BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) – It’s a photograph Patty Henning has seen many times. Yet every time she glances at the sepia-tone image of men nearly 100 years ago playing croquet on what is now the Jekyll Island Club Hotel lawn, she can’t help but be overwhelmed by the striking similarities of then and now.

The hotel stands proud in the background. The lawn is as well maintained as ever.

Easily, this image could have been doctored, recreated from a current snapshot and tweaked to look like it was circa the 1920s. This picture, though, has never seen the likes of PhotoShop. It is an original, with only the men’s sporty attire giving away the picture’s age.

“It looks exactly like it could have been taken here yesterday,” said Henning, marketing director for hotel. “This hotel has become what it was meant to be. It has been brought back to its glory days.”

When the building that became a public hotel in the 1980s opened its door 125 years ago, it was the exclusive domain of the nation’s elite and famous. The likes of J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Joseph Pulitzer and America’s most prominent families used the now-hotel as a private hunting lodge, retreating to the secluded island for solitude and respite.

That wealthy wonderland came to an end when financially unstable times and a call to war struck the nation and forced the private island to shutter its door. Though the original owners intended to reopen the hotel after World War II, the state bought the island in 1946 and transformed it into “a park for the people,” Henning said.

“The hotel just sat in a pretty sad state for years,” said Eric Garvey, chief communications officer for the Jekyll Island Authority, which manages the state park island.

It took a group of visionaries and more than $20 million to reopen the historic property. Architect Larry Evans and his cohort of designers raised the funds, purchased the building in the 1970s and by 1986, it was ready to again become a world-renowned facility, Henning said.

Having worked at the hotel for its entire new 25 year run, Henning has seen the property go through a variety of changes and alterations, all with the goal of making it look identical to the original.

“I was here when it reopened. I have been with this hotel for the whole 25 years,” she said. “Watching as this hotel came back to its state of grace, it has been an amazing process.”

As the hotel slowly morphed back to its golden era, so, too, did the property around the millionaires’ clubhouse. Reclaiming the antique feel of the hotel has provided direction for the island overall, beyond the sprawling croquet lawn and grand dining room of the clubhouse.

With the hotel being “the center of island history,” bringing back its original spirit has been a guide for renovating the adjoining historic district, said John Hunter, historic resources director for the authority.

Mirroring the progress of renovations at the hotel, the historic district has gradually come back to its original days, Hunter said. The Avenue of Palms has been recreated near the hotel, the Morgan Tennis Center has been renovated and Crane, Indian Mound and DuBiogne cottages have been restored to days gone-by. Even the roadways of the district have been restored, by replacing asphalt with period-appropriate oyster shell streets, Hunter said.

“We realized we had to work to bring the island back to where it was,” he said. “It has a great history that was about to be lost. And once it’s gone, it’s gone. I think we have successfully done our jobs in restoring and preserving the island.”

Without the surrounding district of the cottages, shops and palm-lined avenues, the hotel would not be able to draw the crowds it receives annually, Henning said.

“The historic district has become the jewel and crown of the island,” Henning said, crediting Hunter with the drive for making the renovations occur. “The work that has been put into making this district look exactly like it did 125 years ago, it just boggles me. It has made this island park a place families can come and not get run over by a tour bus. It has made this hotel and this island great.”

As the club hotel rings in its 125-year anniversary next year, the island, too, will mark an occasion of its own: the opening of a new convention center campus. Pairing the island’s storied history with the fresh life to be breathed by the new center, hotels and boutiques hasn’t been simple, but will likely prove rewarding, Garvey said.

“The hotel is an iconic symbol for the state. Its renovations are a big accomplishment,” Garvey said. “In building the new district, we are contrasting the new and the old, and we worked hard to make sure each district has its own identity. There will be nothing else like it.”

That’s what area officials and tourism leaders are hoping. The hotel and the island’s storybook past are major boons for the region, bringing in thousands of guests each year.

Work recently completed toward revamping the once-dated structures and facilities on the state park island has been a benefit to the community as a whole, shining a new spotlight on the Golden Isles, which relies heavily on tourism to thrive, said Scott McQuade, director of the Golden Isles Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“Certainly, these are significant attractions for our area. As far as tourism goes, you are always looking for a way to be unique,” he said. “The hotel, the island itself, is like a living museum, a walk back in time. There really isn’t anything else like it.”

Area residents may take the island for granted, and often forget it is even part of the county, said County Commission Chair Tom Sublett, who’s district includes the island.

The island, though, is a hub for generating jobs, tourism and revenue for the entire Golden Isles. It is a magnet of the region’s history as well as a compass for what is to come, Sublett said.

“The Jekyll Island Club Hotel and island itself are a very important part of our community,” Sublett said. “It is a place where you can walk on the floors and play cards at the tables of the Rockefeller and other famous families. The Federal Reserve (concept) was created there. Within the island, there is a significant piece of our community’s history and future.”

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-11-09-11 1836GMT

 

 

 

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Nearly 200 photographs that famed Civil War diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut collected to illustrate her epic account of that conflict have been reunited with her original journals, 125 years after her death.

Chestnut’s descendants have given the photos to the University of South Carolina, where several dozen will be on public display through Jan. 31 in the school’s South Caroliniana Library. Chestnut’s seven original journals and dozens of her later edits have been at the university since the early 1960s.

Chestnut’s daily accounts, which she expanded in later edits to create an autobiographical tone, have long been a historical source as one of the better depictions of the South in the Civil War. The best edited and well-known version, published in 1981, is widely considered the finest literary work of the Confederacy.

