Northwest Collector

Barn sale purchase is major find for savvy buyer . . . and what we can learn from it

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Everyone loves a success story, and I believe that’s the biggest reason for the popularity of Antiques Road Show: the idea that a funny ceramic figurine that was the family joke for years is actually a museum piece; that a map rescued from a dumpster is a rare piece of Americana; that a print purchased at a thrift shop for a few bucks is an original Dürer engraving worth many thousands—all of these are retellings of “Cinderella” that few can resist imagining happening to themselves.

Needless to say, there are way fewer Antiques Roadshow segments—and many more Roadshow tour appraisals that are not filmed—in which the hopes of an item’s owner are crushed: the item is not rare or valuable; the condition is so bad as to make it almost worthless; the amount the owner paid is pretty much the market price, or even more; or—worst of all—the damn thing is a fake!

Unfortunately, a litany of bad news makes for lousy TV programming. Still, that’s what happens in most cases. Not everyone is a winner.

Which is why I offer a doff of the hat to Allen Treibitz of Heritage Gallery Auctions in Patchogue, Long Island (HeritageGalleryAuctions.com)—by coincidence, less than 15 minutes from where I grew up. Allen went to a barn sale in the Hamptons and had the good sense to shell out all of $50 for a painting by an artist named Emily Carr titled Masset Q.C.I. 1912, seen here:

Emily Carr, Masset, Q.C.I. Image used by permission of Heffel Fine Art Auction House, www.Heffel.com.

Now, if this raises lots of questions in your mind, you’re not alone. Who was Emily Carr? What is that object in the painting? What does Massett Q.C.I. mean? And are there really still barns in the Hamptons with things you can buy for $50? (I didn’t think you could get a Caffè Americano at a Starbucks in the Hamptons for fifty bucks!)

If I can pat myself on the back, when I read about Allen’s find, I recognized Emily Carr’s name, but it took me a moment to place her: when I was about to move to the Pacific Northwest twenty-five years ago, I briefly considered applying to the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, BC.

Then everything fell into place: Emily Carr (1871–1945) was an eminent Canadian artist who was much influenced by the Northwest First Nations peoples. The object in the painting is actually a mortuary totem pole (the coloring threw me off), and Massett Q.C.I. refers to the Haida village of Massett, Graham Island, in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia—something I learned through a simple Google search, which also turned up this oddly familiar image:

Mortuary totem pole at Masset, Queen Charlotte Islands, BC, October 1913. Photo by Archdeacon W. H. Collison (1847–1922). Postcard by J. D. Allen Photo Co. Image used by permission of University of Northern British Columbia Archives & Special Collections, UNBC Accession No. 2009.7.1.080, https://search.nbca.unbc.ca/index.php/mortuary-totem-pole-at-masset-queen-charlotte-islands-bc.

For a bear on a pole, he gets around. But I digress . . .

Allen Treibitz made international headlines not just for his smart purchase (there’s gold in them thar barns) but for consigning the piece to Toronto’s Heffel Fine Art Auction House (www.Heffel.com), whose savvy publicity people knew exactly what to do with it. The auction—which was held in November of last year, was a Major Event, not just for the Emily Carr painting but also for others by Canadian artists James Hart, Frederick Varley, Marcelle Ferron, and Kenojuak Ashevak—and Massett Q.C.I., which was estimated to fetch roughly US$70,000 to $140,000, fetched just over US$242,000, including the buyer’s premium. (Some of the work by the above-mentioned artists realized much, much more—but they didn’t come with the cachet of being found in a barn on Long Island.)

I couldn’t help asking Allen some questions about his decision to purchase the piece and his buying process in general:

Me: What attracted you to the painting?

Allen Treibitz: The painting had a look that stood out from most of the works that I see.

Me: Did you recognize the image as a totem pole before you researched the artist?

AT: I recognized that it was an animal on a pole in a rural setting. Having the title as Masset, Q.C.I. helped pinpoint the site and that it was an Indigenous work. 

Me: Have you made other great finds like this in the past?

AT: I have had many great finds, but this one is the most significant and valuable in my career as a dealer/lover of art. 

Me: Do you always research items before you buy or bid?

AT: Research always depends on the situation at hand. Sometimes it’s research on the fly or could be that it’s a feeling I have from doing this most of my life. 

Me: Any advice for other “treasure hunters”?

AT: These great works are out there to be discovered, but it’s very rare to find something this important. 

So what’s the takeaway here?

(1) Great finds are out there, although you may not be able to buy a second home with one. Allen Treibitz is an art expert and dealer who presumably sees a lot of artwork for sale, in barns and elsewhere, and even he hasn’t scored this big before. But it does happen.

(2) Do your homework! It amazes me whenever I see overpriced stuff on eBay (it’s always “extremely rare!” when it actually isn’t) or with a high starting bid in another auction. You just have to check the prices. If you are registered with LiveAuctioneers.com or Invaluable.com, you can see what an item sold for on their platform if it ever came up there. Or you can subscribe to WorthPoint or one of the other websites that tell you past auction prices over many platforms. Some auction houses also allow you to see past auction prices. If you are flea market frequenter or estate sale enthusiast, use your cell phone to do your due diligence “in the field” and download any apps you need beforehand. A little solid research can save you a lot of money—as well as expose sellers who wildly exaggerate the rarity and value of their stuff.

