We’ve not had a collection of the weird and wonderful from our local auction house recently. Their last sale was on the whole quite dull, although with a small number of oddities. But their upcoming sale provides a good selection of the eccentric.
As always it is not just the strange things which people sell (and presumably buy) but also the wonderful collections of things which auctioneers seem to think go together to make a lot — and the way they describe them. And as with so many things the sting is often in the tail.
Anyway here is a selection from the last sale, and the upcoming one.
(Oh, and if you wonder about the spelling, punctuation and grammar, this is exactly as copied from the online catalogue!)
A British soldier’s helmet, c.1976, and the 1939-45 and Italy Stars, also the Defence Medal and 39-45 Medal
A late Victorian silver piecrust waiter, London 1899
A humorous corkscrew comprising a pair of Victorian stockinged legs, ‘Compliments B&L Salloon’, a naked lady bottle opener, and an embossed brass vesta case commemorating the Louisiana Purchase, 1904
Nine old oil cans to include Shell
Eleven Limoges “Bouquet Medicis plates decorated with flowers, a large Russian figure of a Giraffe, a Spanish figurine of a gent, spelter figurine of a horse, a small quantity of brassware to include vases, kettles, candlesticks, trivets etc., a Doulton Bunnykins plate, a 1970’s Donald Duck toy with jointed limbs and a Seiko Quartz Westminster Wittingham drop dial wall clock
A table lamp styled as a horses head with shade
A 1930’s glass dressing table set on tray, two glass jelly moulds, fruit bowls, trays etc., ruby glass vase, a quantity of decorative jugs to include Brixham pottery, floral decorated etc., a Rhapsody Ellgreave vase, a T&G Booth pot, a brass Ferndale Coal miners lamp, a horn handled corkscrew, small quantity of flatware and a wooden card case etc.
A Carltonware Rouge Royale sauce boat on stand, a large Carltonware vase and cover and another smaller decorated with oriental scenes, two wooden biblical figurines, plus a further African carved figurine etc.
A Tobias and the Angel tapestry cat door stop and further Tobias and the Angel Christmas heart cloth decorations, along with cloth fishes, slippers etc., a pretty dog embroidered blanket, a collection of brooches to include butterflies, dragonflies, floral etc., a Jay Strongwater pewter poodle, a Ticher pewter poodle, a ceramic toadstool plus another in fabric, a green brass candlestick with green shade embellished with brooches and two further decorative lamp shades, a wicker basket and a sewing box etc.
An old guitar, a quantity of wicker dolls chairs and baskets, a large oriental wall fan, metal fire surround, a vintage wooden bird cage and a metal vintage dolls crib and a pine trunk
An antique brass fireman’s helmet
A 1918 Beck mark IX trench periscope
An old iron single furrow plough.
A large oil of fishermen harvesting shellfish with horse and cart …
Not sure that a net wouldn’t be an easier way to catch shellfish!
A finely carved ivory group of 7 monkeys
An old penguin teething ring …
You probably knew, but I didn’t, that penguins needed teething rings.
A charming late Victorian small liqueur decanter in the form of a duck, in glass with silver head … Birmingham 1895
Three antique wooden planes and one antique spokeshave plus a 9 piece collection of glass animals including birds and foxes.
A collection of approximately 23 decorative masks to include African wooden carved, wooden oriental, oriental brass, Chinese, etc …
Two stuffed pheasants, one male one female.
A figural eight piece jazz band set plus drums and piano.
A box of 19th century hand tools including drills, saws, planes, an originally boxed Rentokil woodworm treater plus a 19th century folding rule, a Poole pottery part tea service, quantity of flatware, a leather cased Ensign Ranger ii camera, a Mauchlin ware letter opener, small quantity of mother of pearl handled cutlery, a cased set of silver plated teaspoons
An old AA badge and a CBM similar, Victorian photograph album, two Parker pen desk inkstands, one boxed, two Indian cloth dolls, an old toasting fork, a brass engraved box, a leather cuff box containing six silver half crowns, a boxed set of Dorwin dart flights and a Sparklets Corkmaster.
A vintage elephant foot waste paper basket
A 19th century ten-step wrought iron spiral staircase, made by Haywood Brothers Union Street London
A very large and impressive carved stone Celtic cross on base
A 19th century Olympia typewriter with skeleton keys
“Skeleton keys”? I think they might mean “shift keys”
An old canvass covered cabin trunk containing two saws, an old petrol can and two rugs, bearing labels Singapore etc.
