Material Culture Minute: Where did you Get that Giant Papier-mâché Boar?

Perusing a small Shriners' Hall antiques show in New Castle, Delaware, today, I could not help but stand aghast at and bemused by the sight of a giant papier-mâché boar perched at one dealer's booth.

Yep, he's a biggin.

As I engaged the dealer in a conversation about where he got it (Lancaster County), when he got it (yesterday), and how it had been used (who knows--but it's "early"), I made Tyler take photos so I could share this unusual material culture specimen with you on the blog. The asking price--$300--was a little steep for me, especially once I started thinking about conservation and preservation concerns (enough to make an integrated pest manager's head spin)...not to mention finding space for it.

Could I suspend it from a ceiling?

Probably, but there must be better ways to drop a grad student's coin jar fortune. 

As the succulent smell of snack bar bacon wafted through the air, I continued my stroll through the Hall, which was, I should point out for those looking for a wedding reception site, adorned with a disco ball.

"Stayin' Alive" at a Sunday morning Antiques Show in northern Delaware

As I poked through the tools and jewels, a man I did not recognize at first (so sorry!) said to me, "Hey! Did you win the raffle again this year?" 

("Is this what is feels like to be a movie star who's recognized in the neighborhood Brooklyn coffee shop?," I asked myself.)

Reminded of my waning luck, I explained that, sadly, no, I don't think I won the Paper Americana Show door prize twice in four years. 

(I did win it two times out of four, though. As Meatloaf sang, "two out of three ain't bad," right?)

Still a bit dejected by the boar dealer's asking price, I moved on to less costly (but not less fascinating) pastures. With the boar (and that bacon) on my mind, I perused a container of snapshots priced at 25 cents each. I've really been enjoying snapshots. They're still rather inexpensive in comparison to daguerreotypes, tintypes, etc., yet they offer fun glimpses into the past that you just can't find in cased photos due to the limitations of the medium. For instance, here's a fascinating photograph of a woman standing behind row house additions in the early twentieth century. What can we learn about turn-of-the-century American life by examining these transformations? (Amanda Casper, a colleague at the University of Delaware, is asking just that. Check out her blog here.) 

After a few minutes, one of the snapshot dealers (The Collector Gene) asked me if I had looked through that box previously. I shook my head no, but she meant that I had looked through the photos at none other than the Paper Americana Show just last month. Silly me. 

"Well," I said, "I haven't seen anything yet that I recognize, so I might as well keep looking!" 

We had a good laugh and exchanged cards. Apparently these friendly folks have an antiquing blog also.

On a roll, Tyler and I rounded out the early afternoon with a stroll through the ever entertaining New Castle Farmers' market flea. 

A giraffe greeted us.

Does the giraffe help out with the 2AM emergency rug cleaning calls?

We pawed through the treasures displayed inside cardboard boxes on the ground.

Clearly, this is serious business.

(No hand-inscribed early nineteenth-century shawls today.)

And others clamored for a good find at a costume jewelry table.

In terms of sheer frenzy, this might be the flea market equivalent for Loehmann's legendary "grab the gown sale." 

I made it home with a few snapshots as well as some good stories. The next time someone asks me what I like about Delaware, instead of using the 'ole line that it's close to a lot of cities, the antiquing/flea culture will top the list.

Material Culture Minute: The Best Things in Life are (Almost) Free

A few weeks ago, just before the spring semester began, Tyler and I ventured to the Paper Americana Show in Elkton, Maryland. Paper and ephemera shows attract an interesting group of people. Paper and ephemera collectors are definitely different from collectors who gravitate toward furniture, ceramics, etc. Many ephemera booths categorize their stock into themes. For instance, someone who specializes in trade cards and trade catalogues often creates categories such as "food and drink;" "health and medicine;" "animals"; "sports"; specific states such as "Delaware"; "foreign," etc. Why? Because paper and ephemera collectors tend to collect items that fall into only a handful of themes. I didn't quite get this until after I attended a few of these shows and found myself looking through only a handful of themes (health and medicine, needlework, etc.). This makes sense, as paper and ephemera shows feature way more stock than a regular antiques show does. You couldn't go through it all if you wanted to. The problem arises when you run into a collector interested in all things "Delaware" who takes over not only the "Delaware" box of postcards, menus, car dealership advertisements, etc., but also a three feet perimeter around the Delaware box. That means that Connecticut and Florida collectors will have to wait for an untold number of minutes to see if they can find any treasures in their respective boxes. Not all paper and ephemera collectors are this territorial, but there are enough out there to make browsing difficult. Beware.

At any rate, Tyler and I didn't find anything extraordinary, but we picked up a few interesting photos and other pieces of ephemera for a few dollars here and a few dollars there.

For example, here is a great late nineteenth-century tintype featuring some ladies wearing identical plaid or checked skirts.



And here, we have a snapshot of a woman in a well-stocked general store.



And who can't resist shoes? Below is a 1866 receipt for a pair of shoes. The cordwainer in question worked in his trade through the nineteenth century in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, in York County, and he also served in the Civil War.



Here, we have a late nineteenth-century trade catalogue for paper collars. Tyler and I were hoping that the brand name was the same as the one of the paper collar box I purchased in Michigan in January, but, alas, we misremembered the name. Either way, the catalogue can be used in conversation with the contemporaneous box.



And finally, I got all this at a steep discount. About a week ago, I found an envelope in my mailbox from the Singerley Fire Company in Elkton, MD. I immediately thought of the paper show and the door prize drawing I entered, but I also wondered if I was being tapped to donate to a firehouse 20 miles away.

Sure enough, the envelop contained a lovely note congratulating me on winning ($25, which covered about 80% of the total cost of my purchases) and letting me know that they hoped that I had had a lovely time!