We collected some great items this year, filling voids in glass fronted display cabinets, shelving and most horizontal spaces left open in our home. On the way we also collected items to sell in Wifie’s antique mall booth, web site and on Ebay.

We managed to share many of our collections with you throughout the year. These pieces decorate or provide function in our little abode. Peruse some of these revelations from this year with me:

My first discovery of the intrinsic value of antiques. Finding the beauty on both sides of a mirror in Wifie’s collection of vintage hand mirrors and small mirrors. Enjoy the colorful array of glass paperweights or get ready for a group of friends to drop by with a full ice bucket from my collection.

We covered our antique furniture, antique lighting accenting our rooms, the items that adorn our fireplace and the doorknobs we are still working to replace with old ones. We touched on Wifie’s collection of Buzza Motto prints and the wonders of the fashions from the turn of the century. She gave us an insight into her earring collection and her love of music.

Over the weeks we showed you these collections here at Collectors’ Quest and shared the adventures we had in scouring for bargains. The “Quest” makes every item a pleasure to collect and we get a special rush at finding a prized possession, like a hopeful couple on their first date.

This year our hunting passion took us to the Cotswald region of Merry Old England, for the vacation of a life time and we shared our experience of viewing, learning and buying antique items. The lessons the shop owners taught, and the items we saw were worth the money twice over.

Other travels took us to Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and the Dakota’s. We shopped and had time to visit dealers at spectiality shows, the Bead and Button Show, store owners or managers, auctioneers, show managers , participants, collecting fanatics and one elf that promised to put in a good word for us this holiday season.

We reported on art sales, a common form of collecting for decorating, at an art fair in a historic setting and on a Gallery with a Galley in a home shaped like a dry docked ship. There was the show where you could have bought a million styles of beads, and an English antique store with 200 year old spice cylinders. Plus the interview Wifie had with the operator of the best Antiques Fair in all of Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, presented an inside view of the workings of such a venue.

All of the stories we shared, bring back memories we also gathered along the way. Many is the time that the Quest is more important than the booty collected. And often the tales we hear from the people we meet enhance our knowledge of the items we seek.

On a personal note we added another grand baby to our collection, but he’s still too young to sit on a display shelf. That makes five wonderful grandchildren, and three of any one thing is a collection.

Wifie’s Ebay location busted through the 10,000 feed back mark, to earn a shooting star. And we still have a few items we could sell.

And we have another year of great memories.

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No, they’re not action figures, they’re Sport Star Statues. Eight inches tall, they feature such sport legends that only last names are needed for identification. (Apparently, the guy selling them was also equally famous for you send your $2.98 to “Manny”.)

Wooden Polly Dolls: Reproductions of an antique doll — for a whopping $15! (This has to be for the ritzy folks!)

Christmas shelf-sitting trolls. Like those elves we all love, only more for the bingo-going crowd. At just $1 for a pair, I wonder why I haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing such dolls at thrift stores…

What could be more luxurious than putting cocoa on your face? Hershey’s cocoa and all-vegetable oil! I don’t think they should have sold this in a box and called them ‘cakes’ of soap… Me thinketh quite a few of these were mistaken for a box of chocolates…

Ah, pocket handwarmers. I spy these in huge numbers at rummage sales & given my cold mid-west climate, I’ve always wondered why I don’t grab one… Oh yeah, the notion of pockets full of lighter fluid which are supposed to keep you warm - without a flame? My (cold) tukus! Well, then again, you can burn $5 without a flame buy purchasing one of these babies and warm a heart at holiday time. (Incidentally, they run about the same price at thrift stores, yard sales and even antique shops now.)

Put your own photo on a puzzle — in the 60’s?! Hey, if the technology’s been around that long, why doesn’t it still only cost us a buck or two?

Gads, my BFF in high school, Mary, her dad had one of these. Green foam with lines, yippie! Boy we made fun of that. …Or maybe it was the white patent leather shoes and matching belt? If this game helped improve skill and wit, I wonder how much her dad started with?

