In the Hot Seat: Is Your Antique Windsor a Fake?

While researching her book, Killer Stuff and Tons of Money, Maureen Stanton came across all sorts of characters. For years, she shadowed her antiques-dealer friend she calls “Curt Avery,” and he gave her an insider’s view of what goes on behind-the-scenes in the antiques world—including at Brimfield Antiques Show in Massachusetts, one of the largest flea markets in the United States. Most of the dealers she met were … (continue reading)

Love at First Kite: How Pizza and Pente Led to One Oklahoman’s High-Flying Obsession

Vintage kites from all over the world hang from the ceiling and walls of the late Richard Dermer’s popular Hideaway Pizza restaurant in Stillwater, Oklahoma—and that’s only a fraction of his collection. To many locals, the kites might just seem like another piece of quirky décor. But not so. Dermer, who spoke with us before he passed away in March 2014, was an avid kite enthusiast, and each … (continue reading)

Coveting The Craziest Cat-People Collectibles

The memes are endless—Grumpy Cat, Nyan Cat, Keyboard Cat, Maru, and all the Lolcats. Last year even witnessed the first ever Internet Cat Video Festival at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, with more than 10,000 people in attendance. Maybe it’s the culmination of living with domesticated kittens for thousands of years, or perhaps it’s due to an insidious epidemic of feline-hosted Toxoplasmosis. Regardless, we’re having a … (continue reading)

Blood, Sweat, and Steel: My Afternoon with the Ace of Swords

“When I got this sword, it was completely covered in blood rust.” Sword maker Francis Boyd is showing me yet another weapon pulled from yet another safe in the heavily fortified workshop behind his northern California home.
“You can tell it’s blood,” he says matter-of-factly, “because ordinary rust turns the grinding water brown. If it’s blood rust it bleeds, it looks like blood in the water. Even … (continue reading)

Reality TV Cracks Open the Extravagant World of Hollywood Vintage

Vintage fashion is finally having its moment in the sun. Or, that is, the bright lights of cable reality TV. Two shows that premiered this season—Bravo’s “Dukes of Melrose” and Smithsonian Channel’s “L.A. Frock Stars”—each focus on a high-end vintage boutique located near Hollywood and patronized by big-name celebrities.
When “American Pickers” debuted on the History Channel in 2010, it opened the floodgates for piles of rusty … (continue reading)

Diablitos in the Details: The Curious Tale of Mexico’s Most Peculiar Pottery

In the rural Mexican state of Michoacán, devils, mermaids, saints, sun gods, and drunks can all be found mixing it up and having a great time. Each of these characters, and many more, inhabit the strange universe depicted in sculptures produced in the tiny town of Ocumicho.

“Though sanitized into angels and last-supper scenes for tourist markets, authentic Marcelino figures are almost always obscene.”
These bizarre pottery tableaux … (continue reading)

Digging for the Perfect Beat: Davey D on the Vinyl Roots of Hip-Hop

When Dave “Davey D” Cook got into hip-hop in the late ’70s, he didn’t see himself as an archivist. A teen growing up in the Bronx, New York City, he was digging through his mom’s records looking for a great funky beat to rap over. At the time, hip-hop was only five years old. Cook was inspired by Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and DJ Kool Herc, … (continue reading)

Lucas-Tesla Project to Give Drivers a Charge While They Watch a Movie

Today, George Lucas and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk announced the purchase of the old Coliseum 4 property adjacent to the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland, California, with the intention of building a state-of-the-art drive-in movie theater—designed exclusively for electric cars. The complex, which will be called The Lucas Starlight after a drive-in theater in his hometown of Modesto, is slated to open in 2015 in time for the release … (continue reading)

Take That, Instagram: The Enduring Allure of Vintage Snapshots

In an essay for her 1977 series “On Photography,” Susan Sontag wrote that “photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing, which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art.”
Yet today, found or “vernacular” photographs are increasingly presented as art objects, a reverence reinforced by the steady transition from analog to digital technology. These … (continue reading)

Dying To Go Retro? This Modern-Day Morticia Gives Death A Makeover

Caitlin Doughty gushes about death like it’s her high-school crush. “I don’t just pretend to love death. I really do love death,” writes Doughty. “I bet you would too if you got to know him.” The young mortician’s web site even includes a checklist of tips for improving your relationship with death, like magazine dating advice (“Spend quality time together,” “Review your expectations,” etc.).
Like a character straight out of HBO’s … (continue reading)

Dr. Seuss, the Mad Hatter: A Peek Inside His Secret Closet

Dr. Seuss had a unique remedy for writer’s block. When the late author, the alter ego of Theodor Seuss Geisel, was penning his beloved Beginner Books for Random House in the 1960s, he’d have his editor in chief, Michael Frith, over to his house, where they’d work until the wee hours. And when they’d get stuck, according to Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel by Judith and Neil Morgan, … (continue reading)

Should You Feel Guilty About Wearing Vintage Fur?

It’s undeniable: Fur is back. At New York Fashion Week last month, this extravagant, expensive material was so abundant, it might have been everyday wool. Not just seen on coats, jackets, and stoles, designers fashioned furs into skirts, oversize mittens, dresses, blouses, and even hoodies. Most of the top designers, including Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Marc Jacobs, showed real fur in some form … (continue reading)

Making, and Eating, the 1950s’ Most Nauseating Jell-O Soaked Recipes

Poring over vintage cookbooks and food advertisements is equal parts intriguing and repulsive: People willingly ate things like “Shrimp Aspic Mold” and “Chicken Mousse”? Unlike the menus on contemporary food blogs and in best-selling recipe books, mid-century cooking seems guaranteed to make you gag, thanks to its mismatched flavors, industrial ingredients, and gelatin overload.

Often the strangeness of this era’s food stemmed from innovations being tested on our nation’s … (continue reading)

Black Is Beautiful: Why Black Dolls Matter

As a little girl, Samantha Knowles didn’t stop to consider why most of her dolls—her American Girl dolls, her Cabbage Patch Kids, her Barbie dolls—were black like her. But black dolls were not common in her upstate New York hometown, whose population remains overwhelmingly white. So when Knowles was 8 years old, and one of her friends innocently asked “Why do you have black dolls?”, she didn’t … (continue reading)

The Mao Mango Cult of 1968 and the Rise of China’s Working Class

For 2,000 years, the peach was the iconic fruit of China, an auspicious symbol of good health and a long life. But from August of 1968 until roughly the fall of the following year, the mango was China’s most revered produce item, whose meaning was unwittingly bestowed upon it by none other than Mao Zedong.

“Apparently, Mao didn’t like fruit. It was an easy re-gift.”
Now … (continue reading)