Posted at 9:07 pm by 1909ventilo, on July 30, 2010
Maybe if I woke at 4:00 am I would have enough hours in the day to figure out my blog! I still am learning, so hang in there with me! I started this blog for myself really, I wanted a place to store all the things I am interested in and I am learning about. I find history fascinating, which is actually kind of funny because I didn’t have much interest for it when I was in school! I love to do research; it’s great to be able to learn new things everyday. I am terrible at spelling and punctuation but give me a camera and “its all good!” I truly believe everything we have here on earth is borrowed as well as our time. For myself it’s really not about owning something that holds greatness, but the history and the story now that’s “everything!”
Posted at 12:39 am by 1909ventilo, on July 29, 2010
Callahan near Etna California
When I was young, I remember my mom buying cowboy boots across the street from Callahan’s; going to the Rodeo, was a ‘big deal’ in Scott Valley. Those boots were so special to her; she had those boots her whole life! The picture below of the two room school house is where I went to school in Quartz Valley. Fond memories….
thinking of Sie the old man who everyday sat on the main street corner waving at everyone who went by, everybody was so friendly, those were the days!
Etna California,
I Love this Video, everybody is from somewhere…. glad I’m from “Small Town USA”.
Small Town USA by Justin Moore
Some old pictures I found on the internet of Etna California. I grew up there in the 70’s obviously these photos
* note. “Today Callahan is just a shadow of what it once was, and you can get a glimpse into the past by looking at the old buildings. Steel plates cover the windows of the former Wells Fargo building, which was also one of the Denny Bar stores. Farrington’s Mercantile and General Store was established in 1860 and is the oldest continuous family run business in Scott Valley.
The photographs apparently were taken between 1919 and the early 1930s, well before Adams — who is known as the father of American photography — became nationally recognized in the 1940s, Streets said.
“This is going to show the world the evolution of his eye, of his talent, of his skill, his gift, but also his legacy,” Streets said. “And it’s a portion that we thought had been destroyed in the studio fire.”
How these 6.5 x 8.5 inch glass plate negatives of famous Yosemite landscapes and San Francisco landmarks — some of them with fire damage — made their way from Adams collection 70 years ago to a Southern California garage sale in 2000 can only be guessed.
The person who sold them to Norsigian at the garage sale told him he bought them in the 1940s at a warehouse salvage in Los Angeles.
Photography expert Patrick Alt, who helped confirm the authenticity of the negatives, suspects Adams carried them to use in a photography class he was teaching in Pasadena, California, in the early 1940s.
“It is my belief that he brought these negatives with him for teaching purposes and to show students how to not let their negatives be engulfed in a fire,” Alt said. “I think this clearly explains the range of work in these negatives, from very early pictorialist boat pictures, to images not as successful, to images of the highest level of his work during this time period.”
Alt said it is impossible to know why Adams would store them in Pasadena and never reclaim them.
The plates were individually wrapped in newspaper inside deteriorating manila envelopes. Notations on each envelope appeared to have been made by Virginia Adams, the photographer’s wife, according to handwriting experts Michael Nattenberg and Marcel Matley. They compared them to samples provided by the Adams’ grandson.
While most of the negatives appear never to have been printed, several are nearly identical to well-known Adams prints, the experts said.
Meteorologist George Wright studied clouds and snow cover in a Norsigian negative to conclude that it was taken at about the same time as a known Adams photo of a Yosemite tree.
In addition to Yosemite — the California wilderness that Adams helped conserve — the negatives depict California’s Carmel Mission, views of a rocky point in Carmel, San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, a sailing yacht at sea and an image of sand dunes.
“The fact that these locations were well-known to Adams, and visited by him, further supports the proposition that all of the images in the collection were most probably created by Adams,” said art expert Robert Moeller.
Moeller said that after six months of study, he concluded “with a high degree of probability, that the images under consideration were produced by Ansel Adams.
Silver tarnishing on the negatives also helped date the plates to around the 1920s, Alt said.
“I have sent people to prison for the rest of their lives for far less evidence than I have seen in this case,” said evidence and burden of proof expert Manny Medrano, who was hired by Norsigian to help authenticate them. “In my view, those photographs were done by Ansel Adams.”
