Saturday, August 18, 2012
RANDOM NU NEW HOARD
RANDOM MAY TRIP W/ THE DANES
i knew i had more antigo pic
RANDOM LURE
RANDOM LANDS & PEOPLES
RANDOM 341 OBJECT
ANTIQUE LANDSCAPE signed oil HORRIBLE CONDITION BUT IT DON'T STINK MUCH-$42
Don’t leave! You just got here, for-cryin’-out-loud.
The “Keyword” in this listing is “empathy,” and there is a point to be made.
Never in the 15 years we’ve been offering magnificent treasures stuff on eBay have we seen the number of items listed get so low. Both of us have been down, as in “not up to snuff.” Never have so few achieved so little. We even got a few days behind in packing and shipping.
We’re both on the mend and even more able to empathize with this pitiful old painting. When one gets old, stuff starts falling apart. Personally, I deal with it by getting cranky. My dear spouse, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, must find other ways to cope because squeezing her in atop the “crankiness scale” would prove equally as challenging as graphing my political leanings. There is little room to stick a pin to the left of Senator Bernie, “the Most Honorable Gentleman from Vermont,” and S-W-M-B-O shattered all records for crankiness long before her 16th birthday and was, even at such a tender age, widely recognized as a crankiness savant.
A dirt road skirts the south bank of a farm pond where white water lilies drop their petals, and an evening chill whispers secrets of the approaching fall. Seldom traveled, its destination of interest to none save a few old men, the narrowing byway passes near yet seems to ignore a lonely farmhouse as it steals westward where, moments before achieving a sublime oneness with infinity, it is consumed, burned out by a fiery sunset. This inevitable vanishing is witnessed solely and dispassionately by a wake of buzzards, their discordant collective unwinding in silence, perhaps fostering unlikely visions of a bonne bouche, having duteously picked clean the putrefying remains of a beautiful day.
Dang it! I seem to have had one of my “spells,” led astray by those annoying voices in my head. Even though I have no memory of it, as I look back at all that stuff I just said describing the scene, I fear I may have been temporarily possessed by a demon.
However, though a lot of the surface is gone or planning to depart very soon, and the frame has shed, and is continuing to shed, large chunks of once gilded gesso, it’s not a very big painting. The darn thing is only 9 ½” by 20 ½” overall, and the stretcher holding what’s left of the painting on canvas measures a mere 7 ¼” by 18 ¼”. (It shouldn't be all that much of an eyesore.)
It is signed with three initials, lower right. I should say, “as of right now, it is signed.” Unless I spray it with polyurethane or smear it with bacon grease, you may find the three initials somewhere else in the wrapping.
Son of a gun! I was going to suggest it be displayed flat on its back rather than hung on a wall, but I’m rethinking that. If you’d put the hooks and wire on the front of the frame and hang it with its back to the crowd, it won’t look too awfully bad. And remember, it’s small anyway.
Please notice the wire. It’s copper, so there is at least a little scrap value right there.
That’s a copy of Aaron Draper Shattuck’s patent drawing I found on the Internet quite by accident. I was looking for a dancer I once knew up around Indianapolis. Typing in the initials of her “stage name” misdirected me to the patent drawing. Ok, so she was a stripper: I still wonder what ever happened to her, but I guess that’s irrelevant.
She went by Angel Destynie S_____. She used her real last name, but I won't mention it here because she, like the rest of the Shepherd family, is (or was) a very private person. She'd have played her cards close to her chest had that been possible.
In all honesty, this painting is one of those pieces I never thought I’d sell.
Don’t get me wrong. The reason I never thought I’d sell it is that I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting it. (What! Did you think I might be in love with it?) But then a miracle happened. A little thing called eBay came along, and I thought maybe, just maybe I had a chance to get shed of this thing once and for all.
The secret of professional quality photography, in my opinion anyway, is having all the equipment you need. I use a brass covered box which stays outside, braving the elements year round. I found a possum in it once a few years ago. He was eager to get out, which I reckon he did. He made it all the way to the dinner table, accompanied by collards, butterbeans and cat-head biscuits with both squirrel and chocolate gravy. You can't get food like that at your fancy-smancy five-star set-down restuarants, now can you.
In case you’re thinking of sending this piece to a restorer, you may want to rethink that. A couple years ago I shipped this one off to mine; a real miracle worker, a master of her trade. She received it and called me right away. That’s the day I learned how disconcerting it can be to hear such a refineded, well educated and gentle lady cuss like a sailor. Her last words to me were: “I can either throw it in the trash right now or set it out back and throw a rag over it. You can pick it up next time you’re in the neighborhood.” Then, and I’ve never quite figured out how she did it, I’d swear I heard a telephone receiver being slammed in my ear, but she uses only a cell phone. How’d she do that?!
Assuming you’re "a little off," but you can prove you’re not currently under the care of a brain doctor, you may bid now.
But pull your knickers up and caveat all your emptors, because: If for any reason you aren’t totally thrilled, all you’ll have is a relatively odorless reminder to be more careful what you bid on in the future. You might accidentally win, and we’re playin’ keepsies here.
(Well . . . if you are a relatively nice person and have a good enough story, I'll refund your money, but I'm afraid you're stuck with the painting.)
SATURDAY INQUISITION BLOGGING
1550ish. maybe dutch. heretics or siege victims
RANDOM ARNE
trans siberia
RANDOM ARNE IN NYC
RANDOM MARCO
what are thy?
RANDOM PIMPED HOOD ORNAMENT/MASCOT
1952 pontiac
RANDOM EBAY OBJECT
RANDOM JULY DRIVE
very dry
RANDOM KITTY PRON
RANDOM LAND & PEOPLES
RANDOM SQUIRREL
SATURN'S DAY BUTER STAMP BLOGGING
Friday, August 17, 2012
RANDOM ANIMALS
RANDOM MAY TRIP W/ THE DANES
RANDOM LURE
RANDOM LANDS & PEOPLES
OLDER IRIDESCENT gold aurene/loetz type GLASS VAS E numbered-$525
I don’t have the energy nowadays, but yard sales are downright fun – most especially those with this and that scattered hither and yon out in front of an old two-story house. There’s your provenance for this vase – Yard Sale, X-Collection of Old Coot 341. Other than that, I can’t nail it down, but it is most certainly, at the very least, Loetz type.
Just as its personality is influenced by your perspective, its reflected color, while primarily gold, picks up any other colors within range – in this case, the blue of a cloudless Ohio sky. Other dramatic colors are within the glass and resting on the surface, as seen below.
The bottom is ground with a concave mostly polished pontil. Then there’s that number. It would have been most considerate of the glassblower to have included a name and not just a number. But . . . cookie crumbles . . . Que Sera, Sera . . . welcome to the NFL.
RANDOM 341 OBJECT
