Tucked away in a lower Manhattan back alley, the freight-elevator-sized, generically named Museum is one of New York City’s newest curiosities. While it’s only open 16 hours a week, during the day on Saturdays and Sundays, the museum’s contents are viewable 24/7, lit and sealed by glass doors.

Passers-by are encouraged to call a toll-free number to learn about the 15 collections, comprising 200 objects, inside, including a series of Disney-themed bulletproof backpacks; U.S. paper money and coins so mutilated the Fed has deemed them unfit for currency, gathered by artist and writer Harley Spiller, a.k.a. Inspector Collector; a selection of objects from a fake Mars excavation; and personal items fabricated by prisoners, such as dice made out of bread, collected by multimedia artist Baron Von Fancy. Museum also offers several unique ways to experience the world: You can compare industrial designer Tucker Viemeister’s collection of toothpaste tubes from all over the map, or potato chip bags from various countries (collected by an eighth-grade class), as well as a globetrotting fake vomit collection. And that’s just the beginning.

“People say to us, ‘Oh, my gosh, you have to meet this person. They have a collection of potato chips that look like presidents!’”

Individually, many of these objects seem suited to a landfill, but taken together, they serve as a testament to the collecting spirit. At least, that’s how Museum co-founder Alex Kalman explains it, as he waxes poetic about the lessons everyday items can teach us. Kalman, along with brothers Benny and Josh Safdie, run the film production company Red Bucket Films upstairs from Museum, at 368 Broadway in TriBeCa. When the building owners offered them a defunct freight-elevator shaft on Cordlandt Alley out back, the filmmakers knew they had a place to showcase the weird cultural detritus they’d gathered over the years—such as a shoe rumored to be the one thrown at George W. Bush in 2008.

The three partners opened the free, nonprofit Museum to much fanfare in May 2012, with financial backing from the Spade Family, including Andy and Kate Spade (yes, of the purse company Kate Spade). Kalman spoke to us about what you’ll find in the current season of Museum, and how anyone can put his or her quirky collection into the spotlight.

Top: You’d never guess a tiny museum was behind these wrought-iron doors in a New York City alley. Click the image for a closer look. Photo by Naho Kubota. Above: A tube of Teelak teeth-whitening gel—sold in Spain starting around 1960 as a remedy for nicotine stains—from Tucker Viemiester’s collection. Via mmuseumm.com

Collectors Weekly: Could you tell me about the concept behind Museum?

Alex Kalman: We find amazing stories—as well as beauty and absurdity and inspiration—in what many would consider the vernacular. Our backgrounds are in filmmaking, and in many of our films, the stories are very much about the details of everyday life. We look at small, intimate moments and try to draw the poetry, or the universal meaning, out of them. These are moments we can all feel a certain level of familiarity with, much like a tube of toothpaste.

For us, Museum was about creating an institution that celebrates the extraordinariness of the seemingly ordinary. You can obviously learn a lot about the world by reading the newspaper every day, watching movies, or studying political science. But you can also learn a lot about the world by looking at the smallest things that cultures create and seeing the similarities and differences between them.

Mutilated-money collector Harley Spiller, a.k.a. Inspector Collector, says this graffiti-covered dollar was given as change. Via mmuseumm.com

Honestly, there wasn’t as much of an articulated philosophy when we were starting out. It was something we naturally did. When we were filming movies, we were always collecting what we call “modern-day artifacts,” which we would bring back to the studio and share with each other. It was always about having the eye to find the absurd detail in something that others might pass over because it appears to be just another bag of potato chips, or another shoe. But in fact, there’s something insightful or crazy, funny or sad, ugly or beautiful about it. As we were collecting these artifacts, we thought to ourselves that we wanted to open an institution for these things. We wanted to put them on display in the way that we saw them. And that would be, of course, in the form of a museum.

Collectors Weekly: And your museum is in an old freight-elevator shaft?

Kalman: Yes, the owners of the building our film studio is in approached us, having no idea that we were upstairs conceptualizing the Museum. They said they had to remove the freight elevator because it was defunct and so they had turned the shaft into a storage unit. Then, they took us back into the alley behind the building, and they opened these two big wrought-iron doors on the sidewalk. It was like a surreal “Being John Malkovich” experience where there was this tiny, little space the size of an elevator. And that, of course, was the perfect first home for Museum.

Museum, viewed through the glass doors, gives everyday items a spotlight on Cortlandt Alley, between Franklin and White streets, in Manhattan. Photo by Naho Kubota

After we took the space, we approached a friend of ours who’s a fantastic designer and architect named Michael Caputo. He single-handedly completely renovated the space, the walls, and the ceilings. He installed shelves lined with red velvet and lighting. He transformed the space so you walk down this alley and, in the last place you’d expect it, suddenly, there’s this little museum. We put viewing windows in the interior doors, and we keep the space lit at night.

That way, when you’re making your way through the alley, going to and from somewhere in the middle of the night, you can see this light emanating from a window, peer into it, and enjoy the magic of the Museum. It was important to us that the Museum to be viewable 24/7, because one of the beautiful things about New York is that it doesn’t stop, and people are always out and about. Sometimes when we leave the studio late at night, we walk through the alley and see a group of people huddled outside the window, with their cell phones up to their ears, listening to the audio guide.

Collectors Weekly: Where did you find the collections you’re currently featuring?

Kalman: The first season was mostly our own collections—everything we had found. Then, after we opened the space, it became a Pandora’s box for meeting people and discovering all sorts of collectors. So this season is about other people’s collections. Having Museum in New York gives people a chance to say to us, “Oh, my gosh, you have to meet this person. They have a collection of potato chips that look like presidents!” It’s great fun to have this reason to meet collectors and then give them an opportunity to put their collections on display. It might be that they have their collection in their sock drawers, and their things don’t normally get the chance to be important.

Collectors Weekly: What is in your personal collections?

Alex Kalman and his friends marveled at the origin of this sign, found in a motel bathroom in the Midwest. Courtesy of Museum

Kalman: I wouldn’t even know where to begin. It’s very much about the unexpected. They’re hard to describe without also seeing them because I could say, “a stick of butter” and it’s like, “Well, what’s special about a stick of butter?” But there might be elements about packaging or the narrative that’s behind it, a story that took place around that butter or where it’s from, which makes it more relevant and interesting. Museum is also about recontextualizing things.

“It’s fun to look beyond the object to the creation story behind it. What does that say about the culture’s psyche?”

One of my favorite objects from our collection is a little placard that was found on a bathroom counter in a motel in the Midwest. It says something along the lines of, “Due to the popularity of our guest room amenities, we now offer the following items for sale,” and then it goes on to list every single item that’s in the motel room, with an absurd price next to each. I love that; this product that has been created by this motel chain en masse, so that the firm can put one in every room. It’s an effortful response to a problem with theft. There was some conversation that went like, “OK, we have a problem with the people stealing things from the hotel rooms. How are we going to deal with it? Are we going to put security cameras up? Are we going to lock everything to the table?” Then somebody had this bright idea to take the classy approach and leave this absurd plastic little sign in the bathroom. That mundane object that sits on a motel bathroom counter has so much psychology behind it, and I admire that.

This toothbrush was improvised by an inmate from Saran Wrap and his canteen order form; from a collection of objects made by prisoners for prisoners gathered by multimedia artist Baron Von Fancy. Via mmuseumm.com

We’re attracted to objects that show the creativity that people approach problems with. It might be made by somebody who overcomes a lack of resources in a material way. For example, in the current season, there is a collection of objects made for or by inmates in the U.S. prison system. And there’s this incredible toothbrush that an inmate made, because in prison, you’re not issued a regular toothbrush; you’re issued a fingertip piece of plastic that has bristles on it. This inmate wanted a regular toothbrush, not to turn into a shank, not to use for any other reason than to have what was familiar to him when he wasn’t in prison. So he took his canteen order form and some Saran Wrap that he found and modified the fingertip toothbrush into what is then this incredible toothbrush. Not only is it beautiful, but it also has that human story behind it. These sorts of stories come both from individuals as well as big companies. It’s fun to look beyond the object to the creation story behind it. What does that say about our cultural or societal psyche?

Collectors Weekly: So you’re not looking for high-end antiques or things considered rare or high-quality?

This five-dollar bill was deemed evidence by the New York City Police Department. Via mmuseumm.com

Kalman: There’s not a rule like that, but we have other types of rules, and one is ‘no art’. There’s almost nothing in Museum that has been created for the sake of being considered art. There are no paintings and no sculptures. It’s mostly things that have been created to serve other purposes and, in that process, have something beautiful about them. Also, we don’t approach our own collection or other people’s collections with sentimentality. It’s not about “This was my first baseball card.” It has to be bigger than that. It has to be about what the object represents in the cultural landscape.

“Is toothpaste sexy? Is toothpaste responsible? Is toothpaste cool?”

While we aren’t focusing on collections that are incredible antiques or the more traditional values of a collection, we’re not against that either. We wouldn’t automatically rule out something that is perhaps already traditionally considered a collection. In fact, juxtaposing that with the more vernacular items could create a nice balance in Museum. But so far, you wouldn’t find anything in Museum that you would expect when you think of a collection.

In the current season, there’s a collection of toothpaste tubes from around the world. There’s a collection of mutilated U.S. currencies, money that’s counterfeit or real money that’s been scrawled on. There’s a collection from Alvin Goldstein, who was the founder and editor of Screw magazine, who shared with us personal belongings that have stayed with him throughout the narrative of his life. There’s a collection of Disney-themed children’s bulletproof backpacks. They’re things that touch upon something that’s happening in society, things that comment on where we’re at and how we’re thinking and what we’re doing.

Collectors Weekly: With some of this stuff, people might say, “That’s junk. Why don’t you throw it away?”

A bulletproof children’s backpack has a Winne the Pooh theme. Courtesy of Museum

Kalman: Of course, there’s that fine line between collecting and hoarding. It’s important to understanding where you stand on that and to make sure to limit yourself as well as others. But most of these collections don’t come from an endless desire to have. The Museum comes from a desire to create narratives through the collections. Definitely, when you think about the items individually, you can say, “Oh, this is junk.” But if you take a step back and view the collection as a whole, then suddenly it becomes easy to find meaning. Once you start looking at the packaging of Japanese toothpaste versus Italian toothpaste versus Russian toothpaste, it becomes very interesting quickly.

Dice made out of bread by a prison inmate. Courtesy of Museum

Another point is the way the collections are presented, the way we display them. Right now, we have 15 collections in the Museum, making up a total of about 200 objects. Each one has a story posted on the wall behind it. When the museum is closed, you can access the story via the audio guide. And when you enter the space, even though it’s in an unexpected place and at an unexpected scale, it feels like a museum. It feels as though you’re walking in the Louvre, expecting to see the “Mona Lisa,” but instead you’re presented with this toothpaste collection. And that’s to impose the clear value that we see in these objects, and that we treat them as seriously as one might a historical piece of art.

We’re trying to remind people to see the inspiration or the absurdity or the beauty in the everyday, and to be able to see it when you walk to work. Or when you go to the deli, the way someone has displayed sodas in the refrigerator can be meaningful and beautiful. After all, somebody spent time and energy to think of a considerate way to display those sodas, the same way somebody thought about, “How do we display the Queen’s jewels?”

It’s something that has often been said before, but it’s the little moments that make up most of our emotions and most of our feelings. And every now and then, a big thing—like a new job, a marriage proposal, a death, or a national disaster—punctuates our lives, but most of our days are spent dealing with the small stuff, like getting to work in the morning, deciding which toothpaste to buy, or figuring out what to eat for dinner. I think it’s important to have fun with the adventure of the little things.

Collectors Weekly: So what can you learn about a toothpaste from around the world?

When Darkie toothpaste was first manufactured in Shanghai in 1933, it featured a racist caricature of a black man on the label. Eventually, the English name was changed to Darlie.

Kalman: We say to each his or her own, in terms of the way they want to interpret it. The collector points out that the toothpaste industry is shrinking but the varieties of toothpaste continue to expand. You can look at the styles of fonts, the color choices, and the slogans of toothpastes from different countries and see how the product was marketed to those cultures. Is toothpaste sexy? Is toothpaste responsible? Is toothpaste cool? You can see that different cultures approach an idea as banal as brushing your teeth in different ways.

You can also see the evolution of branding. A Chinese toothpaste, called Darkie, once had this caricature of a black man on the front. At a certain moment in history, they said, “Oh my God, we’re told we can’t do this anymore. What are we going to do?” And they changed the name to Darlie toothpaste. Looking at these objects, you can imagine the moment a company says, “Okay, there’s something completely wrong here, but we’re still a functioning company. So how can we do as little as possible to fix the problem?” Changing the “K” to an “L” to absolve the issue that the toothpaste maker had run into is such an amazing and absurd thing.

Collectors Weekly: To me, the toothpaste collection seems similar to the potato-chip-bag collection.

“There’s that fine line between collecting and hoarding.”

Kalman: They’re definitely similar, but they were collected by two different people who were completely unaware of each other. We noticed that the chips one company was marketing to Mexicans versus Italians versus Spanish people had three different flavors. But the brand used the same multinational-looking model on each of the different packages, dressed in a completely different stereotypical outfit. That is something you would never notice, really, if you were just buying one random bag of potato chips in a supermarket.

The collector is a teacher, and it was actually a class assignment, where he encouraged his students to find a strange flavor of potato chips whenever they would travel. They came back with chips flavored like hot dog, lamb, seafood, and mayonnaise—they’re all absurd. But then when you bring them together to create the collection, that’s when a narrative can come into play. One potato-flavor flavor is like, “Oh, that’s weird.” Two are like, “Oh, there are a couple weird flavors.” With three, now I’m studying the similarities and differences. It’s a fun way to collect, choosing one thing and looking at how it’s manifested, depending on where you are in the world.

Collectors Weekly: Let’s talk about Al Goldstein. From what I read in your website, he accumulated all these belongings and ended up homeless?

Kalman: Al Goldstein created an empire mostly through pornography, and he accumulated this absurd level of wealth. Then his empire imploded through various bankruptcies and divorces. He was homeless, and then he moved into an assisted-care home. He’s still alive today, and he gave the opening remarks at the opening of the new season at Museum.

The last pair of Al Goldstein’s gold lamé Nike Air Jordan sneakers. Via mmuseumm.com

At one point, he was living next to Bill Cosby on the Upper East Side and had a house in Miami. He had 200 pairs of gold lamé Nike sneakers. Besides Screw, he started a magazine called Gadget and a television show called “Midnight Blue,” because he was obsessed with reviewing the latest gadgets. He claimed the Ziploc bag was the greatest invention of all time, more powerful than the Gutenberg Press, more powerful than the portable camera, because the Ziploc bag really lived up to its promise. He was a collector not so much for the beauty or the meaning of a collection, but for the personal satisfaction of just having stuff. That speaks to certain ideas about the American dream and materialism in this country.

“When you go to the deli, the way that they display sodas can be meaningful and beautiful.

The objects that are in the Museum came from his last storage unit in Queens, which was packed when he was moved out of his last home into this assisted-care living facility. In the past, he presumably had 20 storage units that were filled with the riches of his collection, like Rolex watches and shark-fin fanny packs—all this absurd materialism from the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. But now, there’s only one storage unit left, and with his approval, we were given access to go and sift through it.

It was like walking into King Tut’s tomb; we had no idea what we would find. Here’s what he had held onto through this arc of his life—the last pair of gold lamé sneakers, just one pair. A trilogy book set on the fall of the Roman Empire, which was unopened, still boxed and sealed. And his girl contact cards, which he would have his assistant or his secretary update each year. These are little laminated index cards with a column for name, a column for city, and a column for phone number. He would carry them around with him whenever he would travel. Perhaps the most enlightening things are the transcribed Dictaphone notes that he would record for his assistant, who would write them up the next morning. That’s the most intimate view into his brain because they’re his middle-of-the-night ranting and ravings.

Collectors Weekly: What about the man who put “Stolen From Alex Walter Hastreiter” on his things?

Kalman: That’s the father of Kim Hastreiter, a co-founder and one of the editors of Paper magazine. He was a jeweler, a sweet and eccentric man. But he was so utterly concerned that something might get stolen or lost that he had engraved on all of his everyday items—his pen, his loupe, his jewel measuring tool—“Stolen From Alex Walter Hastreiter.” Again, this collection captures how a passion or a concern drives a person to handle it and how that solution materializes in the real world. It’s not that he wrote his name on things like people often do, “Property of Alex Walter Hastreiter.” He went to the extent that it had already been stolen, and if it were stolen, it would say that. The label wasn’t something that could be rubbed or peeled off; it was engraved. The effort he put into that concern is remarkable.

Collectors Weekly: What exactly is Hastreiter’s “ass pad” in the collection?

The jewelry loupe engraved with “Stolen From Alex Hastreiter.” Courtesy of Museum

Kalman: He had some back pain, and his doctor said, “If you put a magazine under your left butt cheek, the pain should go away. It’s caused by something in the way that you’re sitting.” Then, of course, that became the quest, to find the magazine with perfect number of pages to alleviate the pain. Then once he found that, the quest was to gather many as he could, so that he would never run out or lose them. Then he would cut them down to size so that they could fit in his back pocket of his pants, tape up the edges. Again, it’s that idea of personally turning something into a product. He could grab a magazine and slip it under his butt and sit down on it, but that wasn’t formal enough. That didn’t feel an ass pad. He was driven to create a product for his condition.

Collectors Weekly: And then there’s also the “ghost paper” collection. Is that the same as the joss paper you can purchase in Chinatown?

Kalman: Yes, it’s one of the rare collections that was mostly purchased new, from a small store in Chinatown. The sheets of joss paper and the papier-mâché objects are meant for Chinese funerals, where these things traditionally are burned as offerings to send the dearly departed treasures for the afterlife. What we love about that is not only the tradition of it, but also how it comes to being in 2013. These are incredibly modern materialistic items: An iPhone. A Louis Vuitton handbag. A plate of sushi. A gold track suit. All made out of paper in an incredibly beautiful way. For instance, a black wallet we noticed was made out of an old designer shopping bag that had the logos printed all over it, like a paper Bloomingdale’s bag. It’s this amazing clash of ancient tradition and the world of a person’s treasured belongings in 2013.

This “computer” is made completely out of paper. It is also designed to be burned at a Chinese funeral. Via mmuseumm.com

And I’m sure that this goes without saying, but even though there’s bit of humor in things that would sometimes be considered serious, for us, there’s never a sense of irony. The Museum is not ever to mock the culture. We created it to celebrate and explore and be moved by or enlightened by these collections. I think it’s a true sensitivity to a cultural artifact to be able to appreciate it on another level than what it was originally intended.

Collectors Weekly: Do you have a collection lined up for Season 3?

Kalman: We’re considering a number of submissions from collectors, and it’s always an exciting part of the process. But if you’re interested in submitting your collection, there should be no shyness or hesitancy. We love when people tell us about a collection, no matter what it may be. People can snap a photograph or write a description and send it to submissions@museum.com.

(Learn more about Museum, its collection, and its events at its web site, as well as on its Twitter and Instagram pages. The stories of the objects can be reached by calling 1-888-763-8839. More on Museum’s founders can found at Red Bucket Films.)

