PERRYVILLE, Ky. (ACNI) – A town of 763 residents, Perryville is known for its Civil War history. Residents once skirmished with Confederate guerrilla commander William Quantrill and his raiders in the town’s business district known as Merchants Row. Another raid was made early Saturday morning when burglars broke into Merchants Row Café and Antiques and stole approximately $15,000 worth of antiques and coins.
Owner James Pope said someone used a crowbar to force open a side door and removed approximately 50 cases containing Civil War belt buckles and buttons, Confederate money, arrowheads, gold coins and jewelry. Several Kentucky long rifles and Civil War firearms were also stolen.
“Anything you could sell quickly,” said Pope. “I feel sorry for the people the people who have to resort to this.
“Saturday was supposed to be our Valentine’s Day with special sales, but they just about wiped us out,” said Pope.
He has operated the combination café and antique store 10 years ago in a historic 1840s storefront, which was once Lattimer’s General Store and the town’s post office.
Pope said he still has antique furniture items for sale and the café and antique shop remain open for business.
The Boyle County Sheriff Department is investigating the burglary and is following several leads. Because of the large amount of merchandise removed from the store, authorities believe more than one person was involved. No arrests have been made. Anyone with information about the theft should contact Sheriff Jim Wilcher at 859-238-1123.
Perryville was the site of the largest Civil War battle in Kentucky, fought Oct. 8, 1862. Re-enactors come to Perryville annually to re-create the battle.
Copyright 2011 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
American landscape painter Winslow Homer (1836-1910) in a 19th-century photograph. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – The Portland Museum of Art’s Winslow Homer Studio is providing inspiration for J. Crew’s spring collection for men.
J. Crew’s lead men’s designer brought his team to Maine to see the Winslow Homer Studio, where the 19th-century artist painted images of Maine’s coast. The museum is currently working to raise $10.5 million for the preservation and endowment of the studio where the Boston-born artist lived from 1883 until his death in 1910.
The studio and Homer’s painting Weatherbeaten are featured on J.Crew’s website for the spring collection.
Museum Director Mark Bessire says he’s thrilled that the fashion world is taking notice of the museum’s ties to Homer and its collection of Homer art.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This landmark Colonial Revival mansion in Rochester, N.Y., was the home of Kodak founder George Eastman. Image courtesy of George Eastman House. ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) – Portraits of John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirators in the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln are among prized Civil War images going on display at a museum of photography and film in upstate New York.
A four-month exhibition that opened Saturday at George Eastman House in Rochester features vintage cameras and 130 framed photographs from the war that began 150 years ago. A warship collection includes one-of-a-kind pictures of the Confederate raider Alabama.
Among the museum’s treasures are a retired Union officer’s album illustrating the assassination plot. It contains portraits of nine people implicated in the conspiracy and an albumen print of a famous Alexander Gardner photograph of three men and a woman standing on the gallows as their nooses are adjusted.
“What’s unique about the album is the photographs were assembled from many different sources to tell the story of the Lincoln conspiracy,” Alison Nordstrom, the museum’s curator of photographs, said Friday. “It’s a real page-turner, a heart stopper that culminates in the photographs of the hanging.”
A facsimile version of the “Between the States” show hits the road in May with stops in Chattanooga, Tenn., Elmhurst, Ill., and Manassas, Va. The museum expects bookings will extend the tour over the next four years as the war’s sesquicentennial is commemorated.
The museum owns 1,100 Civil War artifacts and “not only is this material very rare, but it’s very fragile,” Nordstrom said. “Our holdings are recognized as among the best in the world, so when we have the opportunity to show off what we have, we’re anxious to do it.”
Lincoln was mortally wounded by Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington on April 14, 1865, five days after Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to end the war. A 12-day manhunt for Booth ended in his death, and eight suspected accomplices in a larger conspiracy intended to rally Confederates were convicted that summer. Four were hanged.
Photographic portraiture came into its own during the Civil War era. Lincoln was the first U.S. president to be extensively photographed – more than 125 highly collectible portraits of him survive.
“It’s right around the period of the Civil War that having your portrait made photographically became within reach of anyone,” Nordstrom said. “It wasn’t a rich person’s practice anymore. Portraits are by far the most common kind of Civil War period photograph.”
More than 400,000 highly valued photographs have been gathered up since 1947 at Eastman House, a landmark Colonial Revival mansion that was home to Kodak founder George Eastman.
