Proper Way to Display Your Antiques and Collectibles

Sleepy Eye Pottery

One of the more popular potteries today is Sleepy Eye Pottery. Old Sleepy Eye was a Native American chief. Sleepy Eye is also the name of a town in southwestern Minnesota. The original Sleepy Eye flour mill was built in 1883, in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. 

At the turn of the 20^th century Sleepy Eye started a promotional line of pottery and other items. In 1903 they created a line of blue and grey Flemish ware made by the Weir Pottery of Monmouth, Ill., including salt bowls, butter crocks, vases and steins. The pieces of pottery were given away to with 50lb. barrels of flour as a promotion. However, the government intervened in the giveaways, perhaps because the rather heavy pottery pieces had a negative effect on the amount of flour that was contained in those 50lb. barrels. The stoneware pieces were later sold, printed with advertising, to grocery stores and such.

Today Sleepy Eye Pottery is highly priced by its collectors. Most people know about Sleepy Eye pottery because of the Indian face that is on a lot of the pottery. Many different companies have made the pottery and some collectors buy according to who made it. The Flemish pieces are harder to find and more valuable. Also the pottery is very big with people that collect country and general store items.

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Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts movement was an international movement in the decorative and fine arts that began in Britain and flourished in Europe and North America between 1880 and 1910,  emerging in Japan in the 1920s. It stood for traditional craftsmanship using simple forms, and often used medieval, romantic, or folk styles of decoration. 

It advocated economic and social reform and was essentially anti-industrial. It had a strong influence on the arts in Europe until it was displaced by Modernism in the 1930s, and its influence continued among craft makers, designers, and town planners long afterwards.

The term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least twenty years. It was inspired by the ideas of architect Augustus Pugin (1812–1852), writer John Ruskin (1819–1900), and designer William Morris (1834–1896).

The movement developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles, and spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and North America.  It was largely a reaction against the perceived impoverished state of the decorative arts at the time and the conditions.

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American Brilliant Cut Glass

"Cut glass" is glass that has been decorated entirely by hand by use of rotating wheels. Cuts are made in an otherwise completely smooth surface of the glass by artisans holding and moving the piece against various sized metal or stone wheels, to produce a predetermined pleasing pattern. 

Cutting may be combined with other decorative techniques, but "cut glass" usually refers to a glass object that has been decorated entirely by cutting.

Cut glass can be traced to 1,500 B.C in Egypt, where vessels of varying sizes were decorated by cuts made by what is believed to have been metal drills. Artifacts dating to the sixth century B.C. indicate that the Romans, Assyrians and Babylonians all had mastered the art of decoration by cutting.

Henry William Stiegel, an immigrant from Cologne, Germany, founded the American Flint Glass Manufactory in Manheim, Pennsylvania, and it was there in about 1771 that the first cut glass was produced in America.

The outbreak of World War I dealt the final blow to the fascinatingly brief birth, growth and decline of a uniquely American achievement. Brilliant cut glass. Lead oxide – an essential ingredient in glass made for cutting was needed for more urgent uses, and by the time the war ended, the few factories that had managed to survive used their resources to produce less costly glass.

Cloisonne

 

Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects, in recent centuries using enamel . The decoration is formed by first adding compartments to the metal object by  soldering or affixing gold, silver or brass wires or thin strips placed on their edges. These remain visible in the finished piece, separating the different compartments of the enamel or inlays, which are often of several colors. 

Cloisonné enamel objects are worked on with enamel powder made into a paste, which then needs to be fired in a kiln. In the Byzantine Empire techniques using thinner wires were developed to allow more pictorial images to be produced, mostly used for religious images and jewelry, and by then always using enamel. 

By the 14th century this enamel technique had spread to China, where it was soon used for much larger vessels such as bowls and vases; the technique remains common in China to the present day, and cloisonné enamel objects using Chinese-derived styles were produced in the West from the 18th century.

Flow Blue

Some sources claim that the coloring agent diffused by accident, allowing the cobalt oxide to slightly bleed outside of the lines of the design. Other sources say that the diffusion was intentional in order to soften the edges of the pattern. Perhaps it was an accident at first, with the result being so pretty that the practice became more common.

It took over 100 years for English potters to duplicate the salt-glazed earthenware that created the brilliant white background, along with the application of cobalt oxide that made the Oriental blue patterns so attractive.

In the late 1700s, English potters created a technique for imprinting a design on china called transferware:

·         A copper plate is engraved with a design and heated.

·         Cobalt oxide is applied onto the engraved copper plate.

·         Damp tissue paper is then applied to the engraved copper plate.

·         The tissue is lifted off the copper plate and then applied onto the pottery.

·         The pottery piece is placed in water so that the tissue paper floats off.