(3) Know your collecting area! The more expert you are, the better your instincts will be, and the more likely you’ll make a smart purchase if you can’t adequately research a super-rare or one-of-a-kind item beforehand.

(4) Don’t turn up your nose at barn sales . . . or library sales or garage/yard/rummage sales or church bazaars or thrift shops. Some of the best finds come from those venues.

Happy hunting!

You don’t know Jack . . . but crime historian M. J. Trow does

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I just saw a recent (2023) documentary TV series called Becoming Evil: Serial Killers Among Us; Unsolved Cases. Episode 1 largely dealt with one of the earliest and most famous cases, the 1888 butchery of five prostitutes (some contend there were others) in the Whitechapel section of London. The murderer was never caught and his identity—he was presumably a man, and suspicious males had been sighted—is hotly contested to this day. Yet we all know him as Jack the Ripper.

Illustrations relating to the Whitechapel or “Jack the Ripper” murders. The Illustrated Police News, London, Nov. 24, 1888. Courtesy of the British Library.

The first couple of episodes of Becoming Evil: Serial Killers Among Us; Unsolved Cases were worthwhile to me because they explored other early serial murder cases as well—and not just in England but in the United States. (Yes, Virginia, there are documented cases of psychopathic serial killers in America going back at least until the mid-19th century.) But what made me sit up and notice was the fact that the Jack the Ripper segment featured commentary by a British historian and true-crime writer named M. J. Trow, who has theorized on the identity of Jack, and also the fact that the filmmakers kept showing an image of a 30-something dark-haired man with a mustache and wearing a cap—implying that this was an image of the person whom Trow has figured for the killer.

Now, I interviewed M. J. Trow by email in 2009 after seeing him on another show about Jack the Ripper. He had just published a book called Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer (Barnsley, U.K.: Wharncliffe Publishing, 2009), in which he suggested that Jack may have been a morgue attendant and workhouse resident named Robert Mann. If the photo that Becoming Evil was implying was the Ripper was actually Robert Mann, that seemed to me to be BIG NEWS: an actual photograph of a suspect who wasn’t a wacky guess, like Queen Victoria’s grandson, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, or the American known mass murderer Francis Tumblety, a more likely but still a much-debated candidate for the crimes. (Incidentally, M. J. Trow’s suggestion that Robert Mann was the Ripper has also been pooh-poohed by many “Ripperologists”—Jack the Ripper buffs, for lack of a better word, an opinionated bunch whose interest is nevertheless serious rather than prurient and whose knowledge of the murders is encyclopedic.)

So I contacted Trow about it. Surprisingly, he didn’t even know about the release of Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer—let alone got paid for the interview—and informed me that the photo of Robert Mann was “totally spurious, just a generic picture of some guy in the street.” Damn!

Well, my recent exchange with Trow inspired me to rerun our original 2009 interview, which is still a favorite of mine.

Here goes . . .

“Jack the Ripper: Who Is He? What Is He? Where Is He???” Image taken from Puck, London, Sept. 21, 1889. Courtesy of the British Library.

The Ripper reexamined: Historian M. J. Trow reveals a new, viable suspect

By David Chesanow (December 2009)


Serial murderers, including serial murderers with sexual motivation, have terrorized humanity since time immemorial; we just don’t know to what extent. The vampire and werewolf legends of lore no doubt account for many of these, and I think it’s interesting that a recent medical theory attributes some historical cases of vampirism to rabies infection: It seems that humans who contract the virus have been known not merely to bite a lot but to have supercharged, insatiable sex drives. Think what you like, it had to have been a lousy way to go, for everyone involved.

But I don’t mean to be flip. In this age of advanced communications, we are used to knowing—or being able to access—the news any time we want it and, with simulcasts, even as it happens. The same goes for crime forensics: Who knew even 25 years ago that DNA analysis would be so widely and routinely used to identify perpetrators and discount innocent suspects? Yet, 1,200 or even 120 years ago, what reasonable explanation or law enforcement measures could be offered when, one by one, people suddenly went missing or turned up mutilated somewhere in China or Peru or France or Russia?

Or Victorian England . . . That’s where the most notorious, the most enduring series of murders (in terms of the public consciousness) took place within a few short months in 1888, in an area of London called Whitechapel, by a butcher whom fearful Britons would nickname and the world would come to know as Jack the Ripper. At least, in the teeming capital of the British Empire, news traveled fast, and any supernatural theories—if there were any offered—fell before modern psychology. And while I would point out that Bram Stoker knew his audience when he published Dracula nine years later (in 1897), in the waning years of the 19th century, modern, enlightened Londoners knew Jack was no vampire but a very human and very dangerous nutcase. The fact that the murderer was never caught or his identity conclusively confirmed ensured that “Ripperology” would be a rich subject for writers and filmmakers to mine for the next century; I’m certain it will remain so for at least one more.