Until the start of the 20th century, the American Revolution was the nation’s most celebrated historical event, Nordstrom said.
“Around 1900, which is actually the beginning of our imperial adventure when we started to get involved in wars far, far away from us, the Civil War became the image of union,” she said. “I do believe the Civil War is the historical lens still by which we understand our country.”
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-ES-02-11-11 1626EST
ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
This landmark Colonial Revival mansion in Rochester, N.Y., was the home of Kodak founder George Eastman. Image courtesy of George Eastman House.Four Lincoln assassination conspirators swing from the gallows on July 7, 1865 at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Looters lowered themselves through skylights at the Egyptian Museum. Image by Kristoferb, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. CAIRO (AP) – A full inventory of the Egyptian Museum has found that looters escaped with 18 items during the anti-government unrest, including two gilded wooden statues of famed boy king, Tutankhamun, the antiquities chief said Sunday.
The 18-day uprising that forced out President Hosni Mubarak engulfed the areas around the famed museum, on the edge of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. On Jan. 28, as protesters clashed with police early on in the turmoil and burned down the adjacent headquarters of Mubarak’s ruling party, a handful of looters climbed a fire escape to the museum roof and lowered themselves on ropes from a glass-paneled ceiling onto the museum’s top floor.
Around 70 objects – many of them small statues – were damaged, but until Sunday’s announcement, it was not known whether anything was missing.
Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass said the museum’s database department determined 18 objects were gone. Investigators searching for those behind the thefts were questioning dozens of people arrested over several days after last month’s break-in.
The most important of the missing objects is a limestone statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the so-called heretic king that tried to introduce monotheism to Egypt, standing and holding an offering table.
“It’s the most important one from an artistic point of view,” said museum director Tarek el-Awady. “The position of the king is unique and it’s a beautiful piece of art.” During Akhenaten’s so-called Amarna period, named after his capital, artists experimented with new styles.
Also gone is a gilded wooden statue of the 18th Dynasty King Tutankhamun, Akhenaten’s son, being carried by a goddess. Pieces are also missing from another statue of the boy king wielding a fishing harpoon from a boat.
“We have the boat and the legs of the king, but we are missing other parts of the body,” el-Awady said. “We are looking everywhere for them – around around the museum, outside, on the roof, from where the thieves got into the museum.”
He said none of the missing objects was from the gated room containing the gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun and other stunning items from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings – the museum’s chief attractions. The looters did not break into the room, he said.
The other missing items are a statue of Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s wife, making offerings, a sandstone head of a princess and a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna, and a heart scarab and 11 wooden funerary statuettes of the nobleman Yuya.
Antiquities authorities also announced Sunday that thieves broke into a storage site at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, south of Cairo, on Feb. 11. They had no information yet on whether items were missing.
The Egyptian Museum remains closed and guarded by an army unit, but workers are cleaning the vast building and the garden around it. Efforts are being made to improve security.
On Sunday, the museum director and an architect walked around the roof of the 110-year-old building to draw up designs for upgrading security on the glass-paneled sections of the ceiling.
“We can’t interfere with the original architecture of the building because it’s a monument,” el-Awady said. “But we are thinking about how to upgrade this and put in a new security system for the ceiling of the museum.”
The security of Egypt’s museums and archaeological sites came under scrutiny after the theft in August of a Van Gogh from an art museum in Cairo. El-Awady said the Egyptian Museum’s alarms and other security systems were working during the looting.
The thieves caused considerable damage, breaking 13 display cases and tossing aside ancient objects in what museum staff believe was a frenzied search for gold.
“We pray to God that we’ll never see another night like this,” el-Awady said.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-ES-02-13-11 0923EST
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Looters lowered themselves through skylights at the Egyptian Museum. Image by Kristoferb, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Prince William playing polo in 2007. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
LONDON (AP) – The royal love story has been chronicled in speech bubbles and sketches.
A comic book telling the story of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s romance is due to be published in April, joining a host of other books and memorabilia flooding the market ahead of the April 29 royal wedding.
“There’s always been a tradition in this country of comics for girls in which the girl dreams of meeting someone famous and falling in love,” said Mike Collins, the artist who did the illustrations for Kate and William: A Very Public Love Story.
“In this case, this is what’s happened and it’s for real,” he said.
