With all things Danish surging in popularity following the coronation of King Frederick and Queen Mary in January, we take a look at the famous Tekno scale model toy company – the cream of Danish diecast.
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Let’s be honest, a Christmas tree can look pretty dull until it’s covered in all those wondrous coloured fairy lights and decorations. But where did Christmas lights originate? Who thought of the lighting up of Christmas…?
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Throughout history and across cultures there’s a great deal of symbolism and tradition involving bees. For example, Celtic mythology saw the bee as a messenger between our world and the spirit realm. More broadly, in pagan tradition throughout the world bees symbolise fertility and sexuality and Christianity adopted the bee as a symbol of Christ’s attributes.
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In 1954, Queen Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit Australia. She and the Duke of Edinburgh visited all capital cities except Darwin, along with 70 country towns during the 56 days of her visit. It was an exhausting schedule.
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Some of the funniest, rudest and strangest things that have been said to antique dealers.
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The Blue Willow is most familiar to us as a pattern on pottery, but over the last two centuries it’s actually been used in advertising for everything from airlines to dinner sauce.
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Collector Michael Kelly has long been interested in maritime memorabilia, but it was a chance discovery that led him to an appreciations of ships’ menus, cooked turtle and boiled sheep’s head…
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Recently in Hobart, the scrapbook album of Robin Hood Lloyd (1828-1916) appeared. As AAADA member Warwick Oakman writes, Hood was a lithographer and framer of Elizabeth Street in Hobart.
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Boyd, Douglas, Perceval and Friends, the Murrumbeena Story and Beyond continues…The tradition of studio pottery in Australia changed drastically in 1944. ‘Open Country’, the Murrumbeena home of Merric and Doris Boyd, their five children and assorted artists and friends had become the teaching ground for a new generation of ceramicists.
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Collecting ceramics with a bird theme can be highly enjoyable, as there is a huge choice of styles and designs from different periods and at varying prices. UK author and pottery specialist Alan Marshall takes a look at some of the 20th and 21st century options where, if you buy wisely, you can have fun and feather your own nest at the same time.
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In the mid-1920s less than half the homes in Australian capital cities were connected to mains electricity, yet within a decade a mass market had been created for the mass manufacture and sale of electric kettles. How did this happen?
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While the golden era of wearing badges is over, the Melbourne Cup started a trend in the 1990s of promoting the wearing of replica Cup pins as a necessary accessory at the race carnival each year. Nowadays these pins are highly collectable, for a number of reasons.
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Over the years, Lyn Diskon’s collection of teapots has become a community asset as a tourist attraction drawing visitors from the region and travellers along the nearby highway to view the display in her town’s op shop. “I personally enjoy looking at beautiful things, and I guess I just thought others would too,” says Lyn.
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Most readers of this website will be a collector of something. But you need to have a house full – literally – to be considered a Super-Collector…
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Harry Gordon Selfridge was an American businessman who rose to become a junior partner at Marshall Field’s department store in Chicago, before deciding to follow his ambitions and emigrating to the UK with his family in 1906. His plan was to open a store in London; the largest shop in Oxford Street, Selfridge’s opened to enormous fanfare in 1909.
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As polite society evolved, mourning customs became a way for an individual to participate in society while going through a loss. Billy Robertson and Elizabeth Cheung look at love and mourning in the Victorian period.
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Sending a postcard is something most of us have done while on holiday, even if it was only to sign the back with a laid-back flourish. But in the early 20th century the postcard was also a work of art.
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Ancient coins often contain stories of historical or mythical events, and are sometimes the only reference we have to these events. They are also precious and collectable investments, having been struck in gold, silver and bronze.
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Over years dedicated to the protection of fine art, antiques and collectables for dealers, galleries, museums, public and corporate clients, exhibitions and private clients, I saw that protecting precious items goes beyond the insurance policy itself.
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Often mistaken for extra-large Christmas baubles, glass witch balls have a longer and more interesting history than most Christmas decorations.
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For the French pottery of Sarreguemines, it was a commission from Napoleon I for his apartments at Versailles that put it on the map.
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In the second of two features, we look at the arrival in Europe of chocolate from the Aztecs and coffee from Africa via Turkey.
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From the benefits of beer for babies, tapeworm pills for weight loss and cocaine toothache drops to a smoking Santa and a spanking for serving stale coffee, none of these vintage adverts would get a run in today’s media…
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Our intrepid reporter takes us on a tour of one of Japan’s largest flea markets.
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He’s making a list, checking it twice… gonna find out who’s naughty or nice… Have you ever wondered what happens to the naughty children at Christmas? Krampus is what happens.
