Antique Blog

Rare Helen Keller Photo found

Researchers have uncovered a rare photograph of a young Helen Keller with her teacher Anne Sullivan, nearly 120 years after it was taken on Cape Cod. The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.

Experts on Keller’s life believe it could be the earliest photo of the two women together and the only one showing the blind and deaf child with a doll — the first word Sullivan spelled for Keller after they met in 1887 — according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society, which now has the photo.

“It’s really one of the best images I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Helen Selsdon, an archivist at the American Foundation for the Blind, where Keller worked for more than 40 years. “This is just a huge visual addition to the history of Helen and Annie.”

For more than a century, the photograph has belonged to the family of Thaxter Spencer, an 87-year-old man in Waltham.

Spencer’s mother, Hope Thaxter Parks, often stayed at the Elijah Cobb House on Cape Cod during the summer as a child. In July 1888, she played with Keller, whose family had traveled from Tuscumbia, Ala., to vacation in Massachusetts.

Spencer, who doesn’t know which of his relatives took the picture, told the society that his mother, four years younger than Helen, remembered Helen exploring her face with her hands.

In June, Spencer donated a large collection of photo albums, letters, diaries and other heirlooms to the genealogical society, which preserves artifacts from New England families for future research.

“I never thought much about it,” Spencer said in a statement released by the society. “It just seemed like something no one would find very interesting.” Spencer has recently been hospitalised and could not be reached for comment.

It wasn’t until recently that staff at the society realized the photograph’s significance. Advocates for the blind say they had never heard of it, though after they announced its discovery they learned it had published in 1987 in a magazine on Cape Cod and a half-century earlier in The Boston Globe. It is unclear whether there was more than one copy of the photograph.

D Brenton Simons, the society’s president and CEO, said the photograph offers a glimpse of what was a very important time in Keller’s life.

Sullivan was hired in 1887 to teach Keller, who had been left blind and deaf after an illness at the age of 1 1/2. With her new teacher, Keller learned language from words spelled manually into her hand. Not quite 7, the girl went from an angry, frustrated child without a way to communicate to an eager scholar.

While ‘doll’ was the first word spelled into her hand, Helen finally comprehended the meaning of language a few weeks later with the word ‘water,’ as famously depicted in the film ‘The Miracle Worker.’ Sullivan stayed at her side until her death in 1936, and Keller became a world-famous author and humanitarian. She died in 1968.

Jan Seymour-Ford, a research librarian at the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, which both Sullivan and Keller attended, said she was moved to see how deeply connected the women were, even in 1888.

“The way Anne is gazing so intently at Helen, I think it’s a beautiful portrait of the devotion that lasted between these two women all of Anne’s life,” Seymour-Ford said.

Selsdon said the photograph is valuable because it shows many elements of Keller’s childhood: that devotion, Sullivan’s push to teach Helen outdoors and Helen’s attachment to her baby dolls, one of which was given to her upon Sullivan’s arrival as her teacher.

“It’s a beautiful composition,” she said. “It’s not even the individual elements. It’s the fact that it has all of the components.” ap

Online Antique Dealers Start to Break Away From Ebay

The Full Story:
As part of the 'SS2BM' (Summer Solstice to Blue Moon) promotion organised by members of Pheebay.com, online sellers are exploring alternative means to market their goods due to increasing unease over the uncertainty of Ebay as a economically viable and stable trading platform.

An Ebay seller using the handle ‘Rainbowseeker' has recently begun to list on alternative online auction sites and marketplaces to Ebay, as she explains:

"I have begun to use other trading platforms due to ever increasing commission fees on Ebay. Also, Ebay have recently made changes to the feedback system, which seems to have polarised and alienated the relationship between the buyer and seller. At the moment, I am still listing on Ebay, but am spreading my wings to other venues such as Ebid.net and ECrater.com."