“The albums are basically the eyes, the faces, the hands of those who figure in the diary,” Henry Fulmer, the library’s curator of manuscripts, said Thursday.

The images—small photographs on card stock called “cartes de visite” swapped in that era—include images of President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, newspaper editor Horace Greeley, and European leaders from whom Southern leaders sought support, including Pope Pius IX. They also put a face to lesser-known family and friends mentioned in her diary.

“They absolutely confirm and illustrate her panoramic view of the Civil War as a great epic tragedy,” said her great-great grand-niece Marty Daniels, 67, who is among 12 in her generation responsible for the upkeep of the family’s historic Mulberry Plantation near Camden.

“She was writing not just of the Confederates but the whole world stage,” Daniels noted.

The family donated Chestnut’s three albums to the university in September, nearly four years after winning at auction those albums once considered lost to history. Family members and scholars knew they existed. But the albums that Chestnut referenced in her journals disappeared in 1931, after the niece who inherited them died.

They resurfaced in November 2007 on eBay.

“Of course, where else would they be in this day and age?” Daniels asked, laughing.

She credits a Civil War collector who recognized their worth for saving the albums from an owner who had begun taking them apart and selling the photos separately. Alerted to the eBay notice about a live auction in Nashville, the family pooled their resources. Daniels said even her elementary school grandchildren wanted to contribute, and the family urged libraries and museums across South Carolina not to bid against them.

“We were very afraid we wouldn’t be able to afford them,” Daniels said. In making the request, the family promised “we’d do the right thing and get them to the people of South Carolina and reunite them with her diaries, but we also dearly wanted to see the photographs of our ancestors.”

Purchased for “less than six figures,” the albums were delivered to Daniels’ mother at Mulberry Plantation just before Christmas 2007. Martha Williams Daniels, the great-granddaughter of Chestnut’s sister, has since died.

The family has spent the past several years putting together an illustrated edition of Chestnut’s diary, published last month as a two-volume set titled Mary Chesnut’s Illustrated Diary: Mulberry Edition.

It may look very much as Chestnut intended for the daily diary she began keeping in February 1861, two months before the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor.

An opponent of slavery, who lamented women’s subordinate roles, Chestnut had a front-row view on history. The daughter of a former South Carolina governor and U.S. senator, she accompanied her husband to Washington in 1858 when he became a U.S. senator. They returned to South Carolina after Lincoln’s election, and James Chestnut—who helped negotiate the surrender of Fort Sumter—became an aide to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and one of his top generals, P.G.T. Beauregard.

“Scholars can now fully grasp that she intended this to be an epic work of words and pictures,” Fulmer said.

Fulmer noted that Chestnut meticulously labeled each photo in the albums. Of the 200 or so originally in the albums, 186 were still intact. The library is trying to replace the missing photos, based on the captions that identify them.

Chestnut, who had no children, began editing her diaries in the 1870s and 1880s with obvious literary intent, Fulmer said. While she inquired about publishing the diary in her lifetime, it was deemed too soon after the Civil War. After she died in 1886 at age 63, a Columbia schoolteacher, at her request, began compiling the manuscript, which appeared in segments in the Saturday Evening Post before being published for the first time in 1905, though still not in its entirety, as A Diary From Dixie, he said.

“By the time 20 more years had elapsed, it was an immediate hit,” he said.

A fictionalized version of her diary came out in 1949.

Decades later, the best-known edition of her diary, edited by the late Yale scholar of Southern history C. Vann Woodward, the 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning Mary Chestnut’s Civil War catapulted Chestnut’s fame and earned her respect as a great literary writer of her time. Excerpts from the diary were used prominently in Ken Burns’ documentary film The Civil War.

Chestnut’s biography, Mary Boykin Chestnut: A Biography, was also published in 1981. It was written by Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, who assisted Woodward in his research as a University of South Carolina graduate student and later became president of Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

Chestnut’s original journals, before her own edits, were published as The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries, in 1985. And two of Chestnut’s manuscript novels were published in 2002 for the first time.

Daniels implores all families to salvage and preserve their history.

“There are attics and trunks of letters all over South Carolina, parts and pieces of our collective story,” she said. “We’re just the custodians of a few threads. It’s our challenge to pass it on.”

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-11-03-11 2219GMT

 

 

 

PITTSBURGH (AP) – Even as terrible battles were fought, toys and Santa Claus had a place in American life during the Civil War.

For the start of an annual Toys for Tots campaign Friday, Michael Kraus was dressed in Civil War garb at a Carnegie Mellon University display of 1860s toys. Toys from the era were on loan from the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Museum in Pittsburgh.

Kraus, the museum curator, has been drawn to toys from the Civil War era since he was a boy.

“You’d see these things come out of houses in the 1960s so I started to learn about them,” Kraus said.

He said the 1860s saw the popularization of the Santa Claus tradition in America. Harper’s Weekly in January of 1863 published one of the first drawings of the rotund holiday figure, addressing a camp of soldiers, some of whom carry a banner reading: “Welcome Santa Claus.”A copy of the issue is part of the display.

Kraus said soldiers celebrated Christmas, but it wasn’t as much of a gift-giving event as it is now.

“They were away from home. They would decorate trees with bullets, whatever they had around. They would have a special meal,” he said.

Items on display included a small, flat tin soldier, perhaps made for children who had a father or brother at war, a handmade wooden doll for a girl, and a deck of playing cards. “The Game of the Camp” deck featured cards with illustrated figures – Surgeon, Riding Master and Farrier (a person who specializes in horseshoes and the care of hooves).