When Bob Meistrell started surfing in Northern California during the early 1950s, 20 minutes was about all he could stand in the frigid coastal waters. Despite the constant rush of adrenaline, after three or four good waves, the late Body Glove co-founder was hightailing it back to a dry towel in the warmth of his car. With water temperatures near Santa Cruz hovering in the mid-50s, the surf was cold enough for a swimmer to catch hypothermia in an hour.

“He’d be surfing at Ocean Beach basically in rubber overalls filled with water.”

This unpleasant reality is in sharp contrast to popular depictions of early American surf-culture, which are all skimpy swimsuits and suntanned skin. Bands like the Beach Boys and films like Annette Funicello’s “Beach Blanket Bingo” cemented an image that revolved around the southern tip of California or the tepid waters of Hawaii. In fact, most beaches on the California coast were simply too cold for surfers to get their fix, inspiring pioneers like Meistrell to start tinkering with some creative solutions.

However, the first neoprene wetsuit wasn’t developed by a surfer, but by a Berkeley physicist named Hugh Bradner, whose contributions are sometimes overlooked. In 1951, Bradner was working in conjunction with researchers at University of California, Berkeley, and the U.S. Navy to design a diving suit for the military that didn’t need to prevent water intrusion to keep the wearer warm. Hence the name “wetsuit.”

Top: Body Glove’s first wetsuit size chart used this photographic diagram. Image courtesy of Body Glove. Above: Diver John Foster wears two of Bradner’s early neoprene wetsuit prototypes, circa 1952. Images courtesy of Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, UC San Diego Library.

A fellow researcher suggested Bradner try a foamed neoprene material made by a company called Rubatex. (At the time, extruded neoprene strips were primarily used as a sealant around gaskets for automobiles and airplanes.) Neoprene was filled with tiny, uniform air bubbles that helped insulate against the cold, even without being skintight. Divers working with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography tested Bradner’s early prototypes, and his best designs utilized the thick, foam-rubber material with fantastic results.

An early 1950s ad for EDCO’s sub-mariner wetsuit.

Apparently, Bradner preferred his wetsuit research to benefit the U.S. Navy rather than profiting from their production. In a letter dated December 8, 1952, Bradner wrote, “I plan to get someone started to making the foam suits commercially within the next month or two, if all goes well. I do not anticipate any particular difficulty, since I specifically wish to avoid any profit to myself. I don’t want to compromise my position of unbiased consultation on swimmers’ problems.”

Instead of pushing for his own patent, Bradner allowed the application to pass to the University of California, which abandoned the project after determining the market for watersport equipment was too limited; in 1952, there were relatively few surfers and divers around the world.

True to his word, Bradner formed the Engineering Development Company, or EDCO, with some colleagues in order to manufacture his “Sub-Mariner” suit. As quoted in an ad from Skin Diver magazine, a short version of the Sub-Mariner sold for $45, which would be approximately $400 today, while the full suit cost $75. Regardless of price, Bradner’s company couldn’t compete with brands developed by the actual athletes who used wetsuits, like surfer Jack O’Neill.

Two divers wear frogmen-style drysuits, like those worn by O’Neill during his early surfing days. Image courtesy of Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, UC San Diego Library.

The same year that Bradner’s company got started, Jack O’Neill opened the first O’Neill surf shop in his garage near Ocean Beach in San Francisco. As an avid surfing and diving enthusiast, O’Neill had been testing various methods to keep warm while surfing off the Northern California coast. These included soaking sweaters in kerosene to make them more water resistant and experimenting with rubber drysuits worn by Navy frogmen, or underwater divers. The two-part frogmen outfits were tightly sealed at the wrists and ankles to prevent water from entering the suit, and worn over long underwear to stay warm.

O’Neill’s earliest wetsuit prototype was this vest coated in PVC plastic, circa 1953.

“They’d roll the top and bottom together to seal around the waist,” explains Brian Kilpatrick, O’Neill’s Director of Marketing Communications. “You’d be good for half an hour before the seal would break and then the waders would fill up with water, and you’d be lucky to survive. You can imagine how dangerous that was: He’d be surfing at Ocean Beach basically in rubber overalls filled with water. Super scary.”

Though the drysuit let O’Neill stay in the water a bit longer, he realized it wasn’t a safe solution. Around the same time that Bradner was conducting his experiments in Berkeley, O’Neill got wind of neoprene from a pharmacist friend, who suggested it as an insulator. O’Neill applied a thin layer of PVC plastic sheeting to one side in order to strengthen the material, and then hand-cut neoprene panels to the desired size. Beginning with a swimsuit brief and vest, O’Neill constructed and tested his first wetsuit designs himself.

Then in 1956, O’Neill introduced the wetsuit to a wider audience: At a sporting goods trade show in San Francisco, he set up a full swimming pool, and had his kids float around in their full-length wetsuits along with surfboards, inflatable rafts, and big chunks of ice. The orders started rolling in.

Jack O’Neill’s kids floated around in their custom wetsuits at a 1956 trade show in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, down in Redondo Beach, Bob Meistrell and his twin brother Bill had been experimenting with their own wetsuit designs. Having grown up in landlocked Missouri, the Meistrells were mesmerized by the ocean, and first attempted diving in a local pond using a vegetable-oil can as a helmet rigged up with a bike pump to deliver fresh oxygen. In 1944, at age 16, the Meistrell brothers moved to Manhattan Beach, and were finally able to explore the sea as they’d always wanted.

“The Dive N’ Surf crew would host contests to see which surfer could get in and out of their wetsuit the fastest.”

Fresh out of high school, the boys were drafted to join the Korean War effort in 1950, with Bill heading to South Korea and Bob to the Fort Ord base in Monterey, California. Many evenings, after getting off his shift, Bob would meet up with friends to surf at Pleasure Point near Santa Cruz. In the dim glow of his car headlights, Meistrell was happily engulfed by the frigid water, at one with the waves. “I surfed there for two years at night by car light,” explained Meistrell, who recently passed away. “And with just a sweater on, an army-issued wool sweater.” The thick wool kept Meistrell’s torso warm for a few good rides, but quickly soaked through and let in the cold.

After Bill returned from Korea, the brothers became two of the first certified SCUBA instructors in the state. But years after they’d fallen in love with the sea, they still couldn’t stay in the cold water as long as they wanted to. As luck would have it, their friend Bev Morgan had been introduced to Hugh Bradner while he was doing research at Scripps. Morgan created his own wetsuit prototype based on a design Bradner shared with him, and continued making them for surfer friends like the Meistrells.

Bill and Bob Meistrell pose in a mid-1950s ad for Dive N’ Surf.

In 1953, Morgan opened the original Redondo Beach Dive N’ Surf shop, and soon asked the Meistrells to become partners in the business and help produce his wetsuits. “We were just cutting them out by hand,” Meistrell said of the early Dive N’ Surf designs, “and we’d sew them up with a glue and then hitch them together with a clamp.”

A late ’50s ad for Dive N’ Surf’s “Body Glove” wetsuits.

But most surfers weren’t sold on the benefits of wetsuits, and many continued to brave the cold waters without one. Early designs often restricted mobility, and their rough rubber interiors irritated the skin. Additionally, the thick neoprene material and lack of zippers made them very difficult to put on, so much that the Dive N’ Surf crew would host contests to see which surfer could get in and out of their wetsuit the fastest.

“Wearing a diving wetsuit when the water was cold wasn’t such a foreign idea, but it just didn’t occur to us that this piece of diving gear would translate to surfing,” says Steve Pezman, a lifelong surfer who founded The Surfer’s Journal. ”The dive suits were so gnarly that you’d get these really bad rashes under your arms from paddling. They just weren’t made for vigorous arm use. You could swim in them, but mostly diving is about kicking with your feet. Since the other end was propelling you while you were surfing, the design needed to improve at the top.”

Until that happened, the wetsuit had a bit of stigma attached to it. “For a while, they said only sissies would wear wetsuits,” Meistrell pointed out. Though not for long, as Bill began searching out a lighter, stretchier material, which took him back to the headquarters of Rubatex in Bedford, Virginia, to learn about their different rubber products and work with the company to produce the best possible wetsuit fabric.

The Meistrells adopted the term “thermocline” for their wetsuit branding, which describes a zone of air or water where the temperature changes quickly. But Duke Boyd, whom the brothers hired as a marketing consultant, felt that “Dive N’ Surf Thermocline Wetsuits” was an unwieldy name for hip, new surf gear. According to Bob Meistrell, Boyd asked them, “What makes your suits better than anyone else?” And the brothers replied, “They fit like a glove.” A few days later, Boyd returned to their shop with a finished version of their classic, circular hand logo labeled “The Body Glove.”

By the 1960s, surfers were familiar with the wetsuit-clad Body Glove surf team.

The brothers went on to produce their wetsuits for anyone who needed them: Professional divers, military personnel, film actors, and even a few animals. “That’s how far production companies get carried away with their stories,” said Meistrell. “They were worried if Lassie went in the water and wasn’t able to swim that a wetsuit would help Lassie float. So we ended up making one, and it included a coating of fur on the top, so that he didn’t look any bigger when he got wet.”

Since those early days, both Body Glove and O’Neill have continued to improve their wetsuit designs, but the central concept has remained unchanged. By 1966, when the ultimate surf film, “The Endless Summer,” was released, watersports enthusiasts had a variety of suits to choose from, and no longer needed to trek across the globe to avoid colder waters. Surfing took off, in reality and the popular imagination, growing into a professional sport and international pastime.

“I don’t think Jack ever foresaw this becoming an industry, the surf industry,” reflects O’Neill’s publicist Kilpatrick. “When you talk about the industry, about him being a businessman and an entrepreneur or any of that stuff, he just laughs and says, ‘I’m a surfer.’” Last year, O’Neill Wetsuits celebrated its 60th anniversary, and Body Glove is currently doing the same.

“I remember being a little kid,” continues Kilpatrick, “and my first wetsuit was a beaver tail, just the jacket. Trying to make it through winter with just a jacket with no shorts was a nightmare.” Kilpatrick, who lives in Santa Cruz, says that he never surfs without a wetsuit today. “I can’t believe how far we’ve come. All these minor adjustments and improvements on material, durability, entries and exits, and even your knee pads, your wrist seals, all this fine-tuning of these minute details really improves the user experience and makes your session that much more fun.”

O’Neill and another surfer demonstrate the immense benefit of wetsuits by leisurely reading the paper at sea.

Not only did wetsuits improve the experience for seasoned surfers, but they made the sport more accessible for millions of people who might never have tried it. “When surfboards went from redwood planks to fiberglass and balsa forms in the 1940s, that was the first breakthrough,” explains Pezman, “because the surfboard became user-friendly, lighter, more durable, and more available. Then the next big deal was the wetsuit, because it allowed year-round surfing. Today, there’s no place that’s off limits due to water temperature. In the northeast, they surf in the snow. They surf in Iceland, they’ve surfed in Antarctica, so it’s probably quadrupled the coastline that’s eligible for waves, and some of the world’s best waves are on those colder coastlines. So it’s had a huge, profound effect on the sport of surfing.”

“The wetsuit changed watersports in a huge way,” agrees Bev Morgan, the original Dive N’ Surf founder. “A person could be comfortable in much colder water, so the season expanded to become year-round, for all watersports. The closed-cell chambers within the material also made the user buoyant, which also made watersports safer.”

Bob Meistrell also stresses the wetsuit’s life-saving capability, a benefit that goes far beyond the physical comfort they provide for divers and surfers. He’s heard countless stories of the lives they saved after someone was stranded or knocked unconscious while in deep water. “A life jacket will keep you afloat until they find your body,” said Meistrell, “but a wetsuit will keep you afloat until they find you alive.”

Australian surfer Simon Anderson wearing a cropped wetsuit during the 1980s.

(Special thanks to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives, UC San Diego Library.)

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go. Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.”

That’s the King James Version of Exodus, Chapter 17, Verses 5 and 6, just one of countless descriptions throughout history and literature of people finding water with the aid of a stick. In this famous case, all it took to produce water in the desert was faith in an unseen force and a bit of judicious smiting.

“If you were going to drill a big well, you’d call him.”

In many respects, the picture of dowsing painted in the Bible is not all that different from how it looks today. People still tromp around in arid places, often with a Y-shaped stick or a pair of L-shaped rods held before them. When the descending point of the Y dips toward the earth, or when the two rods come together to form an X, that’s supposed to be an indication of vast reservoirs of life-giving water below the dowser’s feet.

Skeptics dismiss dowsing, or water witching as it’s also known, as unmitigated nonsense. Believers shrug and point to the results.

Romie Nunn (1903-1988) was a believer. On the face of it, Nunn seems an unlikely person to have embraced the practice, which today is often associated with the far reaches of the New Age fringe. A fixture in Casper, Wyoming, most of his life, he was active in the Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce, and for half a century was a member of the International Order of Odd Fellows, Casper Lodge 22. During his career, Nunn worked for oil companies; he ran a gas station, a motel, and a mortuary; he bought an abandoned airfield that became a town that now bears his name; and he was even president of the Wyoming Motel Association for a spell. In short, Nunn was your classic, 20th-century cowboy businessman, wearing cowboy boots and hat even when he wasn’t riding horses, which he did a lot with his friends in the Round-Up Club.

Above: Romie Nunn, at center carrying the Wyoming state flag, on his horse, Ginger. Top: A water witch in Pie Town, New Mexico, photographed in 1940 by Lee Russell for the Farm Security Administration.

“He was quite well known in Wyoming,” says daughter-in-law Hannah Nunn. “If you were going to drill a big well, you’d call him. He was a very charismatic character.” And even though his obituary in Casper’s Star-Tribune neglects to mention it, he was also known far and wide as a guy who had an uncanny knack for finding water.

“It started in the mountains above Casper,” remembers Hannah’s husband, Ron. “There were a lot of summer cabins up there, but people were having water problems. One day he dug a hole for somebody and hit water. I think it was pretty shallow, like six to eight feet deep. And then he started doing it a little bit more, got more successful, and pretty soon he had a reputation across Wyoming. Ranchers were always calling him and saying, ‘Could you come out? We’ve drilled five holes but haven’t gotten anything.’ And he would go out.”

Like most dowsers, Nunn learned from another practitioner of this ancient art. “There was an elderly fellow named Bert Dye,” recalls Nunn’s other surviving son, Jack. “He lived in Mills, which is a little town adjacent to Casper. Bert was a water witcher, too. My dad must have needed a well or something, and Bert came out and did it. My dad got fascinated with witching and started doing it himself. In fact, he was almost obsessed. Everybody thought Bert was nuts. Later, they thought my dad was nuts, too.”

According to Jack, “Bert used a piece of willow, a twig-like thing. If I remember correctly, he had some kind of cloth wrapped around it. I don’t know if that was to disguise it, or what, but he used willow. Initially my dad also used willow, but then he switched to copper.”

The more Nunn witched, the more water he found. “It got to a point where he could tell the difference between an underground pool of water and an underground stream,” says Jack. “He would follow the stream aboveground and at a certain point, based on how he felt the copper rod was reacting, he could give you a fairly good estimate of depth and possible output.” “It always amazed me,” says Jack’s sister, Peggy Nunn Nicolls, “that when he would find something he could also figure out the size of the stream and how deep.” “He was actually pretty accurate,” concurs Jack. “Word just spread.”

Romie Nunn and his wife, Margaret, who was definitely not a dowser. Photo: Casper Journal Collection, Casper College Western History Center.

Hannah recalls one successful witching expedition fondly. “Just for the kick of it, we followed him one time out onto the prairie of a ranch,” she says. “We were walking along and all of a sudden whatever he had in his hand started to wave. He turned around and said, ‘Give me a shovel’! The shovel was handed over and he dug down probably no more than a foot or 18 inches down before he hit water.”

As Hannah remembers it, Romie held his dowsing rod so that its forks rested on the palms of his hands. “The pointed part of the Y-shape faced forward,” she says, “and he held it loosely so that when he was walking around it could respond immediately. He wasn’t really guiding the thing; it was like he just happened to be there, but you had to be very receptive for it to work.”

Others witchers describe a more dramatic effect. Ralph Squire is the president of the Subtle Energy Research Institute, but from 1953 to 1978 he was a peach farmer in California’s Central Valley. Since water was crucial to his livelihood, he learned everything he could about how to get it, including dowsing, which he did himself and often observed. “You hold the rod loosely and a little bit upward,” he says, confirming the technique Hannah observed. But, he adds, “When it goes over the target, it points down fast; you can’t stop it from moving. I’ve seen people try to keep it from going down and it just breaks the skin on their hands. I don’t know what the force is that’s working, but there’s a force there, oh yeah. You just can’t stop it.”

The logo for the town of Bar Nunn is shaped like the runways at Wardwell Airport, which Nunn purchased in 1954 to use as a horse ranch.

Squire learned to dowse during the mid-’70s as a matter of necessity. “There was a big drought at the time,” he recalls, “so a lot of us farmers had to drill wells to make up for the lack of snow runoff in the mountains. I had very good success with it. I did 20 or 30 wells, and every one of them came in. Now, in the San Joaquin or Sacramento Valley, if you want water for a house, say six-to-10 gallons per minute, you don’t need a dowser. Just drill anywhere and you’ll get that much. But if you need 3,000 to 5,000 gallons a minute for irrigation, well, you need to hit one of those interglacial streambeds. That’s where I was dowsing.”

With anecdotal success stories like these (the tales go on and on), it kind of makes you wonder why dowsing has such as sketchy reputation, why, as Jack Nunn puts it, people eventually thought his dad was nuts. The answer lies in the unquantifiable explanations dowsers give for their abilities, the often-conflicting techniques used to achieve the same effects, and the dizzying range of elements and objects believed to be locatable via dowsing.

As far as Hannah Nunn is concerned, her father-in-law had a gift, plain and simple. “I think he felt that his body had some special sensitivity, and that’s what was really moving the dowsing rod,” says Hannah. “The rod was just an indicator, but you had to believe in it for it to work.”

Squire credits deeper forces. “According to Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” he begins, “time and space are related to speed. As speed increases, time and space shrink. Einstein said that if you could exceed the speed of light, which he believed impossible, you’d be in eternity, where there is no time and space. But several scientists have now computed that the speed of thought is 10,000 times faster than the speed of light. So if we can get our minds into the proper state, we can tap into what I call the universal mind and what some people might call God.”

As this aerial view shows, the town of Bar Nunn was laid out alongside Wardwell Airport’s runways.

Most people, whether they consider themselves religious or science-based, don’t buy that explanation. “A lot of religionists can’t accept dowsing because it doesn’t conform to their paradigm of thinking,” Squire says. “Scientists can’t accept it because they don’t understand how it works.” But that last fact doesn’t trouble Squire in the least. “I started off in college with the goal of being an aeronautical engineer,” he says. “One of the first things we learned was that it should be impossible for a bumblebee to fly because its wing span can’t generate enough aerodynamics to lift its body weight. But the bumblebee doesn’t know that, so he goes out and flies anyway. I think that’s the same with dowsing. Even though we can’t understand it, we go ahead and do it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

“If you say your dowsing rods work because an alien blessed them with a magic wand, that’s fine. I don’t care why you think it works.”

