Part 1

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THE COLLECTOR’S WHATNOT

_A Compendium, Manual, and Syllabus of Information and Advice on all Subjects Appertaining to the Collection of Antiques, both Ancient and not so Ancient_

Compiled by

CORNELIUS OBENCHAIN VAN LOOT, MILTON KILGALLEN AND MURGATROYD ELPHINSTONE

Boston and New York _Houghton Mifflin Company_ The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The First Edition of _The Collector’s Whatnot_ consists of 3127 copies, as follows:

Twenty-seven on choicest domestic leaf, bound in teakwood, with leather hinges, numbered A to &, with the Authors’ thumb-prints in red ink in each copy.

Three thousand one hundred copies on American antique wove, bound in manila boards.

The Second Edition consists of one thousand pure and pink copies, bound to sell.

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

_To_

The Resigned Husbands and Wives of

All True Collectors

This Book

is most feelingly

DEDICATED

PREFACE

The American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities was formed on February 14, 1911, by Eben S. Twitchett, B.B.S., Cornelius Obenchain Van Loot, D.A., C.O.J., Raymond L. Pry, A.B., A.M., S.I.W., and Professor Milton Kilgallen, F.R.S., of Balliol College. The present volume is largely made up of the papers delivered by these distinguished pedants before their equally distinguished society.

The 14th of February is a red-letter day in the history of antiques and antiqueing; for the exhaustive researches and diligent labors of the members of the Academy have not only awakened untold numbers of people to the refining value of something really old, but have cleared up those highly important moot points; that is, when does a thing cease to be merely old and become an antique; and when is an antique not an antique?

One of the finest contributions to the literature of antiques, for example, was Dr. Pry’s masterly monograph on _Chisel Markings and Screw-Driver Scratches of the Lower Connecticut Valley_ (Bulletin of the American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities, Vol. IV, No. 7, pp. 3682 _et seq._). In this monograph Dr. Pry pointed out that an old Colonial frying-pan was a genuine antique, worthy of being used as the central object in a modern mantel-ornament grouping. The workmanship, the artistry, the incomparable grace of a genuine De Ruyter frying-pan puts it in the same class with a great painting or a great ruin. A De Ruyter frying-pan in first-class shape is, in fact, infinitely preferable to some great ruins, especially if the ruins come under the head of third-class ruins.† On the other hand, a genuine Oppendink frying-pan, carefully made during the same year that, say, the De Ruyter frying-pan was produced, is worthless as an antique. Both are antiques, yet one is not an antique. There are some who persist in buying Oppendink frying-pans and hanging them on the walls of their living-rooms, alongside a beautiful old Colonial hack-saw and a rare Colonial egg-beater; but their numbers, thanks to the magnificent, careful, and far-reaching work of the American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities, are gradually becoming fewer. ———— † Grasswink, H. Q., _Ruins: Brick, Stone, and Human; Their Classification and Idiosyncrasies_.

This is only an isolated example of the Academy’s efforts. Its field agents have collected, collated, segregated, documented, annotated, and filed over seventy-three hundred pounds (August 28, 1922) of reports on American-owned antiques alone. Some of them have undergone the most severe dangers; while two have even made the supreme sacrifice in their pursuit of duty. This tragedy cast a shadow over the entire Academy; for among its members there were no more ardent or well-informed students of antiques than Judson F. Rapp, Litt.D., and Herman Hymen Heller, of Cracow University. The beautiful Rapp-Heller monument, soon to be erected either in Washington, D.C., or in the lonely spot in Northern Maine where Dr. Rapp dug up the first known specimen of folding iron Colonial camping-stool, will represent the Spirit of Antiqueing in a most dignified and touching way. Sketches for this monument have already been prepared by Mrs. Claudia Gaines Gumme, the distinguished sculptress; and the accepted sketch shows a stern-visaged New-England housewife refusing to accept seven dollars from Professor Heller for a beautiful Colonial cradle, while Dr. Rapp surreptitiously examines the bottom of a ladder-back chair in the shadow of a convenient highboy.