I won’t recount the “canonical” five horrific murders of prostitutes attributed to this particular deviant: All the gruesome details, including a number of hideous police photos, can readily be found online, along with some theories linking subsequent murders to the Ripper and others, ranging from the cockeyed to the credible, suggesting any number of contemporary and new suspects as the killer. There have also been a couple of pretty fascinating programs about the case on the Discovery Channel, one of which submits that Jack booked passage to the United States and resumed his killing spree in New York City. Another, Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed, which I find even more compelling, is based on the book Jack the Ripper: Quest for a Killer (Barnsley, U.K.: Wharncliffe Publishing, 2009) by British historian and former high school teacher M. J. (“Mei”) Trow, who has written a slew of mystery novels as well as historical studies of Spartacus, the 11th-century Spanish nobleman Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (“El Cid”) and Vlad III (a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler, the 15th-century Wallachian prince on whom the character Dracula was based).

In a nutshell, Trow has gone through the published records of the Ripper murders and identified an overlooked individual, Robert Mann, as a very likely possibility for Jack. A workhouse inmate employed as a mortuary attendant, Mann was called to testify at the first two inquests (in the slayings of Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman) but was disoriented and incoherent—which not only discounted him as a credible witness but also failed to raise a red flag, so to speak, that Mann might have had something to do with the crimes. What’s more, using the modern investigative procedure of geographic profiling pioneered by Canadian police investigator Kim Rossmo—whose amazing mathematical system can show on a map where a serial killer likely lives and/or works, based on the locations of the crime scenes, with a success rate as high as 85 percent—Trow demonstrates that (1) both Mann’s living quarters and the mortuary where he worked fell well within the high-probability area for the Ripper’s home turf, and (2) based on where the victims were discovered, Mann would have been well aware that at least two of the bodies would be brought to the very same mortuary where he was employed, giving him more opportunity to gloat over his handiwork. (In his 1999 book Geographical Profiling, Rossmo has written that 22 percent of serial killers return to their victims’ dump sites.)

“There has been so much research into this case especially over the last 50 years that I doubt whether anything has yet to surface. Having said that, to give you one example, the autopsy notes on Mary Kelly compiled by Dr. Thomas Bond had gone missing and were posted anonymously to Scotland Yard in 1987.”—M. J. Trow

Why do I blog on a Jack the Ripper investigation? Because I believe that collecting—of objects or information—should be an intellectual adventure, a quest to discover something new and interesting or even momentous. We are always hearing of “cold” cases that are not just revisited but solved, and the perpetrators brought to justice decades after committing their crimes; of recent archaeological discoveries that force us to revise conventional views of people and events in the distant past; of newly found books and letters and photographs long buried in library stacks and archives that add something surprising to subjects we thought we knew all about. I think M. J. Trow’s research, based as it is on new methodology, can broaden any collector’s or armchair historian’s or even criminal investigator’s vistas.

Here’s my recent interview with the author:

Q: Is there still a lot of interest in Jack the Ripper among Britons and Londoners in particular?

M. J. Trow: The Ripper crimes form the basis of an ongoing industry, especially in London itself, where there are nightly tours of the murder sites and other related areas. Although Ripperology now has an international dimension—Jack is famous throughout the world—it is inevitable that the real focus of interest should be in the place where the crimes were carried out. Bookshops throughout Britain that contain true, crime sections invariably have books on Jack, and the Whitechapel Society (www.WhitechapelSociety.com) with its regular periodical sends out to a wide fan base.

Q: Is this still considered an open case by the police? Are there officers assigned to the case to assist researchers, or do some do it purely out of personal interest?

MJT: There is a general belief that no unsolved case is ever closed, but that is simply not true. The Ripper case was officially closed in 1892, although documentation relating to it has survived to the present day. There is therefore no dedicated team of serving police officers working on the case, although several retired policemen have gone into print with various suspects.

Q: The online edition of the Daily Mail (Oct. 2009) indicates you have been actively focusing on Robert Mann as a suspect for the past two years. When and how did you have an “Aha!” moment when Mann appeared to you as a viable perpetrator of the crime? Did anyone at all suspect him at the time?

MJT: The “Aha!” moment probably came when I realized that Mann had been abandoned in the workhouse as a child by his mother, who would have been in her forties at the time. This corresponds not only to the ages of all his victims (except Mary Kelly) but is also consonant with behavioral psychologists’ ideas of serial killer motive. The fact that Robert Mann was dismissed as being liable to fits and therefore unreliable as a witness at the inquest into Annie Chapman means that he was never seriously considered as a suspect. Four of his seven victims were brought to his mortuary, and the idea of a disturbed mortuary attendant first surfaced in the profiling carried in 1988 by John Douglas of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico.

Q: In Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed on the Discovery Channel, it was pointed out that Mann was called to testify in the Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman inquests. Yet, was he not merely a workhouse inmate assisting in a mortuary and, one would assume, assisting a doctor performing autopsies? Why would he have been called as a witness? Would his responsibilities in a mortuary gone beyond moving corpses around and cleaning up? Could he have gotten actual training in opening up bodies?

MJT: I think it unlikely that Mann would have received any formal training but he would have been on hand to observe autopsies at close hand. We know from other sources that he was trusted to go out of the workhouse to collect corpses, so he is not merely “moving bodies around” in the confines of his own mortuary. Anyone connected with the deceased, from relatives and friends to any eyewitnesses, the police and auxiliary staff (e.g., Mann), would be called to an inquest as a matter of routine.