Kraus pointed out that the Toys for Tots campaign was started by Marines.

The campaign began in 1947 in Los Angeles when a group of Marine reservists decided to distribute toys to needy children. The Marine Corps made it a national program the next year, and the Walt Disney Company designed a logo for the charity. Until 1980, the campaign distributed new and refurbished toys. Now only new toys are given away.

Kurt Larsen, an assistant dean at the university’s College of Engineering, said Toys for Tots helps children in the community but also is an opportunity for student volunteers.

“It’s an introduction to American culture for some,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to look outside oneself and to help others in need.”

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-11-04-11 2349GMT

 

 

 

BARKHAMSTED, Conn. (AP) – Nearly two centuries after Lambert Hitchcock started producing furniture that became a household tradition, the lathes, joiners and sanders are busy again.

The Hitchcock Chair Co., founded in 1818 and based in Riverton, Conn., closed in 2006, and sold all its equipment, patterns and furniture parts at auction. One of the factory buildings was bulldozed.

Today, a reincarnation of the company that once gave the town its name, and once produced 15,000 chairs a year, is producing new furniture using the original patterns and designs.

“We believe this will be a niche business,” said Rick Swenson, who with partner Gary Hath is the new owner of the Hitchcock Chair Co. Ltd. “This is a high-end, high-quality, American-made product.”

Swenson, 53, had been an antiques restorer and furniture maker for years, and began doing Hitchcock restorations in 2005. After the company closed, officials kept referring customers seeking repairs to him and, in late 2006, Swenson opened Still River Antiques with his wife, Nancy, in the company’s old sample shop.

Repairs and restorations kept Swenson busy. He hired former Hitchcock employees to strip the old finishes, replace broken spindles and legs, and touch up the stenciling. Whenever he could, he bought old Hitchcock pieces and restored and sold them, but when customers wanted a specific piece of furniture – a chest or a table, Swenson was unable to satisfy them. “It was hurting business,” he said.

Three years ago, when Swenson learned that thousands of spare Hitchcock parts – legs legs, spindles and tabletops – were available, he bought all seven tractor-trailer loads.

In March 2010, he and Hath learned that they could buy the Hitchcock company archives, which amounted to 400 boxes of patterns, customer lists, blueprints, stencils and the right to use the Hitchcock name. They paid about $100,000 – a fraction of what the business was worth in its heyday.

Over the next 18 months, they developed a business plan to manufacture new Hitchcock furniture, and opened for business in September. In the showroom, new chests, tables and mirrors sit alongside a restored 1830s chair that is indistinguishable from a new one. A storeroom contains dozens of chairs awaiting restoration. In back are several workrooms where employees are fashioning new pieces.

The past few months have been busy. After doing several open houses and a round of autumn fairs in the area, “We are already starting to see growth potential,” Swenson said.

Hitchcock chairs, tables, desks and chests were made of clear maple or cherry, or painted black, white or green. Rush seats were handwoven with cattail leaves.

Many pieces were easily recognized by iconic stenciled pictures of fruit, or scenes of winter or Thanksgiving.

Historically, the furniture was moderately priced because the company’s founder introduced methods of mass production that he had learned from Bristol clock maker Eli Terry.

Instead of having one craftsman custom-build an entire chair or table, Hitchcock made each worker responsible for one task. Parts were interchangeable. Assemblers put the pieces together, and finishers applied paint. Instead of painting an image, they used stencils and applied metallic paint to the sticky varnish.

As a result, the furniture was affordable – and popular. Thousands of designs were created, and in later years, the company offered limited editions, including a series depicting tall ships, the Bicentennial and college insignia. New stencil designs were issued each holiday season.

Today, a classic Windsor chair costs $545, a side chair $379 and a hutch $3,600. “We are trying to keep prices in line with the 2005 price list,” Swenson said.

Swenson and his eight employees are producing furniture using the traditional Hitchcock designs. Six of them are former Hitchcock employees, including Lorraine Lacasse, 76, who began as a sander in 1960, switched to stenciling and worked until the factory closed. “When you were hired at Hitchcock, you stayed there,” she said. Today, she works two days a week, using as many as 18 stencils for a Christmas chair.

Swenson plans to open a 5,000-square-foot plant in Winsted within the next few weeks, and expects to add two more employees by the end of the year. “We are growing very slowly, very carefully,” he said. Some work, like spindle turning or steam bending, is done in Vermont.

The Hitchcock factory closed in 1866 because of problems caused by the high cost of transporting the finished pieces to stores. In 1946, Hartford businessman John Kenney, who was fishing nearby, saw the abandoned factory and revived the company. When it closed in April 2006, President Ronald Coleman attributed the loss of business to competition from low-wage countries like China.

Transportation is still a problem, but Swenson is hoping to establish a network of distributors throughout the country so that he can ship in bulk. He is also hoping that Riverton might once again become a destination for furniture lovers. “The company has always been here. The first question (customers ask) is, Where are you making it?” he said. “They want it to be made in the U.S. and made here.”

So far, Swenson’s operation hasn’t grown too big for the personal touch. He’s currently restoring an armchair that has a baseball motif and a Yankees stencil for the office of a Yankee fan who moved to Massachusetts. When done, the chair will sport a Red Sox logo.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-29-11 0403GMT

 

 

 

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – A bejeweled altarpiece from the 19th century that was at St. Alphonsus Church during the time of Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos is up for auction Nov. 16 in New York City and may never return to New Orleans.