Dowsers, says Squire, pick up signals that instruments designed to measure the phenomena of a Newtonian world we can’t detect. “It may be some physical thing, in which flowing water scrapes against whatever it’s running through, causing friction that may send up radiation or some sort of ray that maybe our aura can pick up on. Water is one of the easiest things to dowse,” he adds, “and that’s why most people in our society still perceive dowsing as locating water. But dowsers today do far more than locate water.”

Hannah describes the dowser’s art similarly. “He never got a chance to prove this, but Ron’s father felt that every mineral in the ground gives off waves. A dowser is just picking up those waves.”

Romie Nunn was not the first person to believe he could detect the presence of minerals under his feet. In a translation by Herbert Hoover (yes, the 31st U.S. president) of Georgius Agricola’s 1556 treatise on metallurgy, De re metallica, the Renaissance scientist explains how some miners “cut a fork from a hazel bush with a knife,” to find veins of ore.” Some, he wrote, use hazel exclusively for silver and ash for copper, but switch to iron and steel when looking for gold. “All alike,” Agricola observed, “grasp the forks of the twig with their hands, clenching their fists, it being necessary that the clenched fingers should be held toward the sky in order that the twig should be raised at that end where the two branches meet. Then they wander hither and thither at random through mountainous regions. It is said that the moment they place their feet on a vein the twig immediately turns and twists, and so by its action discloses the vein….”

An illustration from ‘De re metallica’ shows how dowsing was used to locate minerals underground.

Nunn’s theories went even further. He believed that certain minerals gave off bad waves that could cause disease. “At times everybody thought he was totally crackers and got annoyed with him for bothering people with these ideas,” says Hannah. “He became almost paranoid over it,” sighs Jack. “He believed the reason why some of his friends were having health problems was because they were living over areas that maybe were putting out these waves that were deteriorating their health. In fact, if I’m remembering right, my parents had a sheet of steel, maybe half an inch thick, under their bed to block the waves that my dad believed could come up and impact your health. My mom just put up with it, but a lot of people truly did think he was kind of loony.”

Peggy, who calls herself a “true believer,” has a similar story: “When my husband, Bob, and I were moving from Gillette to Cheyenne in 1978,” she says, “we found a house we were going to buy, but we waited until dad drove down from Casper to check it out for us. He determined that it had an underground stream running beneath it, but we took care of that problem by putting thick black plastic sheets with Vaseline between them under our mattress and under our son, Ross’s, mattress in his crib.”

Extraordinary lengths, you say? Maybe so, “but the water-witch part really did work,” Hannah insists.

For most people, the practice of dowsing for water is tolerated (if not understood) because it’s so ingrained in Western culture. To paraphrase the old saw about bad architecture, anything can become respectable if it’s around long enough. And while Nunn might have seemed “loony” to people in Wyoming in the 1970s and ’80s, today, after radon scares and films like Erin Brockovich, his core belief that there might be bad stuff in the ground that can make you sick is widely accepted now as an obvious truth.

Still, you wouldn’t stake your faith in dowsing to make a business investment, would you? That’s what Romie Nunn did, though, and ultimately it was his undoing.

A family illustration of Romie Nunn’s dowsing rods showing three of his designs: 1. This quarter-inch-thick brass rod features copper handles that allows the rod to rotate up and down. 2. His simplest design was made from a one-eighth-inch thick brass wire. 3. Nunn’s most complex design featured rubber handles and a wire spring wrapped around the quarter-inch copper rod.

“When I was between 10 and 15 years old,” remembers Jack, “I got to drive the car while my dad would sit in the passenger’s seat witching. We drove all over Natrona County. He would hold a little test-tube sample of uranium, gold, all sorts of things, in his hand and he’d track it. I remember one time we went looking for a gold mine he thought he could witch. We never did find it.”

Peggy also had her share of witching adventures with her father. “We would take off in the truck and end up some place way out in the country,” she says. “The Bates Creek and Poison Spider areas are some that I recall. We would walk and walk and walk, and all the time my dad would have his witching rod out, whether we were witching for water, oil, or whatever. Every now and then he would let me try. It would work sometimes for me, but not always. He told me I just needed to practice more, and then we would laugh.”

“For a period of time,” Jack continues, “he drilled these shallow oil wells and hit small amounts of oil, but at that time the technology was such that he couldn’t develop it. That’s when people started thinking he was kind of crazy. He got carried away with the witching.”

If the oil wells were his downfall, he was at least savvy enough to test his capabilities before sinking his own money in the ground.

Pocket-size (3 by 6 inches) copper dowsing rods such as these sell for under $15.

“He got really intrigued with the idea that he could bring in a well,” confirms Ron. “He had worked as a lab technician for Standard Oil, so when he got into dowsing for petroleum products, he somehow convinced them to let him shadow their geologist—Romie was the kind of guy who could make friends with anybody. He actually flew in some of the company planes. He just said, ‘Look, let me experiment with my thinking to see if it checks out with your geologist’. But if you were the geologist and you were out trying to locate oil wells for the company, and all of a sudden here was this guy on the company plane shadowing you with his dowsing rod, well, you can see what kind of resentment that would cause.”

Had he found a few gushers using his techniques, no doubt Nunn would be an even more storied character in Wyoming history than he is today. But it was not to be. “He spent many years, and quite a lot of money, dowsing for oil and natural gas,” says Ron. “He would decide that he had a good location and then he’d bring in a drilling rig. He drilled a lot of dry holes, which wasn’t cheap, even in those days.”

These diving rods from Bellirosa’s Needful Things ($49.95) promise to help you “Find out almost anything your conscious mind does not know but your Higher Self does.”

“What’s interesting,” adds Jack, “is that he would hit oil, but the wells weren’t more than maybe 200 feet deep. These were shallow, shallow wells. He had a little company called Plainview Oil that he used to drill the wells and get the leases. But none of them were productive, and I think that’s when the family probably got upset with him because he was spending a lot of our money drilling those dry holes. That’s when my mother probably said, ‘You’re getting carried away’.”

“It’s a little known fact,” adds Squire, “that all the oil wells in Kuwait were dowsed. I had a friend who lived in Nebraska and was a very skilled oil dowser. He went down into Texas and Oklahoma and helped dowse for oil down there. So that’s a specialized field. Not all dowsers are capable of locating oil, though. It’s not flowing. It’s just a body of decomposed organic matter. It’s closer to what we call informational dowsing, just getting a yes or no answer, the ‘poor man’s lie detector’ thing.”

This pair of brass rods from Tabula Rasa (“Your Pagan Superstore!”) retails for $19.95 but is currently out of stock.

D.J. Grothe is one of those people who test such lie detectors. As the president of the James Randi Educational Foundation, Grothe has been trying to give away one million dollars to the first person who can prove that dowsing really works. Importantly, Grothe doesn’t care how it works, merely that a dowser can replicate his or her capabilities under controlled conditions.

“If you come to me and you say your dowsing rods work because an alien blessed them with a magic wand the night before,” Grothe says, “that’s fine. I don’t care why you think it works. Let’s just test it to see if it does.”

In one famous test in Kassel, Germany, a pipe running through a field was alternately filled and emptied of water. Twenty dowsers who volunteered to prove their abilities were told where the pipe was. All they needed to do was detect whether water was running in the pipe, or not.

“Initially my dad used willow, but then he switched to copper.”

Before and after the tests, each dowser certified that the tests were conducted fairly. In the end, 19 dowsers participated, each making 30 passes across the field. Each predicted he or she would be able to detect water between 90 and 100 percent of the time. The laws of chance guaranteed a success rate of 50 percent, but as a group, the dowsers managed to detect water, or its absence, only 52.3 percent of the time, doing no better than you or I would have by guessing.

“We’re open-minded,” says Grothe. “We want to test these things. If someone comes to us and says, ‘I can use dowsing rods to find X,’ well, that’s fantastic. And then we put together a mutually agreed upon test to see if their claim is borne out.”

Scenes of dowsers at work, from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.

It hasn’t happened yet, but if a dowser could prove his or her claim, the impact would go well beyond Randi’s million dollars. “Guess what else would happen?” asks Grothe. “The paradigm would change. Someone would be awarded a Nobel Prize because they’d have discovered this new phenomenon that’s never been able to be replicated in scientific inquiry. It would reinvent science. It would be a big deal, worldwide news. It’s not a matter of skeptics wanting to disprove this stuff. It’s a matter of skeptics wanting to see if these claims are anything more than a person’s wishful thinking.”

Actually, what’s going on, skeptics believe, is that dowsers are being tricked by something called the ideomotor effect. “It’s the same effect that happens when you’re playing with a planchette on a Ouija board,” Grothe says. “You don’t think you’re moving it and your partner across the table doesn’t think she’s moving it, either. That little thing seems to move on its own.”

Related to the ideomotor effect is the oxymoronic concept of an unstable equilibrium. “When you’re thinking about mechanical equilibrium,” Grothe says, “you’re talking about a closed system. But when you’re holding a dowsing rod, you’re adding energy to the system by your movement. You end up moving it without even knowing you’re doing so.” Thus, in an unstable equilibrium, the stick or rod resting in the palm of your hand appears to move.

This photo of Devon farmer George Casely was taken for England’s Ministry of Information in 1942. The original caption read: “Casely has the power of divining and has sunk a well in several of his pastures.”

Importantly, dowsing rods do not work unless they have contact with a human hand. “They don’t move if you just set them on a pedestal and don’t touch them. They will come to rest and not move again, even if you position whatever the rod is supposed to be receptive to in front of it. Dowsing rods are not like compass needles, which will move if they’re not being held.”

Naturally, dowsers have an explanation for that. “The dowser,” Grothe continues, “says the rod has to be held by a person because the person’s energy is the battery that fuels the device. If quantum physics, or whatever, will prove that energy fields exist, that would be a great leap forward in science. But if you say dowsing works because of quantum physics, but then can’t show that dowsing works, who cares about quantum physics’ relationship to dowsing, right? That’s why we invite people to take the test.”

Just as there are varying theories among dowsers as to why dowsing works, there are differences of opinion over the devices themselves. “For years, the argument was what kind of tree was best?” Squire says. “The final analysis determined it was pliability. That is, the ability of the stick to be able to bend without breaking.”

Palms-up is the standard way to hold a dowsing stick.

Romie Nunn started out using sticks but eventually switched to copper pipe, whether he was looking of oil, water, or gold. Some dowsers hold pendulums over maps to find what they are looking for, which can include missing persons, while others claim that the practice as a whole works better at night than in the daytime. “Today we have plastics that are more pliable than any tree limb and they don’t dry out,” Squire says. “A tree limb, as soon as it’s laid around for a day or two and dries out, then it won’t work anymore and you have to go cut another one. So now professionals get these plastic, what we call white rods, and they have replaced the old forked stick. Of course, if you don’t have the money, just go cut something off of a tree. Pliability is the key factor.”

Except when it’s not. “Some of us dowsers now do what we call device-less dowsing. I just use some part of my body, like a couple of my fingers. I just push my thumb against my middle finger and test the muscle there, and if it holds without slipping, that means it’s a yes. But if the muscle goes limp and flips off like snapping your fingers, then I take that as a no. That’s how, for instance, I buy watermelon. I hold my left hand over each melon and I ask, ‘Which melon in this pile is at the proper maturity for my likes?’ And I keep my right hand behind my back where nobody can see it so I don’t get criticized, and then I can tell which melons are the right ones to buy. I never get a bad melon that way.”

When water is needed for crops, farmers will do darned near anything to find it.

Okay, so if a former peach farmer wants to hold his hands over melons in the grocery store to test them for ripeness and says that it works, what’s the harm? The problem, says Grothe, is that sometimes unscrupulous individuals use the promise of dowsing to separate people from their money. Worse, relying on such specious techniques can cost lives.

“You have things like the ADE 651, the Quadro Tracker, and other devices, which are empty boxes with some wires, maybe wires from an old remote control or something. They’re not even connected; it’s a scam.”

In the 1990s, school districts and police departments across the United States purchased a total of 1,000 Quadro Trackers to look for everything from illegal drugs to missing persons. As recently as 2010, the Iraqi government was using ADE 651s to detect bombs—the country spent a reported $85 million on the bogus devices before its “inventor,” a businessman named James McCormick, was convicted of fraud and sent to prison for 10 years.

“Imagine the civil liberty implications of being arrested based of a reading from a device that doesn’t actually work,” says Grothe. “Or imagine an event like the Haiti earthquake. Instead of using dogs to sniff for survivors, you spend tens of thousands of dollars on one of these gizmos that’s supposed to find survivors. Lives can be at stake because of this silly belief. It’s not just to each his own. The belief in these dowsing rods can actually cause real, immeasurable harm. The reason we care about all this is because belief in this nonsense can hurt people.”

The Iraqi military purchased $85 million worth of dowsing-like bomb detectors for use at checkpoints before the devices were found to be fraudulent. It is not know how many lives were lost due to the military’s reliance on these fake tools.

In Romie Nunn’s case, his beliefs only hurt the family finances. And while you can detect twinges of bitterness in the voices of Nunn’s sons when they talk about that, their real regret seems to be that their father was not able to pass on his gift.

“I was always skeptical,” says Ron. “The one person who really believed in him was Hannah. She loved being his buddy. He taught her how to do it, and I think that she was pretty good at it. The rest of us he wouldn’t bother with because we weren’t really on his team.”

“All I can tell you,” says Hannah, “is that for one reason or another, I don’t know what it was, Ron’s father really wasn’t terribly keen on teaching anybody. I think he wanted this ‘power’ all to himself.”

Jack wanted in on the secret, but nothing came from all those years driving around Natrona County looking for uranium, oil, and gold.

“He tried to teach me and I tried to learn, but it never worked,” Jack says. “I guess even though I spent all that time with him, maybe I never was a complete believer. I couldn’t get it to work. But I saw enough evidence with the water that today if I had to drill a well, I would try to find a water witcher. If I had needed that done when my dad was alive, there’s no way I would’ve drilled it without him finding it for us.”

In fact, even Ron, the avowed skeptic, is still a bit haunted by his dad’s ability to connect the universe’s dots. “He would pull this one on anybody,” Ron remembers. “Let’s say you had a dead grasshopper. He would take a leg off that grasshopper, give it to you, and say, ‘Take this leg and just put it somewhere, in the house or around the house. Give me the grasshopper and I’ll make the connection between the two. I’ll find it.’ And then he would do it. I had real hard time with that one.”

Chicago-based documentary filmmaker Mark Cwiakala grew up surrounded by stamps, yet, he never felt compelled to become a collector himself. However, eight years ago, he teamed with executive producer Jonathan Singer to go on a globetrotting journey to find out what exactly made stamps so irresistible to his grandfather and father, both well-respected philatelists. The younger Cwiakala and Singer, who head the film and commercial production company Concentrated, traveled from Monte Carlo to London to California, spending their own resources, to take their cameras inside the peculiar world of philately. Now, Cwiakala and Singer have decided that, no matter what, their documentary will make its debut in fall 2013.

“If people consider Maria Sharapova a nerd, then that’s the kind of nerd I want to be.”

The yet-to-be-completed film is called “Freaks & Errors: A Rare Collection,” which are named types of highly desirable stamps that contain errors of some sort. (The most famous U.S. error stamp is the Inverted Jenny, which features a Curtiss JN-4 biplane, printed upside down.) But of course, the title also plays with the public’s perception of stamp collectors as out-of-touch eccentrics, obsessed with an old-timey habit.

The scenes featuring interviews with 30-something singer and actress Jackie Tohn, Smithsonian curator Cheryl Ganz, and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg might help break those stereotypes. But other collectors featured in the film are exactly who you’d expect—wealthy middle-aged men who are just a tad kooky. “Freaks & Errors” also promises tales of eccentric millionaires in a billion-dollar industry, as well as obsession, scandal, love, and murder. In the preview, one philatelist looks at the camera, makes his eyes big and says, “You’re going to be SHOCKED.”

We talked to Cwiakala on the phone and via email from Chicago, and he explained the motivation behind this film and its $75,000 Kickstarter campaign, running through June 14.

Top: Jackie Tohn, who appeared on “American Idol” Season 8, talks about her passion for stamps in “Freaks & Errors.” Above: “Freaks & Errors” executive producer Jonathan Singer, left, and director Mark Cwiakala show the plate of four Inverted Jennys, worth $3 million dollars. (Courtesy of Concentrated.tv)

What inspired you to make a film about stamp collectors?

As a documentary filmmaker, it interested me simply that there’s never been a feature-length documentary on stamp-collecting. My grandfather was a well-known collector for more than 70 years, and my dad is a collector and philatelic consultant. But I don’t want it to seem like I’m making this documentary to promote them or their business interests. I’m not a stamp collector myself, but I wanted to learn more about why they do it, and why it’s so special to them.

The Treskilling Yellow—a one-of-a-kind 1857 Swedish stamp that was printed in the wrong color—has been the source of scandals for 150-plus years. Worth millions, its current location is unknown. (Via GlenStephens.com)

Why didn’t you get into collecting yourself?

I don’t know why I’ve never had the impulse to collect. For some reason, I wasn’t born with the collecting gene my dad and grandfather have. That said, I seem to surround myself with people who are collectors, because I’m fascinated with how they can just focus so intently on a singular object or set of objects from a particular time period. Instead of collecting objects, I collect people and their stories on film.

What is the appeal of stamps?

Most people start collecting when they are little kids, and stamps fuel their imaginations, giving them a window into exotic places they’ve never been. The first stamps were issued in Great Britain in 1840, and at the time, the British Empire encompassed almost a quarter of the countries in the world. Quickly, you had stamps from all these places most British people had never heard of or traveled to, like Guiana, India, Hong Kong, and Rhodesia, so Europeans began collecting stamps almost as soon as they were invented. Stamps tell you a lot about the culture of a place, because countries tend to make stamps that mark big events when they happen or to honor important leaders, musicians, or artists in that country at that time. In that way, stamps are like time capsules.

Singer and Cwiakala interviewed “Chicago Sun-Times” columnist Neil Steinberg for “Freaks & Errors.” (Courtesy of Concentrated.tv)

Why did people lose interest?

Well, in most countries around the world, people haven’t lost interest at all. Stamp-collecting is growing in places that are, for lack of a better word for it, developing nations. In fact, I always say you can tell what country is about to become a super power by where stamp-collecting is growing. And right now, it’s growing in India, China, Russia, and Brazil, where people are accruing new wealth and are able to put tens of thousands of dollars into a stamp collection.

“This collector is a little reclusive, and he’s a little quirky and nerdy—so what?”

In the United States, United Kingdom, and parts of Europe, stamp-collecting has declined, and I think that has to do with technological distractions—like iPhones, Xboxes, and laptops—and the availability of information. Any topic you can come up with in the English language is covered on Wikipedia. If you want to learn about Senegal, why would you get a stamp and look it up in a stamp-collector’s book, when you can just Google “Senegal”? I mean, you’re still learning, and learning faster. It’s just less romantic than looking at a stamp and trying to imagine what it must be like in Senegal. Researching a stamp’s origin is like reading a book. And books will never go away, the same way stamp-collecting will never totally die out.

