New Acquisitions, Part Deux - Naughty or Nice?

I have to admit it. Sometimes, as a collector, we like things we can't explain to others. It's the whole Red Wing conundrum. Art pottery and dinnerware collectors look at the crock people like they're escapees from Bedlam; crock people look at the art pottery and dinnerware collectors like they just got off a TIE fighter from Aldeberan. Here are my favorite questionable acquisitions of 2008.

King of Tarts

 

Red Wing cookie jars are a new thing for me. I am not particularly attracted to their most popular cookie jars -- Charles Murphy's trio of Katrina the Dutch Girl, Friar Tuck, and Chef Pierre. I like instead the rarer ones, like Murphy's "Jack Frost" cookie jars, Belle Kogan's fruit-shaped jars (who can resist pulling a cookie out of a pineapple?), and this: the King of Tarts. Probably the only rarer cookie jar is the Drum or "Drummer Boy" cookie jar (which I also covet).

The King's black crown serves as the lid. (If you can't tell from the picture, it's shaped like a pie.) The hand-painted details here on the Fleck Nile Blue glaze include his goatee (which is not always painted in). There are versions of this jar that are brightly polychromed, and they are even more beautiful/scary than this one. Paul worries that the King of Tarts is sort of like that Kachina doll in Karen Black's Trilogy of Terror, that he probably comes to life at night and clubs things to death with his little wand or beans them on the noggin with his sack of cookies. I suspect that might be true. Angus gets up frequently at night ever since I got the King. But I like him anyway. I purchased him off of eBay from a nice older couple in Wisconsin who were getting rid of their cookie jar collection. We met in the parking lot of a KFC in Inver Grove Heights to complete the transaction, adding to the weirdness of the King's aura.

Birch Bark

 

Followers of my blog know that I got the canoe at the Red Wing auction in July, and I totally overpaid for it. I had debilitating buyer's remorse, because, well, good lord, LOOK AT IT. To compensate for the shame, I decided to try and acquire all six items in the Birch Bark line, to make it look more intentional. I got a great deal on the Birch Bark vase from a seller on eBay. I actually really love the vase, but it didn't help me get over the canoe. I'm still embarrassed. The fact that blind old Angus keeps walking into it on its low shelf only adds salt to the wound. But you have to admit: the glazing effect looks remarkably like birch bark. Oh, shut up and humor me, dammit.

Prismatique

 

2008 will be remembered as the year I succumbed to Prismatique. For more than a decade, I've had this attraction/repulsion response to the line. Belle Kogan designed these shapes in the 1960s, and they were among Red Wing's best sellers. The glazes and the geometry of their forms are certainly interesting (and I don't mean that in a Minnesota, passive-aggressive way). But some of the shapes and some of the glazes make me a little queasy, particularly in combination. Nevertheless, something happened this year. The repulsion factor faded; I saw only the swank in these designs. Now my quest is to find examples of each form, inexpensively, in perfect condition. (They are very hard to find without chips or bizarre manufacturing flaws -- the edges must have been tricky to remove from the molds.) Paul has also taken a shine to this line. It makes our antiquing trips just a little bit competetive.

Comments

[Scott]

I can totally understand your fascination for Prismatique, Antay. I think it might be one of my favorite *gasp* Red Wing lines. I think the shapes are truly inspired, and darn if they don't look fantastic as a group. I can't say as much for the Birch bark pieces, though, sorry to say. I'll just leave it at that. Happy new year!