Norsigian, who has spent the last decade trying to prove the worth of his discovery, is now ready to cash in — by selling original prints of the photographs to museums and collectors.
“I have estimated that his $45 investment easily could be worth up to $200 million,” Streets said.
It was written at the time of the 1745 Scottish Jacobite uprising. Two Scottish brothers were captured by English soldiers and thrown into Carlisle jail. One was to be sentenced to death for his part in the revolt while the other was to be released. The younger brother had a sweetheart by Loch Lomond instantly after being executed and therefore be home first.
Execution and release of the two prisoners was scheduled for the same time. The freed man was allowed to go back home, taking the normal way, The High Road. His sibling however, according to an old Celtic belief that if you die away from your homeland you return by an underground spirit route called The Low Road, would be transported back to Loch Lomond instantly after being executed and therefore be home first.
You’ll take the high road
And I’ll take the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
But me and my true love will never meet again
On the Bonny Bonny Banks of Loch Lomond.
Posted at 12:19 am by 1909ventilo, on July 17, 2010
I took this photo for one of the big auctions we had. I love jewelry especially older vintage ,edwardian and victorian jewelry! My Store is on OnlineAuction.com! Check it out all the cool people are there!@
Posted at 12:06 am by 1909ventilo, on July 12, 2010
A Civil War Find
by Clayton Pennington
You don’t need to go to Antiques Roadshow for a great find. Just ask Leo Oaks of Grants Pass, Oregon, and he’ll confirm, it can happen anywhere.According to Oaks, four years ago several pickers he described as “hippie types” were hired to clean out an old shed in Josephine County, Oregon. They were told they could have whatever they wanted.
The pickers found a 16 7/8 inches x 23 7/8 inches oil on canvas face up in the shed’s rafters. Though it was filthy, they planned to take it to a secondhand shop where they frequently sold things.
Oaks intercepted them and bought the painting for the princely sum of $25. The canvas was loose, and there was a piece of corrugated board jammed in the stretcher. (Oaks knows corrugated board. He worked for 40 years as a shift supervisor in a wood products plant that produced plywood.) For a year after he bought it, the painting sat dirty and untouched
“The image was so familiar, maybe because I have so many Civil War books,” said Oaks. “I didn’t recognize the monogram.”
When Oaks eventually took the backboard off, he discovered, written on the back, “Camp of the 3rd Kent., nr. Corinth, Miss. May 11th 1862. Painted by C.W. Chapman Co. D.”
C.W. Chapman was Conrad Wise Chapman, an artist well known for his Civil War pictures and Mexican landscape scenes. Oaks said that the writing on the back is in Chapman’s own hand. Oaks knew it was a find of some importance. “I said, `God Darn, that’s him!’ Then I got excited,” said Oaks. “I’ll tell you, my hair stood up.” He took the painting to a West Coast restorer who cleaned it up and repaired a small hole.
Not only was it a rare find, but it is the image that made Chapman famous. This particular scene provided the basis for a widely published print by Louis Zimmer, Confederate Camp During the Late American War. From the Original Painting by C.W. Chapman, Ordnance Sergeant, 59th Virginia Regiment, Wise’s Brigade.
There are differences, other than the two state regiments cited, between the print and the original work of art. One notable difference is that Chapman included a self-portrait as the solitary soldier leaning on a rifle in the lower left. In the print, he is shown talking with a water carrier.
Chapman was born in Washington, D.C., in 1842, second son of the artist John Gadsby Chapman. The elder Chapman was already well respected, especially for his oil on canvas The Baptism of Pocahontas, placed in 1840 in the United States Capitol rotunda. In 1848 the family moved to Europe, trying several cities before taking up residence in Rome. While in Europe, John Chapman taught both his sons, Conrad and John Linton, to paint.
