Angry Eyebrows Pixie

This guy is one of my favorites.  It’s the angry pixie.  At least his eyebrows and sinister grin suggest to me that he is angry, or maybe a sociopath.  I first saw one at the National Christmas Center in Paradise, PA (Go if you are in the area!).  They have a pixie tree in their Woolworth’s Display (which is awesome!), and probably have no idea how excited I got when I saw this pixie.  I wanted to track one down.  Thankfully my mom found one in her travels, and I got him as a Christmas present last year.  If Elf on a Shelf isn’t getting your kids to behave at Christmas, this terrifying little guy might do it!  His eyebrows will haunt my nightmares!

I will haunt your nightmares!

Wind-Up Drummer Pixie

This one is truly weird.  It is a pixie head on a wind up drummer toy.  This toy is made in India, which is not something you see everyday.  It has a few condition issues, but I had to buy it since I had never seem one like it.  Pixie heads got used on everything!

Flat Pixies

Yes, the pixie head was even flattened for Christmas stockings and wall decorations.  Take these two decorations with flat pixies.  One is a stocking and the other is just a wall decoration.  Both are kitschy to the extreme!

Giant Headed Pixies

I have some big headed pixies, but none are quite as impressive as these.  While there are a lot of pixie designs that you see many times over, these are a little bit more unique.  I don’t think it makes them much more valuable, but it does make them more interesting to me.

Mrs. Claus Knee Hugger

I see Santa knee huggers occasionally, but rarely do you find a Mrs. Claus.  Here she is in all of her glory!  Again, not terribly valuable, but just fascinating that she exists.

Winking Devil Knee Hugger

Not all Knee Huggers are for Christmas, and this guy eluded me for some time.  More, I didn’t want to pay eBay prices.  He is a more valuable pixie, and fairly coveted by knee hugger collectors.  This one is missing his collar, but he was $1 at the flea market.  I will upgrade him eventually, but I was just happy to find one in the wild.

Ridiculous Looking Hillbillies

For some reason there are a lot of hillbilly dolls that use pixie heads and/ or are knee huggers.  I could do an entire article on hillbilly knee huggers, I am not even kidding you.  These fellas are a bit more unusual since they have unique head sculpts.  They have a bit of a Mortimer Snerd vibe going for them.

Big Eye Knee Hugger

With the big eyed paintings and dolls of the 60’s also came some big eyed knee huggers.  While this one doesn’t have terribly sad huge eyes, the aesthetic is definitely there.  She has some literal flower power going on there.

Witch Candy Container Knee Hugger

This one, I think, is pretty special.  Halloween knee huggers tend to be a bit more desirable, and the Witch with the black body from my last article is pretty well known.  I had never seen one with a clear body until we found this one, though.  She has a zipper on the back, so I assume she is a candy container.

And finally, to bring it back to Christmas in my favorite pixies I have found in a long time I present to you…

The Three Wise Pixies

Yes, someone thought that these were the appropriate heads for the three wise men of the nativity.  Not only are they pixie heads, but they are the “Dopey” style heads often used on hillbilly knee huggers.  In a Kitschmas miracle I found these a few weeks ago, and I was way more excited than I should have been.  Now I have to wonder, though, if there is an entire pixie Nativity.  I can dream, can’t I?  These are in such poor taste!  Ultimate kitsch!

Are there even more ridiculous pixies out there for me to collect?  Absolutely.  Have a Merry Kitschmas from all of us at The Collector Gene!

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I started amassing vintage Santa & Me photos several years ago and this is one of my favorites.  Not only does the Santa look pretty good (albeit a tad young if you took those whiskers away) and the little girl is adorable. but it’s hand-tinted, which is quite unusual.  Most Santa & Me photos from the late 1940’s through the mid-1950’s, like this one, are black and white.  The one thing they all have in common is their charming innocence.  It was a time when Christmas decorations were simpler and a visit to see Santa was a highlight of the season.  Enjoy!

And may the upcoming holidays be filled with delightful memories of Christmas Past as well as delightful experiences of Christmas Present!

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We recently acquired this fabulous 8 x 10 photo at a local flea market.  A talented amateur photographer back in the 1940’s was able to combine a shot of a pretty girl with a shot of a typical five and dime pulpy paper mache jack o’lantern.  The result is an image designed to make one do a double take.  If only such a jack o’lantern in that size really existed!  (Alas, in reality, he is probably only about eight inches high.)

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Actually it’s one month, two days, and one hundred and fifty-two years ago as I write this. We apologize for posting our Fourth of July article so late, but a big storm in June zapped our printer (which is also our scanner) and we’ve been on another road trip to New England that we just returned from. Consequently, we are acknowledging the Fourth of July in August.