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The field of geology was of great interest to the gentlemen scholars of the early 18th century, so when a hitherto unknown mineral was discovered in a British cavern in the 1750s it excited a lot of people…
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Except for the most famous of collectors of the early 20th century, very few collectors are remembered, recorded or even appreciated by the majority today. One such man who was unknown as a collector was in fact the most extraordinary person: William Percy Wilkinson or just, Percy Wilkinson.
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From humble beginnings in the small Swiss town of Brienz to royal patronage and world renown, the wood carvings known today as Black Forest captured the imagination of a Victorian public entranced with wildlife.
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Many toy makers began to create models of the airship during its heyday. Valuable collectables today, they often had clockwork motors that turned a propeller, enabling the ship to be powered on a circular path while suspended from a string.
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The Cabbage Patch Kids have become a mainstay of the toy industry and one of the few long-running doll brands in history. The highest price paid so far was US$2000 on eBay for a 1985 CPK called Teresa Ann… they’re definitely having a revival of popularity.
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The original definition of ephemeron, in Greek, was a plant or an insect said by ancient writers to survive only a single
day. In the 18th century it came to denote a person or thing of short-lived interest. Its plural, ephemera, now refers to
collectable items originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.
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Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee in June 2012, almost equalling the record set by Queen Victoria with her 63 years of rule. There will be plenty of royal memorabilia on offer to commemorate the event, in a tradition that goes back more than three hundred years.
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Originally sold by street vendors for a penny, these small, colourful, lithographed tinplate amusements are now appreciating by up to 200,000 times their original value.
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Collector Nick Thomas gives his opinion on the concept of one of today’s antique game shows. We should probably mention right now that the opinion of the writer is not necessarily that of the publishers…
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They sell for serious money today, but the pocket globe was never intended for serious scientific interest. Their small size made accurate calculations impossible and they tended to lack the rings and dials required for the most common manipulations, but they were highly decorative – and the perfect status symbol for the wealthy gentleman.
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The sweeping finial and robust spout of Susie Cooper’s Kestrel shape shows a strong Art Deco influence, but the shape was so popular that it continued in production until the mid-sixties.
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In 1574, King Henry III of France arrived in Italy to visit his counterpart, Alvise I Mocinego, the Doge of Venice. He was greeted with an opulent 10-day banquet unlike anything ever seen before – everything was made entirely of spun sugar…
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The pagan association of mistletoe is so strong that even today, there will rarely be any sprigs of it found decorating a church garland at Christmas…
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The social history of asparagus unfolds across centuries and cultures. It was first depicted on an ancient Egyptian frieze as far back as 3000BCE and was admired by both the Egyptians and the Romans for its delicate flavour and purported medicinal values.
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Shimmering and iridescent, dragonflies swooping and diving over a pond in the late afternoon sunlight appear delicate and fragile. But looks couldn’t be more deceiving. Dragonflies are apex predators, with a hunting success rate of 95%.
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Has anyone ever called you ‘my little tomatl’? If so, you might want to think about slapping them. It’s the Aztec word for tomato, so it sounds like a cute term of endearment, but its literal translation is ‘plump thing with a navel’. We look at a fruit with more to it than you might imagine…
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Although not the first to use the sundial, the Romans were the first to use them as a decorative element in the garden. Remarkably, centuries later we have sundials not just in gardens across the globe, but in space: the furthest sundial from earth is stationed on planet Mars with the Mars Rover…
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Their eyes meet across a crowded room and she brings her delicate lace fan up to her face. He waits for their silent conversation to begin… Is she single? Married? Interested in getting acquainted? All will be revealed with the secret language of the fan…
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It’s hard today to imagine a world that did not include moving images, colour photography or glossy magazines, but in the 19th century many city dwellers had no idea what the natural world looked like beyond their own limited direct experience and monochrome book illustrations. And then entered the diorama.
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Most people have heard of ‘ships in bottles’, marvelling at the ingenuity of the carvers and wondering how the ship was fitted through the narrow neck of a bottle. But few people realise there are other forms of folk art in bottles.
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The first record of drinking chocolate came from Mayan and Aztec pots containing traces of cacao beans, with the age of the pots indicating the Mayans were drinking it from at least 1400BC. Debra Palmen looks at the history and collectability of one of the world’s most favourite foods.
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Ivor Hughes takes a look at the stunningly intricate processes involved in cork painting and sculpture, a Chinese specialty a mere century old.
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For generations, the leading brand for domestic scales has been Salters, a company that has been in business for over 250 years. But the history of scales dates back much further than that…
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