Mark Cwiakala snapped this photo of Donald Sundman, head of Mystic Stamp Company, holding his prized possession, an Inverted Jenny plate. (Courtesy of Mark Cwiakala)

If the United States Postal Service goes out of business, it won’t affect stamp-collecting; it might even make stamps even more valuable. In fact, most collectors aren’t interested in the new-issue adhesive-backed stamps. But it will affect younger kids who are attracted to new stamps because of the look and colors, rather than the history.

Why should non-collectors care about a movie on stamp-collecting?

Globally, the stamp trade is a billion-dollar business, so if anything, the money involved usually blows people away. In the past 30 years, stamp-collecting, at a certain level, has become very expensive. You used to be able to by the better items for a lot less than you can now. Stamp values blew up in the 1970s, partly due to collectors and speculators “investing” in stamps to stave off U.S. and global inflation, the poor stock market, and low gold prices. These values never retreated, so a $250 stamp that ballooned to $2,500 stayed there. It’s made it difficult for the modest collector to start a sophisticated collection. In the end, though, the value of a stamp is just the willingness of someone to pay a certain amount for it.

The filmmakers visited Monte Carlo to uncover the mysteries of philately. (Courtesy of Concentrated.tv)

Often kids start out as country collectors, collecting the stamps from their own countries. Then they move to more specific interests: sports, authors, politicians, other countries, or maybe ducks. As they get older and accumulate more wealth, they will go for the more expensive stamps they’ve always wanted. I’ve heard from collectors that it keeps a lot of people going as they get older, that they almost refuse to die until they’ve found that one stamp, the one piece that could complete their collection.

A lot of people I talk to who, at first, say they have no interest in stamp-collecting, when they think about it more, usually come back with memories of a grandfather or an uncle who was a stamp collector. When they realize that, it gives them a personal connection to the film, as an opportunity to find out what drew their family to it.

What are some of these scandals, mysteries, and murders you mention?

“Freaks & Errors” hunts down the notorious Penny Magneta stamp, which could be worth $5 million. (Via The Stamp Collecting Round-Up)

If we sat down and I just told you the story of the Penny Magenta, a one-cent British Guiana stamp from the 1800s, you’d be hooked. The history of this stamp, even today, can rival any mystery story or noir thriller. In 1856, a shipment of stamps had failed to arrive at the British colony of Guiana, and the frustrated local postmaster, E.T.E. Dalton, commissioned a local printer to make stamps as an emergency measure. The postmaster, however, didn’t like the design, and restricted their use, requiring post office clerks to sign all stamps.

Only one of these stamps is now known to exist, and it’s been owned by some of the most eccentric people in history. Currently, it’s whereabouts is known to a select few. Its owner was the late John E. DuPont, who is infamously known for killing a wrestler staying at his estate in 1997. DuPont died in a mental facility in 2010, and the future of the Magenta is once again up in the air. If it sells, it could go for upwards of $5 million. No one has seen it in a while. It’s really not much to look at, it’s dark and smudgy. At this point, it could be completely unrecognizable, but that wouldn’t change the value.

Does the film do anything to break the stereotypes about stamp collectors?

Stamp collectors often have floor-to-ceiling stacks of stamp albums. This collector’s Los Angeles office shows how chaotic it can get. (Courtesy of Concentrated.tv)

Not really. It’s more like, so this collector is a little reclusive, so what? He’s a little quirky and nerdy, so what? Who can honestly define the word “nerd” without reflecting a little bit about themselves? Most stamp collectors are extremely intelligent and completely fascinating.

“The history of this stamp, even today, can rival any mystery story, or noir thriller.”

Maria Sharapova came out as an avid stamp collector in 2009, and she said she’s regretted it ever since. People said, “How can a tennis player be a stamp collector? How can someone so beautiful be a stamp collector?” If people consider Maria Sharapova a nerd, then that’s the kind of nerd I want to be.

And there are a lot of other famous collectors that you would never have guessed: Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones; the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban (who apparently funded part of his college through selling stamps); and the former President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy. We’re hoping that we can get one or more of the more high-profile collectors to agree to an interview, as I think it would say a lot about the hobby.

You’re asking for $75,000 on Kickstarter? What happens if you don’t hit that?

A close-up of an Inverted Jenny, which occurred in 1918, when the printer failed to noticed the Curtiss JN-4 biplane, nicknamed “Jenny,” was flying upside down. (Courtesy of Concentrated.tv)

We are going to finish this film regardless. We will do whatever it takes. It’s got so much appeal to us personally, and everyone we talk to is excited. There are other grant options that we are exploring, but I think the Kickstarter community adds just that, a community, which creates ambassadors for the film.

To come up with that number, we took an average of film-finishing costs based on our commercial production experience and what we learned from other filmmakers who have completed films themselves. We’ve had a few funding offers from some larger stamp firms, but we want to keep the film pure. We don’t want any specific business to benefit from it; we’re hoping to benefit the hobby as a whole. If you take money from a company, they usually send somebody to say, ‘You need more of this, you need less of this, you need to mention this’. We didn’t want that; we want it to grow organically.

(To learn more about “Freaks & Errors: A Rare Collection” check out Mark Cwiakala and Jonathan Singer’s Kickstarter page as well as Concentrated.tv. More information on stamp-collecting from Cwiakala’s family can be found at Cwiakala.com.)

It’s kind of ironic that Tommy Chong, the smokiest half of Cheech and Chong, is so closely associated with rolling papers. Sure the character he played on stage and in the movies was endlessly smoking fatties, and the comedy duo’s second album, “Big Bambu,” 1972, opened up like a booklet of Bambu rolling papers, with a Cheech and Chong-watermarked sheet inside. Then, in 1978, the pair was rolled into a joint for the poster advertising their film debut, “Up In Smoke.”

“I’m not really a paper guy,” says Chong over the phone, a few days before his 75th birthday. “I’m a pipe guy. I’ve always been a pipe guy, still to this day.”

“One of the things I like about Alcoy is its sense of history.”

Which is not to say Chong lacks, shall we say, experience with rolling papers. “We were on vacation in the mid-1980s in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. I had, um, arranged to buy some pot. The guy asked me ‘how much?’ and I said, ‘Well, give me $10 worth, I guess.’ And he brought me an armful of weed. Literally. An armful. So I sat in my vacation rental and cleaned it. It took me a whole day. I made it fine and beautiful, took all the twigs and seeds out of it, and then I proceeded to get a couple of books of papers, laid ’em out, and rolled. It was probably about an inch and a half in diameter and I would say eight inches long, maybe longer. It was perfect, a perfectly rolled joint. It lasted the whole time I was there.”

Top: The poster for Cheech and Chong’s 1978 film, “Up In Smoke,” was based on the design of Bambu rolling papers. Above: This booklet is from around 1907.

Equally ironic is the fact that rolling papers are so closely associated with marijuana. In fact, according to a Canadian study, the average tobacco smoker who rolls his own cigarettes consumes 12-and-a-half sheets of rolling paper a day, whereas the average marijuana smoker consumes less than half a sheet. The reason for the disparity is obvious when you think about it for a second or two—lots of people smoke a dozen cigarettes a day, but how many people do you know who smoke that many joints in a 24-hour period? Even Chong doesn’t do that.

“I smoke just a tiny little bit,” he says, “a tiny little pellet. I learned that from an old jazz singer named Jon Hendricks of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Before he’d go on stage he’d take these little tiny hash crumbs, and he’d put them in a filter cigarette and light it up. It’s really one toke. And then he’d go on stage and sing like crazy. I learned my habits from the masters.”

In fact, for Chong, rolling papers were always linked to tobacco. “I grew up in rural Calgary in Alberta, Canada,” he says. “Tailor-made cigarettes, as they were called, were a rarity. Back in the day, you bought a can of tobacco, a pack of rolling papers, and rolled your own. The trick was to roll a cigarette one-handed, because you had your other hand on the wheel or holding the reins of your horse. I had a friend who could do it. I tried, but wasn’t that great.”

Josh Kesselman has been making RAW Rolling Papers in Alcoy, Spain, since 1995.

Josh Kesselman isn’t great at it either, although as the founder of RAW Rolling Papers, you’d think he might be. Kesselman can roll a cigarette one-handed, he says, “If you don’t mind a big mess. I learned how to do it from an old cowboy after I broke my thumb 11 years ago.”

While Chong may have had his association with rolling papers imposed on him for marketing reasons, Kesselman sought it out, lured to the mysteries of rolling papers at an early age by his father, who would entertain his children at the dinner table with magic tricks, one of which was to light a sheet of Marfil Arroz rolling papers on fire and toss it in the air, causing it to vanish before young Josh’s wide, impressionable eyes. (Because rice paper generates very little ash when set on fire, it appears to disappear, which is also why it’s popular with smokers.)

Kesselman was drawn to rolling papers by the magic tricks his father would perform with Marfil rolling papers when he was a kid.

“I wouldn’t have cared less about rolling papers had I not been enthralled as a kid watching that thing burn up in front of me,” he says. “I think so much of what we do in life is based on things that happened to us as children. Sometimes you don’t even realize it, but in my case, I did.”

As an adult, Kesselman became a student of rolling papers, from their manufacture to their history, which led him to Alcoy, Spain, where, coincidentally, Cheech and Chong’s Bambu rolling papers were first manufactured, where Kesselman’s father’s Marfil Arroz papers were produced, and where RAW, Elements, and other Kesselman-designed rolling papers are made today.

According to Kesselman, papermaking in Europe began in Alcoy in 1154, brought to Spain by the Moors, who learned the practice from the Chinese. “The original paper was mostly made out of hemp,” he says, “but it was made out of anything with fiber. A lot of times they would recycle linens and rags, clothing-type stuff, anything that had fiber in it.” Paper had been used for currency in China beginning around the 7th century; not surprisingly, that was one of its first uses in Europe, too.

These very rare booklets date from 1840 to 1850.

After tobacco was introduced to Spain from the New World in the 1500s, a tobacco trade developed in Europe in the 1600s. The aristocrats smoked Tommy Chong-size cigars, rolled in palm and tobacco leaves. When they were done smoking these enormous stogies, they would toss the butts on the ground, where peasants would pick them up, take them apart, and reroll what was left in small scraps of newspaper.

“There was probably green smoke and sparks coming off of them,” Kesselman says of these early rolling papers. “It wouldn’t have been like they were smoking a new New York Times. They were smoking paper that had lead and cadmium and God only knows what in that ink, which would have been running all over their hands.”

By the time the custom of smoking made its way to Alcoy, Kesselman says, the papermakers there recognized the need for a special paper made just for smoking tobacco, so they produced a clean-burning, white, rolling paper, which they advertised by promoting its hygienic properties.

Pay-Pay exported its first rolling papers from Alcoy in 1703. This booket is probably from the early part of the 20th century. At right is a detail of the paper’s decorative watermark.

The first rolling papers were produced as large sheets that users would fold and tear, which is how the standard, 1 1/4 size, sometimes called Spanish size, developed. Eventually a Dominican monk from nearby Xàtiva realized that the papers would be easier to use if they were cut to size and protected by a little booklet, and by 1703, a company in Alcoy, Pay-Pay, was exporting rolling papers in booklets outside of Spain.

Kesselman first started doing business in Alcoy in 1995, setting up shop in the town’s second paper mill, which made its first rolling papers in 1764. “We could have purchased a paper machine, which is made in Spain, and brought it over here and processed paper,” he says, “but why would you want to? Everything’s there, all the stuff you need. We’d have been importing everything from Europe anyway. It didn’t make sense. The acacia gum [also known as gum arabic] comes from Ethiopia and Sudan, and all the fibers [hemp, flax, rice] come from India overland. Alcoy’s kind of centrally located for all of that.”

For Kesselman, though, the reason to be in Alcoy, which he visits about four times a year, is about more than mere logistical convenience. “One of the things I like about Alcoy is its sense of history. There, you can sit on a mountainside where you can pick olives or almonds off trees planted by the Moors. There’s just this sense of connectivity that feels genuine, real.” Still, like the Moors, the rolling-paper industry has moved on. “Nobody’s left in Alcoy except us,” Kesselman says.

The colorful booklet at top is from 1923. The one of the hunter shooting the polar bear below it is from 1902.

Being the only rolling-paper producer in town is not without its advantages. “From time to time we outgrow our machines,” he says, “and it’s like, okay, we’re making enough paper, and we’re folding the paper, but we don’t have the machine to get it into booklets. It’s going to take six months to build that new machine, so what are we going to do in the meantime? Well, we go back to the old ways. We set up an old factory room the way it was done back in the early-to-mid 1900s, and fill it with a bunch of Spanish ladies, some guys but mostly ladies, who have these little wooden tools that hold the pack open so you can slip the paper in and kind of flip it over. Some of the ladies laugh about it because they say ‘my grandmother did this.’ Again, it’s that sense of connection. After the machine gets built, we don’t need the room full of Spanish ladies any more, until six months or a year later when we outgrow another machine and we gotta bring everybody back.”

“The trick was to roll a cigarette one-handed.”

Kesselman is equally old-school in his approach to product development, relying on observation and experimentation to get things right with just a handful of ingredients—hemp, flax, and rice. “It’s basically just taking different forms of cellulose and fiber and blending them in a way that makes the paper smoke right,” he says. “See, the thing that’s different about cigarette paper compared to any other form of paper is that cigarette paper is designed to release energy. The paper you write on, the paper you print on, the paper you use for toilet paper, anything like that, none of it releases energy. But with rolling paper, you light it, it burns, and it has to release energy in a certain way that’s going to transfer the energy to the material you’re smoking. It’s something you actually have to tinker with to get right.”

The booklet on the left dates from 1902, the one on the right is from 1904.

One particularly arcane corner of the rolling-paper-maker’s art is the watermark. “Watermarks were originally done just show off,” says Kesselman, “just to make the paper look more beautiful. And when the sheet was out of the booklet, you would know where it came from. Originally it was just for that.”

But Kesselman noticed that the watermarks on his rolling papers were affecting the way in which the paper burned. “I’m always trying to improve the process,” he says, “it’s what I like to do. And this is going to sound strange, but when I’m sitting there smoking, I look at the burning embers, I watch them, I try to see what they are doing and what they are trying to tell me. I really try to connect with it. And I noticed that the embers were following the watermark in a certain way, that the watermark was affecting the burn, making it canoe or run. So I started experimenting. At first I tried to approach the way a scientist would. ‘Okay, so we need to make a cube pattern and control the flame, [Arnold Schwarzenegger voice] we must control the flame!’ You know, thinking of it as something that is not alive. So I tried a cube pattern, and that made it run even more.”

The watermark used on RAW, Elements, and other HBI brands is designed to decrease runs as the cigarette burns.

Rather than trying to control the flame, Kesselman realized that it might be better to try to guide it, similar to dancing with a partner. “You can gently lead your partner to the left or right, but you have to kind of let her do her own thing,” he says. “So I switched the watermark from a cube pattern to more of a crisscross. I also added hard stops every centimeter or so. Doing that allowed the ember to dance the way it wanted to dance, to give it the freedom to go left, go right, but in the end, always kind of end up back at center.”

“I’m not really a paper guy,” says Chong. “I’m a pipe guy.”

Not even the paper’s gum was sparred Kesselman’s scrutiny. “We use a blend of acacia gum and a little hemp protein in order to make it burn evenly.” But what Kesselman won’t do is add compounds to his paper designed to make them “fire safe,” which is the norm for pre-rolled cigarettes sold in the United States. “There’s Franken-tobacco, which is something I really do not believe in, and now there’s Franken-papers, or FSC, which add extra chemicals to the paper in order to make it go out. In my opinion, it’s a fraud and a scam. They are making these cigarettes in the guise of saving people from burning themselves up in their beds by falling asleep smoking. But the only reason this is being done is because the largest cigarette-paper supplier in the world has a patent on fire-safe cigarette paper, and they lobbied to get these laws passed. So it’s not actually for our benefit as smokers, it tastes worse, and it’s more toxic for us in my opinion, based on the things I’ve read. Yet it does make this very large paper company a lot of money.”

With hundreds of product lines and brands, Kesselman’s company is not exactly a non-profit. He, too, is in business, and makes no bones about it, but more than most enterprises, his business involves giving consumers control of their habits (and in the case of tobacco, their addictions), going so far as to offer tobacco seeds to his rolling-paper customers.

“I’m a tobacco guy,” he says, inadvertently echoing Chong’s characterization of himself as a “pipe guy.” “I sell tobacco seeds for people to grow their own because by doing that, you get true tobacco, you get freedom, you don’t pay the government these ridiculous taxes. Marlboro doesn’t get your money, the government doesn’t get your money, you keep it and you know exactly what went into your cigarette.”

The tobacco Kesselman grows is also a key element in his organic vegetable garden. “Tobacco is nature’s pesticide,” he says. “I line my garden with tobacco plants, two rows thick, especially around my zucchinis and tomatoes and things like that. It produces these beautiful white flowers, and it kills any bug that bites it. That’s what nicotine does, it’s a toxin.”

A lovely, and rare, booklet from 1894.

A toxin, which, of course, he smokes. “At the end of the season I yank it and garage-cure it, which means it hangs for about six months until the ammonia all comes out of it. And when I’m out of my own tobacco that I grew, I will not smoke tobacco again until I have grown more, just to make sure that I don’t become completely addicted to it, you know?

“There are lots of things that are incredibly bad for us,” he continues. “I am a true libertarian. So for me, if somebody wants to smoke, then I think it’s their damn right to smoke. As long as they understand that it’s bad for them, then they should have the right to do that. There’s no question on that. But there is pleasure in smoking or else people would not do it. As humans, we need to have the freedom to choose whatever the hell we want to do, as long as it’s not hurting other people.”

Chong agrees, except his example is marijuana, which he smokes to treat his prostate cancer. “I’ve treated it with hash oil,” he says, “but that’s just part of it. It’s mostly diet, supplements, and a vegan diet, mostly vegetarian. Everything I’m doing seems to be working. I’m doing good, man. I’m doing really good.”

Cheech and Chong, back in the day. The comedy duo is currently touring again.

Like Kesselman and his distrust of the motives behind “fire-safe” cigarettes, Chong sees special interests, who still haven’t figured out how to cash in on marijuana, as the cause for the plant’s continued illegality. “Big money made it illegal, big money and big lies. Marijuana is a plant and a medicine. It should not be subject to tax and it should not be subject to patents, which is what the big companies are looking for. They’re looking for a way to patent a medicine so that they can have the monopoly on it. Well, you can’t patent a plant like that, especially weed, you know? You can patent a process, but in weed there is no process. You grow it, you harvest it, you smoke it. That’s it.”

Even if marijuana was made legal tomorrow nationwide, tobacco would still be the main combustible stuffed inside sheets of rolling papers. That’s because the potency of the marijuana that’s sold in legal dispensaries and on the streets today is many times greater than the punch packed by the armful of weed Chong rolled into an enormous joint in Jamaica. Simply put, these days, a joint is just too much. “That’s the whole answer to the argument that pot’s much stronger now than it was back in the day,” Chong the pipe guy adds: “Don’t smoke as much.”

