Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Antique Malls

Antique Malls

I use three different laptops. If the room is dark I use my Toshiba. For some reason the screen is very bright on this one and easy to read. It is the one I am using now. It’s a dark and overcast day and the sun is just getting cranked up. The problem is that I have files on three machines and sometimes I forget which one a file is on. Once they are on the server at WDC I am good to go but most of what I write never gets that far. Then I see something and want to connect with something I wrote earlier and the fun begins. Now where the heck is that file? I think to myself.

My wife is in a book reading group and yesterday took them to see “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She wanted me to tag along and keep her guy member, James, company so I did and saw the movie a second time. I don’t usually do that because I remember pretty well from the first time, but she promised a trip to the antique mall and a dinner at Cracker Barrel. For some reason I am drawn to antique malls like a moth to the flame. It is sort of like going to a museum but not really close… It is the bottom rung on the quality scale for items of artistic excellence however; I inherited an eye for that sort of thing from my mother and was educated by antique dealers from across Europe. They, one in particular, used to delight in showing me stuff I couldn’t afford but was exceptionally fine… Especially porcelain figurines. Sometimes I find a treasure but more commonly just a good buy. I won’t tell you how painful my education was and how many times I got taken. However, since I could never spend much to begin with the good experiences came to greatly exceed the bad.

In a given antique mall I have a theory that there is at least one item of exceptional value that sits in a display case somewhere that is overlooked. For example I once found a Meissen Angel mixed in with a bunch of Hummel’s that had just been purchased by a dealer. He knew the value of the Hummel’s but the Meissen had a crack and was marked down to sell. I had seen a similar angel in a museum in Kaiserslautern and my heart clutched. How it got into a Midwest antique mall blows my mind to this day but it sits prominently displayed in my wife’s display case. Once a day I look at it and shake my head in disbelief. I had a guru in New York City repair it and he swore that no current technology would ever be able to detect it and offered to buy it at a tempting price.

However I have also been scammed a time or two, particularly by Maxfield Parrish prints which I think I know something about but still can be taught a lesson on occasion. Photo copy technology is incredibly sophisticated and what can be done with good period paper boggles the mind. What saves me is that I don’t spend much if I’m not sure and occasionally something genuine turns up that isn’t a blatant forgery. Actually I have several forgeries hanging about that are exceptionally well rendered… They are clearly identified (On the back) for what they are but I still enjoy looking at them and it doesn’t take much to convince my subconscious that they are real.