Also many traders are starting to create their own websites. Sharron Mirikitani is a veteran of online trading platforms and sells on a variety of auction sites as well as having her own website at www.collectibletreasuresemporium.com. Other antique traders, such as the-antique-store.com and outoftheattic4u.com have developed their own sites, as well as listing on auction and marketplace sites such as Ebid.net, Hibidder.com, Zolanta.com, Tazbar.com, Plunderhere.com, and Blujay.com

The 'SS2BM' promotion is intended to highlight to online traders that alternative means to Ebay are available. However, the organisers of 'SS2BM' are also keen to emphasise to sellers that a significant amount of groundwork needs to be undertaken if any success is to be achieved on the smaller alternatives to Ebay, as one member of Pheebay commented:

"Too many 'sellers' think all they have to do is list their products then sit back and watch the money roll in. Wake up this is the real world! There is no such thing as a free lunch! It is your business'promote it!"

Members of Pheebay advocate other means in which sellers can promote their listings, namely by using blogs and social networking sites such as Myspace, Bebo and Squidoo. Furthermore, Pheebay.com also encourage that sellers ‘divert' their Ebay buyers to their independent websites and other auction sites by including promotional leaflets in any Ebay orders, as well as including links in any confirmation emails."

As part of the 'SS2BM' promotion, many participating antique traders are offering generous discounts in an attempt to lure buyers away from Ebay. Such discounted items can be found by entering "SS2BM" in the various sales site's search engines. Details of 'SS2BM- can be found in the forums at Pheebay.com, and sellers taking part in "SS2BM" can be located at: www.culturaltransmission.com/pages/b2bsellers.html

The SS2BM promotion concludes on June 30th.

Antiques Can Pose Mercury Hazard

By MICHAEL HILL
The Associated Press





ALBANY, N.Y. -- Careful with that antique clock. It could pose a mercury hazard. The silvery, skittering, and toxic liquid can be found in some antiques. Mirrors can be backed with mercury and tin; Clock pendulums might be weighted with embedded vials of mercury; and barometers, thermometers and lamps may have mercury in their bases for ballast.

The problem is that mercury in old items can leak, particularly as seals age or when the items are moved, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ask Ann Smith, whose heirloom clock's pendulum leaked mercury onto the carpet of her gift store in rural Delhi, N.Y., as a cleaner moved it.

An attempt to vacuum the tiny silver balls off the carpet only made things worse, requiring a hazardous materials team to be dispatched to Parker House Gifts and Accessories last summer.

"I didn't really think it was the hazard that it became," Smith said. "I grew up in the days when you played with the mercury that spilled out of a thermometer and nobody knew it was a problem."

Exposure to high levels of mercury can cause damage to the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs and immune system. Even the few ounces found in some antiques can be dangerous. Aptly nicknamed quicksilver, it's hard to clean up, and can become an inhalation hazard if it vaporizes.

Dr. Wanda Lizak Wells of the New York state Department of Health, co-author of the study, suggests getting professional help if even a few ounces spill from an old barometer.

And never use a vacuum.

"That is one of the worst things that people can do," she said. The mercury can be heated up by the vacuum motor and vaporize. That was the mistake Smith's clock cleaner made at her shop near the Catskill Mountains. The vacuum was discarded as hazardous waste.

The amount of mercury in a fever thermometer, however, can be safely cleaned without expert assistance as long as proper steps are taken, like wearing old clothes and rubber gloves, according to Wells.

The study highlighted five other cases from 2000 through 2006 in New York state, which collects hazardous response data in a way that allowed researchers to identify cases involving antiques.

Among other examples in the report: A house in Long Island was cleared after two cups of mercury spilled onto a carpet from an antique clock that tipped over. Four workers at a New York City antique store were sent to the hospital for evaluation when mercury spilled from an antique clock column. A hazardous materials team was called to clean up more than an ounce of mercury from a Syracuse road after a spill involving an antique lamp.

Researchers said none of the incidents caused acute health problems.

The CDC report noted that about a dozen states restrict the sale of products with mercury. Antiques experts say there are relatively few items that still contain it.

Among those that do are old barometers and thermometers, which account for only a small slice of the market.

Donald R. McLaughlin, a veteran antiques dealer in Ohio and president of the World Antique Dealers Association, said many such pendulum vials broke decades ago.