I picked up this little ribbon at a flea market about a week or two before the Fourth of July this year. I paid about twenty dollars for it, and the picture of it pretty much explains what it is. It is just under seven inches in length.

What gives an antique value is often what it represents. There was a lot going on in and around Philadelphia leading up to the Fourth of July, 1863. Most importantly, Philadelphia and the rest of the United States were right in the middle of the Civil War.

The spring of 1863 had not been a good time for the Union forces. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia had won stunning victories at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, Virginia. In June, his forces had entered Pennsylvania with the hopes of bringing the North to the peace table to end the war with a negotiated peace. This would have brought about an independent Confederate States of America.

There was a very real possibility that Harrisburg and Philadelphia would end up under Southern occupation. Philadelphia was shoring up its defenses and there were calls for more militia units to defend Pennsylvania.
Fortunately, as things were looking their darkest, Union forces finally checked Lee’s forces at the Battle of Gettysburg – about 100 miles west of Philadelphia. The three day battle, which took place on July 1,2,3, was not only the bloodiest battle of the war- it was the turning point. Lee’s forces never came that far north again.

As if that weren’t enough, the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi fell to the Union forces under the command of Ulysses S. Grant on the Fourth of July, 1863. This opened up the Mississippi River to Union forces and split the confederacy in two. Vicksburg would not celebrate the Fourth of July again until World War II.

I doubt that the citizens of Philadelphia had been able to absorb all that had happened in just those few days, but there must have been a great sense of relief. When the “Friends of the Union” celebrated the Fourth of July, 1863 in Philadelphia, they were also celebrating the turning point of the war and one of the most important events in American history.

That’s a lot of history in one little ribbon found at a flea market.

The post A Patriotic Ribbon From 1863 Tells the Story of an Important Fourth of July appeared first on The Collector Gene.

I’m not old enough to personally remember Foxy Grandpa, the comic character. In fact, even my parents were born too late to remember his debut on January 7, 1900 in the New York Herald, and his popularity was already waning when my mother was a toddler. Still, even without any knowledge of his comic strips or books or stage production, the minute I first encountered him, I was smitten by the cute little old guy with white hair and a bald head, round glasses, and a spiffy suit and vest.

Foxy Grandpa was the creation of Carl E. Schultze, who was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1866. Schultze’s childhood nickname was “Bunny,” and he usually signed his cartoons as “Bunny.” He also created a cute white bunny character that often shows up alongside Foxy Grandpa. This pinback button shows the bunny and the two grandsons along with Foxy Grandpa himself.

Foxy Grandpa is right up there with the earliest of the American comic characters like the Katzenjammer Kids and the Yellow Kid. His stories revolve around those two mischievous grandsons, Chub and Bunt. While they try to trick their grandfather and play jokes on him, he turns the tables on them and foils their plots, often making them look mighty foolish in the process.

Within two years of his debut, Foxy Grandpa was so popular that a Broadway show was created with him as the central character. He was played by actor Joseph Hart. Clearly, the show had a successful run because here is a pinback button that was issued during the show’s second year, which would date it to 1903-04.

This button measures one-and-a-half inches in diameter and was made by the Whitehead & Hoag Company of Newark, NJ. It is in pristine condition and has a wonderful paper label on the back with the following information: Grandpa You’re a Wonder!/ 2nd Year/The Musical Snapshot/”Foxy Grandpa”/Book by R. M. Baker/Music by Jos. Hart.

Joseph Hart went on to play Foxy Grandpa in several Biograph short silent films. A portion of one of those films still exists and here is a link to it:

Between 1900 and 1917, Foxy Grandpa was a staple on the comic pages of several New York newspapers. More than thirty books about him were published by four different publishers during that time. And, like other popular comic characters of the day, toys and games featuring Foxy Grandpa made their way into the market. Fortunately, some survived and made their way into the hands of collectors like us. Here are two of our favorite Foxy Grandpa toys. Both are German candy containers, both have an Easter theme, and both have been in our possession for over 35 years.

The following photo shows a few more Foxy Grandpa collectibles. There’s a small jointed composition figure, a composition bobble-head figure, and a plaster container that might have been used on a desk to hold pencils.

Finally, it’s clear from this object that Foxy Grandpa was a hit with the adults as well as the kids. It’s a well-made porcelain toby mug, and while I suppose a child could have sipped his milk from it, more likely it was meant to be displayed on a knickknack shelf.

During Foxy Grandpa’s heyday, Carl Schultze lived the good life on Park Avenue. While Foxy Grandpa stories continued to be distributed by the Newspaper Feature Syndicate throughout the 1920’s, Schultze faced personal problems and mounting debts. By the 1930’s, he was down on his luck and illustrating school books through the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Sadly, when he died in 1939, the headlines said that he died a pauper.

