The collector's whatnot

OLD RUGS, OLD IRON
OLD BRASS, OLD GLASS

A Brief Brochure on the Search
For the Antique

By a Professional

Jared P. Kilgallen, J.D. and R.P.

(A Second-Cousin of Professor Kilgallen)

The lure of the antique! Who is there that has not thrilled and flushed at the words?

I confess at the outset: I am a collector and you may even call me by that damning word “dealer,” too, if you choose, since, like all non-amateur collectors, I part with items of my collection from time to time; or, if you prefer to put it so, from day to day. No collection is a permanency until it is established in an endowed museum: all private collections are constantly in a state of fluctuation, or flux; for the taste of the true collector is as constantly altering. Other contingencies also affect collections. For instance, no collection of Colonial utensils is safe from carelessness, and I have known a pair of the virtually priceless old hand-wrought 1852 B-mark Brunswick sheep-clippers to be thrown out upon an ash-heap by an Irish housemaid under the impression that they were valueless even to herself. (I know this because those very clippers formed a temporary part of my own possessions immediately afterward.)

Every collector is aware also that after the visits of even the best-introduced people almost any small article in a collection may be missing; and under such circumstances the tracing of the lost item may prove too embarrassing to be considered. My good friend, Dr. G—— R—— Vet. M.D. and Surg. of Erie, Pennsylvania, missed a valuable metal medallion of President Rutherford B. Hayes (circa ’78) in this way, after the visit of a number of his wife’s relatives to the famous old G—— R—— Manse at Erie. What is a collector to do in a case like this, when a complaint might endanger actual estrangement? Dr. G—— R—— informed me himself that when he discovered his loss he thought the matter over for some days and decided to say nothing about it.

Now, to take up my own specialties (if I may call them so), I have the temerity to assume that my long experience in securing and handling these has possibly given me a little knowledge that may be of use to the amateur collector. I do not claim too much, perhaps, when I state that hooked rugs and early American iron and glass were familiar items in my possession long before the present craze for collecting them came to rage so wildly and widely. I have had exquisite hooked rugs, and rare fragments of such rugs, for instance, as far back as 1886.

American glass has always been a passion (if I may use the word) with me. In fact, among my friends and relatives, my search for really good glass has made me almost something of a by-word, jocularly speaking. The reader will easily connote that what I consider good glass is not a thing to be found every day in the week and that I am somewhat particular in my taste. Well, I confess it, and to substantiate the confession perhaps I should essay some description of what I mean by “really good glass.”

Glass, to be perfect in my eyes, should be absolutely in the condition in which it left the retailer who sold it to the private purchaser. I am aware that broken, cracked, or partially decomposed pieces have some value to the beginner, and I myself do often handle them, as a dealer, it is true. But it is sound glass that has kept me so diligently on the search day after day, year after year. Sandwich and Stiegel I leave to the beginner who likes to pay $17 for a ruby finger-bowl that was a drug on the market at two-for-a-quarter five years ago; who gladly signs a check for $125 in exchange for a dozen Benjamin Franklin cup-plates regularly turned out at the Sandwich factory for thirty cents a dozen, up to the time when the strike closed production in General Benjamin Harrison’s administration; but for myself—well, even a quaint old Colonial Sandwich lamp chimney, manufactured during Grover Cleveland’s first term, or as far back as the supremacy of Chester A. Arthur, does not excite me. A friend of mine proudly exhibits a lamp chimney said to have been persistently mistaken for a spy-glass by Lafayette himself on a Christmas Eve, on the occasion when he was so well entertained by the citizens of Yonkers, during his second visit to this country. I have never made the slightest effort to obtain this bit.

No. The perfect glass of my dreams—for I admit I am always dreaming of it—the perfect glass of my dreams is a bit of plain glass, very simple. It may be either pressed glass or moulded glass—I care not; and it may be browned in the making, or clear; I am indifferent about that. I do not even insist upon its antiquity, though the older it is the better, of course; but what I do value is the state of preservation in which I find it. That is to say, as I have already pointed out, a specimen of glass, to be really worth while, should be precisely in the condition in which it left the retailer’s shelf to pass to the original purchaser’s possession, and, above all, THE ORIGINAL CONTENTS SHOULD BE INTACT.

