We Might As Well Call Them Memory Bracelets!

Vintage Sterling Silver Charm Bracelet With 28 Charms $325.00

I believe in memory, and the way objects are understood to hold memory, to tell stories, and act as place markers; to me that is what Vintage Charm Bracelets do – They Hold Memories…

That’s what makes them so popular; that there is a story contained, and artfully dangling from each and every one of them…

“Memories, light the corners of my mind…”

Vintage Sterling Silver Charm Bracelet With 27 Charms $250.00

I think that it is a bit of a pity, that charm bracelets are not more explicitly defined as memory bracelets, or used to tell the story of a life – used as a narrative device; I just think that would be so rich if…they were.

If Your Grandmother Told the Story This Charm Bracelet Contains…

Vintage Sterling Charm Bracelet With 45 Charms $450.00

My suggestion to you, if you know that your Mother or Grandmother has a Vintage Charm Bracelet – is to have them tell the story that their charm bracelet contains. And to have them do that in front of a video camera, this could be an incredible and easy way to gather and collect a part of her history, that might otherwise be lost.

In a somewhat related post I wrote about a person who does this sort of thing for people: Estate Sales Photographs What Happens Too Them

Charmed I am Sure, May I drape from your wrist…?

Vintage Sterling Charm Bracelet With 29 Charms $250.00

Elegant, Classy, and Fun…Vintage Sterling Charm Bracelets are a great way to make your own individual fashion statement. Every one of them is different, each with their own story.

They are for the most part not name branded, or designer themed, but are more an expression of one woman’s experience navigating through her world, and more often than not they represent her story of love – how she loved, where she loved and with whom she loved…

Puffy Heart Charms Are The Big Ticket Charms…

We Have A Vintage Charm Bracelet With 3 Puffy Heart Charms $135.00

What do you think about Vintage Charm Bracelets as objects of memory…?

Do you have a Charm Bracelet with an interesting story?

Let Us Know…

By

Martin Codina

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Antique Dental Model From: Phisick Medical Antiques

We have to eat because we are so very hungry – like everyday 365 days a year. And we have to have variety, we don’t want to eat the same thing everyday…we get kind of bored by the same old same old. So we seek out the exotic – the new, and that’s what we consume.

Maybe that’s OK when it comes to food, variety being the spice of life and all, but what about the way our hunger translates to fashions and furnishings? Is it still OK to always seek out the new? Is it at all unreasonable to continue to demand that new items be manufactured, used a few years, then to load them onto a truck, and cart them to a landfill?

Buying Antiques Is A Small Way To Save The World

Tooth Shaped Drinking Cup Sold By Lyon & Turnbull For £380

It’s this writers observation that the biggest consumers of home furnishings are younger people, somewhere in the age range between 25 and 45 years old. Guess what, they are not buying a lot of antiques, they’re instead making the decision to purchase home furnishings of recent manufacture.

Fashion is the engine of so much new commerce, which is great. New fashions are wonderful expressions of a cultures creativity, and that creativity has a trickle effect throughout the economy – which is great as well. But what about fashion, and the search for the next Big Thing’s effect on the environment? How many trees does it take to furnish a house?

Take a Long Sip From The Past

Sold By Cowans $510.00	Sold By Cowans $206.00	Sold By Cowans $316.00

The Question Might Better Be: How Can You Meld The Old With The New

Yesterday, I was in the San Francisco home of a wonderful woman who is in my opinion, designing her interiors to reflect the past in such a way that they are still clearly useful to today’s consumers. She had an amazing kitchen with all the latest modern conveniences, but it was also decked out with antique lighting and vintage china and cookware. Every wall sconce and ceiling light fixture seemed to come out of an old Moe Bridges catalog. Art Deco furnishing were highlighted here and there throughout her house; paired with objects a’ la Steampunk. Did I mention the Marshall Stacks and Vintage Guitars…?

She is kind of like an Inspired Design Diva…I wish there were more like her. People who can show others how to incorporate antiques in such a visually stunning way, but at the same time keep the feeling of the house fresh and somehow contemporary.

Eat, But Don’t Have Your Hunger Create Negative Effects

Antique Ivory Dental Model with Hinged Jaws Sold By Skinner For $1,293.00

Here Are 5 Environmentally Positive Ways You Can Furnish Your Home…

1. Purchase used high end designer furniture from auctions.
2. Decide that 50% of all new acquisitions will be vintage
3. Tell Antique Dealers what you really want, they need to know.
4. Go to Estate Sales, their variety will surprise you.
5. Look for deals on Craigslist.

