A SIMPLE TREND, A FUNDAMENTAL BEGINNING
When I began attending country auctions back, in the mid 1970's, the biggest movers were antique furniture, china, glass and sewing artistry, such as samplers and quilts. Accessories were also popular and I can’t even imagine how many treadle sewing machines, crossed the auction block during my regular attendance. In the antique trade one learns about the crushing weight of changing trends. As a rule, I always got onto something "in-vogue" at the end of its run, and yes I’d get stuck with a huge inventory of items from, you might say, yesterday’s news.
Seeing as I have always been out of fashion in one way or another, I’ve decided to be a really good watcher and leave the prognostications to those more closely tied to city auction trends, and the latest decorating promotions. What has interested me for some time, is the way kitchen collectibles, from utensils, pots and pans, fixtures, hardware, appliances, books, pottery, dining-ware and product nostalgia have held their market share. Some of this cookery, kitchen, utility articles can attract huge prices depending on rarity, sentiment, color, condition (always a major concern) and the portrayal of the period they represent....eg. Cream-top milk bottles, nostalgia can and bottle openers, vintage tins of tea, baking powder, cookies, candies and the list is a huge one.
There are many reasons for this but much of it does center around the fact, the kitchen is still the warmest, most memory-filled room in our abodes. Whether we think back to our young days helping mom or dad make dinner, bake cookies, cakes, preserve the harvest of strawberries, peaches and tomatoes, there are many good sensations attached to this humble room in apartment, cottage, house or condominium. Memories of grandmother, grandfather, great aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors, the kitchen is a storehouse of the nostalgic. As an antique dealer, who only profits by finding items he can resell, believe me, kitchen collectibles have always been an important component of my current inventory. It is much harder to get today, as more people turn-on to kitchen memorabilia in one form or another.
Hundreds of books have been published on the subject of kitchen-ware collecting, and many newer books profiling the use of collectible pieces in everyday working, efficient, convenient and tastefully decorated kitchens. The use of old mixing bowls, yellow and sponge ware, depression glass, jade-ite, crockery and old utensils, have certainly contributed to an ongoing escalation of prices for even the most basic pieces. Dealers, sale hosts, antique shows and auctions play up these vintage kitchen items, and that has caused a spin-off interest into some of the lesser known items associated with cookery heritage.
In a nutshell this was my own inadvertent commencement to collect handwritten recipes. But it was actually simpler than this, and it had to do with a collector’s shallow pockets. When I began my inaugural antique business, I had just graduated York University, in Toronto, and had a very tiny budget to open a store-front. Well, that didn’t quite work as my dreams had predicted, but my parents took the fall for this one, because I’d been forced to take a job as a news editor for the local press, just to keep a roof over my head. We didn’t go bankrupt but just lost interest. My parents had employment opportunities elsewhere, and I couldn’t joggle business and newspaper assignments. In the mid 1980's, my wife Suzanne and I were much better situated, to start another antique business, one that is still operating on-line today. We had better funding and manpower opportunities to keep it afloat. For business reasons, efficiency and family, we did move it from the main street back home, which has made all the difference as far as ease of operation, and cost efficiency.
Point is, many believe antique dealers are all fat cats with money falling out of their pockets. Truth is, most of us have a lot of money tied up in our respective inventories, and if we’ve made good choices, we’ll survive. If not, well, it’s a matter of time until the auctioneer gets a call for a little clearance sale. As our business was designed in the first place, to be an eventual retirement enterprise, we have always prepared for the future....the time when money will be in much shorter supply, and our efficiency and accuracy will have to be at its highest level. So despite what some believe, we have always been frugal by necessity. We’ve had to be scroungers and penny pinchers, and when you’re in a business you love.....that’s not a disadvantage. Our business from the 1980's onward, is a lifestyle and we couldn’t be happier. Our two boys, Andrew and Robert, are in much the same profession, selling vintage vinyl, electronics and restored guitars.
