"Why Is It This Way?" - Part One - "Always Small"

"Why Is It This Way?"

Part One

"Always Small"

            Is not... that nice?  They own a splendid array of crud and want me to “look at it” (their words).  They would also like me to “buy it” (their words again but not spoken... to MY face.  But... to each other’s face... it was spoken... I assure).

            That is just splendid crud that they have... a lot of...:

            Yes... crud.

            At this moment... it is a confined lot; a defined lot... of ‘their crud’.  It is a selection of their crud.  They have it kept-up... in an old van (enclosed truck)... this lot... of their crud.  So... I don’t want to have to walk all the way over there in the parking lot to look at a ‘van full’ of their current selection of ...their crud.  That’s right:  I don’t.

            They don’t either for they already know that I ‘won’t buy it’ (the van full of their crud).  Hoping for a ‘one item sale’ is the master plan.  A ‘hope’ for a “WE FOUND” and that object titled by blanket definition (words such as ‘chair’, ‘box’, ‘glass’, ‘painting’... or similar... ilk).  Object title defined crud.  Antiquarian crud?  Barely.  THAT (an antique) is a ‘they say’

            And how would they know?

            1930’s lighting fixtures from a funeral parlor spray painted ‘radiator silver’ (“THE PAINT IS ORIGINAL”).  So are the (electrical) wires... too; “ORIGINAL”.

            Crud.

            The ‘idea’ (commercial notion) is that the “FIXTURES” will be deployed by a decorating firm during one of their “JOBS”.  At a “RETAIL PRICE” they will be ‘deployed’ (sold to) (the... ‘whatever’).  That’s the idea.

            “THEY WERE AT A YARD SALE”.

            “IN BATH” (Maine).

            Oh... is not... THAT a buttress of their qualities?  It is passed to me as being one.

            “Good for you!” I say.  They both just looked a me.  I mean really; that’s what they did.  I mean... I don’t want them (the fixtures):  I am not going to BUY them.  Who... wants those?

            No one that I know.

            Being called on because I am a “YOU KNOW” expert... by old van loads of crud...  That is not even a ‘par for the course’.  They don’t even notice ‘that smell’ when the doors of the van are opened.  THAT is JUST THE SMELL of... “antiques”... I want in my home.  It is the smell of old money?  The smell of... “money”?   The smell of... no money?  The smell of crud.  The smell of old 1930’s funeral parlor lighting fixture crud?  NOW THAT IS A SMELL.

            “Let the bodies hit the floor”.

            As is said.

            No.  Their actual “concern” (their word) is that they have “FOUND” (their word again) a seventeenth century New England wrought iron and wood block mounted ‘lighting device’ (my words) titled, by them... “a rush light”.  Prefixed with “CAN YOU TELL US ANYTHING ABOUT (seventeenth century New England wrought Iron) RUSH LIGHTS”.  (I ‘can’ tell but I ...may... not).

            And... anyway... that quest is finalized by “Oh shit I forgot to BRING IT”.  For real:  I am not making that up.  So I am back to the funeral parlor ‘lighting’ and their van full of crud and ...well... ‘getting rid of them’ (dismissal).  That has to be done.  They just ‘don’t leave’.  REALLY.  “Go away” is not a component of their thought process.

            So they’d already told me about their “rush light” and started to tell me the ...adventure... of them finding “IT”.  I pushed back on that story with “BRING IT NEXT WEEK”.  And we just reviewed what happened with that.  I had prepped a tad for them; I brought Hayward’s COLONIAL LIGHTING book with me to ‘assist’ (show them pictures... of rush lights).  I’ve been using “Hayward’s” since I was... fourteen years old... nearing fifty years.  It is ‘the book’ for those that ‘do know’.  Who cares?  No one.  That is fine for me.  Anyway... I didn’t need it.

            Right?

            I was, also, going to refer them to an older dealer who was a lighting collector and an ‘in good standing’ member of the ‘Rush Light Club’ of Colonial American lighting collectors AND had sold her large collection of early American lighting “AT SKINNER’S” (Mass. auction business) at least fifteen years ago but she....

            Did not sell the “what she knows” so ... well... I can ‘bank’ on her and her ‘any opinion dear?”... anytime.  I want.  Don’t worry:  She knows what ‘crud’ is too.

            But that was a waste of ‘thought’.

            Right?

            They forgot to ‘bring’ what they are calling a “rush light”.

            These are the same people who don’t (do not) ‘think’ (feel) the “antiques business” is “doing very well”.  The people with the funeral parlor lighting fixtures and the their van full of... smelly... crud.  These people.  Not me.

            Right?

