PIERRE, S.D. (AP) – A second man has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of trafficking American Indian artifacts taken illegally from the banks of the Missouri River in South Dakota.
Richard Geffre of Pierre also agreed to forfeit his interest in 7,930 items, including stone projectile points, knives, scrapers, drills, axes, hammers, pipes, pendants, necklaces, whistles, pottery, copper arm bands and bison skulls.
The maximum penalty is two years in prison, a fine and restitution.
JERUSALEM (AP) – Undercover Israeli officers foiled an attempt by two Palestinian men to sell an ancient, valuable papyrus document on the black market, police said Wednesday.
The men were arrested at a Jerusalem hotel Tuesday after a sting operation lasting several weeks, police said. The 1,900-year-old Hebrew document, previously unknown and valued at millions of dollars, was rescued, and police showed it to reporters.
It was unclear where the two men obtained it, police and archaeologists said. Similar documents have been found in caves in the Judean Desert near the Dead Sea, where they have been preserved over the centuries by the dry climate, they said.
The most famous of those are the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient holy books and apocalyptic treatises thought to have been collected by an ascetic Jewish sect two millennia ago.
WYKOFF, Minn. (AP) – Several metal antique toys were stolen from Ed’s Museum in Wykoff, including a rare tin wind-up toy of a band of four mice.
The Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the burglary, which happened sometime between April 28 and May 4.
The most valuable item was a Marx Merrymakers set in its original box. It was made in the late 1920s and consists of a band of four mice with a piano and two chairs. It’s worth about $1,000.
The museum houses thousands of antiques, from movie posters to grocery products such as Jack Sprat Gloss Starch from the 1950s.
Museum tour guide Esther Evers said she believes the stolen antiques might be sold through Internet sites and hopes people will also look for them at antique shows.
Sheriff’s deputies are investigating.
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Information from: Post-Bulletin, http://www.postbulletin.com
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WS-05-07-09 1407EDT
In a deal finalized on May 8, 2009, Dan Morphy assumes sole ownership of the company he established in 2004. The new firm will be known as Dan Morphy Auctions, LLC, with all current staff retained.
The purchase package also includes the Adamstown Antique Gallery, the multi-dealer retail venue that serves as Morphy Auctions’ headquarters; and the semiannual event known as Morphy’s York Antique Toy Show. Both properties were part of the original sale to the Geppi companies in 2005.
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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – Spring is here, and that means the season has arrived for tropical print camp shirts, better known as Hawaiian shirts.
After a harsh winter, a change of attire can spark a change of attitude.
“The minute you put them on, you feel a little more relaxed,” said Doug Wood, chief operating officer of Seattle-based Tommy Bahama, one of the nation’s top sellers of upscale versions of Hawaiian shirts.
Hawaiian shirts have been riding one of their periodic waves of popularity in recent years, thanks to the influence of surfer chic. Despite their humble 1930s origins and iconoclastic image, Hawaiian shirts are a serious business and subject of academic study. And they are popular everywhere, said Linda Arthur, a textile professor at Washington State University in Pullman who has written several books about Aloha shirts, the preferred name among aficionados.
“The Aloha shirt has covered the globe,” Arthur said.
Aloha shirts were invented in the 1930s, when mom-and-pop tailors in Hawaii began making Western-style garments out of a common material, colorful Japanese kimono fabric. The shirts at first were sold to tourists, but eventually caught on with locals. Continue reading
“Well, these are your ’30s,” he says. “And this one was patented in 1898 but, actually, it was made in the 1900s. This one right here … ” He bends down to read an old inscription dulled by time. “This one was Nov. 5, 1912.”
You nod and peer closely at a few old machines. “So these are the Oliver Standard Visible Writer No. 3?” you say.
“Yeah,” says Jett.
And this one?
“That’s the same typewriter actually, just a different model. It’s mainly referred to as an Oliver Number 9.”
An old label is prominently placed on the front of the machine, so you read it aloud: “Oliver Typewriter Company. Chicago, USA. Keep machine cleaned and oiled.”
“Yeah, and this one definitely was not,” Jett says, and you detect just a dollop of indignation. Continue reading
He bought it for $200, suspecting he could resell it for five times that. Turns out, his inkling about the book’s value was more spot on than he knew. The Tulsa, Okla., man eventually discovered the book came from the Waco, Texas, drugstore where Dr Pepper was invented and includes a recipe titled D Peppers Pepsin Bitters.