Now Sit Back And Enjoy Your Less Environmentally Painful Surroundings

Antique Dentist Chair Sold By Skinner For an Undisclosed Amount

By

Martin Codina

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Tales From a Typewriter Collector “The Crandall”

Guest Column by Martin Howard

CRANDALL ~ New Model Made By The Crandall Machine Company, Croton, N.Y. 1886

Lucien S. Crandall was born in Broome County New York in 1844. He would become one of the great early typewriter pioneers during the 1860s and 1870s. He patented perhaps ten typewriters with about six being manufactured. All of his designs are very intriguing and brilliantly imagined machines. The Crandall New Model was his third typewriter to be manufactured, but the first to have a fair success in sales.

A Luxury Typewriter at an Affordable Cost

Inlaid Mother of Pearl Detail Of The Crandall Typewriter

The Crandall New Model is one of the most beautiful typewriters ever made. It has a wonderful curved and ornate Victorian design and is lavishly decorated with hand painted roses, accented with inlaid mother-of-pearl!

It seems remarkable that the Crandall, with all this fine additional craftsmanship, had such a low selling price of $50.00 As most other full size typewriters were selling for $100.00

The Crandall Typewriter Had A Unique Type Cylinder

The Crandall was one of the very first typewriters to print from a ‘Single-Element’ or ‘Type-Cylinder’, well before IBM’s ‘Golf Ball’. This Type Cylinder about the size of your finger, rotates to the selected character and will rise up one or two positions for capitals and punctuations – before striking the roller; achieving 84 characters with only 28 keys.

It is made of hard rubber with a metal shield and type. The holes below the type are for alignment, so when the type-sleeve moves towards the roller to print, it pushes against a little metal rod that slides into the hole, insuring perfect alignment.

The Crandall catalog describes another key feature of this machine. The “Type-Cylinder may be removed, and another with an entire change of type inserted in the machine by simply lifting one cylinder from its position and replacing it by another; by this method any language or style of type may be used, including special styles of type for manifold work.”

The Crandall Type Cylinder Was Changeable!

Scripted fonts were available in order to make the type face look like the finest of handwriting.

One might well wonder why the Type-Cylinder did not become the standard in typewriter design and why typewriters with type-bars did, until it made its reappearance in the IBM ‘Golf Ball’ in 1961.

The reason was speed. Even though type-bars are in essence many separate hammers striking away, each hammer has a very simple and quick action, whereas the type-cylinder is moved through a more complicated mechanical dance, which reduces its speed to respond to the keys being struck. The IBM ‘Golf Ball’, with its single-type element, was able to move very fast because it was designed to be driven by an electric motor, type-bars had finally become antiquated.

The Crandall has a gracefully curved keyboard with just two rows of keys.

(While the modern typewriter has 4 rows of keys.)

This was achieved by having a double shift function with an ‘F. & P.’ key for figures and punctuation and a ‘CAP’s’ key for capitals. So for example, to type the number ‘2’ you would push the F. & P. key and while depressed you would push the ‘P 2’ key. Then release both. The double shift function was not unique to the Crandall.

1898 Photo showing a Crandall New Model in use

(Courtesy of The Peter and Cornelia Weil Typewriter Archives).

Article by Martin Howard

Editing by Martin Codina

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Not Exactly like one of these Vintage Bicycles

…except it did have Big Ol’ Balloon Tires…

Elgin Twin 20 Bicycle (circa 1936) Sold by Copake Auctions For $358.00

When I was a kid of around 8 or 9 years old, my dad went to a local junk yard and bought an old derelict bike. Here’s what I mean by “Derelict” – the bike was falling apart. It needed a complete overhaul: It had shredded tires, a rusted frame, and not one iota of non corroded chrome.

That was OK with my My Dad because he liked to fix things, as a depression child, and a one time paperboy; he knew his way around sprockets and spokes and handlebars.