            Really... right?  And what if they did actually find something (a ‘good’)... a preferably ‘great’ “antique” (old New England object)?  There is ‘no justice’ so that... does happen.  I always have to be on the lookout.

            Right?

            This whole is getting encumbered?  Actually the words are ‘top heavy’; this is getting top heavy?  It is a could ‘tip over’?  But... an encumbered mess... of old crud... it is not.  Even when it tips over.  For... ‘a lot’ (very often)... it does that (tip over) ‘a lot’

            These days.  Why is it this way?

            

            Because it has always been that way.... with ‘antiques’.  Most always all promoted ‘it’s antique’ are crud that their owners think (feel) are antiques that are, at the least, “good”.. “antiques”.  Really.  From my very first moments as an antiquarian buff and dealer; student and commercial broker... I... spent the whole time plucking the good and great from absolute astonishing detritus heaps of

            Crud.  That was before they’d invented ‘vans full of crud’ ‘for sale’ in ‘parking lots’.  It was just heaps of crud everywhere and my understood being ‘it IS this way’ and I am the student – broker who... pluck... from this ‘astonishing detritus heaps’.

            What fun I HAD... and still HAVE.  Nothing has changed.  Even the unknowing idiots are ... the same.  The ...STUFF... is the same; ‘good stuff’ found midst ‘bad stuff’ (crud).  THE SAME.  I find as much if not more ‘than ever’.  I am ‘group hugged’ by more ‘idiots’ than ever:  Well intentioned, impassioned, boisterous, enthusiastic, bubbling, giddy... ‘idiots’.  VERY FINE FOLK... until an ‘antiques’ is the issue.  Then... it falls flat on the face.

            The funeral parlor ‘lighting fixtures’ are ‘installed’ as evening event lighting on a “DECK” attached to a “HOME” that “OVERLOOKS”

            “THE WATER”.  Does anyone know they are funeral parlor lighting?  No.  They are like a ‘ship in a storm’ painting:  “Oh look at THAT!”.  Yes... it is a painting of a sinking ship.

            “Oh.”

            There is a lot more to art than that... and most of it, including sinking ship paintings... is crud.  If one collects well... one will have a very modest... pile of crud.

But the big piles of crud are absolutely ALL still here.  No ‘thrown out’ at the town dump.  No.  I am around dozens who hunt town dumps and show me... endless pieces of crud they found there and... plan to and DO “sell”.  Sell crud?

            I do.  All the time.  I enjoy watching your wallet empty upon a “THAT” of  my crud.  I sell ‘THINGS” to “PEOPLE” who should know better ALL THE TIME.  It is easy to do.  The number of people who ‘don’t know’ (anything about antiques) or, more often, THINK THEY KNOW, greatly out numbers a ‘knowing’ person.  These days.  And...:  It has ALWAYS been that way.  It has not changed.  This last includes people showing me crud that they bought and think is not crud (often described as “GREAT”).  The funeral parlor lighting fixtures are “GREAT”.  They were great at the town dump, in the picker’s truck, on the table at the yard sale (professional yard sales?  Absolutely these days), in the ‘dealer’s van’, in the ‘salvage dealer’s’ ‘warehouse’, in the “I CAN DO SOMETHING WITH THOSE” decorator’s... decoration.  And on the final bill for ‘all that’ (including ‘installation’).  Crud.

            “They offer a hint” is the way the actual light from the lighting fixtures was described to me when I was ‘shown’; a decorator dealer ‘showing off’... them... to me.

            “It’s soft.” I said of the actual light.

            “Yes it is soft.  That’s a very good word for it.  I’ll have to remember that.”

            I sent in a bill?  Should have.  But I don’t care.  I mean... it is just stupid.

            But it sold.  Too.

            Crud sells.  That is why there is so much of it around for sale.  It is, I am confidently told, ‘more difficult’ to sell the crud for a ‘good price’ these days; “it’s not the same”.  “It” is the market for crud.  “People aren’t buying”.  Crud?  Well yes... they are not buying crud for as ‘much money’ as in the past.  But it is not the crud market.  It is the

            Amount of crud... and it’s (crud) ‘for sale’.  It is “all” for sale.  It is not at the town dump.  Even... town dumps run crud stores for themselves... these days.  Okay and stating again; the ‘why is it this way’ crud market is... glutted with endless giant mounds of crud for sale.  The micro group of things called ‘antiques’ is still there; right there... where it has been the whole time I have ‘been doing this’ (antiques dealing).  As I stated, this is the very small ‘I know’ market.  It has always been very small; the market of “I know” antiques.

            Always

            Small.