Five vintage fruit boxes including one by C.Stuchbury Northwood, others carrying South African grapes and New Zealand Apples
A stereo integrated turntable ampli tuner, a set Luca Russo sunglasses, a portable typewriter, three Guinness advertising figures one being Jimmy Hill and a cased set of old butterflies
An old metal art nouveau desk lamp, pewter hip flask, a quantity of brass ornaments and metal wares, a large pair of metal tailors scissors, decorative metal boxes and old office items plus three vintage fire extinguishers, and a box of old polishes
A selection of unopened jars of vegetables and fruit in oil
All posts by Keith
Word: Cuntline
Cuntline
No it has nothing to do with female anatomy — at least not obviously!
It is a nautical term for the “valley” between the strands of a rope or cable.
It may also be the space between casks stowed side by side.
According to Wikipedia’s “Glossary of Nautical Terms”: Before serving a section of laid rope eg. to protect it from chafing, it may be “wormed” by laying yarns in the cuntlines, giving that section an even cylindrical shape.
Although the word is not listed in my edition of the OED, it did make an appearance on the OUP Blog back in 2012.
The suggestion is that the word was originally cantline or contline, but from the few references I’ve found there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence for this. And of course it is always possible that, to the male nautical mind, anything with a “crack” or “crease” is going to be associated with the female pudenda.
Something for the Weekend
Wally nails it again …
Thinking Thursday #1
This is the first of what I hope will be an irregular series: Thinking Thursday. My idea is to post puzzles, riddles and so on for amusement, but which will hopefully make you think a bit too. Answers will be provided on the following Sunday, so you’ll have a couple of days to mull over the questions.
OK, so lets have the first puzzle …
There’s no prize for correct answers other than the fun of taking part, but I would love it if you put your answer in the comments.
Answer on Sunday evening.
Oddity of the Week: Toothbrushes
The toothbrush was invented in London’s most notorious prison
In the 1770s William Addis was serving time in Newgate for causing a riot. Brushing his teeth the same way as everyone else — in other words using a rag to rub them with soot and salt — he decided that there had to be a better way. Inspired by the sight of a broom, he took a small animal bone left over from his dinner and drilled small holes into it. Persuading a guard to fetch him some bristles, Addis threaded them through the holes and glued them in place. On his release the invention made him a fortune. His most expensive brushes used badger hair, while the lower end of the range featured pig and boar hair. His company, now known as Wisdom Toothbrushes, survives to this day.
From Mail Obsession: A Journey Round Britain by Postcode by Mark Mason and quoted in London Historians Members’ Newsletter, 09/2015.
Book Review: History of England
Peter Ackroyd
The History of England, Volume 1: Foundation
Macmillan; 2011
This is the first in a series by Peter Ackroyd in which he charts the history of England (and he does mean England, not Britain). The already available subsequent two volumes cover the Tudors and the Civil War.
It is a thick tome — running to just shy of 450 pages of text, plus bibliography, index and colour plates — which charts the rise of England from about the year zilch up to the end of the Wars of the Roses and the accession of Henry VII. This is, I think, too much, because in that space it is almost impossible to cover the ground in any great depth — although Ackroyd struggles manfully to do so, and almost pulls it off.
Most of the book is political history: the rise and demise of kings, rebellion, war, parliament and tax; with each period (pretty much each monarch) being given its own, often long chapter. But in between there are short cameos, often just 3 or 4 pages, of social history on subjects such as the rise of the town, the family of a medieval merchant or ancient roads.
Even having read this book, I still struggle with sorting out who was who, who fought who, and why, during medieval times. For me this just does not hang together as a narrative, the sequence of kings is obscure and all the various plots and wars are just too unmemorable. So I found the social history cameos the most interesting parts of the book and wanted more of them and longer.
But that likely says more about me, than about Ackroyd’s writing, for he lays out, often in quite some detail, the machinations surrounding the rule of each of the monarchs from the late Saxons onwards. This is a discursive history which seeks to try to understand — using existing material — how each monarch got to where they were and stayed there (or didn’t); it is not a book of new material, hitherto unknown research, or amazing revelations. It is very much a synthesis of what we already know, perhaps approached from a slightly different angle, and to that extent it is an easy read.
In other ways this is not an easy read. While Ackroyd writes well, and I often found it hard to put the book down, the text is dense and it isn’t always easy to keep track of the dramatis personae. Which Earl of Warwick are we talking about? The one who has just had his head removed? Or his son? Or his father? Which is, I think, why I find this such a difficult period of English history to get a grip on.