The details of the tragedy are probably still fresh in the minds of all antique-lovers. Dr. Rapp and Professor Heller, it will be remembered, had secured for the society a flawless specimen of early well-sweep with bucket attached. They took the well-sweep and bucket to their rooms and prepared to study their treasures with the painstaking care which characterized all their efforts. Dr. Rapp was a native of Calais, Maine, and therefore had developed his New England conscience to a high degree. Professor Heller, though born in Kishinew and educated in Cracow, had thoroughly absorbed the New England traditions and ideals in the nine years he had lived in America. He often laughingly remarked that his New England conscience had become so acute that he was thinking of changing his name to Lowell or Fitzgerald.

In making a careful examination of the well-sweep with their magnifying glasses, Dr. Rapp and Professor Heller reached markedly different conclusions as to its age. Dr. Rapp, as shown by the hasty notes which he jotted down at the time, was of the opinion that it dated back to 1683. Dr. Heller, on the other hand, basing his conclusions on the moss-layers at the end of the pole, was firmly convinced that it could not have been made prior to 1765. Each scientist labored for hours in the effort to win over the other to his views. The arguments finally became bitter, and eventually they attacked each other with their magnifying glasses, which were unusually large and heavy. The noise of the struggle was heard by several neighbors; but it was not investigated, as Professor Heller had long been accustomed to distil alcohol, sampling the results as he went along, and frequently becoming rather noisy. The neighbors, unfortunately, thought he was sampling a new batch. On the following morning, when an attendant came to clean the Professor’s apartments, both Dr. Rapp and Professor Heller were dead. This is a beautiful example of the devotion to a cause which characterizes the work of all the members of the American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities.

The finest fruit of the work of the Academy, however, came when it commissioned Professor Milton Kilgallen, F.R.S., of Balliol College, to collate and edit the notes, papers, and reports of America’s greatest antique-collectors for the benefit of the present and future generations. The monumental labors of Professor Kilgallen, which have extended over a period of seven years, cannot, of course, be included in any book weighing less than seventeen pounds. The ensuing work is merely a sketch or bird’s-eye view of the Professor’s toil, published in the present form by the Academy in order that antique-lovers may, in a few hours’ reading, obtain an idea of the vast amount of material suitable for individual research work which has been collected in the Academy’s files through the indefatigable energy and enthusiasm of Professor Kilgallen.

The Kilgallen family has long been distinguished in the realm of Arts and Sciences. Colonel Everard Kilgallen, father of Professor Milton Kilgallen, became celebrated at the age of twenty-two for his exhaustive treatise on “The Seasonal Movements of the Potato Bug.” His wife, the beautiful Sheila Catherwood-Trapp, daughter of Sir Almeric Catherwood-Trapp, D.S.O., K.C.B., F.R.G.S., was noted for her bird studies, and particularly for her inimitable paintings of the lesser flycatcher, on which she specialized. So realistic were her paintings of the lesser flycatcher that flies have actually been observed hurriedly leaving a room in which one of these works of art was hung.

This accomplished couple had two sons, Morton and Milton Kilgallen. Both, curiously, were educated at Balliol; and both became full Professors during the evening of the same day—June 21, 1906. Both sons inherited from their gifted parents the love of science and research. Professor Morton Kilgallen devoted his life to ichthyology.