I knew folks were drinking plenty of wine in the 60’s (you had to wash your uppers down with something), but making it themselves? I thought only hippies did that — and with their feet yet. But for less than $10 you can get this kit and make 25 bottles of wine. I have no idea if that’s cheaper than the 25 bottles of store-bought wine… But hey, if it’s a gift, they got it for free.

Can you really put a price on what mom does? Well, at holiday you need to, so spend $1.25 and get her this rooster kitchen gadget. The rooster egg timer is a thoughtful gift which reminds mom that she’s best stop ironing now and bring you your egg, damnit!

For some reason, there are far more dolls and girly ads in the classified section. Perhaps it’s because moms can scan and shop while the egg timer’s running? Here are two gems for girls.

An advertisement for Barbie and her “crew-cut boyfriend” Ken. Somehow, that just sounds mocking. But hey, Babs did eventually dump the dude. This ad tells the shopper to find the “Fashion Paks” at major stores. (Hey, mom needs to get a refill of doctor approved uppers at the pharmacy anyway.)

The next girls toy ad is for Singer’s Trimhandy. This toy looks like a sewing machine, but cuts paper instead. I don’t know if it will “stir” and interest in sewing or not, but it should teach any member of the nursery set to keep their fingers clear of the up-and-down thingy on any similar looking item.

These duck decoys are for decorative purposes only & it is advised that you turn them into “lamps, bookends, etc.” I guess that’s the company’s way of saying they won’t fool anyone, let alone a duck. But, when you’re desperate for a gift for Uncle Simon, well, here ya go.

I saved this one for last because it surprised me. The Sound Conditioner by C. P. Electronics is a “transistorized, batter-powered electronic instrument which creates a tranquil environment for the subconscious mind.” Dude, that’s a white noise machine! Or maybe it sounded like ocean waves or something… Anyway, it’s an ad for something I didn’t think existed until the 80’s — and in true psychedelic 60’s fashion, it uses the word “subconscious”. Dude! Psychedelic + Subconscious + Transistorized = $88. In 1965 dollars that must have been mind blowing all on its own.

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Since high school, Elysian Fields has lived somewhere under my skin and in the warm caves in my brain. Those eight free choices from my ill-fated and wrongfully-obtained Columbia House membership couldn’t have been more fortuitous, and the inclusion of Elysian Fields in their catalogue almost made up for the sampling of pure garbage that made up the rest of their monthly fliers.

To clarify, I’m not talking about the Greek heavy metal band, but the sexy, mellow ‘noir rock’ band from NYC, headed up by Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow. I devour anything that either of them participate in, from backing vocals in other bands, to solo albums, to sephardic side projects. Fortunately for me, they’re a semi-local band, and they make their home in New York City. They’ve often played from the tiny, but legendary, Tonic venue, and when they play, it’s the sexiest thing you’ve ever heard. Unfortunately, Tonic went the route of CBGB and was shut down this past year, leaving their bevy of experimental, independent bands shifting to less intimate venues.

But I collect the music of Elysian Fields, because I really enjoy it. After their self-titled 5-song EP and their first full album with Radioactive & Universal Records, they went into the studio to record their second album. Creative differences between the major label and the band formed, and communications went sour. The band ultimately maintained their artistic integrity and left for another label, but all of the music that was recorded by them had to be left behind - now owned by the all-powerful record overlords. It has never been fully re-recorded or officially released, though a few odd songs have made it onto later albums in revisited formats.

(As a side note, their most recent album, ‘Bum Raps & Love Taps’, is still only available to purchase from Amazon in France, or as an iTunes download - the physical album does not have US distribution rights. That’s how awesome these guys are. So awesome that you can’t hear them.)

Anyone who’s familiar with music at all will realize that the phrase ‘official release’ means next to nothing to fans who want to get their hands on live, or rare, or obscure music. Sometime after the lost album was lost, a bootleg started to circulate from sources unknown. Maybe it came from a sympathetic employee at Universal, or maybe a backup tape was coincidentally discovered elsewhere. It’s assumed that the original recordings are still gathering dust in a closet, but there’s been no communication to confirm or deny this. I’ve made it pretty clear how much I love lost music, and the idea of unreleased recordings of anything is exciting.

