My love for American stoneware

 

Impossible to say which of all the antiques and collectibles that have passed through my hands and spent time in my dwellings over decades is my favorite. I love them all. Going back almost 50 years when early Americana captured my fancy, I was enamored of pieces that had escaped stripping and refinishing. For many things, like furniture, boxes, and splint baskets, that meant they were paint decorated. Swoon. From the beginning I have loved what are called by various names—Early American, Americana, Primitive, American Country. Collections have come and gone, and now living in New Mexico for these many years, my interests have centered around American Indian and New Mexico Hispanic work. Yet, there is a lingering of my collecting past—American stoneware. 

And much more that lingers, including quilts, splint baskets of Anglo American production, and more more more. All of these pieces of stoneware pictured here have lived out in an open shed in my “back 40” for the last five years, but I’ve decided it’s time they come inside.

Only two of these utilitarian stoneware objects is marked, a one-gallon jug from J. and E. Norton Bennington Vermont, made between 1850-1859. A small churn or storage jar from J. D. (J. Dorris) Craven (1827-1895), made in the mid-19th century. The Craven family of potters has lived and worked in the Piedmont area of North Carolina since the 1770s. Of the others pictured here, the first jug on the left and the straight-sided crock on the far right are from the Meyer Pottery (Bexar County Texas, as in the greater San Antonio area), both from the late 19th century. Also pictured are two ovoid shaped jars (one double stamped “2” for the capacity) and a small alkaline-glazed jug that I have not identified as to origin, although all three are likely of Southern origin.

Jewelry for Art's Sake

It’s all about the journey, kids. An array of art made better by the hands of another artist. In this instance, my friend Navajo silversmith Elgin Tom.

I bought the unsigned silver watch cuff (purchased by the gram/ounce) at a high end coin and jewelry shop. Featuring fish scale inlay turquoise, it was probably made at least 60 years ago at Zuni. Bought a rough slab of jet stone (organic rock created when pieces of woody material are buried, compacted, and then go through organic degradation) at Mama’s Minerals in Old Town Albuquerque. The lapidist there cut a stone 20mm x 30mm for Elgin to convert the cuff to a straight forward bracelet. Few people wear watch cuffs or tips these days, although I do have a few because I love the workmanship on the pieces.

The crude copper cuff I bought in Bryan, Texas, February of 2017. I remember the day well. I was with my sister Joan, in Texas on the last extended visit I made to Texas, when I still had stewardship of the two-story barn home I gifted to one of my other sisters that July. The penny was soldered to the cuff. I harvested the sugilite and coral stones from something sometime here. Elgin made a silver bezel for the stones. My only regret is that the oxidized surface on the cuff got lost in the translation. Small loss given the smashing (fab, gorge) results.

Can’t remember the name of the Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo artist, who along with her husband created the pendant with a spiny oyster base inlayed with jet, mother of pearl, and a jet powder and resin mix.

It was Indian Market, and this expectant mother was selling in the garden courtyard of the Governor’s Palace. Her mom accompanied her that day. Elgin made the concho button and hook for it.

And finally, the spiny oyster stone found at a pawn shop nearby came in an 1980s/90s pendant, set in blah, commercially-produced silver work. Elgin made the bezel and bale. Yumbo jumbo all, y'all!

 

Stepping off the Merry-Go-Round

For awhile there, I guess I thought, “if it needs to be said, then I need to say it”. But the time has to be right. I’ll know because it will come spilling out. Or maybe it’s the place—from a distance, like on paper or in the world we’ve come to know, online. I know that I am an introvert. I would know this without having taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) because, well, I know how I feel about things, and I know how things make me feel. I’ve just read that INfJs are the rarest MBTI personality type, making up only 1% to 3% of the U.S. population.

We are compassionate, relying on our strong sense of intuition and emotional understanding. We can be soft-spoken, but this does not mean that we are pushovers. We have deeply held beliefs and an ability to act decisively to get what we want. How many times have I heard, “Harold, why don’t you tell us what you really think.” Chuckle chuckle. Sometimes strong opinions just have to be given voice.

We can form strong, meaningful connections with other people. While we enjoy helping others, we always need time and space to recharge. Unlike extroverts who are energized by situations that require lots of interaction with others, introverts are depleted by these interactions. Typically for me, I just want to get home, close the door and be alone with my thoughts, and do only what I want to to do, which may be absolutely nothing. I had a house guest over the summer—a friend of almost 50 years—who visited three different times in the course of three weeks, a couple of days at a time. At the end of this visit, I was “worn to a nub,” as the expression goes, and resentful. Some part of me—an important part—still hasn’t recovered from these visits.

We are idealists, and we use our abilities to translate this idealism into action. I have to add here that while I haven’t slipped into the world of cynicism, I find it harder and harder to keep my head above water in the seas of meanness and dysfunction that have come to characterize our time. Even though I subscribe online to some of the best sources of writing and news reporting—New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic—I struggle to find things that I want to read.