Q: At the time of the murders, Whitechapel was an impoverished area where many immigrants lived, and in fact there were some immigrants on the list of suspects. Mann was supposedly born in Mile End New Town around 1835, yet Mann is a German name, and he was called Mansel in one account. Is it possible that he was in fact an immigrant? Would that be relevant to the investigation?

MJT: I do not believe that Mann was an immigrant but the fact that his father was a weaver may imply that the family were among the religiously persecuted Huguenots who emigrated to England for safety in the 17th century. Although largely French, some of these Huguenots would have lived along the Rhineland border with Germany. The name Mansel and Marne, which is also ascribed to him, are simply careless work by British journalists.

Q: Your belief in the authenticity of the “From Hell” Ripper letter (sent to Scotland Yard with part of a victim’s kidney) was pretty compelling: The handwriting, spelling and other characteristics seemed uncontrived. Are there no confirmed writing samples belonging to Robert Mann that might be compared to the letter to prove Mann had written it? (Mann would have been about 54 at the time of the murders.)

MJT: Nothing has come to light yet. My belief is that he probably received a rudimentary education at what in England were called National Schools (for ages five to 10) and thereafter as a child in the workhouse might have received continuing educational basics after that. It is unlikely he would be required to write anything, even in the context of his job as mortuary attendant. Since he never married, we do not even have a signature on marriage records.

Q: Is there any Ripper material that, in your opinion, has not been adequately examined and that may conceivably yield more leads?

MJT: There has been so much research into this case especially over the last 50 years that I doubt whether anything has yet to surface. Having said that, to give you one example, the autopsy notes on Mary Kelly compiled by Dr. Thomas Bond had gone missing and were posted anonymously to Scotland Yard in 1987. A number of items from the original police investigation have gone missing and have not been returned. It was not the custom of any British police force to keep artifacts from cases after they were closed. The exhibits in Scotland Yard’s Black Museum are there almost by accident.

Q: Are there other avenues that you are pursuing that may help confirm or discount Robert Mann as a suspect?

MJT: It would be great to learn more about Mann’s childhood and how other people (e.g., workhouse inmates) regarded him. Unfortunately, people of this class were usually illiterate and so left nothing in the way of letters, diaries, etc.

Q: You have said that we will probably never know conclusively who Jack the Ripper really was. Have you ever brainstormed with other Ripper investigators, either privately or in a panel discussion, on your respective preferred suspects? Are Ripper investigators very competitive about their findings, or do you ever collaborate?

MJT: I would love to take part in a television debate of this kind. However, I suspect we would all end up shouting at each other and achieving no consensus!

Q: Certainly, modern forensic technology (like plotting on a map the likely area where a killer lives or works, based on the murder locations) has helped your investigation. Are there other aspects of the “Internet Age” that have been of special value to you in your research?

MJT: Many records, such as census information and workhouse details, are now available online. Although all these exist in various libraries and institutions around the country, to be able to work on them at the press of a button is obviously a huge advantage. I must mention the excellent Casebook: Jack the Ripper site (www.Casebook.org), which contains a mass of material collated by Ripperologists and forms a basis for ongoing research.

Q: Do you ever receive viable ideas or leads from amateur investigators? Are there many collectors of Ripper lore, and what do their collections comprise? Have you encountered many people with a strictly sordid fixation on the case?

MJT: There is a body of Ripper-related material—the first full book on the murders was written in 1908—and there are people who collect anything to do with the case. I myself have 20-plus books written from a number of different angles. Undoubtedly, there are people obsessed with the murders purely because of their grisly nature. The same people probably collect details from the lives of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Henry Lee Lucas, etc.

Q: There have been some very graphic crime photos of Ripper victims in books and even on TV: The Mary Kelly murder scene is a case in point. Yet, “Jack the Ripper: Killer Revealed” showed only the faces of some of the dead victims. Was this intended to de-sensationalize the subject and focus more on the investigatory aspects of the story?

MJT: Yes, this decision was taken by the program’s director because we wanted to focus on the new suspect and the mechanics of finding him. Having said that, I think the dramatic reconstructions were very vivid and caught something of the horror of the original.

Q: Many people nowadays—adults as well as younger people—express no interest in history; many have negative memories of history class from their schooldays. Are you still a high school history teacher, and does your writing inspire your students to pursue historical subjects?

MJT: I gave up teaching last year to pursue writing, TV appearances, etc., and I like to think that a lot of students remember my lessons with interest and affection. It is all too common an experience that a fascinating subject is killed stone dead by a boring teacher; I hope I was never one of those. Yesterday, I received a phone call from a student of mine of over 30 years ago asking me to contribute to a forthcoming TV history program. This has nothing to do with Jack, but he told me that the first lesson he had with me, which was an introduction to the problems of historical research, was about the Ripper.

Study your auction catalog!

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I love auction catalogs: Even if I can’t afford to bid on what I really want—and how many collectors can?—the catalogs make for fun reading.

Catalogs are also a great resource for collectors. Over time, they can give an idea of what’s out there on the market and—if you bother to check the hammer prices afterwards, which I strongly advise—what certain items may fetch. The operative word is “may,” of course; more on that in a moment.

