Tuesday Treasures - November 12. 2024

Quite a mixed lot of thrifted things this week 

I got this carved wooden mask at St. Vincent de Paul.  Where is it from?  That's the question!  Similar ones are said to come from Africa... or Columbia... Sri Lanka...  This one on the back looks most like the ones made of Indonesian softwoods.  At first glance I thought it would be Australian because of the dots.  It hangs with some other wooden masks from around the world, not large enough to be masks, they're smaller souvenir folk art.  There's one dot missing on the bridge of the nose, which is easy to fix.

St. Vincent de Paul has more packets of vintage postcards.  Not the antique of a few months ago, these are 1960s.  I picked up a Christmas present for someone, but I can't share that in case they see this post (not likely, but you know how it is, the rare time will be this one!).  

Two of the postcards are, I think, worth sharing.  My son claimed this first one!  

Mother Goose is one of seven nursery rhyme floats built in the 1880s for Barnum & Bailey Circus.  This and two others are the only ones still around, all in the Circus World Museum (a circus related history museum) in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

King Gambrinus, legendary monarch of brewing, was carved of wood and installed on the roof of the Pabst Brewhouse, Milwaukee, WI, in 1857.  The company grew, and a new sculpture was needed in 1872.  By 1966 the wood had deteriorated and an aluminum King was made.  The brewery closed in 1996, the original wooden King sold, and the aluminum was in storage until 2004.   From 2004 until 2011 he stood in the employee cafeteria at Pabst Illinois headquarters, and now he is on loan to reign at his original location, which is now the courtyard of a tavern.   Some refer to Gambrinus as the Patron Saint of Brewing, however, he was never a real person, and according to the Catholic list of Saints, there are several others with that distinction. 

On to the Goodwill Bins.

I got a "new" purse, which wasn't used at all.

This little, 5" x 4" ish watercolor lithograph (a print that is then hand colored), was not treated gently!  I found it wrinkled, mounted to a torn piece of backing.  It's a print of Franz Herbelot of Notre Dame in Paris.  Franz Herbelot was a street artist in the 1940s-1960s.  Other personal information is unknown, and he may have been a woman using a pseudonym.  A few of his/her images became quite popular, and were turned into prints by Donald Art Co. where some of the originals are available for sale.   They state, Herbelot first made rough on-site street sketches which were unsigned and bear only the location name. These sketches were later reproduced in his studio. It is the lithograph prints and the line drawings with watercolors added which bear his “Herbelot” identity and issued numbers." This small version is probably one of Donald Art Co.'s.  They are all slightly different owing to the hand painting.  The boat in the foreground is yellow in many, this on unpainted. 

 This was an exciting find!  I collect fruit crate labels (I do have two fish can labels), of which I find I have shared few.  This packet contains 35 unused labels from the 1940s previous sold at auction.  Maybe there had been 36 and the buyer kept one.  That's all I want.  

I'll rectify my lack of crate label posts soon!   The masks too, which I thought I'd done already, but can't find.