Set of three Oregon Centennial Plates.

These ever popular plates were produced in commemoration of the 100 year anniversary of Oregon’s statehood in 1959.  They were made by Johnson Brothers (England) for sale by Meier & Frank.

As I recall they came in something like six colors including brown, yellow, green and the three we have here (Blue, multicolored and red).

All three of ours are in excellent condition and are 10 3/4 inches in diameter.

This is a cool vintage mirror with an orange flecked gilt frame and out-swept edges in the corners. It’s probably 1950′s vintage and looks remarkably like the snout/grille of an Edsel. Unlike an Edsel the mirror has eyelets placed so it can be hung with the skinny end at either the top or the bottom.

As the sticker on the back shows this was made in Belgium for La Barge Mirrors of Holland, Michigan, a company that’s still reflecting on its business model.

It is approximately 20 inches wide and 43 inches long and has a few small drip marks (like mascara after crying, or watery ink) on the frame at the skinny end. Otherwise it is in excellent condition.

There’s a reason that the blue in this pair of Agate bookends is so vivid and unreal. It’s because they’ve been dyed. There’s a largely illegible paper label on the bottom that seemingly indicates that they are from Brazil.

This makes a certain sense when correlated to a poorly referenced part of the Wikipedia page on agate, “Another type of agate is Brazilian agate, which is found as sizable geodes of layered nodules. These occur in brownish tones interlayered with white and gray. Quartz forms within these nodules, creating a striking specimen when cut opposite the layered growth axis. It is often dyed in various colors for ornamental purposes.”

Dyed like these bookends for instance. They stand 5 1/4 inches tall and weigh about 4 pounds so they’d be good for paperbacks and smallish hardcovers.

Click to view slideshow.

A place for everything and everything in it’s place.

With 15 drawers this makes that quite a bit easier.

Alternatively one could use it to make getting dressed easier in the morning. Just put one days worth of socks, underwear and a T-shirt in each drawer. After two weeks it’s time to do laundry again.

It is 34 inches wide, 41 inches tall and about 13 inches deep. One of the drawer pulls has been replaced but it is in good shape overall.

Traditionally the carving of small animals in the southwest was exclusively done by the Zuni. The animals were used for ceremonial purposes and became known as fetishes. With the rise of the commodification of native culture in the later 20th Century they became valued as artworks as well as religious items. Coincident with this rise, other people started copying  them in an effort to capitalize upon their success.

Hence, these aren’t actually Zuni and fall into the category of relatively contemporary copies. The two in the front row are tourist grade stuff of indeterminate origin.

The two in the back are more interesting. On the left is a bear that carries a fancy offering bundle and is signed SA and bears what appear to be the numbers 70. I presume this is a year mark although it could be that I’m reading the letters OL upside-down. It is in excellent shape and is about 3 inches long.

The other consists of  two bears and is signed AL.  It is in good condition except one of the projectile points is broken. Luckily the bears are OK. These stand about 3 1/2 inches tall.

Both of these were carved by members of the Navajo Nation, an attribution that was made by the folks at the Heard Museum based on the style of the carving and / or other factors.  Which is part of why I say these are interesting. For folks a the museum these are later copies of the ‘real thing’ and not worthy of further consideration.  Some other folks see Navajo carved fetishes as an important part of what kept the carving tradition alive and helped bring about its revival among the Zuni.

That’s one of those questions that can (and probably will) be debated in academic and collector circles for the indefinite future and ultimately it is yours to decide if these are nice, fake, or nice fakes.

Let me start by noting that I’m not actually sure this is a coffee table.

It’s remarkably like a piece we had in late October which also looked like a coffee table but instead was the base for a Drexel Declaration ‘leisure center’.

Like that piece this is a bit long (66 inches) and a bit narrow (19 inches) and about the right height (15 inches) for a coffee table.

So, even if it’s not a coffee table it’d work as one.  Whatever it was intended to be it is date stamped from July 1968 and was product number 1290. Unfortunately I’m not sure of the maker or designer.

The wood work is nice without any significant staining or ring and it’s structurally quite sound. The only major flaw is that one of the sculptural ‘wave-form’ ends is broken, as shown in the pictures. Overall I’d consider it to be in fair to good condition.

Seven piece flatware set emblazoned with the logo of Portland’s prestigious* University Club.

I initially hoped that wondered if these were stolen by disaffected working underclass fifth columnists but it is more likely that they were sold or given away when the club changed flatware patterns.

This is an International Silver Company pattern with baroque styling.  All the pieces have a fair amount of use, consistent with institutional service.

*To paraphrase J.P.Morgan, If you wonder if you could become a member, you can’t.

This vintage two drawer cigar box originally contained cigars made by the J.T. Swann & Co of Tampa Florida. They were “manufactured to retail at more than Five Cents each and not more than Eight cents each and are so tax paid.”

Which I take to mean it is fairly old.  It’s hard to say exactly, but a five to eight cent cigar seems like a good price for one in the late 1940′s.

Swann cigars were made by a company named after James T. Swann. Swann was a realtor, investor and general bigwig who happened to own a cigar factory and citrus groves. He died in 1953 and was succeeded by his son James Jr. who died in 1955. Much of their business was conducted via mail order, leading to some strenuous complaining when the postal service increased rates.

The box is 9 1/4 inches wide, 5 1/2 inches tall and 6 1/4 inches deep. It is in excellent condition and has classic box or finger joints on the back two corners. It is stamped on the bottom with the maker’s mark, the seal of the City of Tampa Florida and pertinent tax info.

Without you we’d have no business doing what we’re doing. We’d have nothing to sell, no one to sell it to and the families we help would have just as much nothing as they have now.

And they already have a whole lot of it.

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This prop’s for you*.

*Metaphorically speaking that is. In the event your feeling literal and you need an actual propeller or you’ve become tired of waiting for your ship to come in and instead you’re assembling your own, one piece at a time we do have one available.

It  is about 13 inches in diameter and is designed to fit on a shaft 3/4 of an inch in diameter and about 2 5/8 inches long. It weighs roughly 7 1/2 pounds.

These chrome frame chairs with metal seats and backs make me think of the darkened restaurants where sweet looking little old ladies would congregate which are among my first memories.

Those same ladies would spit hell-fire and damnation and roundly scorn their husbands and humanity in general while occasionally  slyly handing a free soda to the bug-eyed kid standing dumbfounded on the other side of the counter.

They’re are all long gone now and I’m sure the old shell-back green and yellow metal chairs we sat in have since been turned into SUV’s or kitchen accessories.

This set of four chairs probably once sat in a similar kind of establishment. The smell of old smoke and cooking grease that probably once coated these is long gone scrubbed away and covered by a newish coat of paint.

They’re in good condition and measure 32 inches tall to the top of the back. I’d guess they were originally made in the 1950′s.