The catalog for the 2023 Western Art and Wine Auction at the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, WY. The cover art by Tucker Smith (TuckerSmithArt.com), Morning on Ditch Creek, is a signed artist’s proof giclée print on canvas made from one of Smith’s spectacular oil paintings. “All art is donated specifically for the auction, mostly directly by the artists, to be auctioned to benefit the museum collection, and all proceeds go to the museum,” according to Clint Gilchrist, the museum’s executive director. “The cover art is always one of the pieces donated for the auction.” See all the catalogs at https://museumofthemountainman.com/artauction/. The next auction will be on July 11; the catalog will be online on June 1. Catalog cover image used by permission of the Museum of the Mountain Man.

If you collect within a narrow field, you may even see an item come up for auction more than once over a period of a few years. If it’s a rare or one-of-a-kind piece, it can help you to know what it sold for the last time it went on the block.

Lot descriptions are also informative, both for what they contain and what they don’t. A really good auction house with knowledgeable experts—Heritage Auctions in Dallas, say—will publish beautiful catalogs with insightful descriptions that contain valuable details about an item’s uniqueness, provenance, condition, etc. But don’t let that stop you from doing your own research: If you collect Theodore Roosevelt memorabilia, for example, and a letter from Teddy to a Mr. Joe Blow comes up for auction, do your homework and try to find out who Joe Blow actually was, if the auctioneer hasn’t done so already. Special associations often go unnoticed and only add to an item’s worth.

Hard-copy catalogs are relatively inexpensive collectibles in their own right—and well-illustrated ones are as good as any coffee-table book . . .

Here’s an example: Some years ago, a short 1909 Christmas greeting written by legendary 19th-century boxer/Civil War veteran Mike Donovan to a Captain Jack Crawford came up for auction. Donovan’s handwriting wasn’t so legible, and the lot description querulously noted that Donovan referred to Crawford as “the Poet Scant.” “Scant”? I was confused too.

So I Googled “Captain Jack Crawford, Poet Scant.” It turned out he was Captain Jack Crawford, known as the “Poet Scout,” who was a lot more famous than Donovan (at least, outside of pugilistic circles). Both men had been born in Ireland and served in the Union Army, so they obviously had some common bonds. Crawford became a cavalry scout in the Indian Wars and was among the first to arrive at the site of the Little Bighorn fight after Custer’s 7th Cavalry were killed. Crawford was also famous as a frontier poet, hence the moniker: He used to pen his verse at campfires—while his compatriots were drinking, eating beans and farting, one imagines—published several books (pretty avidly collected today) and was active on the public reading circuit. And he was a pal of Buffalo Bill Cody, with whom he later worked the Wild West show circuit.

All of this evaded the writer of the lot description, but it greatly enhanced the note’s value—both to your humble correspondent and the guy who outbid me!

Hard-copy catalogs are also relatively inexpensive collectibles in their own right—and well-illustrated ones are as good as any coffee-table book—in addition to being great reference material and useful as “provenance” if you acquire something that has been auctioned off in the past. Here’s a great 2020 movie poster auction catalog from Heritage Auctions in Dallas. Image courtesy of Heritage Auctions (HA.com).

Anyway . . . bear in mind that while hammer prices may provide an indicator of an item’s fair-market value, nothing’s written in stone. Just as on eBay when two goons get in a bidding war and drive an item’s price ski-high up five days before the end of the auction, people in an online or live auction can get crazy and bid far beyond what they reasonably should. (Figure in the buyer’s premium as well.) So take hammer prices with a few grains of salt.    

Conversely, you may get lucky—as I have more than once—and find a great item BURIED in an auction catalog among unrelated items: for example, an uncommon film star autograph hidden among sports memorabilia. Not only will other collectors of that film star miss the autograph (unless they collect sports memorabilia too) but the sports people will probably ignore the film star as well. Then you have the opportunity to nab a great item far below what it would ordinarily sell for.

In a nutshell: Look hard for those hidden gems among the other lots!

A final word . . . I originally wrote a version of this story about 15 years ago. Catalogs, for the obvious reasons of lower cost, speed, and convenience, are nowadays often sent out only as pdfs or links to web pages. Occasionally you can find them online on Google Books. If you don’t want to download and keep the pdfs on file, you may be able to view past sales on an auctioneer’s website.

On collecting Japanese woodblock prints: An interview with Peter Gilder

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There’s a learning curve for any novice collector, and it can be expensive—not just because one can overpay for a collectible before knowing enough about rarity or scarcity, or even buy a counterfeit item, but because new collectors tend to buy a lot of stuff on impulse before deciding to specialize.

Kuniteru, “The Steamship Carrying the Chief Priest of Higashi Honganji Temple in Kyoto Is Welcomed to the Port of Hakodate in the Northern Island of Hokkaido,” 1870, oban triptych (29″ X 141/2“). (The black boat at the right edge of the center sheet has the American Consul on board. The American consul. Mr. Rice, came to Hakodate in 1857.) Courtesy of Peter Gilder, Arts and Designs of Japan.

Having collected 19th-century and early 20th-century Japanese woodblock prints for a number of years and seen the prices climb steadily on dealers’ websites, my advice from the get-go: Read up on Japanese prints online, view the wide range of themes and the works of individual artists, and try to collect prudently. If you plan to collect prints seriously—that is, not just pick up a samurai image as a gift for a martial artist friend, or a nostalgic landscape of a place you may have visited on a trip to Japan—I believe it’s better to collect narrowly and then expand your range than to buy widely at first and then focus. At the very least, you’ll potentially save yourself a lot of money.