A Slideshow of Rolling-Paper Art

Cheech and Chong's 1972 album opened like a rolling-paper booklet and even featured a rolling-paper sheet watermarked with a picture of the duo on it.

Cheech and Chong's 1972 album opened like a rolling-paper booklet and even featured a rolling-paper sheet watermarked with a picture of the duo on it.

A flat-folder-style booklet from 1930.

A handsome portrait from 1901.

The date on Da Juanita is unknown, but the similarly styled El Globo Dirigible is from 1906.

This hardback booklet from 1912 shows the Principality of Asturias on the northern coast of Spain.

This rare beauty is from 1903.

The art on this booklet from 1936 appears designed for football fans.

Bullfighting is a common theme on booklets.

Each of these booklets contains 250 sheets, or hojas, which means leaves.

The Ambar booklet on the left is from 1904, the one on the right is from 1916.

The booklet on the left from 1931 is relatively common while the undated one on the right is very rare.

This long-folder-style booklet is from 1906.

Sometimes the type on rolling-paper booklets was treated in an almost iconic manner. Quinto is from 1915, Numero Uno is from 1903.

This booklet was made in Spain for sale in Argentina.

A booklet showing a woman enjoying a cigarette, from 1877.

Another Spanish-made booklet, only this one is made for export to Uruguay.

A pair of rare booklets from Sevilla.

A very rare booklet depicting a gramophone from 1904.

Adding blocks of color to booklets was a common design motif.

A gorgeous long-style booklet from 1935.

Booklets with the same design were often printed in different colors.

"The Farmhouse," from 1923.

"The Carnation" was an Alcoy rolling paper made for the Argentine market.

A pair of bicycle booklets from 1904.

Automobiles were a popular subject. The booklet on the right dates from 1906.

One-color booklets had the obvious advantage of being inexpensive to print; the Girafa booklet is similar to one from 1899.

This square-style booklet is fairly common.

(Special thanks to cigpapers.co.uk and paurolhom.be for sharing images of their rolling-paper booklet collections with us.)

Adrift in a sea of digital apps for every imaginable function, we often feel our needs are met better today than in any previous era. But consider the chatelaine, a device popularized in the 18th century that attached to the waist of a woman’s dress, bearing tiny useful accessories, from notebooks to knives. In many ways chatelaines provided better access to such objects than we have today: How often have you searched for your keys or cell phone at the bottom of a cavernous bag?

“Certainly, they clanked; when they moved, the chatelaine would’ve made a lot of noise.”

Like a customized Swiss Army knife, a chatelaine provided its wearer with exactly the tools she needed closest at hand. For an avid seamstress, that might include a needle case, thimble, and tape measure, while for an active nurse it might mean a thermometer and safety pins. Inspired by the complex key rings carried by “la chatelaine,” the female head of a grand French estate, these beautiful, little contraptions were as fashionable as they were practical. In fact, their design was sometimes so trendy that style trumped usefulness.

We recently spoke with collector Genevieve Cummins, co-author of the book “Chatelaines: Utility to Glorious Extravagance,” about the forgotten history of chatelaines.

Top: A sterling silver chatelaine complete with a whistle, folding buttonhook, coin purse, vinaigrette, and thimble bucket. Above: This tintype captures a woman wearing a chatelaine similar to the Tiffany piece at right, circa 1870s, which includes a combination perfume bottle and vinaigrette, left, and notebook with pencil.

Collectors Weekly: In what context did chatelaines develop?

Cummins: From early times, humans have had to carry necessary items on their person. A practical solution was to hang these from the waist. Keys or tools such as scissors could be carried attached to a cord or ribbon, or these items could also be placed in a pouch. This became quite common from the 16th to 18th centuries.

The concept of waist-hung items is almost universal across all cultures. For example, the Japanese wore netsuke and inro or the Chinese wore embroidered purses and pouches. Though purses and pouches preceded the chatelaine—they are mentioned in Chaucer—later purses were very small and dainty. The chatelaine was a more useful addition to an outfit.

Some items, like toiletries or precious possessions, were placed in fitted containers called étuis, made of base or precious metals, and when worn on a cord would be called “equipages.” From the introduction of the watch, circa 1510, watches were worn by women on such watch equipages, or on a long chain with watch at one end and keys seal etc at the other end. These chains were worn looped over the waistband or draped across the body.

However, the word “chatelaine” was not used until 1828 when a London magazine called The World of Fashion reported a new accessory, called “la chatelaine.” The medieval chatelaine had worn the keys to the castle, so these new accessories included a symbolic key, as the ladies were wearing them as a symbol of their status as “The Lady Chatelaine” of their chateau.

The next year the same magazine published three fashion plates of ladies wearing chatelaines. The word is now used for earlier examples, though technically these should really be called equipages. During the 19th century, the popularity of chatelaines varied, but it was still a major fashion accessory.

Left, an very early sewing chatelaine, circa 1680, complete with a pincushion ball, combined needle case and thimble holder, and scissors case. Right, an engraving from “The World of Fashion” in 1829 depicted a stylish chatelaine fitted with a small key, worn by the woman on the left.

Collectors Weekly: Who produced these devices?

Cummins: Most major jewellers made or sold chatelaines, including Tiffany, Liberty, H.W. Dee, Samson Mordan, Thornhill, Boucheron, Faberge, Lalique, and many more. It absolutely stunned me when I looked at a book called “The Master Jewelers,” and saw that almost every major and famous jeweler in the later 19th century, at some stretch, had made a chatelaine.

These were mainly watch versions, but absolutely beautiful items encrusted with diamonds and enamels. The majority were made as a complete entity and were matching. Complete examples are the most aesthetically pleasing and collectible, but not always easy to find. Interestingly, the original sets that have survived are more likely to be made from base metals because it’s not worthwhile for people to break them up into pieces. The base metal and steel examples were generally mass produced.

Collectors Weekly: How were chatelaines actually worn?

Cummins: There were two styles. The majority have a medallion at the top, and then behind that is a metal tongue that hooks over the waistband. The other style, which is more typically American, has a very long brooch pin at the back.

Gowns of the era did not have large or convenient pockets and women did not have large handbags, only little bags or reticules. It was therefore necessary to carry any items that were needed for a specific pursuit. There were even chatelaines for nursing, sporting, painting, or dolls.

An illustration from Iowa’s “Milford Mail” newspaper in 1896 depicts a woman wearing a “jingling chatelaine” even while ice skating.

Collectors Weekly: What kind of person carried a chatelaine?

Cummins: All members of society, from mistresses to maids. Royalty wore them, though these were more likely to be a watch, purse, or fan example, and nurses carried their necessary medical implements on their chatelaines. The quality of the items and its variety would carry status; each would have a variety appropriate for their needs.

There was also a lot of symbolism used in these accessories, like pansies for thoughts, etc. I have one that’s got crosses, anchors, hearts, and stars on it, as a faith, hope, and charity symbol. I think the anchors were a symbol of hope.

I think this particular one might have even been a mourning chatelaine, because after I bought the item, I put my finger in the thimble bucket and out came this tiny piece of paper with a quotation from Longfellow: “Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain Shall be to our true love as links to the chain.” It really had quite a punch.

Left, this “Faith, Hope, and Charity” chatelaine may have been a mourning piece, as it contained a romantic quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Right, two sporting-themed chatelaines featuring dog’s head medallions.

Collectors Weekly: Did women wear them out in public, or only in the home?

Cummins: The really beautiful ones were worn in public. There was a typical American variety, which is like a miniature chatelaine with only one chain that drapes across the body and has a watch at the end. And in fact, there is quite a well-known carte-de-visite of Mary Todd Lincoln, and she’s almost certainly wearing one of these. This way of wearing the watch was part of her fashion statement, part of her jewelry.

To some extent, on these long, flowing gowns a chatelaine broke the plainness of a skirt. Dance chatelaines were worn when you went to a ball or a party. But the really utilitarian, basic ones you would’ve only worn around the house. You’re more likely to find images of housekeepers or nurses wearing those.

I was very excited to find a photo of a lady sitting in a big crinoline gown wearing a chatelaine, because she was a titled lady but she was photographed at home doing her needlework. It’s the only image I’ve ever seen like that. Her chatelaine was important enough to her that she was happy to have her photograph taken while wearing it.

A cabinet card circa 1880 shows a well-dressed woman wearing a needlework chatelaine, a rarity in posed photographs.

Collectors Weekly: What types of accessories were made for chatelaines?

Cummins: There was a gentleman called Walter Thornhill in England, and in our book we printed an article detailing the contents of his shop, and the list of objects is just incredible. It went on for pages with the varieties that were available.

A Regency chatelaine, circa 1810s, made in gold and diamonds with jasper plaques, including a key, watch, and seal.

There were some very basic, common things like the purses and the spectacle holders. The chatelaines to take to balls would often have a perfume bottle, a notebook, and a pencil, and sometimes a little purse where you put a little sovereign or a single coin or a handkerchief. I discovered quite a lot of articles about the plight of the pocketless woman in regards to where you put your handkerchief.

The most common notebook would have ivory leaves, and it might have five or six little pages in it that swivel. I don’t think they used it for anything serious; I think some of this was just affectation. But they’re very special when you find them still with messages written in. One notebook from the 1930s actually had a list of the winners of the Melbourne Cup, a major Australian horserace. I looked them up and they were correct, so I assume she had worn it to the Melbourne Cup and written down the names of the winners.

The little needlework toolkits that they used to take to their sewing circles vary from the most basic to the most absolutely glorious, exquisite things that you would never use because they’re too delicate. Many would have been more for “show and tell.” The needlework chatelaines would have a scissors holder, a thimble holder, a needle case, and sometimes a tape measure and a pinwheel where pins went in the sides.

Then there was another style called a “Norwegian belt” which royalty and high society clamored for in the 1870s and ’80s. They had interchangeable pieces with fans and perfume bottles and needlework tools. Not many people would’ve been able to afford them. The Norwegian belt that I have is so heavy that when you put it on a mannequin, it just slowly sinks down. It’s unbelievably heavy.

I found another extraordinary one that was made for a lady artist who painted the birds of paradise up in New Guinea. It was commissioned for her and had a little paint box, a container for brushes, and a container for water, all in silver. I also discovered one for playing golf, with little score cards and a pencil. Ladies even wore pen knives and cork screws, occasionally; it just depended on what they felt that they would need.

Collectors Weekly: What’s the most attachments you’ve seen on a single chatelaine?

Cummins: About 12 or 13. I’ve got some images of the larger steel ones and they are extraordinary. Certainly, they clanked; when they moved, the chatelaine would’ve made a lot of noise. Nuns wore an equivalent device, and they got used to holding the chains when they were approaching the children, so the children couldn’t hear they were coming.

It’s a very characteristic noise, and I think that was part of your status. They had some fabulous cartoons in Punch that caricatured the loud steel ones.

These 19th Century cartoons from “Punch” magazine mocked the chatelaine’s use for domestic women.

Collectors Weekly: Were certain styles more utilitarian than others?

Cummins: The ones that seem to be the most practical were the purses and the spectacle holders. There’s a great photograph of a lady during wartime who is wearing a purse chatelaine, a pen chatelaine, and a spectacle chatelaine, so that she had on her whatever she needed to go around.

That’s why the nurses adopted them, because they needed to carry all their basic essentials—thermometers, scissors, safety pins, styptics for dressing wounds, all sorts of things. At the children’s hospital where I’ve just recently retired, nurses in the emergency department are still wearing leather pouches from their waist, to hold pens and pencils and thermometers and scissors. And they don’t realize they’re wearing a nurse’s chatelaine, which goes back to the late 19th century.

They often had a shield-shaped leather pouch with all the little slots in it that you put things into, like a slightly up-market gentleman’s tool kit, or they had extra bits hanging off the leather pouch, such as a Red Cross pin cushion or a watch.

I’ve got a number of images of nurses wearing ones with steel, but I have also seen one in sterling silver. In one of our big hospitals here in Sydney, there’s a photograph of all the nurses in 1895, and I would say a third of them are wearing chatelaines, and they’re all slightly different.

Left, a variety of chatelaines designed to carry spectacles. Right, this cabinet card image, circa 1885, shows a nurse in uniform wearing a long chatelaine with a pinwheel and scissors. In her hand she holds a watch, which hangs from her neck on a black ribbon guard chain.

Collectors Weekly: What are the most unique chatelaines you’ve come across?

Cummins: The most interesting ones were made for special uses, like nursing, painting, sports like golf or archery, children, or dolls. The most beautiful ones (made in gold, silver, enamel, precious stones, filigree, etc.) were those for watches, fans, perfume, and purses.

The ultimate chatelaine is an example that relates to one of the fashion plates of 1829, when the name was coined. This chatelaine is constructed of linked antique and ancient intaglios set in gold and includes the symbolic key and an agate locket. It drapes across the body then loops over the belt. I’ve had the individual pieces dated, and the actual intaglio seals come from a couple of hundred BC to a few hundred AD. A lot of people collected these seals when they went on their grand tours of Europe, and I think maybe this was put together later when the chatelaine fashion came in.

Similar to one depicted in the “World of Fashion,” this chatelaine is made from intaglio seals ending with a key and agate-cameo locket. Right, the chatelaine as it would have been worn on a period dress.

Collectors Weekly: Why did chatelaines go out of style?

Cummins: A couple of things caused this: One was the take-over of the wristwatch from the pocket watch (previously worn on a vest or guard chain or as a brooch). Handbags also became larger so ladies could carry their paraphernalia in these, rather than wear them separately. Women were becoming emancipated so were freer to move around and new fashions came and went. Some ladies still use a variety of needlework tool chatelaines today, and occasionally one sees a purse or watch made to wear at the waist.

Collectors Weekly: What surprised you about chatelaines?

Cummins: Just the ingenuity of them. As far as I know, there is no museum anywhere that has a good selection of the whole range of styles of chatelaines. It’s a subject that has been completely and utterly ignored.

Chatelaines were not an incredibly widespread fashion, but they were popular enough to have long articles written about them in a few of the ladies’ magazines of the day. You’ll see a few scattered here and there in museums, mainly 18th and early 19th century watch chatelaines, but it’s an aspect of women’s fashion accessories that has never been well represented.  I don’t think people realize how gorgeous and varied they can be.

From left to right, this elaborate Art Nouveau needlework set includes a tape measure, strawberry-shaped emery for sharpening needles, needle book containing flannel pages to hold needles, scissors in scabbard, acorn-shaped vinaigrette, thimble holder, and heart-shaped pinwheel.

(All images courtesy Genevieve Cummins, except for cartoons and fashion illustrations)

It’s easy to think of pin-up art as a charming relic of the old boys’ club—images that might line the walls of a Mid-Century smoking room where Don Draper and Roger Sterling slap each other on the back. And the names of the artists that come up over and over again are men: Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren.

“She was an icon for women in a man’s world, especially when it came to her pin-ups.”

So you might be surprised to learn that, according to pin-up art expert Louis K. Meisel, three of the most talented pin-up painters from the Golden Age, roughly the 1920s to the early 1960s, were women. “Pearl Frush, Joyce Ballantyne, and Zoë Mozert were terrific, as good as any of the men—in fact, better than many of them,” Meisel says.

That doesn’t change the fact that pin-ups were meant to be consumed by men. They first appeared in men’s magazines and break-room calendars in the 1920s and 1930s. Then pin-ups really took off after United States entered World War II in 1941, when images of wide-eyed, wholesome “all-American girls”—who just happened to have voluptuous figures and tight, revealing clothes—were sent to soldiers in the form of girlie magazines, Mutoscope cards, lighters, playing cards, etc., to remind them of what they were fighting for.

Top: Pin-ups by (from left) Pearl Frush, Zoë Mozert, and Joyce Ballantyne. Above: Regarding the Paramount Pictures “Unusual Occupations” short, “Zoe,” the artist told Marianne Ohl Phillips, “I made that fancy little costume myself. But you know, I could never paint a picture like they had me set up. Not in a million years!” Via “Tease!” Magazine #3.

“These were the girls that the boys who fought in World War II and the Korean War came back to marry,” Meisel says. “It was about getting a little house in Levittown and bringing up their two or three kids. Both male and female pinup artists painted for that.”

So Mozert, Ballantyne, and Frush were tasked with creating the ideal woman for American soldiers: young, busty, wasp-waisted, and long-legged. Her pretty face, with an occasionally coquettish expression, telegraphed childlike sweetness and a lack of real awareness of the pornographic thoughts she inspired, dancing on the edge of the virgin-whore complex. Didn’t these female artists mind portraying such an unattainable ideal?

As they say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Some people see beauty in a wide spectrum of body types and faces. Others divide the world into the beautiful people and the rest of us. From what we know about these women, it seems that female pin-up artists of the Golden Age bought into the most exclusive standard of beauty. But they themselves matched the WWII-era ideal, so they didn’t mind painting fellow members of “beautiful people” club.

A Frush pin-up captures the sweetness of the “all-American girl.”

“They were very curvy, pretty women,” says pin-up dealer Marianne Ohl Phillips, who interviewed both Zoë Mozert and Joyce Ballantyne before they died. “Both of them used themselves as models; Zoë especially loved to paint herself. From the time they were children, they thought the most beautiful thing in the world was a woman’s face and body. And none of them were gay. It is something they enjoyed painting, and they felt lucky they could make a living at it.”

“He said, ‘What’s a cute, little thing like you doing in the calendar-art business?’”

According to Phillips’s definitive 1991 article for The Betty Pages on “Zoë Mozert: Pin Up’s Leading Lady”—which has never appeared online—she “was often in papers, expounding her views on the perfect face and figure for pin-ups. Always fearless, she rated Tinseltown’s stars and starlets, a score of 100 being perfect. Scoring over 95 were Ida Lupino, Jeanne Crain, Mary Anderson, and Peggy Knudsen. Some glamour girls who didn’t measure up were Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour, Barbara Hale, Loretta Young, and Lana Turner, all receiving scores of 60 or less. … ‘The perfect face and the perfect figure have yet to be combined in one woman,’ she stated.”

In this Joyce Ballantyne pin-up, a girl swoons over red roses from her sweetheart.

While Mozert, at least, was not above mean-girl snarking on friends and celebrities with less-than-ideal figures, she and the other pin-up artists were still blazing a trail for women. What little we know about both Mozert and Ballantyne reveals that they had outsized personalities that gave them the gumption to succeed in a man’s world.

“I think they would consider themselves feminists,” Phillips told me. “I probably would, too.”

Still, Meisel, the co-author of several authoritative books on pin-ups, says that he can tell whether a pin-up was painted by a man or a woman just by looking at it.

“If you really get into it, you begin to see that women have a different way of portraying women than men do, even when they’re all trying to do something sexy for a pin-up calendar or a magazine,” Meisel says. “There is a certain sexy look, with black stockings, garters, and emphasis on certain parts of the anatomy that Elvgren, Vargas, and other male pinup artists do. I would say that the women portray very beautiful, idealized women, but the images are less erotic.

Ballantyne says that the pin-up was all about the tease—hinting at nudity, but not actually showing it.

“With Pearl Frush, for example, her girls were very beautiful, with wonderful-looking bodies, but it wasn’t so much about being sexy as being the all-American girl. She had less emphasis on breast size and legs than the male artists,” he continues. “Zoë Mozert was often her own model. Usually, she painted a different face, but she used her own body. And I guess in doing so, she had a different idea of what she should look like to men than maybe men would.”