“I began feeling like I had a national treasure,” said Waters, 59.
Dr Pepper’s manufacturer says the recipe is not the secret formula for the modern day soft drink, but the 8 1/2-by-15 1/2-inch book is expected to sell between $50,000 to $75,000 when it goes up for auction at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries on May 13.
“It probably has specks of the original concoction on its pages,” Waters said.
Waters discovered the book, its yellowed pages stained brown on the edges, underneath a wooden medicine bottle crate in a Shamrock, Texas, antiques store last summer. A couple months after buying it, he took a closer look as he prepared to sell it on eBay.
He noticed there were several sheets with letterheads hinting at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled “W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store.” An Internet search revealed Dr Pepper, first served in 1885, was invented at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton. Wade Morrison was a storeowner.
Faded letters on the book’s fraying brown cover say “Castles Formulas.” John Castles was a partner of Morrison’s for a time and was a druggist at that location as early as 1880, said Mary Beth Webster, collections manager at the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco.
As he gathered more information, Waters took a slower turn through the book’s more than 360 pages, which are filled with formulas for everything from piano polish to a hair restorer to a cough syrup. He eventually spotted the “D Peppers Pepsin Bitters” formula.
“It took three or four days before I actually realized what I had there,” Waters said.
The recipe written in cursive in the ledger book is hard to make out, but ingredients seem to include mandrake root, sweet flag root and syrup.
It isn’t a recipe for a soft drink, said Greg Artkop, a spokesman for the Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. He said it’s likely instead a recipe for a bitter digestive that bears the Dr Pepper name.
He said the recipe certainly bears no resemblance to any Dr Pepper recipes the company knows of. The drink’s 23-flavor blend is a closely guarded secret, only known by three Dr Pepper employees, he said.
Michael Riley, chief cataloger and historian for Heritage Auction Galleries, said they think it’s an early recipe for Dr Pepper.
“We just feel like it’s the earliest version of it,” he said.
He hasn’t, however, tested that theory by trying to mix up a batch. Neither has Waters; he’s thought about it but would need to find someone to decipher all the handwriting.
Jack McKinney, executive director of the Waco museum, surmised that Alderton might have been giving customers something for their stomachs and added some Dr Pepper syrup to make it taste better.
“I don’t guess there’s any definitive answer. It’s got to be the only one of its kind,” Riley said.
McKinney said the ledger book was bound to be popular with Dr Pepper collectors because it’s from the time the drink was invented.
Riley said the book was probably started around 1880 and used through the 1890s. It’s not known who wrote the Dr Pepper recipe in the book, but they don’t think it was the handwriting of Alderton or Morrison. Some of the formulas have Alderton’s name after them.
At first, Alderton’s drink inspired by the smells in the drugstore was called “a Waco.” “People would come in and say, ‘Shoot me a Waco,'” Riley said.
Soon renamed Dr Pepper, the drink caught on and other stores in town began selling it. Eventually, Alderton got out of the Dr Pepper business and Morrison and a man named Robert Lazenby started a bottling company in 1891.
Flipping through the pages of the ledger book takes one back to a time when drugstores were neighborhood hubs, selling everything from health remedies to beauty products mixed up by the stores’ chemists. And among the formulas being mixed up in drugstores were treats for the soda fountain. A two-page spread in Waters’ book has recipes for “Soda Water Syrups,” including pineapple, lemon and strawberry.
“There were very few national brands,” Riley said. “Their lifeblood was all their formulas.”
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On the Net:
Dr Pepper Museum, http://www.drpeppermuseum.com
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-ES-05-04-09 0751EDT
BARTLESVILLE, Okla. (AP) – Jane Phillips would no doubt be smiling to see her beloved jigsaw puzzles entertaining people visiting her home on Cherokee Avenue. The wife of oil giant Frank Phillips loved puzzles and was known to have one under assembly nearly all of the time on a bridge table in her library.
The puzzles she so enjoyed are back in circulation after more than two years of work by staff and volunteers at the Frank Phillips Home, which today is an Oklahoma Historical Society museum.