The unofficial second release goes by a few names - Clinical Trial, The Albini Record (named for Steve Albini, their collaborator at the time), Black Acres, or simply ‘The Lost Second Album’. And as hard as I try, I can’t find it. It’s not often that I can’t complete a collection, or hunt down a reasonable price to satisfy anyone’s material desires, but I’m stuck. Fans suggest seeking out online downloads, though even those searches are fruitless. I can only assume that any listening of this album would cause Universal’s head to explode, since they’ve made no money off of the music due to their refusal to release it, even to a very solid fan base. Still, I’ve come up empty-handed, even after message board begging - which is the saddest, most pathetic kind of begging there is.

The music industry is peppered with lost tracks, deemed unsatisfactory by either the artist or their label. From this graveyard are usually spawned comprehensive box sets of lost music, much of it probably deserving to remain lost - but there are always a few great tracks that might connect to the listener, even if they miss the artist’s desired outcome.

Jethro Tull’s ‘Nightcap’ CD set is a great example of this, and an album that I hunted for years (in the pre-internet days) before an industrious aunt found it at a Washington, DC store for me. Among the tracks is a full album’s worth of rock opera in which the sound equipment didn’t live up to the band’s standards, and so was never released - but rewritten almost entirely into their album ‘A Passion Play’. For Tull fans, or any music fans, I don’t think that recording quality is quite as important as getting to hear more creative output from the brains and hearts that they admire while they were in their raw, youthful prime. Of course, I can very much live without a Jethro Tull song about female problems, which is midway through disc 2. What were you thinking, Ian Anderson?

DEVO’s set of two ‘Hardcore DEVO’ CD have reached prices as high as $75, but have recently quieted down to roughly $35 each, with the increasing accessibility of downloadable tracks. These albums feature recordings that the band made in the mid-to-late-70s on a 4-track recorder, before they were signed to any label and were relegated to messing around in a Dayton, Ohio basement - and a lot of it is really bizarrely great.

But ultimately, if anyone wants to share the love of Elysian Fields’ Clinical Trial, I certainly won’t object.

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Hubby and I got up early on Saturday morning, pretty much the norm. I leisurely started to read the paper, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. When I turned to the Metro Section, my heart stopped! The thing that got me so excited was a picture of the (locally) famous boat house! We’ve got friends in Milwaukee who took us past it one year and whenever we get near the city, we drive to it, park and just stare.
The really good news was that it was being opened to the public for the weekend! The headline read “A Gallery with a Galley.” It went on to say that works from various Milwaukee artists of years gone by would be displayed in this boat-shaped residence. Hubby was anxious to go as well so we headed out, camera and note pad in hand.

It opened at noon and we arrived a bit after 2:00. The weather was awful, snow had been coming down since the night before and the roads and sidewalks were not in very good shape. But it did not hinder us or the scores of other locals who anxiously walked the wooden steps to the “Landlubber.” It was pretty crowded and with the rooms being very small, you literally ‘rubbed elbows’ with a lot of folks. Most of them had the same story; they’d been past it many times and longed for the chance to go in and check it out. And we all agreed, it was pretty special!
All of the rooms have carried through with the nautical theme. Porthole windows, lots of wood, the back part of the boat (deck) had lawn chairs and seat cushions that were used in boating years ago. Music from the 1940s was playing on a ‘well-used’ stereo system. That really set the mood.

A large poster of David Niven, one of the best actors of his time, covered a large part of the wall and many other spaces had delightful pictures and paintings.
We introduced ourselves to Paul Finger. The newspaper article stated that Paul was owner, but he corrected that. It seems he has resided there for 7 years and has been doing his best to buy it.

You could tell how much he loved the place. An extremely charismatic gentleman, Paul showed us around a bit and was very enthusiastic about the artwork he owned and proudly displayed. Many of the pieces were by Leroy Ebert who studied at the Layton School of Art after World War II. He befriended artists such as Karl Priebe and studied with Gerrit Sinclair. His works included still lifes, portraits and abstract. There were a lot of ‘unframed’ pieces as well as larger pictures.