Professor Milton Kilgallen had planned to devote his life to entomology. Fortunately for all antique-lovers, his first researches were made among the borers. This chance brought him in close contact with antiques; since it is among the antiques that many of the wood-borers seem best able to function and to express their individuality. Although he has never lost interest in the borers, his early love for entomology has been abandoned in favor of his second love, antiques. He has devoted himself to the study of antiques with the enthusiasm which has always characterized the activities of the Kilgallen family. His tall, somewhat wooden figure and his rich mahogany-colored features—due, probably, to his somewhat eccentric but constant use of furniture polish as a face lotion—are familiar to antique-dealers from Odessa to Otaru and from Edinburgh to Eski-Shehir. His knowledge of antiques verges on the supernatural. Other antique-collectors cannot account for it; but he himself ascribes it to a trimonthly subcutaneous injection of the special furniture polish from his own laboratory. With the charming simplicity that always characterizes his speech and acts, he declares that if one wishes to place himself _en rapport_ with an Indian, one lives like an Indian; if one wishes to familiarize himself with the gorilla, one lives the life of a gorilla as nearly as possible. If, therefore, one wishes to become thoroughly familiar with furniture, one must live like furniture: that is to say, he must _think_ like furniture. The whimsical directness and incontrovertibility of this suggestion is typical of the man; and if we are to believe him, it accounts for his penetrating knowledge of all sorts of furniture. Other collectors have tried the same system, but most of them either went blind or lost their reason.

Professor Milton Kilgallen has the largest collection of worm-holes (in furniture, of course, not in the earth or other substances) in the world. In his beautiful residence on the Maine coast is one room devoted entirely to these little miracles of patience. Some of them are plain, without edging, while others are cross-sections. It is almost impossible for Professor Kilgallen to state from day to day how many he has in his possession; but at the lowest estimate there are more than twelve thousand. Professor Kilgallen is also an ardent collector of samples of patina, or the polish which comes on ancient articles from constant handling and rubbing. These samples range all the way from an arm of a desk-chair once used by Savonarola to the elbow of a frock coat worn for several years by the Honorable William J. Bryan, which last he obtained with great difficulty. Not counting kitchen utensils and garments patinated by the Professor himself, he has more than 1178 specimens of patina, which establishes a world’s record for a single collection.

The American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities counts itself fortunate to have secured the services of the world’s greatest expert on antiques in the preparation of this book and in the collecting of the enormous mass of data which is always open to any member of the Academy or to any antique-collector in good and regular standing. If this book shall further the cause of antique-hunting and somewhat lighten the arduous labors of those whose lives are dedicated to finding something old to put in the house, then the American Academy for the Popularization of Antiquities shall not have come into existence in vain.

CORNELIUS OBENCHAIN VAN LOOT, D.A., C.O.J. _President, A.A.P.A._

FLORAL PARK CITY, FLORIDA _September 30, 1923_

CONTENTS

ANTIQUEING AHEAD, BY EBEN S. TWITCHETT, B.B.S., F.A.A.P.A., ETC. 1

HINTS FOR BUYING FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES, BY CECILIA LEFINGWELL PRYNNE (MRS. GÜTZ) 29

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS, BY MURGATROYD ELPHINSTONE, A.B., A.M., F.R.F.H.A., LECTURER ON SCROLLWORK AND FRETS AT SINSABAUGH UNIVERSITY, 1917–18 39

OLD RUGS, OLD IRON, OLD BRASS, OLD GLASS: A BRIEF BROCHURE ON THE SEARCH FOR THE ANTIQUE BY A PROFESSIONAL, JARED P. KILGALLEN, J.D. AND R.P. 61

THE EUROPEAN FIELD, BY PROFESSOR CHARLES A. DOOLITTLE, F.R.A.C.S. 77

HORSECHESTNUT 113

A WORD ON POONING, BY AUGUSTULA THOMAS 133

LIST OF PLATES AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS

REAR VIEW OF THE STATUE OF PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN FLORAL PARK CITY, FLORIDA _Frontispiece_

PLATE I: OLD DUTCH OVENSIDE CHAIR WITH THE RARE PRETZEL BACK 4

PAIR OF WONDERFUL OLD FRENCH STATUETTES NOW THE PROPERTY OF DR. TWITCHETT 10

PLATE II: MAGNIFICENT OLD FLAT-FRONT EARLY NEW JERSEY SIDEBOARD DISCOVERED BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN AN OBSCURE PART OF NEWARK 18

PLATE III: FROM PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S COLLECTION OF BEAUTIFUL OLD WOOD-CARVINGS: FIGURE OF POCAHONTAS; BELIEVED TO BE THE WORK OF JOHN ALDEN 26