The Silver Twin's ...Place... In New England Decorative Art - Part Ten - "Triple Jump"

The Silver Twin's ...Place...

In New England Decorative Art

Part Ten

"Triple Jump"

Returning to the ‘frontier’ and updating the ‘hiatus’ (Part Nine [A]) of the Silver Twin’s Place... I briskly summarize:

            Take down (shed)

            Collapse (barn) (“dangerous”)

            Closed up house

            Burns flat.

            No real surprise there:  “Awful

            OLD place

            It WAS”.

            And add in the fifty years of “closed up” after the “LAST PEOPLE TO LIVE THERE” (the actual “Silver Twins”).  The “moved them out”.  The “cleaned it out”.  The “got in again” (Part Nine [A])... and:  All the pieces fit.  Right?

            The old wooden sap spiles (Part Two)... et al... I purloined, myself, the ‘best I could’.  And I figured antiquers had been knocking on that door for

            SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS (starting 1920’s)

            For sure and that probably having a nineteenth century ‘dealer’ knock on the door

            Too. 

            Yep...:  The place

            Had been ‘gone through’

            Before it burned

            “Flat”:

            “RACCOONS BEEN LIVING IN THE ATTIC ONE OF ‘EM COME OUT ON FIRE”.  I wasn’t even around for it (the ‘burned flat’).  It had been a solid decade since I even ‘last drove by’...

            Up over Silver Hill.

            I figure.

            Before I ended my ‘special events’ visits I had brought forth my ‘qualified quandary’ of the Silver Twins hoard of old New England decorative arts and have written out how that ‘carries’ using their old broken farm baskets as a specimen example of that aesthetic.  And the consideration (‘qualified quandary’) of ‘setting’.  Too.  Then I noted my interest of ...did they (the Silver Twin’s Place) have what I called a “stoic old New England crude primitive design jewel(s)” ‘in there’ that I found” (end Part Nine [B]).

            Before the place burned flat.

            This last (‘burned flat’) vanquishes the second consideration of the aesthetic of ‘qualified quandary’ of ‘setting’.  In case your trying to keep track.  It’s just the “grown up” there now.  No structures and one would ‘never know’d they’d been one’ (a Silver Twin’s Place).  Or that there ever could have been a consideration of ‘qualified quandary’ of ‘setting’.  Too.  JUST SOME “nice” “wildflowers” when “you drive by”.  So now that I have set up the cracker barrel with the checkerboard on top, let me do a couple of triple jumps of the aesthetic of the Silver Twin’s ...Place... in New England Decorative Art... and then get out (end this missive).

            Leaving you to drive by the wildflowers of all this

            On your own.

            I cannot walk into our kitchen without noticing a ‘crude’ ‘primitive’ “shelf unit” set up against the “(black) soapstone topped” “island” in the center of the kitchen. “Flushed” up against the island in an appropriately worn old “puke” or “baby shit”*** green paint is a light as a feather ‘tombstone ends’ shelved storage unit handmade from mid nineteenth century packing crate (thin ‘finished’) boards.  This unit has three ‘older’ paint ‘colors’ under the ‘green’ and retains the ‘never painted’ inner shelf boards that were ‘always covered’ (with loose paper?).  It measure 30 inches wide, 34 inches tall, 14 inches deep and ‘come out of’ (I bought it from) the Silver Twin’s kitchen. It was ‘covered’ (shelves filled full) with ‘kitchen stuff’ when I spied it and bought it... all... as a unit and ‘got it out of there’.  My wife took it off of me when I got home.

            She wiped it down.

            Put it “there”

            Its been there ever since.

            She likes it.  I like it.

            It’s got some of her cooking crud on it.  Nothing overloading it.

            That’s not what this is about.

---

*** These are antiques dealer slang titles for this 1900-1930’s color.

            It’s about the “a stoic old New England crude primitive design jewel(s) ‘in there’ that I found”.

            From a perspective of (and only of) old New England design this (shelf unit) ...form... stands here as a singular fabrication of actually difficult-to-create (especially considering the light thin boards)... function intentional... balanced in size and weight... slightly embellished (tombstone top ends) made ON THE (Silver Twin’s) PLACE... and drawing from no other inspirational directives other than ...old Maine shed door barn yard design AND a few “from the wife” expressions of (design).  She “I need” and/or “want”.  There it is; designed, made, used.  No one... anywhere else... ever.  Except, of course, it’s my wife’s NOW.  After “it” (the homestead) “burned” flat.  Let us not make too much of this for it is

            ONLY WHAT IT IS...

            But that ‘what it is’ IS a ‘pure strain’ of ... old New England Decorative Art (design).

