picker (finder of antiques).  I’ve known him all my life.  I started being an antiques dealer before he become a picker.  Before that he was just “Zipper”.  “Zip” for short.  That he come by quite early; first grade we all remember.  In first grade when we’d go outside on recess Zip could never zip his jacket up.  The teacher... Mrs. Dunlady... always had to do it.  You know:  With him inside the jacket.  Never could zip it himself.  Next year; second grade, still couldn’t do it.  Went along so in FIFTH GRADE he’s STILL having the teacher zip him up.  So right along we started calling him ZIPPER.  Or Zip.  And that’s stuck.

            Then he become an antiques man.  Picker.  Zipper the picker.

            He parents run a motel out on Two.  Always run it.  You Know:  Nice place nothing fancy TOURIST place.  Zip always worked there.  Now he’s most of the place himself.

            His folks live in the HOUSE and that walks through the old barn out back to where Zip’s built himself a bungalow:  Nice little cabin that’s a HOUSE.  Out back there.  He goes in through the old barn to the parent’s house.  That barn he uses for his antiques.  I’m always in there.  Never been in Zip’s bungalow.  I always go to the front door of the parents house and they let me in to walk through into the barn.  Except in summer when I pull around back of the house to the side door of the barn.  Zip opens that door in the summer and has his antiques sign out by the road.  He sells to the ones who stop.  They go in the side door with their wallet and come back out with no more money and a pile of junk Zip just sold ‘em.  ‘WORKS OUT FINE DON’T IT’ Zip always says to ‘em.

            Everyone is looking to buy the old fly fishing equipments so Zipper figures he’s gonna be special on that.  ‘Cept that... well... it isn’t that easy to get anymore.  BUY IT mostly and Zip don’t like having to do that so most of it he misses out.  Oh he got plenty of the old crud; the old Sears and rob junk.  Nothing FINE any more.  Zip:  He get beat out on that at the sales and auctions.  So he’s just got the old crud he puts outside the barn in the summer trade.  I don’t say anything about this to ‘im.  I know it’s a sore spot.

Most of what he gets I don’t want and he tries powerfully hard to make me want it he says.  Most of the time we fall back to just chat and looking over a prospect if some summer people stop going through. Zip works them hard if he thinks they’ll show color (old gold digger’s panning expression).

            I seen him sell “The POPE’S Hat” to a couple from LONG ISLAND.  Some fraternal thing he called the POPE’S HAT.  They didn’t know nothing.  I think.  Maybe they did.  Anyway:  They bought it.  That’s the kind of stuff he sells there mostly.

            Zip can go a pretty long time without having to find (“buy”) anything.  He got plenty around he’s dragged home.  Always something around like a canoe chair he wants too much for.  And stuff like that.  Some of it been there TWENTY YEARS I swear.  He don’t move on his price.  Funny thing is he actually remembers all their prices.  He’s got one of them Langley’s Root and Herb Bitters bottles; just the aqua common one.  NO PONTIL.  He want twenty-five.  It’s only worth TEN.  But he’s had that in there twenty-five years.  For twenty-five dollars.  Every summer they ask it (the price) over and over.  “STILL GOT IT” some of ‘em say.  The reason he does that is he likes it; that Langley’s.  HEAVEN FORBID he finds a GOOD (old) BOTTLE.

            One time he had a Warner’s (Safe Cure) box with three bottle still in it FULL. Kept ‘em out in the barn they never froze I wonder why.  RIGHT?  Anyway.  He sold ‘em.  The BOX with the bottles still in it.  Summer guy went back and forth for an HOUR and then give Zip the hundred fifty.  After he left Zip celebrated.  Went through the house out to the soda machine and took off a Moxie.  Locked it (the soda machine for the motel) back up and walked around the side of the house to the barn’s antiques door. He sat down and opened it. He SAT in that chair; that old PRIVATE SCHOOL arm chair, sipping it for TWO HOURS.  JESUS you think he’d OFFER me one.  I said so.  He just laughed. I’ve never sat in that chair of his either. 

            You ever been in a house with him?  Jesus.  He stands his ground with a DOLLAR.  And that WORKS TOO.  Tight.  Jesus.  You get all the way in there way to a back shed or something and he gets a dollar out on some old buckets or such.  Then he says the dollar for all the buckets.  Then the old fella says okay real slow the way they do. Then Zip; he’ll say “WELL I don’t know IF I SHOULD for THAT dollar.  Just like that he say that.  Then that old fella... why he’s STUMBLE BLOCKED.  So then Zip says “I’ll tell you what put in them two (old wooden) BOXES and I’ll CALL IT a TRADE.  Course the old fella DOES.