"There aren't many left," he said. "I rarely see them anymore, and I'm out every day."

Still, researchers urge people to inspect old items containing mercury to make sure the seals are tight. They recommend removing or replacing mercury components when possible, though they warn never to drain the mercury.

When moving a piece containing mercury, researchers suggest placing it in a leak-proof container.

And moving slowly.

Lincoln Museum Gets Collection of Items

By CHRISTOPHER WILLS Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press






SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - A battered old hat, a pair of stained gloves, a child's silly rhyme - hardly the stuff of history.

Except that this hat is a stovepipe hat, the gloves are stained with a president's blood and the rhyme was written by a young Abraham Lincoln.

All three items are part of an immense private collection put together by a Lincoln fan over 35 years. Now the collection is about to go public after being purchased for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. The collection contains hundreds of letters and documents, but its strength is the array of personal, everyday items related to the 16th president, his wife and his assassin, John Wilkes Booth.

The presidential library's executive director, Rick Beard, said it should help remind visitors that Lincoln was a real person with real problems who still managed to do great things.

"I think it's very important to understand that there are indeed great men, but that these great men are human, that they have a complexity to them, that they're not marble figures," Beard said.

The hat's brim shows two finger-sized spots where Lincoln continually touched it to take the hat off. Its band is stretched from his habit of stuffing legal papers inside to carry around with him.

Lincoln hated wearing gloves, Beard said, yet he always carried them. This particular pair appears to have been dropped on a red dirt road, but the stains are blood from Lincoln's assassination on April 14, 1865.

And the rhyme, neatly written in a childhood "sum" book for practicing math, shows a 15-year-old smart-aleck: "Abraham Lincoln is my name/ and with my pen I wrote the same/ I wrote in both haste and speed/ and left it here for fools to read."

Acquiring the 1,500-item collection is "a coup" for the museum, said Daniel Weinberg, a Lincoln collector and owner of Chicago's Abraham Lincoln Book Shop.

"They are wonderful collectibles," Weinberg said. "People enjoy having a personal relationship with their historical figures. One can let ghosts arise when you're looking at the hat, for instance."

The collection was pieced together over three decades by Louise Taper, who said she grew interested in Lincoln after reading a book about the president.

"I loved it. I loved reading about his life and Mary, and I wanted to know what happened to his children and the children's children," she said. "That started it, and it just took off."

The museum's foundation is buying most of the collection, and Taper is donating part of it. Eventually, the foundation will give the collection to the museum so that the state owns it outright.

Neither Taper nor Beard would disclose the price, but Lincoln experts say the collection is likely to bring more than $20 million. Beard said no tax money is involved. Instead, the foundation is working with the city of Springfield to issue bonds to pay for the collection now, and private fundraising will pay off the bonds in years to come.

Parts of the Taper collection will go on public display in July.

Rather than focusing on some particular aspect of Lincoln, Taper acquired items from throughout his life. Many collectors were most interested in official documents or Civil War strategy, but not Taper.

"That didn't appeal to me," she said. "I wanted to know more about Lincoln - where he lived when he was young, and his parents and family, and how his relationship with Mary was, and their children."

Her collection includes about 100 Mary Todd Lincoln letters, giving the Lincoln presidential library a total of 500 - out of only 600 in the world, Beard said.

Some of the letters recount Mary Todd Lincoln's fight with Congress to collect her husband's salary after he had been killed and to establish a pension for presidential widows. Taper said that fight set a precedent for Jacqueline Kennedy to receive a pension after John Kennedy's assassination.

Initially, Taper kept her Lincoln items and other presidential collectibles at her Los Angeles home. The famed stovepipe hat was displayed on a cabinet in her living room.

But as the items grew in value, she had to keep them locked away, where even she could not enjoy them.

After working for years with Lincoln experts in Springfield and serving on the museum foundation's board, Taper decided her collection should go to Lincoln's hometown.

"I think Lincoln needed to go home. It was time. It was time for the world to see everything and other people to enjoy it," she said.