The piece, which is scheduled to be sold at Sotheby’s auction house, is a monstrance, a vessel shaped like a cross surrounded by a sunburst. At the center is a glass case, called a luna, in which the consecrated Host is exposed for the adoration of the faithful.

Charles “Jerry” Rosato, a longtime antiques dealer who collects religious artifacts, said he bought the monstrance in the late 1990s for $5,000. He consigned it to Sotheby’s because he needed money to pay off a $30,000 Katrina-related loan.

News of the sale brought a quick rebuke from New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, who said church law prohibits the sale of a sacred object to someone not affiliated with a church.

Saying he is “very concerned and very disturbed,” Aymond added, “Besides being a relic of someone who could be canonized with local ties, a monstrance holds the body of Christ and should never be auctioned off for money.”

The monstrance, which gets its name from the Latin word monstrare (to show), was made in France in 1857 by Jean Alexandre Chertier for the Irish Channel church, one of three built in the 1800s by the Redemptorists. Chertier, a renowned silversmith who specialized in liturgical art, made a silver-gilt and enamel container of holy oils that Emperor Napoleon III gave to Notre Dame Cathedral, Wood said.

The monstrance is depicted in St. Alphonsus’ main ceiling fresco, which Domenico Canova painted.

Rosato bought the vessel in the late 1990s from the Rev. Alton Carr, the pastor of St. Mary’s Assumption Church, because the parish needed money. That church, also built by the Redemptorist order, sits across Constance Street from St. Alphonsus, which was closed in 1979 and has since been used as an art and cultural center.

When Carr demurred about selling the monstrance, Rosato told him to call Monsignor Earl Woods, the archdiocesan archivist. “He said, ‘If Jerry Rosato’s buying it, he will take care of it,’” Rosato said.

Woods has died. Carr, who lives in San Antonio, could not be reached for comment.

“I wasn’t intending to make money off it,” Rosato said. “I wanted to be the caretaker of it. My intention was, when I died, to give it back to St. Alphonsus.”

Hurricane Katrina changed his plans. It wrecked the Kenner auction house, where he had been storing goods that people wanted him to sell. Rosato said his losses from wind and water damage and looting amounted to about $275,000.

He dipped into his retirement savings, but he still needed to borrow about $30,000. The monstrance, Rosato said, was the only thing he could use as collateral.

After making the rounds of well-heeled Catholics in an attempt to sell the vessel so he could pay off his loan, Rosato decided to sign it over to Sotheby’s to see what it could fetch at auction. He had to pay $1,500 to ship it to New York.

It is now scheduled to be part of an auction of 19th-century art and silver.

The monstrance is an example of silver-gilt work – silver with gold plating. It is 4 feet tall and 27 inches wide, and is adorned with an angel sculpture and paste stones.

When he was an altar boy at St. Alphonsus, Bill Murphy said, the massive 13-pound piece required three priests to carry it.

“I was always afraid they were going to drop it,” he said.

The monstrance was in St. Alphonsus during the 13 months Seelos was in New Orleans – from September 1866 until his death from yellow fever in 1867 at the age of 48. After a miraculous cure was attributed to his intervention, Seelos was beatified in 2000, and he needs one more miracle to be declared a saint.

Because Seelos was a native of the German state of Bavaria, he was assigned to St. Mary’s Assumption Church, where many German Catholics worshipped.

But he frequently crossed Constance Street to celebrate sacraments for English-speaking parishioners at St. Alphonsus, said the Rev. Byron Miller, who is the chief American advocate for Seelos’ canonization.

“Father Seelos was a tireless sacramental priest,” Miller said, adding that Seelos was valued as a man who heard confessions and was a wise counselor.

But more important than the monstrance’s tangential connection to Seelos is its iconic importance to the community, said Murphy, who called it “one of the great artifacts from the Irish Channel.”

John Wood, the head of Sotheby’s silver department, said its estimated value for the auction’s purposes is between $40,000 and $80,000, but it would take more than that to be withdrawn from the sale.

That is more than the archdiocese can afford, Aymond said.

But Rosato hasn’t given up hope of getting the monstrance back to the Irish Channel.

“Maybe someone will step up and buy it so it can come back,” he said.

David Schwab, an antiques dealer who has Rosato as a client, shares that hope. “It’s a sacred artifact,” Schwab said, “and it belongs in St. Alphonsus, not in some rich New York guy’s apartment.”

___

Information from: The Times-Picayune, http://www.nola.com

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-26-11 1746GMT

 

 

 

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) – War veteran Bill Jamison fought back tears during the Sunday dedication of a memorial honoring the Memphis Belle, the storied B-17 bomber that flew 25 crucial missions over German-occupied Europe in World War II.

Jamison and about 80 other people watched the unveiling of the monument depicting the 10-man crew standing in front of the historic airplane, which survived the war and spent 59 years in Memphis before being moved in 2005 for restoration at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.

It sits with other military statues and memorials at Veterans Plaza in Overton Park and also features a statue of longtime Memphis resident Margaret Polk shielding her face as she looks up at the sky.

The airplane’s pilot, then-Lt. Robert Morgan, named the Memphis Belle after Polk, who was his sweetheart before he deployed for war.

Jamison, 80, and other members of the Memphis Belle Memorial Association spent years working to restore the bomber while it was in Memphis. Her symbolic return in the form of the monument drew emotions from some in attendance who fought to keep the Belle in Memphis.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Jamison, an Army veteran who served in the Korean War. “I cried when the plane left. In fact, I’ve got tears in my eyes, now.”