“Before the 1970s women’s movement, nobody thought that pin-ups were objectifying.”

But Phillips, a paper dealer who helped bring pin-ups back into fashion in the late 1980s and ’90s, says she believes the women were naturally better at painting women. In her piece, which was reprinted in Tease! Magazine #3 in 1995, Phillips asserts, “It is infinitely logical that these exquisite creatures were painted by a female. No man, no matter how knowledgeable, can be as familiar with the feminine form as a woman.”

“You find mistakes in the male paintings,” Phillips told me. “Elvgren’s got a famous painting where she’s got two left feet, and there are just these things that don’t fit every once in a while. The women never made those mistakes. I think they looked in the mirror a lot and they got things more right. The men tended to make the breasts larger, and they made the legs longer. The women tended to paint very proportionate women, more of a 36-26-36 look, whereas men would make them a little top-heavy.”

This Ballantyne is a rare woman-painted pin-up featuring black stockings, garter belt, and heels.

Meisel isn’t denying that these women had talent. The founder of Meisel Gallery in New York City, Meisel says he helped establish photorealism as a collectible genre of painting. With his late business partner, Charles G. Martignette, he started hunting down the original pastel or watercolor paintings that pin-up posters and calendars were based on in the 1970s. They were the first to acknowledge pin-up painting as fine art and hang the works of Vargas, Elvgren, and Mozert in gallery shows.

In fact, in their book, “The Great American Pin-Up,” Martignette and Meisel often compare Frush to esteemed pin-up artist Alberto Vargas, who is much-celebrated today for his centerfold and cover work with Esquire and Playboy. Meisel explains that Pearl Frush is one of the most technically proficient watercolor photorealist painters he’s ever seen.

“When it comes to watercolor, I’ve seen the best that exist. Fifty years ago, Pearl Frush was way ahead of everybody,” Meisel says. “Face-wise, she is on the level of Alberto Vargas. Her paintings are not as sexy, but when it comes to painting a face, nobody surpasses Pearl Frush. It’s too bad that she wasn’t with a bigger publishing company.”

Many pin-up lovers consider Pearl Frush to be talented on the level of renowned “Esquire” pin-up artist Alberto Vargas.

Largely, the stories of these women have been untold. One of the problems is that pin-up illustration, like most commercial art, was hardly considered worth saving until Meisel and Martignette came along. The two went on a detective mission to salvage the original artwork done by pin-up masters.

“No man, no matter how knowledgeable, can be as familiar with the feminine form as a woman.”

“At the time, they weren’t sold in art galleries where people paid money for them,” he says. “They were given away. If your company had purchased 5,000 calendars from Brown & Bigelow, the salesman would show up and say, ‘Gee, Mr. Smith, this is the original painting that’s on the calendar you bought from us. Would you like it?’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, yeah, I’d love that.’ When he was unwrapping it at home, his wife would say, ‘Oh, you can’t put that in our house. What’ll the minister think when he comes here?’”

As a result, Meisel says, many pin-up paintings got stashed away in attics and basements. Often, the unframed artworks, done in pastels, would end up smeared. The two managed to recover originals by many major artists, but by 1990, an original Pearl Frush remained elusive.

A trend in pin-ups in the ’50s was cowgirls, as seen in this Frush painting.

“So Charles went out to Joliet, Illinois, where the Gerlach-Barklow calendar company was based. He spent a week there, where he went to the town hall and library, looking through annual reports and articles about the company. He came back with the names of 17 people whom he determined were executives at the company during that time.

“One morning, he calls up a woman in Wisconsin, and he says, ‘I understand that your father was an executive at Gerlach-Barklow. Did he ever bring home any artwork from there?’ She says, ‘Oh, yeah, we got some portfolios in the attic.’ At 11:00, Charles is on a plane from Florida, and at 4:00, he lands in Wisconsin. At 5, he’s having tea with this lady, talking about her father and waiting. At 6, they go to the attic where she shows him a portfolio with 24 Pearl Frush original watercolors from two calendars. He bought them on the spot.”

Another problem is documentation, explains Deanna Dahlsad, a pin-up collector, writer, and web publisher who blogs at the site Kitsch-Slapped, “specializing in bad taste from a (feminist) chick’s perspective,” as well as others.

Mozert poses with pin-up artists Rolf Armstrong (left) and Earl Moran. All three were among the “Big Four” artists for Brown & Bigelow calendar company. Via “Tease!” #3.

“So many women are left out of historical records,” Dahlsad says. “Men will say, ‘I want to show off what my father did; he deserves to shine. Someone should do a book on him!’ Daughters don’t do that about their moms to the same degree, so often things get thrown away. How many men would look at their archives say, ‘Just take it all to the dumpster’? Somebody would be saying, ‘You can’t do that! You’re George Petty. Put it back!’”

Fortunately, Phillips, who discovered Mozert was still alive in 1990, reached out to the artist 23 years ago. The budding pin-up dealer living in Iowa, traveled to Sedona, Arizona, just to meet this icon and learn from her, but when The Betty Pages put out a call for anyone with information on Mozert, Phillips ended up writing a 13-page profile on the artist.

“My first impression upon meeting Zoe Mozert was astonishment,” Phillips wrote in her article about the 5-foot-tall painter, who was 83 at the time. “This tiny, graceful lady had such presence, she seemed to fill the whole room! Within minutes, Zoe was flirting shamelessly with my husband, Jerry, who immediately fell under her spell.”

At 52, Mozert painted the world’s largest reclining nude for the Red Dog Saloon in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1959. “Red Dog Rosie,” based on a picture of herself, is taller than the artist was. Via “Tease!” #3.

To me, Phillips confides, “We became friends. I spent weeks with Zoë, and after that, I would visit regularly and clean her house. She could be temperamental. Just before I published the article, she called and said she didn’t want it published. I went ahead and did it anyway, then sent her a copy. She was just so thrilled with it. She called and was quoting it, too. I thought that was so cute.”

“It’s a shame nobody wanted to hang up pictures of beautiful men in their garages.”

When Mozert passed away in 1994, Phillips discovered the state of Arizona was planning to raze her home built on a mesa. “Her property was worth a fortune, but the house wasn’t,” says Phillips, who called the state to alert them to the historical treasures inside. The officials let her claim everything the Mozerts left behind. “It was a horrible mess. All these valuable papers were mixed in with cat-food containers. I had to go through it all and put it in trash bags and ship it back here.”

Mozert’s brother Bruce had already rescued the original pin-up pastels, but Phillips was able to save the artist’s photos, invoices, and diaries from the bulldozer.

One of Mozert’s glamorous “girl heads,” featuring her brother’s perfect pout.

“She always lived as if everything was a headline,” says Phillips, which seems like the right fit for a woman who briefly joined a circus. “She had a service that would cut out all the clippings about her across the country, and so she had these scrapbooks. A lot of the newspaper articles were just things that obviously she had done to get attention, like have a pet monkey, and get it in the paper. Now I have all those scrapbooks.

“My whole life centered around men and art. Men were easy to come by; and my paintings were my children.”

“She was a prolific photo taker, too,” Phillips continues. “I found all her model photos, and just zillions of pictures of her with all four of her husbands. There were some drawings that were wadded up, but mostly it was her ramblings. She just wrote on the back of everything. She also would write diaries on everything. It was very hard to read her writing. I deciphered lots and lots, but I probably haven’t deciphered it all. Sometimes she was angry, and she drank quite a bit at the end. She was very into philosophy and homeopathic medicine, so she would write about that.

“I uncovered her letters as well. She used to correspond with pin-up artist Ted Withers. She fancied herself in love with him, so she wrote a love letter to him. There was also his letter to her, turning her down gently. He wrote like an old-fashioned Southern gentleman.”

As a young woman, Mozert modeled for fellow pin-up artist Earl Moran.

Zoë Mozert’s story

Mozert, the most famous of the top three female pin-up artists, was born Alice Adelaide Moser in Colorado Springs on April 27, 1907, to Jessie and Fred Moser, a painter and wood sculptor respectively. Gifted at carving patterns used for the scrollwork on stoves, Fred founded Moser Pattern Company in Newark, Ohio. Naturally, young Alice revealed her artistic gifts early. “The story goes that her mother placed a Bible, a silver dollar, and a pencil in front of her when she was only two years old. Zoe grabbed for the pencil and began making marks,” Phillips wrote.

Chicago ad man Doan Powell designed Mozert’s trademark signature.

In 1924, the 17-year-old was admitted to the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art on scholarship, and her illustration instructor, Thornton Oakley, had been a student of Victorian artist and writer Howard Pyle, who illustrated adventure books for youth featuring legends like King Arthur, Robin Hood, and Aladdin. Mozert lost her scholarship and had to get a job her third year, thanks to a minor scandal—she’d posed nude for an art class at another college nearby.

At age 26, Moser moved to New York City to pursue her career in art. True Story Magazine was the first to buy one of her “girl head” pastels of her sister Marcia for $75, and while she waited for her career to take off, the 5-foot-tall Mozert worked as an artist’s model.

“Around that time she decided her name was a handicap,” Phillips explained in her piece. “People found it all too easy to treat the tiny 85-lb. Alice like a child and not take her seriously. So she substituted a ‘Z’ for the ‘S’ in Moser and added a ‘T’ to make it high at both ends. Then, leafing through dictionary until there were no more pages left, finally came up with ‘Zoe’ (pronounced ‘Zo’ee,’ as in showy.)”

Phillips says Mozert made her wholesome all-American girls look at least 17 years old.

Soon her whole family, her mom, her dad, her brother, and her sister, changed their last name to Mozert. When Zoe got a gig painting cosmetics ads, her brother Bruce and sister Marcia would pose as a besotted couple, and the three would be written up as “The Royal Family of Art,” given that they descended from Robert the Bruce of Scotland. Her brother was also her favorite lip model, for images of women.

“’Those lips you’d love to kiss’ in many of Zoe’s early paintings are really the lips of her brother,” Phillips wrote. “‘They had a more definite, better outline than my own or Marcia’s,’ said Zoe.”

Mozert shows her work to Errol Flynn and Eleanor Parker, the stars of 1946′s “Never Say Goodbye.” The artist served as a consultant and provided the art for the film, which features Flynn as a George Petty-type pin-up painter. Via “Tease!”#3.

In five short years, Mozert had taken the illustration world by storm. By 1938, she had already painted 400 covers for movie magazines like True Confessions, worked with major publishers like Dell, Fawcett, and King Features, and created images for ads for Kool Cigarettes and Dr. Pepper. That year, she landed a prestigious gig to produce six covers for Hearst’s American Weekly Magazine, and at one point, she had nine covers on nine different magazines on the newsstands at the same time. On the social scene, she was known for her pithy “Zoeisms,” like “Always keep yourself bigger than your job.”

Of course, the petite woman had to have a big personality to keep the men from running her over. She told Phillips she never got along with fellow pin-up great Rolf Armstrong, who was aloof, but George Petty was a pal on the party scene.

“We met, in 1938, when we were judges for the Miss America Contest in Atlantic City,” Mozert told Phillips. “James Montgomery Flagg, the artist who painted that ‘Uncle Sam Wants You’ poster, was also a judge. Well, Flagg was a mean, old sourpuss who didn’t get along with his wife; so he hit on me. He said, ‘What’s a cute, little thing like you doing in the calendar-art business?’ Just then George rolls up and says to Flagg, ‘Listen here James, we’re lucky we made it—she earned it!’ Then he proceeded to flirt outrageously with me. I returned the compliment!”

One of Mozert’s beloved nude pin-up girls.

Ever an adventurer, Mozert took a job as photographer’s assistant on a cruise ship to South America in 1939, and there, using a photo of her friend Swann Marlowe, painted her first nude, which was hung in Mendelssohns Gallery in New York two years later. This inspired Mozert, at age 33, to take up pin-up art. Studying the work of Petty and Elvgren, she made several more nudes, which she sent to David Smart of Esquire.

“I thought Mr. Smart was terribly handsome and he was attracted to me, too.” Mozert told Phillips. “You could feel it in the air. Esquire was considering me as a replacement for Vargas and Petty.” While Smart did commission more paintings from her, eventually buying 12 of them, none ever ran in the publication.

But that didn’t keep Mozert down. When the art director of the nation’s biggest calendar company, Brown & Bigelow, saw her nude painting at the gallery, he sought her out to offer her a contract. Another nude pastel of Swann became the company’s top seller of 1943. This led to a 26-year relationship with the firm. Then in 1942, Mozert produced a series of Victory Girl Mutoscope cards for B&B, meant to be sent to the troops serving in World War II. Eventually, Mozert became one of B&B’s top four artists, along with Moran, Elvgren, and Armstrong.

A Mozert cover for “True Confessions.” She is said to have been influenced by the styles of male contemporaries Earl Moran, Gil Elvgren, George Petty, and Rolf Armstrong.

And Mozert did, in fact, pose for many of these pin-up paintings herself. According to Phillips, she would position her camera and adjust the lights using a large mirror, change into something skimpy, and have her assistant Sunny Johnson take the snapshot. While Mozert often painted her own body, Sunny would typically  pose for the faces. “While walking down a street in St. Paul one day, I noticed a soldier eyeing me up and down,” Mozert told Phillips. “‘The face isn’t familiar,’ he was murmuring to himself, ‘but that body…’”

In 1943, the 36-year-old moved to Hollywood with her husband (the second of her four short-lived marriages). Paramount Pictures decided to include her in a film series called “Unusual Occupations,” with a short called “Zoe” about “the pin up girl who paints ’em too.”

During World War II, Mozert painted Victory Girls for Mutoscope cards meant to be sent to soldiers fighting overseas.

It wasn’t long before Mozert made her mark on Tinseltown. Howard Hughes recruited Mozert to paint the publicity image for 1945’s “The Outlaw,” a scandalous billboard of buxom Jane Russell in a peasant blouse dropping dangerously off her shoulder. Mozert also consulted and provides the art of the set of 1946’s “Never Say Goodbye,” which starred Errol Flynn as a George Petty-type character.

At age 45, Mozert retreated to Arizona, where she kept painting calendars for Brown & Bigelow, who was paying her a pretty penny by 1952, around $5,000 per image. In fact, she received a letter from Brown & Bigelow that read, “The price that you are being paid for the girl head is more than we are paying for any other subject in the line, except Norman Rockwell’s.” By 1953, however, under pressure from church groups, B&B asked her to “tone down” her nudes and make them more “pure.” She told Phillips she did, but the company held off on printing them.

Jane Russell models for Mozert, who’s painting the scandalously sexy promotional art for 1945′s “The Outlaws.” Via “Tease!” #3.

Mozert kept painting until 1985, when she injured her shoulder in a fall. “My whole life centered around men and art,” she told Phillips. “Men were easy to come by; and my paintings were my children.”

Joyce Ballantyne Brand’s story

Joyce Ballantyne, 11 years Mozert’s junior, did have real living, breathing children. In fact, Cheri, her youngest daughter with her second husband Jack Brand, became an American icon as a toddler, after Joyce created the attention-grabbing Coppertone billboard featuring a dog tugging down a little girl’s swim trunks.

Ballantyne and her famous daughter were tracked down in 2004 by Tampa Bay Times reporter Jeff Klinkenberg, who visited them in Ocala, Florida, just two years before the artist passed away. “I did not bring a martini shaker with me to Ocala, but I should have,” Klinkenberg wrote. “‘Mind if I smoke?’ she asked in a nicotine voice. ‘My whole house is my ashtray.’ [She] gazed across the table at me through giant pink eyeglasses and the haze of cigarette smoke. I got the feeling she knew how to handle hayseed reporters.”

Joyce Ballantyne, 86, lifts a martini glass to a reporter at her Ocala, Florida, home in 2004. Photo by Stephen J. Coddington/Tampa Bay Times.

Ballantyne was born in Norfolk, Nebraska, in 1918, near the end of World War I. She told Klinkenberg, she “liked drawing and making paper dolls; during the Depression she sold paper dolls for a buck apiece. She said she habitually entered art contests and won a scholarship to Disney’s School for Animation in California. She remembered the day when the Disney representative heard her girlish, teenage voice over the phone and rescinded the scholarship. Women married and had babies and gave up careers, she was informed. A woman was a poor investment.”

After studying at the University of Nebraska and the Academy of Art in Chicago, Ballantyne got a job with King Studios, illustrating a dictionary for Cameo Press and painting road maps for Rand McNally in the 1940s. According to Klinkenberg, by 25, she had married artist Eddie Augustiny, with whom she would have a daughter named Coby, and—as would be expect of a free spirit—learned to fly airplanes.

After a few years at King, she took another position at Stevens/Gross studio, where she worked for 10 years, which brought her into the prestigious “Sundblom Circle,” led by the creator of the Coca-Cola Santa, Haddon Sundblom. Top pin-up artists and illustrators including Gil Elvgren, Al Moore, and Al Buell were also in this club. In fact, Ballantyne’s art is most closely associated with Elvgren.

A titillating page from a Ballantyne Artist’s Sketch Pad calendar.

“Gil Elvgren, the most important pinup artist of all time, was very good friends with Ballantyne, and they actually posed for each other,” Meisel says. “When she got an assignment to have a couple sitting in a restaurant, Gil Elvgren would be the waiter, that kind of thing.”

In 1945, Elvgren recommended her to Brown & Bigelow, who started looking for new artists during World War II, as many pin-up painters had been drafted. Introduced as “the brightest young star on the horizon of illustrative art,” she designed a B&B direct-mail “novelty-fold” brochure. Eventually, she was allowed to produce a 12-page Artist’s Sketch Pad calendar, which showed the steps to drawing each image, for the firm.

“She was an icon for women in a man’s world, especially when it came to her pin-ups,” her friend Ed Franklin told the Ocala Star-Banner. “She was beautiful.”

Ballantyne caused a stir when she painted this topless mischievious mermaid for the family-oriented outdoors magazine “Sports Afield.”

Klinkenberg agreed with that assessment. “Even closing in on 90, Joyce is an attractive woman. As a young woman, she resembled the Donna Reed in ‘From Here to Eternity,’ only earthier. Often she used herself as a model, gazing into the mirror while painting a buxom doll who later would be admired in a greasy garage by drooling auto mechanics.”

At some point, she divorced Augustiny and remarried dashing TV announcer Jack Brand, who modeled for her, too. The Brands ran among a glamorous scene, populated by celebrities and artists, who’d throw late-night penthouse parties in Chicago and Manhattan, laden with martinis and pipe tobacco.

Outside of her work for B&B, Ballantyne also took assignments with Sports Afield magazine, which hired her for illustrations regularly for 20 years starting in 1947. Her first cover image was of a voluptuous mermaid, modeled after herself, pranking fishermen by putting a tire on their hooks. It caused quite a stir with readers; it seems they weren’t expecting such a sexy image on a magazine about wholesome family hobbies.

Like her friend and colleague Gil Elvgren, Ballantyne specialized in putting girls in accidentally sexy situations.