The graphic novel will be published in two editions: The first follows the prince’s life from the rugby pitches of his exclusive boarding school to his adventures in the Royal Air Force, while the other traces Middleton’s half of the story with cheeky fictional diary entries that imagine her as a love-struck student who later comes to terms with the ups and downs of being a future king’s girlfriend.
The two halves will come together in a collected bound edition that’s presented as a flip book and includes a fictional account of the wedding day (and a kiss, too.)
The couple make a good looking comic book superhero and heroine, Collins said.
“She’s got this flowing hair that’s really lovely to draw, and he’s got a very distinguished face,” he said.
Rich Johnston, who wrote the script, said he didn’t think William and his fiancee would mind having their love story chronicled in speech bubbles and cartoons.
“It’s better than seeing themselves on a plate,” he joked, referring to the many commemorative china items on sale.
A U.S. publishing house has also announced a rival to the comic, also to be published in April.
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
This 1880s child’s plate has letters around the edge to teach the alphabet and a picture in the center to display a method of hunting seals. The plate sold at a Skinner auction in Boston for $148, below auction estimate, perhaps because the picture of a seal hunt is controversial today, Image courtesy of Skinner Inc., www.skinnerinc.com.
Opinions change with time. Throughout the past 40 years, it has become popular to “think green.” But our ancestors hunted for food and killed buffalo, deer and passenger pigeons, making some species endangered and others extinct. It was proper to kill animals, throw garbage out into the backyard without composting it or play with the mercury from a broken thermometer, which today we know is dangerous. Toys reflected scenes of everyday life, so it is not surprising to find an antique child’s plate with what we consider a frightening decoration. Some small plates were made with the letters of the alphabet embossed on the border. These alphabet plates were popular from the 1780s to the 1860s. The letters taught a child to read, and the center design usually included a nursery rhyme, proverb or wise saying. Some plates pictured a mother or father doing everyday jobs like cooking or sewing or farming. Alphabet plates were made of pottery, porcelain, glass or metal and sometimes came with matching mugs.
One early-19th-century English plate that recently auctioned caused comment among the bidders. The transfer-decorated Staffordshire plate pictures hunters in a canoe surrounded by seals. The hunters are beating the seals to death with clubs so they can sell the fur. Canada banned hunting baby harp seals in the water in 1984, and Russia banned killing baby seals in 2009. Before various countries’ bans, hunting killed many baby seals and lowered the seal population, but the bans have brought seal herds back to a larger size.
Q: Twenty years ago, I bought two antique Windsor chairs from a friend for $1,500. A dealer recently appraised them for $1,250 each. I have been unable to find any information about the cabinetmaker. His mark is machine-carved on both chairs and reads “John M. Bair, Hanover, Penna.”
A: The machine-carved marks indicate that your chairs are not antiques. Bair’s Cabinet Shop, the name of John M. Bair’s business, operated from 1933 to 1964 in Hanover and later Abbottstown, Pa. So your chair dates to Bair’s early years in Hanover. Bair’s made high-quality reproductions of antique furniture, especially Colonial Revival furniture. So your chairs date from the 1930s at the earliest. They’re not antique, but that doesn’t mean they’re not well-made chairs worth the price you paid or more.
Q: I have a painting on tin of a black woman and a blond girl making a gelatin salad. In the bottom right corner it’s signed “Harry Roseland” and dated 1901. Can you help me determine the value of this painting?
A: Harry Herman Roseland (circa 1867-1950) was an American painter. He is known for his paintings of people in turn-of-the-20th-century settings. Your picture was used in an ad for Knox Gelatine. Prints were given to customers as premiums, tin signs with the image hung in grocery stores; and the original painting may have hung in the corporate offices. Charles B. Knox invented a gelatin powder in 1890 and founded the Charles B. Knox Gelatine Co. in Johnstown, N.Y., in 1896. Knox is now part of Kraft Foods. You have a print, not an original painting. A copy of your print in mint condition and framed sold online for $427 a few years ago.
Q: I have several records marked “Vogue.” The records have a picture printed right on the vinyl. I’d like to know something about them. Are they valuable?
A: Vogue picture records were made by Sav-Way Industries of Detroit from May 1946 to April 1947. Each record has a picture on both sides, sometimes signed by the artist. The records’ pictures were applied to an aluminum core and then covered with vinyl. Then the grooves were stamped into the vinyl. Most of the records were 10-inch 78 rpm, but some 12-inch 78 rpm records were also made. The first Vogue picture record was “Basin Street Blues” with “Sugar Blues” on the flip side. More than 70 different Vogue picture records were made. Sav-Way Industries claimed it was making 500,000 records a month in early 1947, but the company went bankrupt a few months later. It is still fairly easy to find Vogue picture records for sale. Most sell for $10 to $50.