Built by Boeing, the Belle was one of the first B-17s to complete its 25 missions over German-occupied Europe. It flew at a time when heavy bombers often flew without fighter escorts.

The bomber had a painting of a leggy woman on its nose, in honor of Polk. Morgan chose the artwork from a 1941 illustration in Esquire magazine, according to the Air Force.

Polk, a lifelong Memphis resident, died in 1990. Morgan, of Asheville N.C., died in May 2004. The two split up shortly after Morgan’s return from Europe.

After the Belle’s final mission in May 1943, its crew came home for a nationwide bond-selling tour, cementing it as a wartime symbol of courage and sacrifice. Younger generations learned about the bomber from the 1990 movie Memphis Belle.

The Belle had been given over to an agency that disposed of surplus military equipment in 1946 when a group of private citizens, led by WWII veterans, managed to get it in flying condition and brought it to Memphis. But age, weather and vandalism took its toll. The Belle was in serious disrepair when the association was formed.

Restoration work continued until Oct. 5, 2005, when the Belle was transferred to the Air Force. The move disappointed volunteers who worked on the aircraft while it was in Memphis, said George Barnes, the association’s president.

“People were hurt that she was gone, but they realized the Memphis Belle in the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force would be seen by millions of people,” Barnes said. “In the long run, it’s better for the Belle to be where she is.”

Belle association members stay in touch with the Air Force and receive updates on the restoration, which could be finished in two years, said Andrew Pouncey, the group’s past president. Restorers are currently working to lower the bomber’s landing gear.

Speakers at Sunday’s unveiling said it’s important for people to remember the Memphis Belle as a tough, resilient aircraft that protected its young crewmen from air and ground fire while dropping its bombs on strategic targets in Germany and France.

“We need to recognize the sacrifice and educate the children that are coming along to the fact that we are a free nation partly because of what they did,” Barnes said.

___

Online:

Memphis Belle Memorial Association: http://www.memphisbelle.com/

National Museum of the U.S. Air Force: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-23-11 2313GMT

 

 

 

 

CORNING, N.Y. (AP) – In a memorable Hollywood scene from Risky Business, the 1983 comedy drama that launched Tom Cruise to stardom, a mother’s prized Steuben glass egg goes missing from the mantelpiece only to reappear – imperceptibly nicked – in the nick of time.

Steuben Glass, an American icon of handcrafted crystal for over a century, looks now as if it’s vanishing for good.

Its lone factory in Corning, a glassmaking company town flanked by Steuben County’s tree-topped mountain ridges in southwestern New York, is shutting down Nov. 29, the week after Thanksgiving. With profitability elusive at the best of times, the prospects of reviving the 108-year-old vanity brand seem every bit as slim.

While the matchlessly transparent glass is still acclaimed as the lodestar of lead crystal, Steuben has struggled to find its footing in old age – never more so than since 2008 when glass pioneer Corning Inc. sold the ailing business to Schottenstein Stores Corp., a retail-chain operator in Columbus, Ohio.

Topping the list of critics’ complaints: Uninspiring new designs, the addition of cheaper engraving methods and, for the first time in its history, a production shift overseas that squeezed the price of simpler ornaments and champagne glasses below an unheard-of $100 each.

“They totally lost their way,” said Jeff Purtell, a Steuben dealer in Portsmouth, N.H. “If your design department is pathetic, your costs are prohibitive, and your marketing – and vision for the future – is not successful, then you’re doomed whether you’re making Steuben glass or Twinkies.”

A generation-long slide in demand for fine crystal accelerated abruptly when the financial crisis hit Wall Street in September 2008, just weeks after Schottenstein bought 80 percent of Steuben for an undisclosed price.

The operator of budget-friendly Value City Furniture and DWS shoe stores scrambled to appeal to more economically diverse markets – just as other hard-pressed crystal titans like Baccarat, Orrefors and Waterford Glass have done in Europe – but Steuben never turned a profit, said company spokesman Ron Sykes.

“The economy collapsed, so there wasn’t great demand even from collectors,” Sykes said. “We studied others that tiered their product and had some moderate success. Bottom line is, it did not work for us.”

Most of the factory’s 60 workers will be axed, and Steuben’s flagship store in New York will close once its inventory is sold off, Sykes said. Corning, which is expected to rehire more than a dozen union employees, bought back the Steuben brand but held out little hope it might re-enter the crystal arena.

Since 1903, Steuben glass has been fashioned into everything from fruit bowls and decorative animal figurines to one-of-a-kind sculptures bestowed as official gifts of American presidents from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton. Art objects can cost tens of thousands of dollars, with classic pieces creeping into six figures.

“I often wondered why the last generation, maybe two, cut down on Steuben,” mused collector Thomas Dimitroff. “The young folks don’t want it. Same thing with silver. There’s a different attitude. Every year we’re getting further away from the Victorian love of clutter, quality or not.”

Hundreds of Steuben pieces swarm shelves, tables and cabinets throughout Dimitroff’s home. He traces his fascination to his teens in the 1950s when he accompanied his father, a doctor, on visits to company founder Frederick Carder’s home. Carder, who died in 1963 at age 100, never failed to show his gratitude to his physician.

“Every time Mr. Carder said to my dad, now take a piece of my glass, any glass you want. My dad would never take one, and now I wish I could yell at him!”