But her biggest break came when the Shaw-Barton calendar company hired her in 1954, when she was 36, to paint a 12-page calendar. Her 1955 calendar was such a hit that it had to be reprinted multiple times. This success led to gigs making more sexy calendars for Louis P. Dow company and Goes Lithography, as well as doing images for Esquire and Penthouse magazines.

“Women married and had babies and gave up careers, she was informed.”

“Mine always had some clothes on or at least a towel on,” Ballantyne told Klinkenberg. “I didn’t go in for dirty stuff like they do today. The trick is to make a pin-up flirtatious. You want the girl to look a little like your sister, or maybe your girlfriend, or just the girl next door. She’s a nice girl, she’s innocent, but maybe she got caught in an awkward situation that’s a little sexy.”

Unlike other pin-up artists, Ballantyne never got away from advertising illustration. She did work for Ovaltine, Sylvania TV, Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, Pampers, and Schlitz. And in her later years, she made it clear that she was rather cross that she’s still best-known for that Coppertone suntan lotion ad. “Just another baby ad,” she told Klinkenberg. “Kind of boring.”

Ballantyne and her daughter, who modeled for this ad at age 3, were so bored with the iconic Coppertone baby.

It started when Coppertone asked illustrators to submit ideas for a billboard commission. Ballantyne won the job in 1959 and created the image of a pig-tailed girl who finds a dog pulling down her swim trunks, which was loosely based on an idea by pin-up artist Art Frahm. She posed Cheri, who was 3 years old then, in the backyard, snapped some photos, and drew the image.

Those famous bare butt cheeks and tan line were plastered all over the United States with the slogan “Don’t Be a Paleface!” Before long, that image became a cultural benchmark, associated with summer fun in the sun and beach vacations. And poor Cheri Brand Irwin has spent her life dodging endless lascivious comments about her back end.

In 1974, the Brands moved to an old three-story building in downtown Ocala, Florida, to be near her family. The 56-year-old artist was none too happy trading the glitz of the big city for small-town life. She told Klinkenberg, “I’d go to a paint store for supplies and would literally find a sign on the door that said, “Gone Fishing.’ I didn’t think I’d be here long.”

A rare male pin-up (possibly based on Ballantyne’s husband, Jack Brand) for one of Ballantyne’s Artist Sketch Pad pages.

Ballantyne’s husband died of lung cancer in 1985. Cheri and her husband moved into the top floor of her building to take care of the artist, who kept drinking her evening martini and smoking cigarettes until her death in 2006.

Pearl Frush’s story

Of the three, Pearl Frush is the most mysterious. In their book, Meisel and Martignette explain that her tendency to paint in watercolor and gouache made it difficult reproduce those works in large numbers. But she also used pastels when needed, and “readily commanded the respect of the art directors, publishers, sales managers, and printers with whom she worked.”

In fact, it’s hard to pin down an exact birthday for her; she was born in Iowa, and her family moved to the Mississippi Gold Coast when she was little. One rumor has her birth in 1897, via the 1900 census. Most sources say she was born in 1905.

This Pearl Frush painting in particular calls to mind the work of Alberto Vargas.

When applying for a job at Brown & Bigelow, she wrote, “I started drawing, like most children, as soon as I could hold a crayon. I guess I enjoyed it more than most children because I kept at it and was soon begging my mother for paints, modeling clay, etc. She was cooperative but not enthusiastic, as she believed that artists starved in garrets and only became rich and famous after they were dead.”

She studied art in New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York City, and finally at the Chicago Art Institute. In 1931, she married a man named Charles Warde Brudon and began signing her paintings “Pearl Frush Brudon.”

In the early 1940s, she opened a studio in Chicago for freelance work in advertising, and took assignments with Sundblom, Johnson & White. Then starting in 1943, she made a splash at Gerlach-Barklow, who published several of her most successful pin-up calendars including Liberty Belles, Girls of Glamour, and Glamour Round the Clock.

Frush loved swimming, so she painted a lot of water-sports scenes, enough for a whole Aqua Tour calendar.

Meisel and Martignette describe her as a “vigorous and attractive woman” who loved swimming, canoeing, sailing, and tennis, so it’s not surprising that many of her pin-up played sports, as in her Sweethearts of Sports calendar. In 1947, Gerlach-Barklow published her Aqua Tour series, depicting women in watery settings, which broke the company’s sales records.

By 1955, Frush had divorced Brudon and married Robert Mann, with whom she moved to Atlanta. She would also sometimes sign her work “Pearl Frush Mann.” Applying to Brown & Bigelow that year, she wrote, “I didn’t turn out to be much of a musician, but I married one. My husband, Bob, plays cello in the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and writes music. He also plays trumpet. For excitement, we play chess almost every day and usually getting in three or four games. I win one out of three and keep hoping to improve.”

According to this letter, Frush may have been a little more shy and humble than Mozert or Ballantyne, which might be part of the reason she produced less work. She started the letter to B&B with “I’m afraid my history is not very exciting.” And finished with, “Sorry, I don’t have my recent photos. I dislike having my picture taken except for snapshots.”

A pretty-girl gouache by Pearl Frush at the height of her artistry. Via GrapefruitMoonGallery.com.

As one of the most important artists at Gerlach-Barklow, she was seen as a rising star in the pin-up industry, so B&B quickly hired her, publishing its first Frush pin-up in 1957, a single-page hanger calendar, with a horizontal image. At this point, she was at the height of her career, producing almost startling photorealistic images. In the 1960s, Robberson Steel Company of Oklahoma City was so happy with their Frush advertising calendars from Gerlach-Barklow, they commissioned her to do a series of glamour paintings, the last one in 1974.

There is no known death date for Pearl Frush, whose middle name is usually listed as “Aleryn.” But Ancestry.com has a Pearl Alice Frush listed as dying in 1985 in Decatur, Georgia, survived by her husband Robert Goodell Mann of Atlanta.

“Altogether I don’t think there are a hundred images of Pearl Frush around the world,” Meisel says, musing that she didn’t get the chance to do enough.

Publishing companies like Shaw-Barton hired pin-up artists to produce art for calendars, like this piece by Ballantyne, which reads “You don’t think I’m flat, do you?” Other firms, mostly in masculine industries like plumbing, would order a certain number of pin-up calendars with their names and addresses printed along the bottom.

Of course, the era of the illustrated advertising pin-ups started to fade in the 1960s and 1970s, as the technology for reproducing color photographs got better and better. And Meisel also blames the rise of feminism and political correctness. “Before the 1970s women’s movement, nobody thought that pin-ups were objectifying,” he says. “It was the all-American girl.”

“The ‘lips you’d love to kiss’ in Zoe’s early paintings are the lips of her brother.”

“The easy breezy flirt girl who isn’t showing too much skin, she still exists,” counters pin-up collector Deanna Dahlsad, who mentions that she runs into more female pin-up collectors than male. “But as women entered the workforce in the 1970s, it was no longer acceptable to put out pin-up calendars in the break room at the office. Or to give them as gifts to your best salesmen, because they might be saleswomen.”

Dahlsad also wonders if Frush, Mozert, or Ballantyne ever felt conflicted about creating these innocent-but-sexy women to be ogled at factories and mechanic shops. “When you’re a commercial artist, you take jobs that pay you,” she says. “If that’s where all the money was, as a woman, you’d be lucky to get that job.”

Mozert seemed quite satisfied being an object of lust, but she did admit to Phillips, “It’s a shame nobody wanted to hang up pictures of beautiful men in their garages. But business was business, and one had to meet the demand.”

Everyone throws their cat out for the night in a translucent nightgown, right? This is a recurring theme in Ballantyne pin-ups.

(For more information on female pin-up artists, check out Louis K. Meisel and Charles G. Martignette’s “The Great American Pin-Up,”  ”Tease!” Magazine #3, as well as Jeff Klinkenberg’s Tampa Bay Times articles, 2004′s “Real Florida: Red-faced with the Coppertone Girl” and 2011′s “Coppertone Girl puts past behind her on Segway in Ybor City.” Also, more images of their work may be viewed at Louis K. Meisel Gallery, Marianne Ohl Phillips’ MOP Pin-Ups, and Grapefruit Moon Gallery.)

The mysterious packages kept arriving, some from eBay, others from the Home Shopping Network, each addressed to her. All these clothes she didn’t want, which weren’t her size or style. She couldn’t explain them to herself, much less her husband. Finally, late one night he heard her stirring and awoke to see his wife browsing shopping websites and ordering clothes in her sleep.

“They were selling this dress with blood splattered on it.”

Emily Spivack, a writer and fashion historian, stumbled upon this extraordinary tale buried in the description of an unremarkable dress on eBay. When she first began exploring the shopping website around 2000, Spivack was struck by the humanizing element in such ordinary auction listings. “I was intrigued by the idea that this marketplace—which was supposed to serve one function, to be transactional—could also have a storytelling emphasis,” Spivack explains. “Interestingly, the time I spent on eBay became much more about looking for stories than things that I actually wanted to purchase.”

As the creator and editor of the Smithsonian’s fashion history blog, Threaded, Spivack often dissects the social, political, and historical ramifications of clothing styles and shifts. But with her “Sentimental Value” project, Spivack has chosen to examine the more personal impacts of clothing, scouring online auctions for the most intimate and revealing stories. For the new “Sentimental Value” exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, Spivack has curated a fascinating selection of such bizarre online disclosures, along with the physical garments they describe.

Top: Spivack’s Civil War era shirt with mysterious stains. Above: This cache of stockings was the first purchase Spivack made on the basis of its backstory. Photos by Shana Lutker.

“Sentimental Value” originally began as an online archive of the narratives Spivack discovered in eBay item descriptions. In 2007, after happening upon a specific auction that included a fascinating backstory, Spivack became hooked on this method of inadvertent storytelling.

“I was looking for vintage high heels, and I came upon this vintage Playboy bunny outfit from the ’60s with the puff-ball tail and stockings, and these beautiful black high heels. They had all the costume elements, and also the woman’s original ID card and a photo of her wearing street clothes, just looking totally normal and completely anonymous. To find this costume that’s so loaded and also see this person who would put it on in the expressionless photo, all these things just clicked for me.”

Spivack began searching out the most unique narratives hidden among the standard product listings on eBay, and saved the most fascinating for her “Sentimental Value” archive. Since the site’s launch in 2007, Spivack estimates that she’s collected images, text, and screenshots for over 600 eBay stories.

The cover for the “Sentimental Value” catalog features images pulled directly from eBay auctions.

Though such interesting stories are few and far between, Spivack appreciates these attempts to interject a human connection into these detached online transactions, especially as we  do more and more of our shopping on the Web. “I get the sense that people are being a bit more thoughtful about their purchasing these days,” she adds. “They want to hold on to things longer and knowing the story behind something can really add to the longevity of the item.”

Spivack believes that sellers are compelled to include these personal anecdotes because of what they might add to their clothing’s value. “I do think having a story attached adds a greater significance to the object and people appreciate that,” she says.

“Now she has to set an alarm every day to make sure that she hasn’t gone shopping in her sleep.”

In 2010, Spivack took her project to a new level: For the first time, she considered bidding on these items, garments she had no intention of wearing. “What would happen if I started collecting these stories in a physical way?” she wondered. “I wanted to see what the experience would be like to have these packages arrive in the mail. To be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, these are the denim cutoffs that this woman wore to a Grateful Dead concert when she met her husband, and now I have them.’ Or the pair of hot pink Versace jeans that Jessica Simpson supposedly once owned, and gave to her backup dancer, who then gave them to a real-estate agent who sold them.”

By then, Spivack had a clear sense of the more common tales she would encounter, like those about wedding dresses or weight loss, so she held out for only the most exceptional backstories. Her very first “Sentimental Value” purchase was a lot of vintage stockings, supposedly hidden in a barn where they had been used in pornographic films.

These shoes were worn by a runner who blacked out for the final 15 minutes of a race, collapsing after she crossed the finish line. Photo by Shana Lutker.

Since taking this initial plunge, Spivack has collected nearly 70 different pieces, none of which she has ever considered wearing. “They fit into a different category in my mind,” she explains. “In a way, they’ve become art objects.” Around 20 of these items are on view at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, along with excerpted auction texts and a video featuring several more pieces from Spivack’s collection. The exhibition is designed to convey the diversity of objects and stories that Spivack has uncovered, coming from people of all socioeconomic levels and describing everything from priceless heirlooms to mass-produced mall brands.

“Some are historical, but I also wanted to include items that felt deeply personal, where the person was really revealing something intimate about themselves. I wanted to include stories that captured the language of the Internet, with emoticons and LOLs, or written in all caps, like they’re yelling at you.”

In addition to this online vernacular, Spivack also appreciates the significance attached to such commonplace, run-of-the-mill articles of clothing. “I love finding stories about really ordinary objects, like a sweater you might look at and not think that there’s anything spectacular about it, until you hear the person’s story. Somehow, they tell you that they’re related to an astronaut who had taken two missions to the moon, and that they’re very sick but also a hoarder.”

Included with these cutoffs was this description: “I had forgotten to bring shorts for the weekend, so the guy I was with, now my husband, helped me out with a pair of borrowed scissors! True story—gosh, I hate giving these up!!!!”

Spivack refers to these backstories as the “provenance” of her pieces, a term used in the world of antiques to convey a documented form of object history, typically relating to the specific artist, manufacturer, or owner of a piece. Yet for Spivack, anonymous and unverified provenances are equally compelling, whether for Jessica Simpson’s Versace jeans or a Victorian-era brocade dress or a T-shirt from the 1980s.

Even the most traditional pieces in Spivack’s collection have unreliable qualities to their stories, like the Civil War era shirt shown at top. While the age of this garment is confirmed, the reasons for its mysterious stains and alterations are pure conjecture. “The ragged hole does have some dark edges, as if blood soaked,” wrote the original seller. “There is what appears to me to be blood stains to the front and back, mostly laundered, but leaving wash stains, although there are spots of blood set in on one of the arms. There is a patch of blue color on the back suggesting to me that some migration of color from a Union uniform during a wash has transpired onto the back, which might indicate it was mended and worn again in active duty, if this was worn by a soldier during the Civil War.” As Spivack explains, “It’s provenance with a twist.”

Other garments have less dramatic histories, like the clothing ordered by the sleep-shopper at the beginning of this article. “Now she has to set an alarm every day to make sure that she hasn’t gone shopping in her sleep,” says Spivack.”I get the sense with a lot of these stories that people want to share them, but they haven’t really thought in great depth about why they’re sharing it. It’s just an intuitive thing to them. And I happen to be capturing these stories before they disappear from eBay and the memory is lost.”

A screenshot of the eBay listing for a silk dress reportedly worn during a mob-related killing in the 1920s.

Spivack’s favorite stories typically blur the line between historical, personal, and hearsay, like the description of the green silk gown belonging to a seller’s aunt in the 1920s. “Supposedly, her aunt wore the dress to a club one evening,” says Spivack. “She was a blonde, and moved fast, and her boyfriend was involved in the mob. And when they went out that night, someone next to her was shot and killed, and blood splattered on her dress. So they were selling this dress with blood splattered on it. I bid on it, and it’s in the show. To me, that story is absolutely incredible.”

Perhaps what Spivack finds most alluring is the raw realism of these fleeting wardrobe memories. “They’re written in Internet language, and they’re not the most beautiful garments or the most incredibly well-told stories. In a way, that’s what I love about it: I’m intrigued by other people’s experiences with clothing, particularly when they’re not really interested in fashion.”

(To learn more about Emily Spivack’s “Sentimental Value,” check out the website or visit the exhibition in Philadelphia through August 18th, 2013.)

The meerschaum pipes carved in Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century are among the most bizarre and improbable concoctions in decorative art. Some feature bowls made from the heads of historical figures like Napoleon while others sport the likenesses of literary characters such as Sir Dagonet, King Arthur’s much-abused jester (above). There are pipes based on nursery rhymes, others depicting men on horseback, and lots of naked ladies, ranging from classical nudes positioned at the ends of pipes like ship figureheads to erotica bordering on pornography.

“She was huge, just massive. Cost me an arm and a leg.”

Roy Ricketts loves meerschaum pipes, although his admiration for them is purely on aesthetic grounds. Over the past 20 or so years or so, Ricketts has collected approximately 350 late 19th, early 20th century meerschaum pipes carved in a wide range of designs; just about all of them can be seen on his website, House of Pipes, and Ricketts has posted a selection of those on Show & Tell.

“I used to collect wood carvings,” he says by Skype from his home in the United Kingdom, “but they tended to be the same sorts of figures, either Asian or religious. It was very much the same old same old, so I lost interest after a while.” But Ricketts had not lost his interest in the carver’s art. If fact, even before he started selling off his collection of wood carvings, he found himself acquiring a few meerschaum pipes. “I bought a couple of pipes from local antiques shops,” he says. “Nothing of any quality, but it was enough to get me interested.”

Top: A meerschaum pipe bearing a character who appears to be Sir Dagonet of Arthurian legend. Above: Ricketts named this 7-by-7 inch lap pipe Louisa.

Meerschaum is a relatively new material to pipe making, appearing no earlier than the 18th century. Found primarily in and around the city of Eskişehir in western Turkey, meerschaum is a porous mineral that’s soft enough to be carved but hard enough to be polished, revealing the carver’s artistry. Unlike hardwood briar pipes, which are also finely carved, meerschaum does not burn, which means the bowl is cool to the touch when it’s being smoked and the pipe material imparts no flavor to the tobacco. And because meerschaum is porous, meerschaum pipes change color over time as they are smoked. Thus, the stone, which is carved white, turns butterscotch brown when made into a pipe, filled with tobacco, and smoked, a process that’s frequently hurried along by rubbing a finished pipe with beeswax and, occasionally, ox blood.

“It’s the residue that gives the pipe its color,” says Ricketts. “When you are smoking, your mouth produces this spittle that drips down into the bowl, mixes with the residue of the tobacco, and forms this brown stain which some collectors like. It doesn’t overly appeal to me. I like the whiter ones, which are unsmoked.”

Ricketts’s first meerschaum was a cheroot holder adorned with a can-can dancer. Cheroots were, and are, very small cigars, whose ends are simply cut off rather than tapered, hence the popularity of cheroot holders, to keep all that loose tobacco from getting in your mouth. “Although they were all relatively short, they came in various widths.” says Ricketts, “I’ve got a couple of meerschaum cheroot sets that have several little bowls that fit in the top of the cheroot holder to accommodate the various sizes.”

Carvings of men on horseback roping animals (in this case, a colt) are not uncommon on cheroot holders.

So it was a meerschaum cheroot holder rather than a proper meerschaum pipe that first caught Ricketts’s eye. “I went into an antiques shop in a town not far from here,” he recalls. “It was a very expensive antiques shop, I never used to go in there, but I thought I’d go in and have a look. Lying in a case were about three meerschaums, and one of them was the can-can dancer. I got really carried away with it, I really thought she was something else, and I paid at the time what I considered was an awful lot of money for it, about 30 pounds, which would be about $45.” Nowadays, he says, that can-can-dancer would fetch somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 to 300 pounds. “I’ve never seen another one exactly like it.”