Q: I am a collector of Occupied Japan ceramics. Another collector I ran into told me that Occupied Japan items were stamped in red, black or blue, and that a piece with a red mark is more valuable than a piece marked in blue or black. Is this true?
A: Florence Archambault, the author of books on Occupied Japan, says there is no evidence that what you were told is true. For one thing, marks on Occupied Japan items can be found in a variety of other colors, including yellow, green, gold and brown. The “Made in Occupied Japan” mark was required on Japanese exports starting in February 1947. In August 1949 the requirement was altered and ceramic exports could be marked “Made in Occupied Japan,” “Occupied Japan,” “Made in Japan” or simply “Japan.” That means that identical pieces can be marked differently. But collectors of Occupied Japan ceramics prefer pieces marked “Made in Occupied Japan” or “Occupied Japan.” The occupation ended in April 1952.
Tip: Some tea and coffee stains on dishes can be removed by rubbing them with damp baking soda.
Terry Kovel answers as many questions as possible through the column. By sending a letter with a question, you give full permission for use in the column or any other Kovel forum. Names, addresses or e-mail addresses will not be published. We cannot guarantee the return of any photograph, but if a stamped envelope is included, we will try. The volume of mail makes personal answers or appraisals impossible. Write to Kovels, Auction Central News, King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.
Need more information about collectibles? Find it at Kovels.com, our website for collectors. Check prices there, too. More than 800,000 are listed, and viewing them is free. You also can sign up to read our weekly Kovels Komments. It includes the latest news, tips and questions and is delivered by e-mail, free, if you register. Kovels.com offers extra collector’s information and lists of publications, clubs, appraisers, auction houses, people who sell parts or repair antiques and much more. You can subscribe to Kovels on Antiques and Collectibles, our monthly newsletter filled with prices, facts and color photos. Kovels.com adds to the information in our newspaper column and helps you find useful sources needed by collectors.
CURRENT PRICES
Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.
Mister Whiskers and the Wrigleybottom Jewel Robbery game, “A Crazy Crime Game,” 250 cards, 46 colored counters, booklet, Milton Bradley, 1937, 7 x 5 inches, $30.
American Tourister “Tiara” train case, white vinyl exterior, ice-blue quilted brocade lining, padded handle, four plastic feet, 13 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, $70.
Gucci satchel purse, black patent leather, bamboo handle, brass holders signed “Gucci,” 1960s, 6 x 8 x 2 1/2 inches, $125.
Hull pottery ewer, Water Lily pattern, turquoise and pink flowers, marked, circa 1948, 5 1/2 inches, $165.
Mount Washington Crown Milano glass cracker jar, oval, creamy opal, gold scrolling band, flower sprays, lid, marked, 7 inches diameter, $460.
Union Leader cut plug tobacco store display sign, tri-fold, lithographed, features vaudeville star John Bunny smoking, 1914, 43 x 28 inches, $480.
Popeye doll, wooden, hands on hips, smoking yellow corncob pipe, blue pants, shirt with red collar, Chein, 1932, 10 3/4 inches, $500.
Paris porcelain bowl, white, apple-green border with gilt floral bands, hand-painted birds, footed, circa 1825, 4 x 8 inches, $955.
Sterling-silver center bowl, pair of stags base, antlers support fluted oval bowl, Cartier, circa 1950, 8 x 12 x 8 1/2 inches, $1,910.
Cast-iron bench, scroll crest, interlocking arches, scrolled arms, pierced seat, cabriole legs, scroll toes, Hinderers Iron Works, New Orleans, late 1800s, 35 x 42 inches, pair, $4,420.
New! A quick, easy guide to identifying valuable costume jewelry made since the 1920s. Kovels’ Buyers’ Guide to Costume Jewelry, Part Two, a report on the most popular styles, makers and designers of costume jewelry. The report makes you an informed collector and may get you a great buy. Photos, marks, histories and bibliography. Special Report, 2010, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches, 36 pages. Available only from Kovels. Order by phone at 800-303-1996; online at Kovels.com; or send $19.95 plus $4.95 postage and handling to Kovels, Box 22900, Beachwood, OH 44122.
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