Word: porcelain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...joke, really," says San Francisco Dealer Dorothy Dubovsky. There is nothing funny, though, about the price of some of these minor treasures. It is virtually impossible to buy a genuine brass spittoon because all but a few are already ensconced in places of honor in private homes. The porcelain heads used by phrenologists 70 years ago ($350) and the brightly colored enamel coffee pots of the 1890s ($75) are so scarce that manufacturers are now busily and cheaply reproducing them. Fancy china Jim Beam bourbon bottles, cranked out in limited quantities in the 1950s and early '60s as gift...
...Terribles were undaunted; they had a secret weapon that had never failed to take the day-marbles hand-carved from the finest porcelain commodes. Toucan Captain Len Smith, 50, winner of nine world championships, explained that only porcelain gives the "tolley" (shooter) the proper heft and feel. Every Toucan tolley is custom carved to fit the knuckle, but none has a diameter greater than .75 in.-the dimension prescribed by the British Marbles Board of Control...
...Good Friday last, a jolly throng turned out to see if American mettle could match Toucan porcelain. But the colonial question had unfortunately been resolved by default: the Americans failed to show. Still, the Toucans were presented an immediate threat by the Johnson Jets of nearby Langley Green, who "killed" Smith in the first round by slamming his tolley off the pitch. But Len's son Alan saved Toucan face by knuckling ten straight hits to lead the Terribles to a 25-20 victory and their 13th consecutive championship. The battle done, Terribles and challengers alike repaired...
...President (though a Democrat), has succeeded Lyndon Johnson. "All those damn Indians," as one rubbernecker inelegantly described George Catlin's incomparable frontier paintings, have been banished from the upstairs corridor. Pieces from the White House vermeil collection have replaced Lady Bird Johnson's personal collection of porcelain birds, and a wooden gavel inscribed to the President, a gift from the Mayor of Vincennes, Ind., rests on an end table...
...reasons are various. Unlike fine porcelain or glassware, silver is rugged enough to be used on the dining table. George I coffeepots go for as high as $15,000 and George II candlesticks for $3,000, largely because any host can not only use them, but be more than proud to display them. (What housewife dares entrust to a maid, or even herself, the washing of a Ming plate or a Meissen cup?) Some private collectors are charmed by the nostalgia that exudes from an emblazoned baronial crest, enchanted by the social history implicit in a snuffbox and fascinated...