“It’s best to store prints in acid free folders in acid free boxes. No exposure to light.”—Peter Gilder

I also strongly believe you should learn something about preserving the prints, information on which I’ve found to be pretty elusive on the internet. For example, I think it’s a bad idea to buy matted and framed prints, as you won’t know what the borders look like. Furthermore, you need to be careful about framing and displaying prints, as Japanese printmakers used “fugitive” ink that can fade over time when exposed to light, even if framed under UV-light-resistant museum-quality glass. (I read somewhere that museums that display framed Japanese prints do so for only two or three months at a time, under low- or non-UV-light conditions, then rotate them out.) Granted, it may take years for the ink of a framed print to fade noticeably in ambient (indirect) light, but do you really want that when your print’s colors have already remained vibrant for 125 years or more?

Another word of advice: Try to have an idea of what your print should look like. That won’t be possible for all prints, as there are many thousands of images, but you may find that the colors of the print you are considering are not as nice as another example you have found online—or you may discover, as I have, that that the oban-size (roughly 10″ x 15″) print that you bought is actually only one panel of a two- or three-part print, which the seller failed to mention.

And needless to say, just as the real estate mantra is “Location, location, location!” in collecting it’s “Condition, condition, condition!”

Kuniyoshi, “Katsuenra Genshoshichi Protecting Himself from the Government Arrows with a Tiger [Leopard] Pelt,” from the series “108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden, c. 1827–30,” published by Kagaya Kichibei, oban-size (101/8” x 145/8“). Courtesy of Peter Gilder, Arts and Designs of Japan.

When I have the itch to buy a new print, I have my main go-to people, and at the top of my list is Peter Gilder of Arts and Designs of Japan, a San Francisco–based specialist in prints from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Not only are Peter’s offerings invariably in excellent condition—something a collector really has to watch for—but they are very reasonably priced, and he sends out an email with new offering on the first day of every month, which is a huge convenience.

A criminal lawyer for two years, Peter quit to live in Japan for several years, becoming an amateur master second-degree go player. On returning to California, he started a Japanese print business, which he’s been running for 47 years. He is an associate (i.e., overseas) member of the Ukiyo-e Dealers Association of Japan.

I asked Peter a number of questions intended to provide new and prospective collectors of Japanese woodblock prints with some basic information on these beautiful works of art and hopefully save them some aggravation and money in the process.

Q: How widely collected are Japanese prints, and have they become more popular in recent years? 

Peter Gilder: Japanese prints are collected wherever there are human beings. There are always new collectors appearing and old ones disappearing. I would say they have become less popular recently partly because of the rise in interest in other Asian art particularly Chinese, and with the much greater monetary abilities of Chinese collectors. Sotheby’s New York ended their Japanese department in the last 10 years, after more than 100 years of auctioning Japanese prints.

Q: People often think “ukiyo–e” is synonymous with “Japanese woodblock prints,” but that’s incorrect. Can you explain? 

PG: “Ukiyoe” simply means pictures of the floating world, a kind of Buddhist concept of the transitoriness of life. It was taken to mean images of the pleasures of life, whether courtesans of the pleasure quarters, a beautiful landscape, etc. So “ukiyoe” would embrace woodblock prints, paintings, lacquer, ceramics, and other art forms.

Q: Is it true that 19th-century Japanese didn’t consider block prints to have much artistic merit? 

PG: Japanese prints were essentially the art form for the emerging middle class: merchants, who had money but little status in the societal hierarchy. That’s why such a large part of the art is devoted to the theater and the pleasure quarters. Also, landscapes and warriors, myths, ghosts, etc. Among this group, Japanese prints were important. No doubt, they thought that the art form was less important than the official schools of painting that the nobles might favor.

Q: When did Japanese prints become popular in the West? 

PG: Japanese prints have been filtering west since the late 1700s through Deshima, in Nagasaki Harbor, a Dutch outpost at that time. After Japan reopened, in the 1860s, the prints became popular through visitors from other Western countries. I once had an album of prints that were collected by one of the sailors on Commodore Perry’s ship [in the early 1850s]. The great influx, though, started in the late 1800s and has continued since.

Hiroshige, ”Onagigawa Gohonmatsu [Five Pines, Onagi Canal],” from the series ”100 Famous Views of Edo,” July 1856, published by Uoei, oban-size (93/4” x 141/4“). Courtesy of Peter Gilder, Arts and Designs of Japan.

Q: Where were prints traditionally made, and how many people were involved in the process? 

PG: Woodblock prints were produced throughout Japan, but the great majority were done in Edo (the old name for Tokyo). Osaka was number two, probably Kyoto number three. Nobody knows exactly how many people were involved in the production of any particular design. But of course there was the artist (or artists, if more than one collaborated) who produced the finished sketch. Then the carvers who incised the design into wood blocks. More experienced carvers did the faces and hands; less experienced carvers did the rest. After that, there were the printers who mixed up the dyes and applied them to the blocks. Finally, there was the publisher who hired and paid them all and presumably supervised the whole process, then sold the prints in his shop.

Q: What distinguishes Osaka prints from others? 