I admit that this is asking a great deal. It is more than one requires, for instance, of seventeenth-century Venetian glass, or of old Bohemian or of Bristol. Shall I be accused of jingoism when I say that I, personally, have found perfection only in American glass? (A Hungarian collector, now resident in this country, once asserted to me that he had found a sample of Scotch glass in the state I hold to be really worth while; but he was absolutely unwilling to show it, though I made every effort to induce him; and I ended by doubting him.) I do not claim that I have found worth-while glass frequently. Alas, no! For though I have looked and looked and hoped and hoped for it during many years, I have actually discovered but two perfect examples—only two! The first (a superb thing from Kentucky) I found absolutely by chance in the queerest, quaintest little place imaginable, up a passageway behind a hotel, early in the morning after the election of President Taft; and the second (not so pure, but nevertheless wonderful) I discovered only last September, among some shrubberies close to a summer mansion on the rugged coast of Massachusetts. What these discoveries meant to me, only one who seeks with a like patient enthusiasm could comprehend. I shall not describe my sensations; it is enough to say that there are pleasures one must keep to one’s self. I did not even speak of my discoveries at the time; but it may not be out of place for me to say now that they made me very happy. Indeed, after the second, I wandered for hours as in a dream, and even on the following day, when I chanced to meet a friend, he passed me, and then looked round over his shoulder at me for some time, all without recognizing me.

Now, a word upon the manner and means of collecting. As will readily be supposed, I do not follow the ordinary channels or patronize the customary marts of trade in antiques. I have nothing to say against the Antiquity Shops as such; and I freely admit that many of them contain genuine prizes for the persistent seeker; but after all they are for the amateur of careless purse. It is true that in a shop one CAN pick up a very small bit of rare value for nothing sometimes; and I have done it successfully; but the chances are against it, and, as it is always risky, usually I have thought better not even to try. No, the shops are not my field of endeavor. I say it in all modesty, but I have done better among the garnered old treasures of one quiet, private house than in a hundred Antiquity Shops.

In general, a collector needs what I may be pardoned for calling the Collector’s Eye. To illustrate my meaning: How many of my readers have not at some time missed an heirloom, or other treasured object that has simply disappeared? We all have these losses. The missing object has, most probably (as we say), just been “thrown out.” The true Collector’s Eye is ever busy in those places or receptacles where things are “thrown out.” Of course, most of one’s discoveries made in this manner consist of portions, rather than of entire objects of vertu; nevertheless, I have thus picked up many of my best things.

But the true Collector’s Eye is never at rest. Take an old gate in a fence, or a dilapidated building of any sort: the ordinary gaze may pass over these surfaces with mere ennui, but many of my best old hinges, latches, etc., have been wrenched from such environments, merely in passing, as it were. The Collector’s Eye will note the very fall of a fine old bit of blacksmithing from some careless horse. No doubt the uninitiated critic will cry “Fie!” upon this. “What? Are there collectors who collect horseshoes?” And may I ask: “Why not, indeed?” Aside from the intrinsic value latent in any fine old bit of iron, no true quoit-player would miss an opportunity to make a contribution to the beautifying and decoration of his home club. And let me whisper in the ear of the Philistine skeptic for his better information: Is he aware that in the finest Louis XV vitrine in the palace of Prince Oscar Schofield, at Zorn, under glass and reposing upon delicate shagreen velours, is the gilded shoe of the steed of Balaam? If no collector had picked it up, would it be there?

But I would impress upon the beginner: he must not be content with merely picking up things. He must, indeed, pick up what he can, wherever there is a fair opportunity; but I should not stand where I do to-day among collectors, had I stopped with merely “picking up” things. True, I have picked up many and many’s the good thing; but my BEST things were not obtained in this way.