            That’s how he gets all the crud he’s got.  It’s a slow and steady process.  I asked him about a pair of chairs he’s got in there (the antiques shop barn).  I asked in nineteen seventy-seven I swear.  He says he can’t sell ‘em.  “FOLKS” he says “HAVE TWO MORE MATCHING”.  Won’t sell ‘em he says.  Don’t even know what they are ‘cept that they’s IN THE HOUSE.  His he got in the barn.  He says he’s just waiting.  Been forty years.  Damn fool.

            He found a Civil War belt buckle in there.  (Ellen Porter’s house?  Never been clear to me).  He put it out in the barn.  SIX YEARS they (Civil War collectors) all come by and told him it was a “fake”.  Six years of that.  One day one of ‘em brings a summer sport along and they talked that buckle over for an hour.  Then Zip tells him fifty bucks and that it’s a fake.  That fella look back and forth then paid out the fifty.  Zip folded the money into his pocket.  “That buckle ain’t FAKE.” the fella said.  Jesus if you think Zip forgot THAT.  Only ‘better one’ I ever seen get him.

            Zippy’s a funny man get’en to be a funny old man now.  Seems to be.  He don’t know any art.  He knows an old thing; that something is old.  But he don’t know its ART.  I told him once.  Now probably thirty years ago.  I come on to an early tall clock up in the attic of the Schooner Winthrop House.  The case was lying down under the eves.  The bonnet was off and pushed in-under too.  The movement was in a box.  Must have been put up there after the Civil War.  All the Winthrop boys were killed in that war.  Union boys.  Whole family went to Hell after that.  No one had been in that attic for a whole century.  So Zip’s up there with me.  He sees the old clock and starts his engine.  “Shut-up” I tell him.

            So the cleanout goes along a couple of days and I take that clock out early the third morning.  I take it right out to the truck and take it right home.  It said “Dover” on the dial.  That’s Dover New Hampshire not Dover England.  Zip is going along with me on all of this.  So he starts his mouth engine up once we’re on the road to my place.

            “Campbell’s” he tells me “got a clock just like this right inside their (antiques) store door.  Come face to face with it every time I go in.  Want seven hundred dollars for it.”  That was it right there for Zip.  My tall clock was just the same as Campbell’s and worth seven hundred dollars.

            I poked that a little as we drove. Did he see the movement?  You mean the works in the box?  Yes.  No he figured they were all there fine.  Did he see me take off and save the finials on the bonnet.  He seen me take off the ‘decorations’.  Did he see me make him take the top end of the case so I wouldn’t have to worry about him chipping the feet on the base.  No he didn’t notice that except that I took “the heavy end”.

            I told him it’s a tall clock, not a grandfather’s clock and the ‘works’ is called a ‘movement’ and is regarded as sculpture; three dimensional art.  He wanted to know if ‘it will work’ (go tick-tock):  “CAMPBELL’S DOES.  HAD A CLOCK MAN FIX IT”.  I give up.  I said the case and bonnet are sculpture too.  “BIG LONG BOX AIN’T IT” he says.  I give  up.  Thirty years ago right then.  Never ever made another try at Zip about art.  Just no point.  I hid that clock in my barn for a decade.  Money in the bank you know.  Zip forgot about it after he told me along that Campbell “SOLD HIS GRANDFATHER”.

            Campbell’s old tall clock was import: Welsh.  Used to import boat loads of ‘em.  They are all the same; cheap junk that people think-look-rich... so that they appear think-look-rich but didn’t have to spend much ($300-$400).  These days those folk have found out the truth and now they won’t even buy ‘em.  I’ve never owned one.

            Ellen Potter has a tall clock too and you bet Zip been ogling that for thirty years.  It a “Hoadley”; a cheap Connecticut wooden movement that peddlers sold from their wagons.  The family would go in town and have the case locally made.  Many times a coffin maker would make a case.  Usually they are plain with a dark brown stain finish.  Some cases are paint decorated fancy and I pay attention to those.  I did glimpse the Potter tall clock when I went to that Ephraim Howe Honor home tour... twenty years ago.  A glimpse is all I needed.  They had to screw those clocks to the wall to make ‘em level so they would work (go tick-tock).  That’s a warning sign right there as to their quality.  Zip, of course, thinks it’s worth seven hundred dollars.  You can see how it is easier just to give up and shut up when it comes to explaining art to Zip.  “ANTIQUES” as he calls them is another  matter.