But for a couple of decades in the early 20th Century, Bunny Schultze made us smile over the antics of an energetic little old man who could outsmart his grandsons. And he helped set the stage for other artists to create memorable, amusing comic characters. Young Walt Disney, growing up in the first decade of the 20th Century, most likely was quite familiar with Foxy Grandpa. Schultze may have had very little left to his name when he died, but hanging on the wall of his one-room apartment was a picture of Mickey and Minnie Mouse with the inscription, “For Carl E. Schultze, in admiration. Walt Disney.”

The post The Coolest Comic Grandfather – Foxy Grandpa & His Fabulous Easter Toys appeared first on The Collector Gene.

New to our Christmas display this year but not new to our collection is this Bliss Adirondack Cottage circa 1905.  When we bought it from a small local antique shop almost three years ago, we weren’t sure how to display it, but we said even then that it would make a great Santa Claus workshop.  That vision was finally realized this year.

Here you see the front of the cottage with German bisque elves playing on the upper and lower porches while a nice old composition German Santa sits on his wooden sled.

Here you see the back of the cottage just filled with toys and decorated Christmas trees and another playful elf.

This doll house came with a paper from an auction when it was purchased by someone else in 2005.  It was described thus:  Bliss Adirondack Cottage – an unusual doll house with lithographed paper exterior, stained wood roof and base, 4-room interior with period wallpaper, 17.5 inches tall.”

We have loved Bliss doll houses from the moment we first saw them early in our collecting years, and we have been fortunate enough to acquire about four of them at affordable prices.  Bliss doll houses are characterized by their wood construction and beautiful chromolithographed paper coverings.  The peak of production was at the turn of the century, and the most elaborate houses are beautiful miniature renderings of highly Victorian-style houses in all their gingerbread glory.  This “cottage” is unusual and, we believe, rare because it is quite simple in style and decoration.  The very realistic-looking logs are, indeed, just printed paper.

Rufus Bliss went into business as a carpenter in Pawtucket, Rhode Island back in 1823.  He was highly skilled and inventive in his carpentry techniques, becoming best known for his lathe-turned wooden screws and clamps.  He took on a partner, A.N. Bullock, in 1845 and the name of the company became R. Bliss and Company.  In 1867, several years before the company first advertised the making of toys, Mr. Bliss withdrew from the business.  In 1873, Mr. Bullock died.  However, the company continued on with Mrs. Bullock retaining an interest, and a stock company involving Bullock family members among others was formed in 1874.  The company continued to make practical things like wooden screws, clamps, and tool handles, but they expanded further into croquet sets, tennis racquets, and paper-lithographed toys.  Today, their doll houses, wooden boats, and pull-toys are among the most prized and expensive of American antique toys.  A Massachusetts company bought out the toy-making end of the business in 1914 and kept the name, but it ceased production in 1935.

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I don’t know who these people are.  Random family photos like this turn up in my possession all the time.  Clearly this is an important meal, and judging by the gigantic turkey on the table, I’m going to assume it’s Thanksgiving sometime in the late 1930’s or early 1940’s.  I wonder why Norman Rockwell didn’t paint this family scene; it’s Americana at its finest.  Please note as well the stacks of plain white bread prominently displayed on the table.  Where are the Pillsbury Crescent Rolls?  You may laugh, but a buttered piece of white bread was usually an accompaniment to my holiday feasts as a child in the 1950’s, too.  We can only imagine the scintillating conversation going on here based on on the lone man at the table who is about to doze off.  That’s the great fun of collecting old photos.  You try to imagine who these people were and the kind of lives they led.  One thing I can’t figure out, though.  Why was this photo blown up to a gigantic 11 by 14 size?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM ALL OF US AT COLLECTORGENE!

Collecting enriches our lives, and we are very thankful for that.

The post We Gather Together…A Vintage Thanksgiving Feast Photo appeared first on The Collector Gene.

Santa Clauses and Easter Bunnies are relatively easy to find in the antiques and collectibles world. But if you want to collect and/or display vintage St. Patrick’s Day decorations, you’ll need the luck of the Irish!

Aside from postcards, cardboard cut-outs, and pinback buttons, most antique shops do not have many older St. Patty’s decorations for sale. That’s why we count ourselves very lucky that we’ve been able to amass as many pre-World War II Irish-related candy containers, figures, and toys as we have. A good portion of our collection came in one fell swoop over thirty years ago when we encountered a table at a local flea market just loaded with neat St. Patrick’s Day decorations that the dealer had acquired from one family. We scooped just about every one up and had an instant collection!

There are many symbols associated with Ireland and the Irish, and these antique St. Patrick’s Day decorations reflect that symbolism.