Like fine diamonds, clear-as-water Steuben (pronounced stew-‘BEN) seems almost to emanate light from within. Depending on how it’s worked, it can reflect or refract the entire spectrum of a ray of light.

Other hallmarks are its elegant, naturally flowing shapes – and eye-popping price tags. While largely confined to the wealthy, Steuben long lured up-and-comers willing to set aside a small fortune to possess a dining-room centerpiece or splurge on a wedding gift for a favorite niece.

Even before being sold by Corning, which was almost continuously steered from 1851 to 2005 by five generations of the highbrow Houghton family, historians worried Steuben’s uncompromising dedication to perfection of materials, craftsmanship and design might someday be sacrificed if profitmaking became primary.

“If you took away the understanding that it might never make money and sold it to somebody for whom it had to make money, that was the beginning of the end,” said Mary Jean Madigan, author of Steuben Glass: An American Tradition in Crystal.

“Little by little, Steuben changed over some decades,” Madigan said. “It began to change a lot right about the time of the centennial in 2003 when it became clear Corning would expect it to be run as a business and not so much as the historical purveyor of fine crystal it had been. What it is now is not what it used to be in terms of what is made, how it’s marketed and who’s buying it.”

Steuben got its start when Carder, an English designer, agreed to run a glass-engraving shop in exchange for the freedom of creating decorative glass. His richly hued creations turned him into a giant of the glass arts scene alongside Louis Comfort Tiffany and Rene Lalique.

The Houghtons, a dynasty of arts patrons, bought out Carder in 1918, but as popular taste turned less ornate, Steuben almost collapsed during the Great Depression.

Corning scientists came up with an exciting new formula – a colorless heavy-lead optical glass – and marketing maestro Arthur Houghton Jr. propelled Steuben into a name of distinction. He staged exhibitions by leading contemporary artists such as Henri Matisse, Georgia O’Keeffe and Salvador Dali, opened a retail store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and advertised in all the best magazines.

As well as signature household items, the ads showcased limited-edition pieces such as an arctic fisherman poised on the ice, preparing to spear his catch.

Few enterprises demanded such a high rate of artistry. A stable of specialists employed both innovative and ancient techniques as the crystal moved from 2,500-degree Fahrenheit furnaces through blowing, grinding, polishing, etching and other precision processes.

While Steuben didn’t always contribute to profits, it burnished Corning’s reputation as an industrial glassmaker with an appreciation for ancient traditions of using glass as an art form. The business hit its peak a half-century ago when it employed nearly 300 people.

Old-timers like Max Erlacher, a master engraver who underwent a seven-year apprenticeship in his native Austria, are aghast at how a beloved company has fallen.

“When I first came here in 1957, it was just a shining star,” he said. “Other companies like Baccarat of France did fabulous glass and still do, but they never had that quality of engraving. But even they’re going downhill because they don’t have the clientele.”

In his studio near Corning, the 78-year-old carries on an 18th-century tradition that has few peers, using dozens of fine copper wheels attached to a lathe to create exquisite engravings.

After Houghton retired in 1973, “Steuben didn’t have the same spirit, the understanding of what it takes to create a piece of art, translate it into glass and market it the right way to discerning audiences.”

In the 1990s, as Corning moved out of consumer glassware into high-tech arenas like fiber optics and LCD television monitors, Steuben began to shrink. It lost money in 17 of its last 20 years under Corning, including $5.7 million in 2007. Sales dipped below $25 million a year. Corning outsourced stemware production to Germany around 2003 – and Schottenstein later turned for glassmaking help in Portugal.

Eric Hilton, a Steuben consultant for 35 years who designed elaborate sculptures given as U.S. tokens of friendship to queens, popes and heads of state worldwide, sees “a definite void with the passing of all that craft and skill” and remains puzzled by “the shift in the appreciation of beautiful objects.”

“Steuben fell down a bit when they started getting the stuff made abroad,” he said. “It didn’t come back quite right at times. Whereas if it was made totally in the Corning factory, it wouldn’t go out the door until it was utterly perfect. We used to think, ‘For goodness sakes, we’re whipping ourselves to death!’”

On a brighter note, dealers expect the vibrant aftermarket in Steuben collectibles to pick up pace. “Tiffany art glass hasn’t been made since the 1930s, and the desirability did not diminish, it’s increased,” Purtell said.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-24-11 1304GMT

 

 

 

TYLER, Texas (AP) – Just in time for Halloween a creepy book only a librarian could appreciate.

In the case of this particular book, however, no one at the Tyler Public Library seems to be feeling the love.

The 1933 first edition, illustrated copy of Champion Textbook of Embalming by A. O. Spriggs needs a new home, officials said.

It’s up for sale in the library’s third book auction, paired with a 1944 Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, for those who want something a tad unusual for their collection.

The books – as well as a host of others – are up auction until Oct. 31.

“Oh no, no, no, it’s not something we could ever put on the shelves,” Evelyn McLane, programming associate, said. “I think the embalming book came in about a year ago, as a donation.”

Library officials said donated books that can’t find a home on circulation shelves sometimes become undiscovered treasures for others.

In the case of the embalming book, it was immediately clear it needed to go someplace else, far away from unsuspecting library patrons.

“We put the embalming book in the last one (sale), but it didn’t sell,” McLane said. “We paired it with Poe to see if someone would buy it.”

On a 1-to-10 scale of unusual donations, officials peg the book at about a 9.9.

Items recalled as closer to a “10” surfaced in the 1980s: two books with bullet holes.