PG: There was a certain amount of cross fertilization between Osaka and Edo prints. A number of artists, like Toyokuni I, went back and forth and worked in both places. The prints were fairly similar until the late 1840s when Osaka prints changed to a mostly “chuban” (half-size) format and were lavishly printed. Maybe they weren’t as affected in Osaka by the sumptuary laws that forbade such things. They were also almost exclusively theatrical in Osaka.

Q: Is it true that prints were often used to illustrate sensational crimes and events—like 19th-century tabloid journalism? Is there a tangible connection between traditional block prints and modern manga? 

PG: Prints illustrating sensational events were common in the Meiji period and must have been popular. No doubt, there is a strong connection to manga. I’m sure many manga artists are very familiar with the older prints.

Q: What are the most popular themes and artists among, say, American collectors?

PG: I don’t think there are really any significant differences between collectors geographically anymore.

Q: What determines the prices of prints? What’s your advice on the acceptable “collectible condition” or prints? 

PG: The market is of course the final determinant of print value. But I think each dealer should have a certain spectrum of values in mind when they assess particular print.

There are three areas to look at when determining value:

  1. Identification. Where does this particular print reside in the entire field? For example, if it is something like Hokusai’s “Great Wave,” we know immediately where to place it. For other less well-known items, one has to make a determination, based on artist and subjective estimate of its beauty.
  2. Impression. How early in the printing process is it? How elaborate are the printing techniques and how special the inks and paper?
  3. Condition. That means everything that has happened to this particular piece of paper since that day it was printed: wormage, stains, trimming, foxing, etc.

Yoshitoshi, “Osen and Otoku on the Veranda of the Isegan Restaurant at Shibaguchi,” from the series “Kaito Kaiseki Beppin Kurabe [Comparison of Specialties at Restaurants in the Imperial Capital,” April 2, 1878, published by Kobayashi Testujiro, oban-size (91/8” x 137/8“). Courtesy of Peter Gilder, Arts and Designs of Japan.

Q: How do you advise storing or displaying Japanese prints? Is it all right to frame them? (My understanding is that real collectors don’t frame their prints, even under Tru Vue Museum Glass—not just because of the “fugitive” aspect of the ink in traditional block printing, even under low-light conditions, but because of the tactile experience of actually handling the prints. Is this true?) 

PG: It’s best to store prints in acid free folders in acid free boxes.  No exposure to light. Handling prints is a tricky area as touching the paper with fingers is likely to transfer skin oils to the paper. Best to minimize touching and exposure to light.

Peter Gilder’s website is www.artsanddesignsjapan.com. Sign up for his monthly list, which he usually sends out on the first.

Collectibles for capitalists

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Vintage stock certificates make great graduation, holiday gifts

All images courtesy of Scripophily.com

What do you get for the guy/gal/friend/loved one/coworker who has everything? A conversation piece, of course.

There are a lot of dealers’ websites that I visit regularly, just to see the new stuff on offer. One that I never tire of perusing is Scripophily.com, the premier seller of vintage and even recent stock certificates and bond—“business paper” that has become nearly obsolete in this age of online trading. I love the steel engravings and the fountain pen autographs on many of the older documents; I love the typography; I love the fact that they absolutely reek of history: I can almost smell the cigar smoke of Gilded Age boardrooms, almost hear the leather armchairs creak under the weight of freewheeling tycoons and steely-eyed investors, earnest entrepreneurs and cheapjack con men . . .

A 1907 certificate for 100 shares in the Ohio-Tonopah Mining Company, incorporated in Arizona ($69.95). The buffalo image, by the way, was ripped off from the 1901 $10 bill; the original artwork was by Charles R. Knight, the artist who painted the famous dinosaur scenes for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

But that’s just me: lots of people buy a stock certificate for genealogical reasons—their ancestors may have owned or worked for the company—as an expression of a brand preference, or because it connects with another collect passion: gun collectors, for example, would probably love old shares in firearm companies to hang in their man caves; for movie buffs, there are certificates for motion picture studios and film labs old and new; and model railroaders will get a blast from shares in the Lionel Corporation, not to mention any of a slew of historic lines. Some folks even see offbeat humor in hanging or giving a certificate for a notorious business or one touched by scandal: like Worldcom or even Martha Stewart Living.

Scripophily.com’s president, former Northwest resident Bob Kerstein, a CPA since 1978, has been chief financial officer of companies like McCaw Cellular Corporation (now AT&T Wireless), Falcon Cable TV and American Mobile Satellite Corporation, director of financial reporting at Warner Brothers, and chief information officer at Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, owners of the Vancouver Canucks and the Vancouver Grizzlies (before the latter went to Memphis), so he knows his onions about big business. In fact, Kerstein doesn’t just sell old stock and bond certificates but autographs, antique documents, early currency, and other interesting items; he also provides stock research services, so if you’re up in the attic and come across a bunch of shares in the bottom of Granny’s old trunk, Bob can tell you if they’re still redeemable.

A single share of common stock in Apple Computer from 1987 with an image of an Apple II and the printed signature of John Scully as president ($1,695).

Here’s a quick selection in a pretty wide price range that I pulled from the Scripophily.com website:

For the Civil War collector: a $1,000 bond from 1865 for the payment of bounties to volunteers from New York State ($149.95); an 1865 check signed by Medal of Honor winner John Hartranft ($175); an 1861 Confederate bond for $100 issued in Montgomery, Alabama, before the capital of the Confederacy was moved to Richmond, Virginia ($129.95).