We like to exert control of situations by planning, organizing, and making and acting upon decisions. And I’ll add that as leaders we encourage those who support the work we do to step up, voice their ideas, and take their own leadership roles. And to get credit for what they do.When making decisions, INFJs place a greater emphasis on their emotions rather than objective facts. And while we don’t see the world through rose-colored glasses, we understand that our world is filled with both good and bad, we hope to make it a better place. To borrow a well-used expression, we seek to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Push come to shove, when our resources feel depleted, we have to step off the merry-go-round. Over the years I have found this to be true more and more frequently. An article of the December 2017 issue of Smithsonian Magazine explores the famously misquoted words of Greta Garbo regarding alone time. “I never said, ‘I want to be alone,’” she explained, according to a 1955 piece in LIFE magazine. “I only said, ‘I want to be let alone! There is all the difference.”





From New Mexico Looking Back at Texas

So much has changed since I started this blog in 2007. For one thing, I’ve grown old, now staring at my 78th birthday on September 16. Back in 2007 I had just lost my mother, I had decided I wanted to try living at least part time in New Mexico, which to me of course meant Santa Fe, and I was one year shy of 65. I had been enamored of the capitol city since our family’s first and only true vacation. I’m uncertain of the year, either 1952 or ’53. I’ve written about that before on this blog, and I’m not going to rehash it here.

For the first few years of this blog, I had a lot to say about the things that had been brewing in me for my entire life. Family, people who have made their mark on me over decades, religion, social justice, history, the world of collecting of which my interests are a minuscule part, more. Photos were an important part of what I posted. Then somewhere around 2012 I lost my steam, so my time in blogosphere was reduced to pics and only brief comments, if I said anything at all. It didn’t take long for me to lose interest altogether. I’ve tried regenerating that over 10 years, posting a piece maybe two or three times each year, but I’ve lost the need to say something. I hate to think that I have drained the well. 

Well, crap, why am I now connecting that I had heart bypass surgery in November 2012, and one year before I had a stent. The spring of 2012 was the last time I exhibited at the Round Top Antiques Fair. I sent what remained of my collection of Texana to auction in July that year—two 26 foot van loads from my two-story barn home in Leon County Texas. That 200 acre place had become part of my family in 1973, and in 1999-2000 I had had about 2000 square feet of the barn that had been built in the early ‘60s converted to a living space. I created a native garden that had grown shovelful by shovelful over several years.

After sending off those two van loads of my collection, there was plenty of unrelated but very cool stuff still in the place. By 2013 my twice-annual trips to Texas were reduced to one. In the winter of 2017 I made another significant run at reducing the contents of my barn home. That summer I deeded the place to my middle sister. I had bought a home here in Albuquerque, which I love about as much as anyone can love a place. At times my heart still mourns giving away something that at its foundation was a gift to me from my mother, and in which I had invested so much spirit, talent, physical energy, and money. Reality dictated that I give up something, the hard lesson of resources.  I haven’t been back to Leon County since May of 2019. A friend here in Albuquerque who buys and sells carried me to Texas then, pulling a 20 foot cargo trailer behind his crew cab truck to bring back everything we could haul for a sale here in Albuquerque. It happened, a more than modest success, still falling short of an outright success. Action. Cut. To be continued.

Public Art Weaving

When talent abounds. He's a musician, cabinet maker, and now a builder of outdoor looms. She's a weaver. Discovered on a walk of the neighborhood this week, an invitation to "weave", or as the tag attached to the loom beckons, "Please Play". A bucket of materials sits at the base of the loom.  Warping and weaving, public art at its best.

McChesney Gal-leg Spurs

Gal-leg spurs, made by the McChesney Company around 1900. Uncle Frog, married to my Aunt Mary, gave me those spurs a couple of years before he died in 2000. 

I had spied them hanging from the rafters of their garage in the greater Spring Branch area of Houston. When I asked about them, he replied, “Do you want them?” Did I want them! OMG.

The spurs had come from his father, Henry Clay Todd, who grew up in Grimes County Texas. I had not thought of Frog (William Woodrow) or his family having any connection to horseback riding or cattle or ranching, but that just shows how little we know of the past. They were city folks, as far as I knew. I’m no blood kin to the Todds, but no greater treasure could have come from my own family. 

I’ve been thinking about those spurs lately. I’d love to have them here with me in New Mexico, but it makes no sense. They’re in Texas, hanging from the horn of a trophy saddle from the 1952 Texas Cowboy Reunion, made by the Olsen-Stelzer Saddle Company in Henrietta, Texas. Again,  that saddle is not a part of my blood heritage. Just something that I’ve acquired along the way. This is how history is kept alive.