Back Then People Rode Bicycles More Leisurely

JC Higgins Bicycle (circa 1950′s) Sold by Copake Auctions For $341.00

The first thing my Dad did was to completely take the bike apart. And then he sanded away all the rust and old paint almost down to the bare metal, and then hanging the bike from wires he had hung from the the ceiling rafters of our Norwalk CA. garage, he spray painted the frame red; to me it looked like – fire engine red…or at the very least a speedy, very fast red…

In Those Days We Never Once Thought About Mountain Biking

Cleveland Welding Roadmaster Supreme (circa 1937) Sold By Copake Auctions For $14,300.00

After all the painting and such, my Dad still had to search high and low for a store that still sold the right tires for this bike; no one seemed to have the balloon tires this bike needed. It was the early 60′s and most of my friends were riding around on Stingrays and 10 speeds. We needed Balloon Tires…big bulbous balloon tires…with plenty of thick and road worthy rubber…

I don’t remember where my Dad found those replacement tires, but he did find them, and afterwards he put the whole bike back together.

I loved that bike.

I Rode My Bike As A Get Away Bike…and get away I did

Monark Super Deluxe  Bicycle (circa 1940′s) Sold by Copake Auctions For $715.00

And my friends snickered and laughed at the bike my Dad had worked so hard and had taken so long to reconstruct. They said that it was not a fashionable bike, that it looked big and clunky – they thought that it was funny looking too, and well I kinda had to admit that it was a big ol’ funny and clunky looking bike as well…

Except for one thing: Its big sprocket held a secret.

Colson Commander Bicycle (circa 1937) Sold By Copake Auctions For 2,310.00

In our little neighborhood, on “Our Block” as we used to call it, all us kids held regular bike races. The true test of a bike was how fast it would go. To be a hero you had to win the race. You had to pump your little heart out, and cross the finish line first to achieve the checkered flag and your friends hearty congratulations. I had never won one of those races.

On the big day – the first race day of my Big Ol’ Red Bike, I was nervous even though my Dad had explained the mystery and physics behind my bikes big sprocket. But I am not sure if I believed him about all that. I just wanted to win…once.

On Your Mark, Get Set…Go!

Restored Shelby Airflow Speedway Special (circa 1938) Sold By Copake Auctions For $1,760.00

Here’s the thing about a big sprocket bike: They are slow starting, and it takes a while to gain any momentum, and you have to work at it, but then the bike really starts to move, and the bikes that were so far ahead, were suddenly less far ahead, and then I was neck and neck with the leader who was furiously pumping…and then I passed him.

Dang…! It felt Great To Be Winner.

By Martin Codina

All Images and Auction Results From: Copake Auctions, an auction house who by the way, would make an excellent choice to sell your vintage bicycle collection through.

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(Ivory Model Of a Noh Mask Sold by Woolley & Wallisy for £300)

I have a theory about the way masks and such are viewed by the Western World, that they are misunderstood or feared. I mean some seem to think that it is a strange activity to attend an archaic theater form such as Noh, but they’re OK with it happening somewhere distantly.

But hang one of these masks on the walls of your house, and all bets are off as to whether or not some of your friends might think you’re a bit off your rocker.

But Who Doesn’t Wear a Mask Somewhere, Sometimes…?

(Noh Mask of Tsurimanako Sold by Christies for $5,040.00)

Noh Theater and the masks the actors wear perfectly reflect our own natural tendency to shade and hide our feelings and intentions when in certain situations. I mean, is it your inner pure face shining through when you are deep in some business negotiation, or when you’re out on the town…?

I don’t think so. What I think is that these masks represent various archetypes of character, archetypes we readily recognize when we see them, and ones we readily employ when we need to.

Masks are our Forte or Attempts at Defense

(Noh Mask of Deigan Sold by Christies for $11,400.00)

I collect masks, I’ve never been sure why exactly, maybe because there is so much mystery contained in the head behind the face. What is being thought about behind the facade, what is being desired in that moment by the person I am talking to. How can I make them smile…

By the way what is the difference between hanging a picture on a wall and a mask…not sure there really is one…

Noh and its Masks Perfectly Reflect Safer Ways at Drama Than Acting Out

(Noh Mask of Washibana Akujo Sold by Christies for $7,200.00)

If you ever wonder what might be the counter point in the West to Masks in the East, try hanging a child’s doll on a wall. Creepy right? Every culture has a multitude of ways to fetishize “States, Feelings, Fears, and Beliefs.” Native or Eastern Cultures don’t have a lock on this – everyone does it to some extant or other.

(Okame Noh Mask Sold by Eldred’s Auction for $690.00)

Article By

Martin Codina

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