When news of the Civil War reached Rome, Conrad rushed to join the Confederacy. Unable to get to Virginia, he enlisted in a Kentucky regiment. During the battle of Shiloh, he suffered a serious head injury. “Some people think he shot himself,” said Oaks. The fierce fight at Shiloh happened on April 6 and 7, 1862. Both sides suffered major losses; the North lost 13,047 men, the South, 10,694. After the battle, Confederate forces retreated to Corinth, Mississippi, the site of the painting.
*Note Leo Oaks is friend. Thanks Leo for letting me share your story. 🙂 VF
You can read full article at the link below. Thanks to the Maine Antique Digest for letting us share the story.
Posted at 10:42 pm by 1909ventilo, on July 9, 2010
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams
“Join, or Die” was drawn by Benjamin Franklin and appeared in conjunction with an editorial by him that addressed the dissatisfaction of the colonies and encouraged colonial unity.
America. Jodocus Hondius. Amsterdam, 1606 (1628). Excellent. One subtle printer’s crease near lower center. Full fine original color.
[sold]
A particularly beautioful example, in superb original color, of the seventeenth century’s first great atlas map of America.
Jodocus Hondius the elder is regarded as one of the foremost cartographers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. His acquisition in 1604 of the copper-plates used for the Mercator atlas launched the Dutch map trade into the new century and, in Koeman’s words, `won [the Mercator atlas] its proper fame’.
Love this beautiful map! You can read about all the interesting details at this site listed below! Not sure what this sold for? But look at the article below that was a nice find!
A copy of the first map to portray the world as a globe has been bought for £545,600 at Christie’s in London.
The price paid for the 1507 drawing – the first to label the New World as “America” – is a world record amount for a single sheet map. London clock dealers Charles Frodsham and Co bought it, saying they were “over the moon” with their purchase.
The auction house also sold a recently discovered set of letters by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley for £45,600.
The map was made German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller, who followed the teachings of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
Vespucci was the first to claim the New World was a separate continent – as opposed to Christopher Columbus, who thought it was part of Asia.
The name “America” was derived from Vespucci’s first name, and the drawing was the first to distinguish North and South America and to show the Pacific Ocean.
At a cost of $10 million, the Library of Congress is buying the first map to use the name America. The, map printed in 1507, is the first world map in which the name “America” appears for the lands of the New World. Historians say the 494-year-old map caused the hemisphere to be named for explorer Amerigo Vespucci instead of Columbus.
The evidence of this knowledge is in Waldseemueller’s world map of 1507, perhaps the most valuable of the 5 million maps owned by the Library of Congress. It was acquired for $10 million in 2003 and went on permanent display last year.
The 1507 Martin Waldseemüller map measures more than four feet by eight feet when assembled from its 12 separate sheets. The map has been referred to as America’s “birth certificate” because it is the first document on which the name “America” appears.
The much-in-news fine, exceptional and antique 18K gold, enamel and diamond-set hunter case ‘petite souscription � tact’ watch that was owned by Empress Josephine, wife of French ruler Napoleon Bonaparte lately got sold for $1.3 mn at Christie’s auction house in Geneva. This amount is seven-fold of the anticipated price during its pre-auction.
There isn’t any information available about the anonymous buyer. The watch is a replica of the ‘montre a tact’ or ‘tactile watch’ pattern designed by Abraham Louis Breguet in 1790, when it was inappropriate to ask for time in public. The USP of the watch is its very ability to enable wearer identify time by its mere feel from outside as the watch hand resides outside.
In 1799, Josephine placed an order for this watch at 3,000 francs. Later, in 1804, diamonds were embedded when Napoleon was bestowed with the crown of Emperor of France. Later this watch was given to Hortense, wife of Napoleon’s brother Joseph Bonparte. Hortense stepped on to the pedestal of the Queen of Holland when Napoleon made his brother King in 1806, and it was then this watch the watch was then imprinted with an alphabet ‘H’.
SCHEDEL, Hartmann (1440-1514). Liber Chronicarum, in German: Das Buch der Chroniken und Geschichten mit figuren und pildnussen. Translated from Latin by Georg Alt (c.1450-1510). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 23 December 1493.
SCHEDEL, Hartmann (1440-1514). Liber Chronicarum, in German: Das Buch der Chroniken und Geschichten mit figuren und pildnussen. Translated from Latin by Georg Alt (c.1450-1510). Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 23 December 1493.