Many were purchased by art-lovers who wanted a bit of Milwaukee history. He also offered artwork by “Tess” who loved the female body and did a lot nude pictures. Very tastefuly done.
The newspaper article offered a nice history on the house and its owner/builder Edmund B. Gustorf. It is located at 3138 N. Cambridge Avenue, ‘dry-docked’ across the street from the Milwaukee River. It is 76 feet long, has a replica of a lighthouse by its side and is truly one of a kind. If you get a chance to view the house, do so. And if you get an opportunity to buy some artwork by Ebert, Priebe and Sinclair, be sure to do that too.
Paul was even kind enough to put out a spread in the dining area! Many of the folks gathered around (very cozy I might add), were art collectors looking for that treasure and nostalgic piece. It was such an enjoyable day and one for the memory books.

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I first really began to understand codebreaking after reading Edgar Allen Poe’s The Gold Bug. One of Poe’s hobbies was cryptography, claiming he could break any substitution cipher given to him. In The Gold Bug, Poe explains (over several pages) how to use the rules of language to crack this simple code:

…Let us assume 8, then, as e. Now, of all words in the language, ‘the’ is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation, the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters, so arranged, they will most probably represent the word ‘the.’ Upon inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that ; represents t, 4 represents h, and 8 represents e.

The connection between language and code works both ways: they key, ultimately, is communication — and a cipher ensures that only the correct recipient receives the message. In literature, however, the purpose is largely for entertainment value. The secrets aren’t capital-letter Secrets: Those aren’t usually published and distributed. Ciphers for literary ends tend to promote inclusion, that the reader is In On It, whatever it is, because they can read what others can’t.

Futurama is a recent example of this: pretty much from episode 1, signs in the background have included ‘alien writing,’ a combination of swirls and lines and dots that appears peppered throughout the show but isn’t a direct part of the story. The first version was a one-to-one cipher, like Poe’s in The Gold Bug, which allowed people to translate it pretty quickly. Alien Language 2 was added to complicate things a bit: it uses a differential cipher, math-based rather than letter-based, to translate. The cartoonists weren’t completely cruel, however; they left clues, which gave fans a leg up and a way to break the code themselves. The code wasn’t so prevalent to make it difficult for viewers to understand the show, but it was included enough to reward devoted fans for their attention.

The Freemasons, purely by their largeness, were the kings of ciphers, but their lesser relatives had their own as well. Primarily substitution ciphers, the likes of which Poe could crack while eating breakfast, these groups had varied and imaginative examples of their secret alphabets. Many of the state Masonic lodges use ciphers in their regular ritual…and even printed their ritual in them. These ciphers tend to rely on training to understand — they’re not complete messages, usually common phrases memorized to connect to the cipher. Below you’ll see an example I bought recently, from the Grand Lodge of North Dakota. The first reaction is, of course, “WHAaaaaAA?” (emphasis on the second syllable), which quickly turned into fascination for me. The idea of printing nearly an entire book in a cipher is an interesting one. Books are meant to be permanent and transportable; that permanence gives a decoder plenty of time to do their work. And, we’re not talking about a means of communication, such as a book printed in Cherokee or esperanto. Another language communicates itself directly, provided you understand the language. Ciphers communicate a language, provided you can pull the content from the noise.

Beyond the simple cyphers of the Freemasons and cartoonists, there’s communication going on without a direct message encoded. The Codex Seraphinianus and the Voynisch Manuscript are both mysteries. Both contain strange characters in an unknown language, captioning odd illustrations. The former, the Codex, is an art project, but the language of the Voynisch document is still a mystery. To sit down to read a book that is unreadable sounds a bit crazy, but I’d like to think it’s an exercise in creativity. Reading is a combination of language and imagination — one half of the brain handling rules and structure, while the other handles the conceptualizing. Take out one half, and you’ve got an entirely different experience altogether. Reading a book encoded by a cipher is another brain function altogether, making for a different experience as well. Books aren’t always just words on a page: reading is a complex thing, and isn’t always what you might expect.