For the transportation collector: an unissued 1950s certificate for the Cessna Aircraft Company ($495); a 50-by-40-inch UK/Canadian enlistment poster from 1915 entreating men to “REMEMBER THE LUSITANIA!” after the ship was sunk by a U-boat ($695); one hundred shares in the Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad Company, issued to robber baron E. H. Harriman and signed by him.

For the gearhead: a 1924 certificate for ten shares in theDuesenberg Automobile & Motors Co.($395); various Packard Motor Car Company certificates dating from the 1920s to the 1950s ($24.95 to $395); twenty shares in the Yellow Cab Company of Baltimore from 1915 ($139.95).

For the Northwest collector: a 1907 $500 gold bond certificate for the Mount Hood Railroad Company, signed by trustee Matthew S. Browning of the Browning Arms Company and with a great steam locomotive/horse-drawn wagon vignette ($139.95); an 1890 certificate for 10 shares in the Grays Harbor Company (to finance the building of roads and the laying of rails, including the cost of bridges over the Wishkah and Hoquiam rivers), hand signed by the company’s president and secretary, and with a great vignette of a steamship ($395); a 1910 certificate for 20 shares in the Seattle–Tacoma Short Line with a great Mount Rainier vignette and also signed by the company’s president and secretary ($69.95).

For kids of all ages: a single share in DreamWorks Animation SKG from 2009 with Shrek’s face on it($79.95); a rare specimen gold bond certificate for $500 from the Hershey Chocolate Corporation dated 1920 ($395); an unissued circa-1960 specimen certificate for Wurlitzer Company, maker of the famous jukeboxes ($99.95); a bank check issued by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East show, dated 1912 and signed by Gordon W. Lillie (“Pawnee Bill”) himself ($395).

An 1867 $1,000 gold bond for the Brooklyn Steamship & Emigration Co. ($395). An 1868 article in the New York Times headlined “Another Financial Bubble” indicates that the 871,000 acres of prime timber and cotton-growing land that the BS & E supposedly owned in Georgia, Tennessee, and Missouri for the resettlement of immigrants from Europe had, oddly enough, never been deeded to the company, which had already issued $1 million in bonds of dubious value. This is one of them.

Scripophily.com offers custom framing, too, for the perfect presentation. Browse the inventory at www.Scripophily.com.

Starting your first collection? Here are a few tips . . .

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A couple of months ago, I received an interesting letter, apparently mass-mailed to collectibles dealers, from a gentleman whose father is a paralyzed U.S. Army veteran suffering from PTSD. The father had collected various things in his youth—“cards, stamps, games, etc.”—all of which had been destroyed by flooding, and the son hoped to put a new collection together for his dad. The son concluded the letter asking for “information and/or samples.”

This piqued my interest for two reasons. One, I know the rewards of collecting—as most readers of this blog also do—and can well imagine it providing therapeutic value for someone coping with anxiety (with the caveat that competitive collecting, such as bidding at auction, can be another source of stress).

The second thing that interested me was that the son seemed not have ever collected anything himself: Why else would he have mailed a bunch of collectibles dealers to ask for information? It seemed like a noble but misguided effort to help his father by “casting too wide a net,” so to speak.

Naturally, I was eager to offer encouragement and advice. Here’s my reply:

Dear Mr. ———

Please convey my gratitude to your father for his service and tremendous sacrifices for our country.

Your letter did not sound as if you have ever collected anything yourself, so I want to urge you: First off, please do not build a collection for your father. Instead, ask him what he wants to collect and then offer him any help he needs to create his own collection.

Collecting is a very personal pursuit, and people’s interests change: I collected coins when I was a kid—often by going through my father’s pocket change—and I learned a lot about coins back then, when you could still sometimes find buffalo nickels and Mercury dimes. My father was born in 1906: HIS father’s pocket change might have had coins from the Civil War era! Hard to imagine.

The point is, I don’t collect coins now—or stamps or baseball cards, which I also collected—as my interests have changed. So whatever your dad collected when he was a kid may not have the same meaning to him now.

Second, BUILDING a collection is at least half the fun of HAVING the collection. If you just buy a collection and give it to your father, it won’t be as much fun as building it himself. So let your father do the collecting!

So you really need to talk with your dad and see what really interests him!

Third, unless you have a lot of money, don’t collect what everyone else is trying to collect. When I used to collect rare books when I was in my 20s, and didn’t have much money, someone told me: Don’t plan to collect signed Ernest Hemingway first editions, because you will never have much of a collection. In fact, depending on what your dad decides to collect, you may not need to spend much money at all! I used to collect my favorite ballplayers’ autographs just by writing them letters and asking for their autographs. So it cost the price of a postage stamp, some paper and some envelopes!

Fourth, and this is a big one: Ask other people who collect the same type of thing how to go about it and who to buy from. Don’t buy ANYTHING until you research it, as there are a lot of people who will overcharge you or sell you fake stuff, especially on eBay.

Anyway, I hope this helps. Once your dad decides what he wants to collect, let me know and maybe I can help with more specific information.

So far, no response, but I wonder if readers have anything else to add . . . ?