So is this a book worth reading? Yes, I think it is if you want a good overview of how England got from the Romans to the beginning of the Tudors, and can manage to keep straight in your head who begat who; who married who; and whose head was removed and why. I was very confused about this period of English history before I started on the book. I’m a little less confused now; but it is still not crystal clear, which I hoped it would be. Which, as I said earlier, probably says more about me than about the book.
Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆
Weekly Photograph
This week’s photograph is one from our garden. This is a magnificent Acer growing in a large tub on our patio — it is doing so well it is over 6 feet and we think has rooted through the pot and through the paving of the patio! But it is absolutely gorgeous, especially at this time of year when it has this wonderful golden/red leaves. The stems are naturally red all year and in Spring contrast with the delightful fresh pale green of the new leaves. This shot was taken about a week ago and is a composite of two frames.
Autumn Acer
Greenford; October 2016
From Agincourt to WWII
This is a very lightly edited version of something I posted earlier today on Facebook, but I’m repeating it here as I feel it needs to be filed for posterity.
There’s an interesting perspective from Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian under the banner
We can respect the fallen without wrapping ourselves in the flag,
as the Agincourt anniversary shows.
And I have to agree, especially as I see the BBC have already dusted off their never-ending supply of Remembrance Day poppies. Basically I’m with Evelyn Waugh who back in the 1930s described Remembrance Day as a disgusting idea of artificial reverence and sentimentality. Moreover I object to being subjected to what is now basically moral blackmail.
But note very clearly: I’m not saying be unpatriotic, not to remember and not to be grateful for the sacrifice others have made to protect our freedoms. I’m saying that the current public display of maudlin sentiment and obsequiousness associated with Remembrance Day (and everything around it) is nauseating and unnecessary and serves only to glorify war. Martin Kettle says it much better, and in much more measured words, than I can:
… if we are capable of thinking about Agincourt without wrapping ourselves in the flag, why not other later conflicts too? In three weeks’ time we will reach the climax of the annual military remembrance rituals. A century after the great war, these rituals have become more culturally hegemonic than ever before. Yet it is surely possible to respect the importance of history and to support events that bring peoples together while still feeling that … these particular rituals have now become unnecessarily oppressive.
At some point in the future … we will begin to let go of these rituals. One day, the head of state will no longer lay a wreath at the Cenotaph in November for the long-distant dead. One day, MPs and TV newsreaders will not feel the press of obligation to wear poppies on all public appearances …
For the present, people in public roles have little scope but to conform on such matters … we will be right to stop doing these things … and there is nothing inappropriate or disrespectful about suggesting that we would benefit from that time coming sooner rather than later.
We need to be looking and going forward, working for peace; not looking mournfully backward.
Something for the Weekend
Glasses maketh man and woman …
Your Interesting Links
So soon already here’s another rag-bag of links to interesting articles you may have missed the first time round …
Quite a long time ago Scientific American posted an interactive Periodic Table, but they have been doing some updates to it. Click the element for some basic information. May be helpful for those with yoofs studying chemistry.
So ladies, what if everything your doctors told you about breast cancer was wrong? Find out some of the realities ad decide for yourself whether you should have that mammogram. [Long read]
Staying with jiggling lady-parts … here’s why scientists are saying you should throw your bra away.
Moving down the body, Belgian sexologist Goedele Liekens is on a mission to sort out prudish British sex education. And not before time, says I.
In another medical piece, scientists now think that anything up to 25% of our genes work in sync with the seasons. And that may mean our central heating and artificial lighting are screwing our physiology which expects winter to be different to summer.
Here are just two of many recent pieces which have looked at the sleeping patterns of hunter-gatherers and compared them to our modern habits. Seems they aren’t so different as we thought. First from the estimable Ed Yong in The Atlantic and the second from IFL Science.
And now for the obligatory piece about our feline companions. It seems our cats aren’t so emotionally distant as we think and they do seem to be able to sense our moods.
So at last to the history section …
It’s right what they say: you don’t know what you’ve got until you look. An historian has found the earliest known draft of part of the King James Bible hidden away in a Cambridge college.
Those of us who live in London love to moan about London Transport. But have you ever wondered what London’s public transport was like in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries?
Back in the 17th century lots of amateur natural philosophers (what we would now call scientists) were experimenting with lenses and looking at the microscopic world. Mostly they didn’t understand what they saw and had to get artists to try to draw it for them.
Returning to London, here’s a brief history of Georgian London (1714-1830).
And finally here’s something totally mad … A Steampunk-themed café filled with kinetic sculptures has opened in Romania.