The shamrock, of course, is a species of clover native to Ireland, and it often appears on St. Patrick’s Day postcards. We have a little pot of artificial shamrocks in our collection, and shamrocks decorate our clay pipe, our Irish potato candy containers, and a couple of our Irishmen’s hats.

The shillelagh is a traditional Irish fighting club made of blackthorn wood. Legend has it that blackthorn hedges are home to fairy folk. We have a shillelagh candy container in our collection and a shillelagh that opens up into a circular paper Irish flag.

The national symbol of Ireland since 1542 is the celtic harp, one of the world’s oldest instruments. Celtic harps often appear on antique postcards. We also have some paper horns and a silk Irish flag that display the harp.

And then there are the green pigs. While I can’t find any specific reference to Irish pigs as symbols of good luck, I did find references stating that several European cultures including the Irish considered pigs a symbol of good fortune. Pigs are often shown with four-leaf clovers for extra good luck. Because we have four green pigs in our collection, all dating from about 1915-1930, I think it’s safe to say that they are St. Patrick’s Day decorations. The typical lucky white or pink pig is turned green to honor the Irish. We also have a couple of St. Patrick’s Day postcards that prominently feature pigs as lucky symbols.

The green pigs pictured here are mere inches in length and height.  The largest pig is a candy container with a removable head.

Our favorite antique St. Patrick’s Day decorations all come from that wonderful era just after World War I and up into the beginning of the Depression. That was a time when German and American factories were churning out the most whimsical little cardboard and composition holiday and party decorations. It’s very easy to picture our candy containers as part of a St. Patrick’s Day table setting. They might also have been handed out as prizes or favors at a classroom party. By that point in time, too, most Irish-Americans had been in the United States for several generations and were taking pride in their heritage.

Enjoy some pictures of a portion of our collection, and good luck to you as you search for your own St. Patrick’s Day collectibles.

Almost every Irishman pictured here is a candy container.  A couple have removable heads.  Three have space for candy underneath.  One is a composition figurine glued to a little chipboard box.  Only the wee green-suited guy carrying the bundle of sticks is not a candy container.  You’ll note that most of the Irishmen have red hair and a tall black top hat.  And, yes, the tall black top hat made of cardboard is a candy container.

Which came first – the postcard or the figure?  Look carefully and you’ll notice that the composition figurine is most definitely based on the depiction of the Irish lass on the postcard.  The postcard art is by well-known American artist Ellen Clapsaddle, but the postcard was printed in Germany.  Clearly, German artists turned the picture into the figure.  We owned the postcard for several years before acquiring the figure.  The figure is in near-perfect condition with a 20-cent price tag from Wanamaker’s on the bottom.

As mentioned in the article, here are our shillelagh and potato candy containers.  The circular “Irish Lobster” box is a funny gag gift.  When you open it up, there’s a little mirror inside.  Obviously, the Irish Lobster is you!

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These vintage Christmas decorations date to the 1920’s and 30’s.  Only one is marked “Japan,” but I suspect that that’s where all of them were made.  A combination of cardboard, composition, and cotton batting, they have that old-fashioned charm that just can’t be duplicated.  These decorations have been a part of our collection for quite a while, but Jim found a new place to display them this year.  Can you guess where that might be?  If you’re a regular reader of “Collectorgene,” you might be able to tell.  The “rocky mountains” that these little guys are perched on were featured in an article several months ago.

The following pictures tell the whole story.

Yes, indeed, those whale bone fossils that we now display in our living room window have become a part of this year’s holiday display.  Collecting to the extent that we do forces us to be creative when it comes to squeezing one more thing in!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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Sometime in the early 1960's, two trick or treaters stopped in front of the news-stand to pose for this Halloween snapshot.

What a great photo!  It combines two things I love – old magazines and Halloween.  Anyone over forty will probably admit to going out on Halloween wearing one of those lame, out-of-the-box costumes at least once during their trick-or-treating years.  It was so easy for parents.  I know I had a Minnie Mouse costume, and Jim was Donald Duck more than once. They were made of a silky, synthetic fabric that I believe was flammable.  The plastic masks were held on with thin elastic bands, but at least they were easy to flip up on top of your head for better vision when walking from house to house.

By the early sixties, Hanna-Barbera was on a roll.  Huckleberry Hound was introduced in 1958, and Yogi Bear became a break-out star in 1961.  The older kid on the right has the cool Yogi costume; his/her younger sibling appears to be wearing a more generic clown costume.

Of course, what really makes this photo for me are all of the magazines on display behind the kids.  It looks like Fidel Castro is on the cover of the “Look” magazine.  This could very well be from Halloween 1962, in which case the Cuban Missile Crisis had, literally, just ended.  The kids, however, probably don’t care.  They just want to load up on those nice, full-size candy bars that everyone got back then – and avoid the apples at all cost!

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