“Everyone’s a critic, but that was a little extreme,” Librarian Chris Albertson said of the bullet-riddled literature. “We did track them down” to pay for the damages.

The facility once received a collection of astrology books with detailed instructions on fortune-telling, but that topic seems to pale when compared to Spriggs’ embalming book.

The clinical textbook gives instructions on handling cases centered on death by gunshot, poison and freezing, to name a few.

“We have a lot of technical books here,” Albertson said, citing topics such as law, medicine and mechanics. “We’re in the business of trying to put good reading in people’s hands.”

The embalming book doesn’t quite fit into that business model, it seems.

People interested in bidding on the item can see it at the library, 201 S. College Ave.

It’s under lock and key, entitled the “Spooky Lot.”

There are 25 auction lots in all, touching on a variety of interests, including history, classic literature and classic comic characters including Little Lulu and Donald Duck.

Other items include a collection of old Oklahoma newspapers, featuring front pages of historic events in the United States – the end of World War II, the first man on the moon and dropping of the first atomic bomb.

Some newspapers feature sports teams of the 1950s.

A complete “Five-Foot Shelf” collection of Harvard Classics is also up for bid, a name given in references to the size of the grouping.

“You could probably get the equivalent of a Harvard education if you sit down and read them,” Albertson said. “To have a complete set pass through here is kind of unusual.”

There’s also the Official Fonzie Scrapbook, based on Henry Winkler’s character from the 1970s television sitcom, Happy Days, and other stars of by-gone eras.

The library’s “Beautiful Places” lot features a book filled with what appears to be hand-tinted scenes from Yellowstone National Park, suitable for framing.

Books in the lots have been selected based on rarity, nostalgic value and special interest topics.

Special care is taken to advise donors that materials not added to the library’s collection may be auctioned or sold, officials said.

Bid sheets are located next to the display cases and people must have a library card to compete.

Winners will be contacted at the conclusion of the sale, and all proceeds benefit the library’s book fund to help buy new books.

___

Information from: Tyler Morning Telegraph, http://www.tylerpaper.com

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-20-11 1822GMT

 

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) – History finally is coming to life at Athens-Clarke Fire Station No. 2.

There, firefighters are nearing the end of a project that began more than a decade ago – restoring an 87-year-old fire truck.

Countless hands have been laid on the 1924 Foamite-Childs Fire Apparatus Truck since a citizen donated it to the department in 1999.

The truck was first stored at Station 6, where firefighters stripped it to the frame, sand-blasted wood floors and running boards, and rechromed the steering column, rails and other parts.

They tinkered when time permitted over the next few years, but then the project ground to a halt. Personnel transferred to other stations, were promoted to other duties and even retired.

After the roof of Station 6 collapsed during a heavy snowfall in 2009, the vintage truck was moved to Station 5, where it continued to sit.

Then, about six months ago, Lt. David Barber told a bunch of co-workers it was time to revive the restoration project, and the Foamite-Childs truck was moved to Station No. 2 at Atlanta Highway and Mitchell Bridge Road.

“Everybody was on board with that,” said fire Sgt. Randy Patman, who was part of the group that first began working on the truck 12 years ago.

“I hate to see things that are good go to waste, and I hate to see history thrown away,” he said. “Restoring this truck took a lot of work, but in the end it’s worth it, because it’s an asset to the fire department.”

The Foamite-Childs fire truck was one of only two ever built by the company in Utica, N.Y.

It seats just two, a driver and a passenger, but back in the day, as many as 10 firefighters might have clung to railings as they stood on the running boards racing to a fire.

Athens resident Patty Curtis was going through the classified section of the newspaper one day in the early 1970s, looking for antiques that she and husband Jack loved to collect.

She came across an ad for the 1924 fire truck, which a University of Georgia student was selling, so she bought it as a present for her husband, who owned The Stone Store.

“I said, ‘Jack, you need some fire protection for the farm’” that the couple own in Greene County, she said.

But before the couple got the truck to the farm, they were driving it on Milledge Circle when they nearly lost control around a corner because the brakes were bad.

“It was our one and only drive,” Patty Curtis said.

The Curtises knew the truck would need a major overhaul to be safe, but they never had the time or money to fix it up.

And so the Foamite-Childs truck sat in their barn for more than 25 years.

Then, in 1999, they read a story in the newspaper that some firefighters had restored the oldest fire truck in the Athens-Clarke inventory, a 1962 pumper.

“Since we didn’t have the time to restore it, we thought we’d give it to the firemen because we knew they’d enjoy it,” Patty Curtis said.

She was right.

“When I walked into Station 6 and saw that antique truck parked behind the 1962 truck, I said, ‘What in the world is this?’” Patman recalled. “It was a real nice surprise.”

Patman and fellow firefighters David Smith, Eric Frye, Blake Doster and Mike McDaniel came together to fix it up just as they had the 1962 pumper.

Each man had experience in various types of restoration. One tinkered on old cars, another rebuilt jukeboxes, and another antiques. Others had professional experience refurbishing metal pieces and in auto paint-and-body repair.

The new restoration project was much more of a challenge. Unlike the 1962 pumper, the Foamite-Childs truck’s engine didn’t run because it had seized.

As the antique was dismantled, each piece was photographed and inventoried.

As the paint was sandblasted from the body, they discovered the truck hadn’t come from the Goshen Volunteer Fire Co., as the faded lettering had said.

And no one knew which Goshen, as there are several towns with that name on the East Coast.