OLD NEW ENGLAND PRINT OF THE FIRST MEETING OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES 32

STATUE ERECTED TO PROFESSOR KILGALLEN IN FLORAL PARK CITY, FLORIDA, BY GRATEFUL CITIZENS OF THAT COMMUNITY 42

PLATE IV: PRICELESS BIT OF OLD STAFFORDSHIRE WARE (A PAPER-WEIGHT) COLLECTED BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN 50

PLATE V: RARE BIT OF OLD WORCESTERSHIRE WARE 58

DR. TWITCHETT AND MRS. AUGUSTULA THOMAS’S HUSBAND (MR. THOMAS) WEARING THE INSIGNIA OF FULL MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES 64

THE GLASS PERFECT 68

PLATE VI: OLD SKIPWORTH WARE: DOG ON PAPER-WEIGHT 74

PLATE VII: PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S MAGNIFICENT COLLECTION OF EARLY AMERICAN UTENSILS, ALL HAND-WROUGHT, AND SOME OBTAINED FROM THE DESCENDANTS OF THE FAMILIES IN WHICH THE ARTICLES HAD BEEN HANDED DOWN FROM FATHER TO SON 80

PLATE VIII: COLONIAL TRIGLE-STOOL, DISCOVERED IN A NEW HAMPSHIRE WOODSHED, AND PURCHASED FOR A MERE SONG BY PROFESSOR KILGALLEN 86

PLATE IX: COLOGNE CATHEDRAL AS IT IS TO-DAY 94

PLATE X: NEW DESIGN FOR COLOGNE CATHEDRAL 94

PLATE XI: COLONIAL KITCHEN SINK FROM THE OLD PALAVER THOMPSON MANSION IN HAVERHILL 102

PLATE XII: SAMPLER IN THE POSSESSION OF PROFESSOR KILGALLEN’S FAMILY 110

THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL: “RISING IN THE NIGHT, TROUBLE OVER THE YEARNING OF THE BASSINES TO BE REUNITED TO THEIR ORIGINAL SOURCE” 124

“HE KNEW THE OLD MUSICIAN SUFFERED FROM HEADACHES,” ETC. 126

THE BECKET (ACTUAL SIZE) 128

PROFILE VIEW OF THE PORTE-CHAPEAUX OF NOISETTE À CHEVAL RECONSTRUCTED AND IN USE 130

RECEPTION HELD BY THE AMERICAN ACADEMY FOR THE POPULARIZATION OF ANTIQUITIES ON THE LAWN BEFORE THE ACADEMY’S BUILDING AT THE SAN FRANCISCO EXPOSITION 136

OLD VIRGINIA FOUR-POSTER INLAID WITH MAHOGANY 144

———— ANTIQUEING AHEAD

By

EBEN S. TWITCHETT ————

ANTIQUEING AHEAD

By

EBEN S. TWITCHETT, B.B.S., F.A.A.P.A., ETC.

It was Mr. Leslie Stephen, I believe, who remarked, of the repartees of the late Dr. Samuel Johnson, that it was futile to defend them except to those who enjoyed them without defense. Some color of this same good-humored contempt, this faintly supercilious _laissez-faire_ [or, as the French phrase has it, this spirit of leave it lay], has too long characterized the attitude of antiquers in general toward those who seem, to the esoteric view, at least, Philistine, gentile.

Antiquers have, as a rule, contentedly held themselves above the indignity of proselyting; a little jealous, perhaps, of their relative rarity, they have looked askance, or two, even, at those who strayed, unbidden, into their company. It was, they felt, enough to be an antiquer and to antique; they knew no restless itch for converts; they believed, or affected to believe, that the antiquer is as impossible of post-natal evolution as the ventriloquist or the Ethiopian.

Herein, as Professor Kilgallen has at last made manifest, antiquers have been doubly at fault—at fault in a parochial willingness to conserve for their own behoof an avocation at once innocent, diverting, and, if individual taste so incline, remunerative; at fault again in assuming that the antiquer must needs be born [in the vernacular] that way.