One of the most important books in the history of printing, ‘Liber Chronicarum’ [Nuremberg Chronicle or Weltchronik] is an illustrated history of the world by Dr Hartmann Schedel with illustrations by Michael Wolgemut, his stepson Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and (probably) Wolgemut’s apprentice, Albrecht Dürer. The printing was carried out in Nuremberg in 1493 by the renowned printer-scholar, Anton Koberger, first in Latin followed by a German edition a few months later.
” Chronicle is probably the most sophisticated printed book published before the year 1500 because of its use of different graphic layouts that integrate text and image in more varied ways than anything that had previously been attempted.”
The book is divided into seven ages within a biblical timeline and narrative, and loosely incorporates historical events together with extended digressions that displays the author’s personal interests.
“Schedel compiled this elaborate history of the world from “the first day of creation” to his own time in an effort to correct what he felt was a slight to German history by other chroniclers. He divided his work into the usual six ages of the history of mankind, adding a seventh in which he foretold the coming of the Antichrist, the destruction of the world, and judgment day.”
Over eighteen hundred illustrations appear in the book, compiled from about six hundred and fifty woodblocks. Many of the portraits appear multiple times and even some of the city maps are reused (some of those are imaginary views or adaptations from other artists and predictably, the closer to Nuremberg, the more accurate was the map).
Posted at 10:34 pm by 1909ventilo, on July 6, 2010
Emerging from her childhood, and inspired by her blossoming romance, Kaiulani realized she had to bring an end to the injustices suffered by her people and set to sail for America, to meet President Grover Cleveland, to prove that she and her people were not the “barbarians” portrayed by the American press.
Princess Kaiulani combines the profound natural beauty of Hawaii with the sweeping romance of a classic Merchant Ivory epic.
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PRINCESS KAIULANI OF HAWAII
The Monarchy’s Last Hope
“I must have been born under an unlucky star,
as I seem to have my life planned out for me
in such a way that I cannot alter it…”…Princess Kaiulani,
Rozel, Jersey,
summer of 1897
If you travel by private jet there’s no need to worry about your luggage getting beaten up in transit. Hence you can use a set of beautifully handmade cases crafted from the world’s finest exotic leather. At least, we assume that’s the rationale behind Bottega Veneta’s outrageously opulent set of alligator skin luggage. The six piece set, which includes three suitcases (small, medium and large), a beauty case and a duffle bag, costs $157,000; the pieces are also available individually, ranging from $23,000 to $47,000. All are finished in noce fume rich brown soft-finished alligator skin and feature burnished metal hardware with reinforced corners and locking mechanisms. And of course if you’re traveling by private jet you can afford it.
On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exercised their right to vote for the first time. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Disagreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
THE YEAR 1908
This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1908.
One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1908:The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1908 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year,
a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Women’s Suffrage 1908
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as ‘substandard. ‘
Sugar cost four cents a pound.
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used
Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Posted at 10:22 pm by 1909ventilo, on July 2, 2010
Auction: 2002 Americana & Decorative Arts. November 20. Price Realized: $4,312.50 Fragment of Flag Made by Betsy Ross, with parts of 2 red and 2 white stripes, 7 stars. Appears to be silk, with cotton stars and hoist, all hand sewn. Old ink note on hoist “Property of Mrs. Rachel Albright / Granddaughter of Betsy Ross.” Remnant as pictured about 14 x 22″. Framed under glass. Brittle, not removed from frame for examination. (EST $1000-$1500)
Sold at Cowans $4312.50
According to the whitewashed legend, Betsy Ross was a mild-mannered seamstress living in Philadelphia. Sometime in 1776, General George Washington and two other members of the Continental Congress entered the Widow Ross’ humble home and asked her to make a flag. Washington had the idea to incorporate six-pointed stars, but Ross demonstrated a clever folding method that produced a five-pointed star with a single snip of the scissors, making it easier to mass-produce. The general approved the design, and the rest is history. http://www.slate.com/id/2259351/?from=rss
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
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