The original paint job underneath stated the truck had belonged to the Independent Steam Fire Co. in Charles Town, W.Va.

While passing through on a trip up North, Smith stopped by the fire department in Charles Town.

“I told this guy we had an old fire truck from his town back in Athens, Ga., and as we were talking, I saw some photographs hanging on the wall, and I told him, ‘As a matter of fact, that’s the truck right there,’” Smith said.

When the Foamite-Childs truck is fully restored, at least 95 percent of it will be original parts, according Barber.

Smith found hose nozzles, extinguishers and other odds and ends at a fire exposition in Boston, and Patman ordered other parts he found online.

But putting back each little part was a challenge, because over time, the writing on tags explaining where the parts belonged had faded.

“It’s like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle upside down, without a picture to go by,” Patman said.

Firefighters turned over the engine for the first time last week, but it remains to be seen if it will be road-worthy.

The idea is to drive it in local parades and use it for fire education, according to Battalion Chief Mark Freeman.

Firefighters expect the Foamite-Childs truck should be fully restored by early spring, and Jack Curtis hopefully will be able to fulfill the only wish he had when donating it to the fire department – to ride on it in a parade.

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-19-11 1755GMT

 

 

 

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) – A Kodiak bear-skin rug. A 1958 Barbie doll, still in the box. Hand-carved wooden squirrel calls.

Local pawnshops are a mecca of the odd and unexpected. Once thought of as seedy hangouts for the down-and-out, pawnshops have enjoyed a resurgence lately, thanks in part to the stagnant economy and reality TV.

Bob Cramer, owner of Adams Street Exchange Pawn and Swap, 416 SW Adams St., said shows like Pawn Stars and Hardcore Pawn aren’t exactly realistic portrayals of day-to-day pawnshop life, however.

“Those are made-for-TV shows,” Cramer said. “They want you to believe that every five minutes this cannon, there’s only one in existence, and it’s going to come into your shop. You really have to take a lot of that with a grain of salt. We get some rare things, but you don’t get them every day. This is Peoria.”

Still, among the trays of cast-off engagement rings, shelves of secondhand musical instruments, knickknacks and aging video game consoles, there are some gems. Some things are so unique that Cramer is reluctant to part with them, such as a small Piper Cub model plane with a Weed Eater motor that hangs from the ceiling. Or the bearskin rug, which is for sale, but only at the right price.

“We could’ve made good money on the bear, but we held out,” Cramer said. “You have to have some things in the store that look cool.”

Pawnshops aren’t just for shoppers, however. Many of their customers are living on a fixed income and just need some cash to make it through the week. So they bring in their valuables, show ID and fill out paperwork. They walk out with cash and a receipt. The pawnshop holds merchandise for a certain number of days and, if the customer doesn’t come back for the goods, they end up on the sale floor. Sometimes they come back for the goods, sometimes they don’t.

Pawnshops are governed by the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and are insured just like a bank, since they hold items that don’t belong to them. Adams Street Exchange has a database of more than 18,000 customers, including Peoria resident Patricia Arias.

Arias, who is on a fixed income, said she comes to Adams Street Exchange every month. She brings in rings and necklaces for extra cash.

“Sometimes you’re a little short for the month,” she said. “The economy doesn’t make a difference.”

Robert Hayes, who has run Derby Pawn, 814 Derby St. in Pekin since 1993, says there have been more customers coming in lately with merchandise to pawn than there are people interested in buying.

“Our shelves are so full of merchandise that I’m probably sitting on 50 guitars. I’ve never had that many guitars,” Hayes said. “My loans have gone up probably 30 percent from last year, and who knows what 2012 is going to bring.”

Hayes sees all kinds of items. The strangest thing he’s ever taken in? A male bondage leather outfit.

“I said, dude, I don’t want to buy that. But he only wanted $20 for it. So I put it on eBay and, lo and behold, someone from California was interested. He bought it for $100.”

Hayes said the best part of running a pawnshop is getting to know his regular customers.

“We’re helping them through times when their paycheck doesn’t make it through until the end of the week,” he said. “I enjoy that. It’s kind of like a family around here. We all know that pawnshops thrive and flourish during bad economies – especially while the cost of precious metals are up. So if the economy doesn’t get fixed, there’s going to be a need for us for quite some time.”

John Balaco, owner of R&J’s Northside Pawnshop, 1215 NE Jefferson Ave., says many of his customers bring in items “just to keep up with the price of gas.”

Balaco says construction workers often bring in tools during the off season, then buy them back when the work starts up again. He also has electronics, guns, the occasional piece of art. Unique items include two sets of early 1800s dueling pistols. There’s a pony skin on one wall, a hand-carved jade rosary from Africa, small replica shrimp boats about the size of a child’s bicycle.

Balaco, who owned Mulligan’s bar for 20 years and now runs EastPort Marina Cantina May through October, learned the pawn business from his father, who ran a shop in Alton, Ill. He was taught things like how to tell the value of items, and how to identify counterfeit gold from the real stuff.

He says the pawnshop television shows have brought in customers that may never have stopped in.

“We get so many people who have never been to a shop and wanted to see one,” he said. “The TV shows have done a really good job getting people interested.”

But, he says, the shows aren’t exactly realistic.

“A piece of moon rock – who has that stuff?” he said. “And if you do, you’ll take it to Christie’s (auction house), not a neighborhood pawnshop.”

___

Information from: Journal Star, http://pjstar.com

Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WF-10-19-11 1120GMT