I was quite a young man when I began collecting, taking with me a sack, and sometimes a wheelbarrow also, for this purpose, on my daily rambles. One day it struck me that a splendid old Colonial house, which I had often passed, must contain many lovely, quaint old things that would be charming for a person of taste to number among his curios. There was a “To Let” sign upon the house, and I confess that the thought of the difficulties in my way dismayed me. To seek out the agent, to obtain from him the name and location of the owner of the house, who might prove to be, perhaps, a resident of some distant city difficult of access—to do all this and then bargain and bicker with the owner (in case I reached him), to chaffer over prices, and in the end, very likely, to find him obdurately avaricious: what was the use? Seldom have I been more discouraged; but I think I may have mentioned that I am a collector. To the real collector, discouragement is never despair.

After thinking the matter over, I decided to go about it in the straightforward, manly way, instead of adopting the roundabout and involved means I have just sketched. There was the house; the frank thing was simply to go in and see whether or not it contained the treasures that the noble old classic façade seemed to suggest. And this was the course I sensibly determined to follow.

Owing to certain technical difficulties, I was obliged to make my visit after dusk had fallen, and then only by the inadequate illumination of a small, patented electric lamp; nevertheless, even so hasty and umbrous (if I may use the word) an examination of the contents of the place as I was able to make proved disappointing. The house had been fitted up for tenancy, not for the owner to live in, and the collecting of scarce an object in the whole interior paid for the expense of removing it in a small hired vehicle.

However, all houses are not alike; not even all unoccupied ones, and it should be emphasized that in this first experience of mine I overlooked something of importance. Many a time, afterward, in examining rental properties and residences offered for sale, I have recalled with a mournful smile that first omission; and seldom indeed has my patient search gone unrewarded by beautifully patined sections of brass or copper, perhaps, and some fine old bit of plumbing.

Let me say again, the Collector’s Eye overlooks nothing, and the great point is, not to follow the fad, but to anticipate it. There is not a single class of antiques that I did not collect long before the amateurs began to “pay prices” for such things, and I am now principally engaged in collecting the antiques of the future. I know better than anybody else what the priceless old things of the future will be, because I have formed the habit of picking them up at the time when they are thrown out.

Now, let me add just one word upon a bit of old textile now in my possession. I have hanging upon my wall a superb bit of old Kuppenheimer weaving. People say to me: “How in the world did you ever find a piece of that color? We have specimens of Kuppenheimer, but ours are not like THAT! How DID you obtain it?”

I shake my head and smile. A collector’s secrets are not for everybody.

And yet—and yet, I appreciate the honor that has been done me by the eminent association under the auspices of which this book is compiled, and I will drop just a hint. Reader, your Kuppenheimer (in case you are so fortunate as to possess one) can be of the same faint, elusive, subtly napless shade, if you will treat yours as I did mine.

And withal, I am compelled to admit that the unique quality of MY Kuppenheimer was the result of an accident. I will tell you part and let you guess the rest—if you can—and if you do guess it, you will have a Kuppenheimer worth owning.

I did not obtain my Kuppenheimer from Rochester. In fact, it had passed through several hands before it came to me, and then, as it still had that peculiar garment-like quality, which a real Kuppenheimer often possesses, I wore it, myself, for several seasons. In time the patina began to alter noticeably, but it was not thus that it acquired the sheen I have mentioned. However, I found myself somewhat conspicuous, and in the autumn of 1921 I placed the Kuppenheimer among my collections, which I keep on the other side of my apartment, opposite the window.

Now during the following winter, I happened to notice that the glass in the larger pane of the window became defective, during an absence of mine upon a collector’s excursion. There are a great many boys in my neighborhood, and I am a special favorite among them. One of them, evidently not knowing of my absence, had been trying to attract my attention with a large pebble and the window glass had thus been inadequate. Without thinking much of the incident, I placed the Kuppenheimer in a position that would remedy the inadequacy of the window.

Fellow-collectors, have you guessed the secret? In the spring I found the Kuppenheimer to be as I have described it. That is the true story of what is perhaps not undeservedly known as the Kilgallen Kuppenheimer.... I never wear it now, except upon Inauguration Day, in honor of a new President....

People say I am trustful to leave the treasure in my apartment when I go out, but the Kilgallen Kuppenheimer is much, much too well known to be stolen. Any thief who would even consider such a proceeding, knows perfectly well what he would get, too.