The main reason why Ricketts has more cheroot holders in his collection than bowl-dominated pipes is that cheroot holders gave artists more room to create and embellish. “I like cheroot holders more than the figural pipes like the Dom Perignon,” he says of the monk who invented champagne, whose head holds the pipe’s large bowl. “I like carved meerschaums in the fancy form, the really, really exotic ones. You don’t tend to get that when they are carved as a bowl.”

Ricketts is also a fan of lap pipes, especially the one he’s named Louisa. “Broke my heart when I saw that one,” he remembers. “There’s a place down on the coast called Brighton, a seaside place. It has a particular section of the town called The Lanes, which used to be very famous for its antiques shops. It must have 200 to 300 shops. At one time every one sold antiques. It had always been my ambition to go to Brighton and go to The Lanes, so one day I decided to do it. I headed out to Brighton, found The Lanes, and was very disappointed to learn that most of the antiques shops had been turned into jewelers and trendy places. But there was one antiques shop left, a big one, and as I walked in the door, I could see her in a cabinet at the back. She was huge, seven by seven inches, just massive. Cost me an arm and a leg, let me tell you.”

Sometimes the juxtapositions in meerschaum carvings are quite surreal, as in this hand clutching what appears to be a lobster.

As their name suggests, lap pipes were held in the lap when smoked. “You couldn’t possible pick it up,” says Ricketts. “Originally it probably had a push stem made of cherry wood, six to 12 inches long, with a flexible mouthpiece attached to that. So you could sit it in your lap and smoke it. Because the stems were detachable, they tended to get lost.”

Other gems from Ricketts’s collection include a cheroot holder depicting a stork with a frog in its beak. “I bought that one from a New York collector some years ago,” Ricketts says. “The stork’s legs are only a 64th of an inch thick. How it survived all these years, I have no idea, although it has never been smoked and has lived in a case, so that probably explains it.”

Another pipe depicts the long-outlawed “sport” of bull-baiting. “That pipe must have been custom made. It’s a very bold thing to say ‘unique’ in anything, but I imagine that pipe is a one-off, custom made for some sadistic bastard! It was a dreadful sport.”

This creepy creation was said to have been owned by occultist Aleister Crowley, “an evil character,” says Ricketts.

At the other end of the content spectrum is a pipe featuring Little Boy Blue and a female shepherd, who’s wagging her finger at the lad for letting the sheep get loose. “According to Ben Rapaport, who wrote the book on meerschaum pipes, any pipe depicting children of any sort can be considered quite rare, simply because they were not a subject that was discussed among men in smoking rooms.” Also scarce, but no doubt more actively discussed, are pipes with erotic imagery on them. “I have some exceptionally erotic ones,” Ricketts says, “which were smoked by men in their clubs. Erotic meerschaum is exceptionally rare and highly collected.”

According to Ricketts, the height of meerschaum carving only lasted for a very short period of time, “from somewhere between 1870 and 1900,” he says. “Then design changed, not exactly overnight, but very nearly that. By 1905, 1910, you can see the style of modern pipes coming in. Basically, the carving was done behind the bowl of the pipe,” as can be seen in an early-20th-century pipe Ricketts owns at the end of the slide show below. “People got bored with the fancy meerschaum pipes, you see?” he asks. Well, actually, no. “The pipes got a little ostentatious,” he adds. Now that makes sense!

More Meerschaum Pipes from the Collection of Roy Ricketts

The woman in this cheroot holder is wearing amber boots and cap.

The woman in this cheroot holder is wearing amber boots and cap.

One of the first meerschaums Ricketts purchased shows a woman in Victorian bathing costume carefully making her way into the water, probably at a seaside resort.

Ricketts believes this pipe was commissioned by a "sadistic bastard" who longed for the days when bull-baiting was still legal.

Dom Perignon, the monk who invented champagne.

An example of an erotic meerschaum: The maid's apron can be lifted to show, as they say in England, the "naughty bits."

This pipe, which depicts a gagged pirate or seaman, is in the classic saxophone shape.

The color in the hand and wrist on this pipe is evidence that is has been smoked.

The visors worn by these knights are made out of walnut. Ivory pins act as each visor's hinge, allowing them to open and close.

The bowl of this cheroot holder is amber, as is the stem.

This lion closely resembles lions found on Swedish heraldry.

Ricketts contacted an official from the Seminole Nation in Florida to confirm that this pipe is modeled after Chief Osceola.

Ricketts believes this pipe may represent the three Bronte sisters.

This can-can dancer was the first meerschaum Ricketts purchased.

Because cheroots came in different sizes, the pipes meant to hold them sometimes came with larger and smaller bowls, into which the end of the cheroot would be inserted.

A cheroot holder depicting a young woman playing a flute.

The thinnest leg on this stork is just a 64th of an inch in diameter.

In the 20th century, meerschaum pipes became more traditional in appearance and the carving was placed behind the bowl.

It’s not unusual for men of a certain age to have a soft spot in their hearts for the look of vintage guitars and the sound of rock ’n’ roll. Some get as far as a high-school garage band, others might learn enough covers to tear it up at the neighborhood bar, but most guys with even a grain of common sense between their ears don’t go much further than that.

At the risk of suggesting Matt Eichen lacks good judgment, he started a guitar company and named it Musicvox. Okay, to be fair, he kept his nose to the grindstone long enough to become an oral surgeon, which gave him the wherewithal to pursue his quixotic passion. Still, have you seen his Spaceranger guitar? It looks like something an intoxicated animator for “The Jetsons” might have cooked up for the scene in which daughter Judy first lays eyes on the retro-future pop star, Jet Screamer.

“When Matt first started, I’m not sure he knew what he was doing.”

An orthodox Jew whose yarmulke would never be confused with Slash’s top hat or Buckethead’s inverted KFC container, Eichen got into music the same way most music lovers of his generation did. “I’d say it started with The Beatles,” he admits, immediately apologizing for sounding so trite. “I moved on to the Stones when I joined a Rolling Stones cover band in college in the 1970s. My own personal interests always included garage music and basic rock ’n’ roll. Chuck Berry was a major influence. Anything with a strong groove.”

A drummer before he got into the guitar at age 16 (“I picked it up pretty late”), Eichen remembers well the exacting standards of his band mates. “I was playing with people who were very skilled,” he says, “very good at their craft, and very interested in the tone of their equipment. Everything had to sound appropriate to the era we were playing.”

Top: Matt Eichen, reflected in a mirror-top Spaceranger. Above: Ming Tea, performing “Daddy Wasn’t There” in the 2002 hit “Austin Powers in Goldmember.”

Though he ended up focusing on guitars, Eichen remembers an initial preoccupation with amplifiers. “We were using all vintage tube amps,” he recalls, “old Ampegs, Fenders, some Standells, things like that. Solid-state amps were becoming more affordable and prominent in the mid to late ’70s. Marshall amps were very popular with those who could afford them. We couldn’t, but we preferred the warm-sounding late-’50s, early-’60s, Ampegs and Fenders anyway. That was the tone we were looking for.”

Eventually, Eichen started paying serious attention to the tone of the guitars he was starting to play. “When I was a resident at Mount Sinai in Manhattan,” he says, “my guitar was an Ibanez Stratocaster copy. I couldn’t afford a Fender or a Gibson at the time—every dime I had went to either rent or Chinese food. When I first started buying guitars, I was looking for things like Harmonys. I really became attached to them because they were affordable and they had that sound, thanks to the DeArmond pickups.”

The M1-5 is one of two new models introduced by Musicvox in 2011.

At first, his peers wondered why he didn’t save up for a Les Paul or Stratocaster like everybody else. “I was ridiculed because of their construction, that they were mass produced, cheap, et cetera. But they had an amazing, amazing sound.”

Like a lot of budding collectors of the inexpensive, entry-level guitars of the 1950s and ’60s, Eichen found himself in a lot of pawn shops. “During my residency and afterward, whenever I had some spare change I would go to a pawn shop wherever I could find one. If I was traveling to a conference in any state, when I get off the plane, the first thing I’d do is go to a pawn shop in the worst part of town and see what kind of guitars were available. Harmonys were always on my list, but then I spread out to Supros, Danelectros, Airlines, and Silvertones. Anything made by Valco or Kay. They had magical tones.”

Al Masocco knows exactly what Matt Eichen is talking about. A veteran of the marketing side of the music business for more than 35 years, Mascocco got to work with master musicians such as Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Jeff Beck. Like Eichen, Masocco also took a shine to the offbeat guitar brands, many of which are described in detail on his PulseBeat Guitars website. “You can’t Pro Tools these guitars,” Masocco says, referring to the popular software used by amateur and professional recording engineers to replicate the tone of Les Pauls and Strats. “They have a different sound.”

Matt Eichen’s inspirations for Musicvox guitars include (from left) Danelectro, Supro Ozark (with a mother-of-toilet-seat finish), and Silvertone, which was sold in Sears stores. Guitar Photography: Bart Hackemack.

While Eichen was amassing his collection in the late 1980s, he learned why finding examples of these guitars in good condition was so difficult, even though they had been sold in large volumes.

“The mass marketers were trying to get a younger audience,” says Michael Wright, a guitar historian who began writing a monthly column, “The Different Strummer,” for Vintage Guitar magazine in 1991. “They were selling a lot of guitars that would become beginner guitars.”

Not surprisingly, a lot of those guitars did not survive their first owners. “Many of the kids who got them for Christmas, birthday, or whatever couldn’t get a tone out of them,” Eichen says, “so they were cast aside and eventually tossed away by their parents. A lot of them were gone within the first five or so years after they were sold.”

The earliest versions of the Spaceranger hid the guitar’s electronics in a box under the pick guard, just like the Supro Ozark.

As Eichen’s dental career took off, he was unwittingly edging closer to the founding of Musicvox. “In 1994,” he remembers, “I went to San Diego for a sinus-surgery conference. Naturally I went to a local pawn shop where I found a Supro Ozark with a floating bridge and pickups. All of the electronics were mounted in a box under the pick guard on the body. The body was not routed, it was a very rudimentary type of design, with a mother-of-toilet-seat finish on it. I just loved it.

“That was really the core of the design of the Spaceranger,” Eichen continues. “The body didn’t look like it, but the proportions were the same. The headstock, though, was my idea. It was just something that would’ve caught my eye, had I seen it in a store.”

“The electric guitar is the voice of rock ’n’ roll.”

Eichen’s guitar education really accelerated in 1995, when a collection of Michael Wright’s Different Strummer columns were published as a book. “His book influenced me quite a bit, especially the European guitars like EKO and Hagstrom. It seemed like everything he wrote about I had to buy.”

And, of course, closer to home, there was Danelectro. “The Danelectro is an amazing instrument,” says Eichen. “I took a lot of inspiration from Nat Daniel, who was the company’s owner and designer. When I first had this desire to design an instrument, I was worried that I wasn’t a good enough guitarist. I could play blues and rock, but I wasn’t a lead guitarist and I had never learned to read music—to this day I play strictly by ear. But when I read about Nat Daniel, I learned that he could only play three chords. He played just well enough to test out his instruments. I thought, if he can do it, I can do it.”

Compared to the Spaceranger, the Space Cadet is a conservative-looking instrument.

According to a summary of the company’s history written by Wright, in 1996 Eichen created the first sketches for what would become the Spaceranger. Moving from a drawing on an index card to a scale cutout in cardboard, he eventually found his way to Gulab Gidwani of Exotic Woods, who digitized Eichen’s designs to produce about 10 necks and bodies on a computer-numerical-control (CNC) carving machine. The blanks were finished in nitrocellulose lacquer by a Philadelphia-area luthier, after which the instrument’s hardware was added, including new-old-stock Kay trapeze tailpieces.

Eichen took his prototypes to the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) trade show in January of 1997. There he met a Korean manufacturer who was contracted to produce the first full run of Spacerangers, which were ready for the next NAMM show in July.

“When Matt first started,” says Wright affectionately, “I’m not sure he knew what he was doing.” Indeed, that first batch of production Spacerangers, Wright recalls, “was not particularly well received. Have you seen a picture of the Spaceranger? That’s one ugly guitar, there’s no way around it. His guitars were laughed at back then, but I don’t think they’re laughed at anymore.”

A sample of Matt Eichen’s collection of electric guitars.

A change in the guitar’s finish and a new manufacturer improved their appearance, but the growing respect for Eichen’s instruments had as much to do with their distinctive look as their singular sound. “He was very influenced by pickups that look and sound like DeArmond pickups,” says Wright. “DeArmond, which was in Toledo, Ohio, was famous for making a lot of the pickups for a lot of the cheaper guitars like Harmony, but they also made them for Gretsch, the toaster-top pickups. With older pickups, the sound is subtler than that of modern, high-output pickups. By picking a ’50s/’60s pickup, combined with a retro look, he ended up with something that had a vintage vibe.”

The comparatively more conservative Space Cadet followed in 1999, and Musicvox created bass and 12-string versions of both. But it was a mirrored Spaceranger bass (see photo at top) that Eichen ran as an ad in a number of guitar magazines that caught the eye of a few key musicians, who would become some of the fledgling firm’s biggest boosters.

“One day I was in my office,” Eichen recalls. “I had just treated a patient and there was a message that Allen Woody had called. At the time I had no idea who he was, but I knew about the Allman Brothers, who he played bass for. That ad also prompted Tom Petersson from Cheap Trick to phone me. I was amazed. I had been a huge fan of Cheap Trick when I was 16 years old, and years later, here he is tracking me down.”

Ultrabunny, giving a Spaceranger a live workout.

Another musician who was prompted to reach out Eichen was Matthew Sweet, who, in 2002, was working on the third Austin Powers movie, Goldmember (Sweet plays bass in the film-series’ house band, Ming Tea, whose lead guitarist is Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles). “He had acquired some of my guitars,” says Eichen, “and told me that the Spaceranger looked like it had been designed for the film. After an extensive series of emails, he showed one to Mike Myers at a band practice. Apparently everybody had a great laugh; they thought it was wonderful. Myers eventually got one for himself.”

“The unique thing about a guitar is that it’s art that you can create another type of art with.”

More importantly for Eichen, his Spaceranger was chosen for the movie, although it was not at all a foregone conclusion that the instrument would make the final cut. “They decided they were going to use the instruments in the movie because they felt they couldn’t get anything custom for the film that would’ve looked more appropriate,” Eichen says. “But it went all the way up to the shooting of the scene before we knew whether they were going to use the guitars. The director of photography, as well as the film’s director, Jay Roach, made the final decision when the actors were in costume. According to Matthew, they had other guitars sitting by, waiting, just in case. They very easily could’ve pulled my guitars off the set and replaced them with something else. But everyone had a great reaction to them. I was very, very fortunate; it gave the guitar a permanent place in pop culture.”

In recent years, Eichen has produced very limited-edition runs of guitars with unique color and hardware combinations. For example, there are only four Spacerangers that look like this one.

For a while, the future looked very bright for Eichen’s retro-looking guitars. The ginormous musical-instruments retailer, Guitar Center, placed a large order of Spacerangers to capitalize on the guitar’s prominence in the film. “It looked things were really going to take off,” Eichen remembers.

Then, overnight, everything changed. “My then-two-and-a-half-year-old daughter got thyroid cancer,” he says. “It really knocked me off the whole guitar thing. The movie had just come out and there was the order from Guitar Center, but when she got sick, I just stopped everything cold.” Fortunately this story has a happy ending. “She’s fine today,” Eichen says, “she’s a healthy, 13-year-old kid.”

By 2008, Eichen’s turn-of-the-century fling with Musicvox seemed exactly that. He even started selling off pieces from the collection he’d been building since his Mount Sinai days. “I had stopped buying instruments and wasn’t involved with manufacturing or anything. I sold handfuls of Supros and Airlines to people all over Europe, all over the world.”

Recently, though, Eichen has gotten back in the guitar game. “We have four children, three girls, ages 11, 13, and 18, and one boy, 15. Our three oldest wanted to know why no one else’s home revolved around guitars. They had grown up with guitars all around them; everywhere they turned they saw guitars. They rummaged through articles in Guitar World, Vintage Guitar, Guitar Player, and other guitar magazines and read about me and Musicvox. They had seen the music videos of Devo 2.0 and Ming Tea from Goldmember. Finally they said, ‘Look, what was this all about? Why don’t you do it again?’ Initially I refused but when I reviewed the press and materials with them, I saw their interest growing and it got me excited to do it again. It was very inspirational.”

Another 2011 addition to the Musicvox family was the Space-inator.

Eichen says it took a lot to get Musicvox back in motion in 2010, to line up the factories, register for the trade shows, and secure new trademarks. And without a Guitar Center order in his back pocket, he had to tweak his business model. “I decided to make rare, limited, custom runs for collectors, and cut them off at four numbered pieces per unique design. I changed features, pickups, finishes, and finish accents. As a result, our guitar prices have been rising steadily in the aftermarket. Most folks never knew that almost everything we do, even in production, is very limited and boutique. That’s started to catch on with some insiders.”

Kevin Smith is one such insider. With a collection that numbers 1,200 guitars and is still climbing, Smith has more Musicvox guitars (around 70) than any other brand except Dean. “I didn’t catch on to Musicvox stuff until last year or the year before,” he says. “I got hooked on them, especially when he was offering a lot of the prototypes and early models that were made in 1996. I picked up a few of those, including a triple pickup model that was never put in production.”

Guitar collector Kevin Smith, with just a few of the 70 or so Musicvox guitars.

The timing, it seems, is right for Eichen to carve out a niche for himself as a specialty maker. “The factories he’s dealing with,” says Wright, “will take relatively small orders now. There was a while when they weren’t doing that, but then the recession hit.”

“We had our first new products ready for the NAMM show in July 2011,” Eichen adds. “We’ve been to every show since.”

Among the new guitars in the Musicvox stable are the M1-5 and the Space-inator, both introduced in 2011. If his original Spaceranger raised the eyebrows of guitar purists who objected to its cartoony appearance, the Space-inator raised the ire of Fender, which objected to its original name, the Strataspear.

Eichen won’t discuss the Fender situation, although you can read the full text of Fender’s objection on the Musicvox website, but Masocco finds Fender’s complaint more than a little ironic. “In the 1950s, there was a company called S.S. Stewart,” he says, “whose Model 44 was ripped off by Harmony for its H44 Stratotone. And then Harmony got ripped off by Leo Fender when the name Stratotone was turned into Stratocaster. This sort of thing has been going on for years.”

One of the musicians Eichen got to know well was the late, great Allen Woody, who played bass for the Allman Brothers and Gov’t Mule, as well as Blue Floyd. In the video below, he plays a 12-string Space Cadet bass.

Which brings to mind that priceless quote by Hunter S. Thompson, who once observed that “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

Matt Eichen has managed to avoid such corridors because he’s stayed focused on the things that drew him to guitars in the first place—their sound and their beauty. Certainly that’s what’s kept Wright interested all these years. “I like guitars because they are art,” Wright says. “The unique thing about a guitar is that it’s art that you can create another type of art with. The object itself is beautiful as a piece of sculpture, but its primary beauty is the sound it makes when you make music. Matt’s guitars live in that nexus.”

“Guitars are meant to be played,” agrees Masocco. “You want to preserve them as pieces of history, but it’s also about the sound and what they represent. The electric guitar is the voice of rock ’n’ roll,” he concludes. “That’s what it is.”