The introduction of transferware to the china industry created a product that was less expensive than imported, hand-painted Chinese porcelain. The affordable product was very attractive to the surging Victorian middle class.

At first, transferware Flow Blue patterns incorporated Oriental designs and motifs, including temples, pagodas, and Asian scenery. Later, the Victorian romantic sensibility created a market for floral and pastoral patterns that highlighted English culture.

Manufacturers found themselves with an abundance of factory seconds and thirds, rejected because the blue overflowed into the white more than usual, blurring the pattern lines excessively. The United States provided a market for these factory seconds. The low cost of these rejected, yet beautiful, pieces of blue-and-white dishware made Flow Blue popular with the middle and working class. From 1840 to 1870, the popularity of Flow Blue rose, and in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries it had its great heyday.

An interest in antiques created a new surge of popularity of Flow Blue for collectors in the late 1960s. Renewed interest in the late 20th century created demand for blue-and-white antique china as well as for reproductions for regular use in the home. Demand for blue-and-white antique china as well as for reproductions for regular use in the home.

Today Flow Blue is very collectable. The patterns and who make it determine the value. It’s not a popular as it used to be and overall is very affordable.

Minton Pottery

Minton's Ltd., was a major ceramics manufacturing company, originated with Thomas Minton (1765–1836) the founder of "Thomas Minton and Sons", who established his pottery factory in Stoke-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England, in 1793, producing earthenware. He formed a partnership, Minton & Poulson, c.1796, with Joseph Poulson who made bone china from c.1798 in his new near-by china pottery. When Poulson died in 1808, Minton carried on alone, using Poulson's pottery for china until 1816. He built a new china pottery in 1824. 

The products are more often referred to as "Minton", as in Minton china. Early Mintons products were mostly standard domestic tableware in blue transfer printed or painted earthenware, including the ever popular Willow pattern. From c. 1798 production included bone china from his partner Joseph Poulson's near-by china pottery. China production ceased c. 1816 following Joseph Poulson's death in 1808, recommencing in a new pottery in 1824.

On his death, Minton was succeeded by his son Herbert Minton (1793–1858) who developed new production techniques and took the business into new fields, notably including decorative encaustic tile making, through his association with leading architects and designers including Augustus Pugin and, it is said, Prince Albert.

Minton entered into partnership with Michael Hollins in 1845 and formed the tile making firm of Minton, Hollins & Company, which was at the forefront of a large newly developing market as suppliers of durable decorative finishes for walls and floors in churches, public buildings, grand palaces and simple domestic houses. 

The firm exhibited widely at trade exhibitions throughout the world and examples of its exhibition displays are held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. where the company gained many prestigious contracts including tiled flooring for the United States Capitol.

Majolica

Maiolica, also called Majolica is Italian tin-glazed pottery dating from the Renaissance period. It is decorated in colours on a white background, sometimes depicting historical and mythical scenes, these works known as istoriato wares ("painted with stories"). 

By the late 15th century, several places, mainly small cities in northern and central Italy, were producing sophisticated pieces for a luxury market in Italy and beyond. The name is thought to come from the medieval Italian word for Majorca, an island on the route for ships bringing Hispano-Moresque wares from Valencia to Italy. 

Tin glazing creates a brilliant white, opaque suroface for painting. The colors are applied as metallic oxides or as fritted underglazes to the unfired glaze, which absorbs pigment like fresco, making errors impossible to fix, but preserving the brilliant colors. Sometimes the surface is covered with a second glaze (called coperta by the Italians) that lends greater shine and brilliance to the wares. 

In the case of lustred wares, a further firing at a lower temperature is required. Kilns required wood as well as suitable clay. Glaze was made from sand, wine lees, lead compounds and tin compounds.

E-bay and the Shop

Its a new day and the shop is going to be changing the way we list on E-bay. I'm pretty much is charge of posting every thing that we sell on-line. We are trying some thing new and I'm doing some research how to best optimize our sales on E-bay. So I will be researching what are the top selling antiques, and collectibles on E-bay.

There are a lot of things you have to take in consideration. What price point to sell things at, what time to post, and if you want to go with an auction or a buy it now. So we will be not be posting as much furniture and focusing more on smaller things that have to be shipped. I am still hoping that we will still focus on high end items. I feel that they always sell well on-line.

So there are lots of new things to learn and include into our on-line sales. I'm hoping eventually we will have our own website and sell through it. The internet seems to be the new wave of the future and we might as well take advantage of it.

Welcome to my Blog

Well I finally started a Blog. I want to welcome everyone and hope that you will enjoy the time you spend on here. The purpose of this blog is to expand on the Antique Man theme. Here we will talk about Antiques and Collectibles. I will also be posting about my life as an Antique Dealer. So I hope that you enjoy it and continue with me on this journey.