These errors, happily, no longer reproach the confraternity at large. The popularization of antiqueing, under the purposeful leadership of Professor Kilgallen, is, one may assert, almost a _fait accompli_, or, as the clever Gallic dictum puts it, an accomplished fact. And it has been incidentally established, surely, that the antiquer may be made almost as expeditiously and convincingly as the antique itself.

The inspiring example of Milton Kilgallen, and the indisputable success of his endeavors, have, together, persuaded me that I have been even more at fault than those esoteric antiquers, if I may, for the last time, so describe them, toward whom, in the pride of my peculiarity, I have felt and spoken very much as they, in turn, have felt and spoken of the Philistine proper. For years, sedulously and vigilantly I have enjoyed a monopoly of the great branch of the art and science of antiqueing which continues to preoccupy my powers. I have made no effort to interest other antiquers in my province; I have thought of them, indeed, as scarcely less pitiable than those to whom an antique is a piece of, in the vulgar idiom, junk.

Too, even had I felt a need of sympathy and envy and applause in my secret ambitions and achievements, I should have been restrained from the essay to share my enthusiasm by my fixed belief that it could be acquired in no way except that accident of inheritance by which it came to me.

_Peccavi_, or, in the perhaps more pungent idiom of Cicero, I have sinned. I now make confession and, as far as may be, atonement. I reveal my guarded secrets, at last, without reserve.

I am still, I believe, the only antiquer ahead, _sui generis_, or, to adopt the scintillating Italian phrase, alone in my class. Rather, now that these lines have seen the light, _fui_, _non sum_. I have been, as the Latins put it, not I am. For it will be enough to whisper my revelations; there will be, to-morrow, I realize, more antiquers ahead than one can shake a stick—if the reader will indulge me in the solecism of ending a sentence prepositionally—at.

To this I am resigned. Long enough have I enjoyed the sole entry to an entire tense; long enough have brother and sister antiquers rummaged in the traditional and commonplace haunts of the antique, the past; long enough have they ventured no farther than the abode of the antiquer—the present. To-morrow, forsaking these well-trodden precincts, they will join me in the virgin, but pregnant, future.

Like me, they will stoop no longer to the facile, shameful processes of searching, in cobwebbed bins and attics, for antiques which any novice must recognize, at a glance, as old. Like me, they will even smile at the enthusiasms of those who scratch in the dust and crow, like barnyard fowl, at each inevitable discovery. Like me, they will know the pure joy of explorations and discoveries among the boundless stores of to-morrow’s antiques.

I must begin at the beginning, with my birth. My destiny was predetermined by the ancestry of which I sprang. My parents, both of sturdy native stock, were by instinct mated to produce the original antiquer ahead. It was inevitable, I apprehend. It was to be. It was.

My father, worthy fellow, had no clear knowledge of his natural talent. My mother, I sometimes fancy, was remotely, dimly conscious of her gift. I can recall, as yesterday, the exalted look with which she witnessed the removal, from our stately parlor, of the array of commonplace antiques with which it had been furnished, the joy with which she and my father arranged, instead, those potential antiques which only the gropings of their common hunger recognized for what they were.

Even I, then in plaid kilts, did not at once share their delight, their understanding. I found the red plush surface of that priceless varnished oak sofa a harshly ticklesome affair; I was, to be sure, impressed by the new frosted globes adorning the gasolier, the intricate arabesques of the plaster rosette on the ceiling, from which it sprouted downwards; I need not say, surely, that these globes, tinted a glorious winey purple, decorated with protuberant knobs and profound depressions, were none other than those very treasures of the Obenchain collection, famous in four hemispheres as the sole surviving set of admitted Roscoe Conkling gas-glass. They were, and I must marvel helplessly before the phenomenon of instinct which urged my father, a simple-minded barber in the town of Yonkers, to choose, unerringly, for the tastes of fifty years beyond!