It has been frustrating over the years to attend auctions, estate sales, markets and fundraising flea markets knowing we have an inflexible budget. My wife is the accountant, and let me tell you, it’s like partnering with Ebeneezer Scrooge, before the spirited visits of Christmas Eve. God bless her, she means well, and she has kept us on track and as accountants like to see, maintained our finances "in the black." Over the decades we’ve had to find our inventory by resourcefulness and by seizing opportunity. We’ve also had to face facts that we just can’t afford to play ball with the upper echelon of the antique and collectible trade. We’ve become pretty good at ferreting out deals, and finding value in the most unlikely places. It’s what really commenced my foray into book collecting. With the exception of some titles and regional histories, which can sell for much greater amounts when sold individually, buying joblots of books fit our modest budget. And I found that re-selling them was possible, especially on-line, particularly on ebay. We’re in our sixth or seventh year now, selling via ebay auctions, and books are still my mainstay.
As I was generally forced away from major antiques, at regional auctions, shops and sales, I found few competitors with my background in history and literature, willing to chance money on old books. The reality that many of these books, not just cookbooks, held treasures ranging from hockey cards to folded-up money, and handwritten recipes, gave me many reasons to work a little harder as a hunter-gatherer. As you may have read on this site in a previous posting, it wasn’t until we had many hundreds of handwritten recipes, that we began looking at them from a number of angles.....did they have a monetary value, could we frame the paper and offer them for sale, put them into a large binder and sell them as a job-lot, or simply collect them, research the tradition of writing-out recipes, and sell off the companion books they arrived in, to make up our necessity, to at the very least, break even as dealers.
The reason I have offered this little biographical piece, is that it pertains to almost all collectors and dealers, at some point in their respective careers. We’ve all had to be frugal, buy prudently to please the bank, make sensible gambles, and occasionally, settle for a little less than the flashy pieces coming up for auction. On many occasions, as Victorian setees, pine flat-to-the-walls, hoosier cabinets, spinning wheels, sewing machines, diningroom sets, are being auctioned in front, we’re the contented souls in the back sorting through the old cookbooks, thrilled at the harvest of interesting cookery heritage that cost a fraction of what the big players were bidding. In terms of profit, it might not be as large as some dealers would like but in terms of a profit suited to our modest proportion, it’s more than adequate, and every reason to attend auctions in the future.
We were drawn to handwritten recipes by necessity you might say. Wanting to participate in the excitement of sales but having only a few dollars to spare. I used to feel bad about this until I figured out how to use experience and patience to make inroads. For years now I’ve been buying and selling vintage books and getting the contents, the handwritten recipes for free. I don’t intend to sell them because they’re more important than a means to a financial end. If you’re a wee bit like us, and like to collect but have financial limitations, there are all kinds of inroads you can make for a small commitment of cash. I suppose there are times, particularly when I’m asked by an interested reader, that I’d like to say in earnest, "it was commenced as a mission by the historian to capture cookery heritage for posterity." Ah shucks, truth is, I collect handwritten recipes because I’m cheap and getting cheaper. But I do love them......and I’m always on the hunt for more.
Collecting kitchen memorabilia is still a hot market trend with no end in sight. I feel pretty comfortable I finally caught onto a trend that matches my overburden of stuff. No, I can’t see a time when Suzanne and I will grow tired of seeking these paper heirlooms.....I’m just a little concerned how I’ll be able to convince my sons to carry it on after we’ve gone to our heavenly cookery reward. We’ll have to leave them the funds to open up a cookery museum. And yes, we could fill one many times over.
Note: We do hope to have some interesting actuality to present in coming submissions, as the spring season heralds the annual antique and collectable foray, here in the hinterland of Ontario. We’ll let you know about our recent finds, and give you some hints where to look for buried treasure....should you be interested in branching-out, to collect handwritten recipes for your own cookery archives. We should also report here, that there are some fantastic, delicious, and unusual heritage recipes worth their weight in proverbial gold.......just waiting to be discovered by chefs the world over. You can beat them to it! You just need to look in the right place, open the right book, and have the right mindset.......enjoy your travels, the hunt, the good folks you meet along the way, a little hiatus at a lakeside café, and of course.....the ultimate find! It likely won’t make you a million bucks, like finding a masterpiece of fine art, but it’ll make you feel like a million.....and that’s what this collecting thing is all about....or I’d given it up and got a real job twenty years ago.
On our web site, Muskoka Cookery, we will be offering some insights about the recipes, a wee bit of analysis regarding our latest finds, courtesy my wife and resident chef, Suzanne. Over the coming year she’ll offer some additional information about these old recipes, the terms and oddities she has found when reading through our collection. If you have any questions feel free to email us at birch_hollow@sympatico.ca