            Do I have a source of evidence respecting and supporting this ‘pure strain’?  Yes.  I return to the Concord Museum (Parts Seven and Eight).  I have used it twice already and so return to the same museum and the same reference book for their collection to find... a very special stoic old New England crude primitive design jewel.

            Collection catalog number “15” “Desk” shows a “one of the humblest in the collection” (from a design perspective).  It is also a “most historically significant” (heritage) too.  The latter is that the desk, pencil dated 1838, was one of a set (it is believed) of identical desks constructed and... painted green... that were locally fabricated for the Thoreau brothers for their school of that year (1838).  The school failed but... this single desk... survived dispersion by being retained by Henry David.  He took it to the hut at Walden Pond and there wrote, including the ‘journal’ of WALDEN, on it.  When he left Walden, the desk left too and reappears at the head of the stairs in Emerson’s home and was there still used for writing by Henry David.  Eventually, through Thoreau’s sister, the desk passes to the Museum.  Its heritage is impeccable?

            It’s design is... nothing.  True... it is but a green painted ‘stick’ desk; a form of that form (stick furniture).  But... divinely merged with Thoreau at Walden, particularly noting the philosophic heritage (principals) of Walden... the desk and it’s design... ARE consistent with a Walden – Transcendental vision... and

            That vision

            Points at... too... the Silver Twin’s ...Place... and its decorative arts.  Is not the essence of Walden written on this desk the very celebration of the Silver Twin’s New England homestead’s simple ‘self reliance’?  Its (the Silver Twin’s Place) hand carved wooden sap spiles... are an intellectual vision?  I certainly do not miss the connections and... hold them to be true.  It is so true to I (us; my wife and I) that it (this intellectual vision) is in our kitchen... too.  We seek it, find it, save it and protect it.  Here, though, the Twin’s kitchen shelf unit, fabricated as a ‘pure strain’, becomes a splendid third ‘triple jump’ of this aesthetic when wedded to Thoreau and his desk.

            A step higher?

            Although that comparative unit works fine for buttressing the ‘stoic old New England crude primitive design jewel’ object I have been harping about... so it may become the ‘THE’ “...place...” of New England Decorative Art contributed by the Silver Twin’s homestead...

I do

            Personally

            Like my ‘that’; the “MINE.... THAT”... a little bit more ‘hardball’.  That means, principally, I like it ‘older’ (Colonial settlement era) and crafted ...tougher... meaning a little more past a ‘your not gonna just FIND THAT’.  Object... so...:  What I bring up as ...triple jump... support and evidence for this ‘step higher’ is... an old

            Barn door.  Weather beaten old relic abandoned moved tossed pitched nailed up dragged here and there used again and again but always the managing to be the same:  A Barn Door.  This one... “Jesus I don’t know WHERE it came from on that property” but it was

            STILL THERE and... I said “Oh wow” right away and... got it out of there.  It wasn’t attached to anything when I found it but it had definitely been ‘put away’ and ‘left alone’ MANY times and for a LONG TIME.

            What makes this old door remarkable (jump number two) (jump one is that it is ‘of’ the Silver Twin’s Place)... is that the construction of the door is ‘insanely’ fine considering what it is (a colonial era rural New England barn door).  WIDE... THIN... handmade... locally mill sawn ...again noting ‘thin’ wood thickness for accuracy... White Pine ‘finished lumber’ assembled to be a ‘barn door’ with ...individually handmade one by one-one-at-a-time wrought iron ‘rose head’ Colonial era nails... THERE (at the Silver Twin’s Place.  And then “hung” (used as an exterior door) for

            Two hundred and fifty years (inclusive of all usage variables including “put away” and “left alone”.

            Including I FOUND IT.

            A weather beaten gospel according to what?

            It is, ‘according to what’, “just there”.  That is its pure strain.  Designed with drastically difficult material to procure at its construction date (1750-60) with these drastically fine materials then used, this pure strain stays active as its ‘it’ ever after and EVEN AFTER I DRIVE OFF DOWN THE HILL with it in the back of my truck.

            With it.  It is an old barn door.

            Right?

Or is it... an it... as one views an oil painting; a composition on a flat surface?  Is it a ‘painting’?  I ask.  When I study the ‘inside’ side and trace the shadow of the long removed ‘original wrought iron hinges’... is that an obsessive painterly detail that only an artist would care about.

            Notice.

            And find... to assure

            That this old barn door is but an old New England decorative art... I found... as part

            Of the Silver Twin’s ...Place...

            In

            Old New England Decorative Art?

            “Who was the artist?” I’m asked.

            “The Silver Twin’s Place”.

     The End