“I would drop by to see Granny almost every day after school,” said Marcus Low Jr., the Phillips’ grandson. “It seemed like she always had a puzzle she was working on.”
The 26 jigsaw puzzles, most of which are Parker Brothers Pastime Puzzles, had been stored away at the home for decades until now. Packaged in plain white boxes that provide no clue to the picture the combined jigsaw pieces ultimately will make, the puzzles were and are true challenges.
It took staff and volunteers 150 to 200 hours to put together the larger puzzles and about 30 hours to put together the smaller ones. The puzzle workers, who donned white gloves to protect the delicate pieces, worked two years to complete all the jigsaw projects.
Once the puzzles were assembled, Pat Krebs of Bartlesville framed them carefully using protective glass to shield the historic creations from sun damage.
Dating from the 1920s and 1930s, the wooden puzzles have elaborately shaped pieces. Many of the pieces are cut in the shapes of roosters, cats, alphabet letters and scrolling. The specially shaped pieces add another layer of artistry to the finished product.
“The puzzles are not only beautiful, but also record the events and attitudes of their time,” Frank Phillips Home director Jim Goss said.
Jigsaw puzzles for adults were first seen in the early 1900s and were quite a challenge. Puzzles were cut along color lines and were not interlocking. Not only were there no pictures on the boxes, the titles of the puzzles were very nonspecific. Puzzle enthusiasts might order jigsaws and bring them home without having any idea what the picture would be until all the pieces were assembled.
At the time the Phillips home was built, in 1908-09, Parker Brothers introduced their Pastime Puzzles, which featured pieces with recognizable shapes. These were so popular that Parker Brothers stopped making games and devoted its entire factory to puzzle production in 1909. Following this craze, puzzles continued as a regular adult diversion for the next two decades.
“They would have puzzle parties – especially among high society,” exhibit designer Karen Smith Woods said. “This is part of how they spent their time then. They would pick up puzzles in the fall and spend all winter working on them.”
The puzzles had not been seen since the Phillips family left the mansion. Exhibit organizers unveiled them now because the home is celebrating its 100th anniversary.
The exhibit is also timely considering the current national economic woes. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the popularity of jigsaw puzzles grew to staggering levels. Anne Williams, a leading historian of the American jigsaw puzzle, reports that in 1933, puzzle sales reached 10 million per week.
Psychologists explain their appeal as a way to escape the chaos of hard times and the opportunity to create something beautiful from a disordered array of individual pieces. During the 1930s, puzzle enthusiasts could rent a puzzle from their local store, just as DVDs are rented today.
It is not known when “Aunt Jane” became interested in jigsaw puzzles or how many she had. She was known to give puzzles away to friends and employees. Most of the puzzles she kept were of the Pastime Puzzle brand and their themes reflect her interests and the current events of the time.
Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WS-05-03-09 1345EDT
LONDON (AP) – A first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species book sold for about 40,000 pounds ($60,000) Thursday at an auction conducted by Keys.
Hamish Riley-Smith, a local book dealer, bought the work, which was still in its original embossed green binding, said Keys auctioneer Andrew Bullock.
Written for a lay audience, On the Origin of Species outlined Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which in turn provided the foundation for the modern understanding of evolution.
Keys, a Norwich, England-based auction house, said the book was one of 1,250 copies first printed in 1859.
This is a bumper year for Darwin fans, who are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the scientific luminary’s birth. Celebrations earlier this year included a landmark exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum, prayers at Darwin’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, and a host of parties, lectures and exhibits around the world.
The 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species is Nov. 24.
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On the Net:
Darwin’s Collected Works: http://darwin-online.org.uk/
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
AP-ES-04-30-09 1138EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) – Tony Bennett donated a watercolor he made of longtime friend Duke Ellington to the Smithsonian on Wednesday, the 110th anniversary of the jazz great’s birth.
The painting depicts Ellington with a bouquet of pink roses in the background. The jazz musician made a habit of sending Bennett a dozen roses when he wrote a new tune in hopes that Bennett would record the piece.
“Every time the roses came, I said, ‘Oh, Duke wrote another song,'” Bennett said.
The 15-time Grammy Award-winning singer said Ellington told him years ago to maintain a second art form beyond music.