Five from an Antique Store

Looking back, here are a few photos I never managed to post. These were taken at the Missouri Mouse antique store in Saint Paul last year around this time.

As I review the items I captured that day, I realize once again that I have a weakness for Victoriana:




Yes, that book is about the Henry Stanley of Livingstone and Stanley. In looking him up, I found that his exploration enabled the murderous occupation of the Congo by Leopold II of Belgium. He's also the person who came up with the all-too-ubiquitous term "dark continent" to describe Africa.

There are also 20th century items. I think I included this spatter gun because I had no idea what it was:


The tag reads "ink spatter gun" and on the side it says Use With Spatter Ink. I gather, from a brief look around the interweb, that it may have been for spattering ink onto fabric? But it's not very clear.

The purpose of this King Koil mattress company clock (klock?) is a lot clearer:


King Koil was based in Saint Paul, so the clock has valuable local cachet. The company got its name from a naming contest in the 1930s, which was won by Era Bell Thompson of North Dakota. When she arrived on the train in Minnesota to collect her $25 prize, the company's owners were surprised to find that she was a 13-year-old Black girl. They gave her the money but didn't do the publicity they had planned, much to their shame. Thompson later went on to a career in journalism and was an editor at Ebony magazine.

The last item from the store is probably my favorite:


These lightable nativity figures approach life size. Their faces (especially those of Mary and Joseph) are not well-painted, and their cloak colors are cartoonish. To top it off, each of the hand-written tags says its particular version of "Joseph Blow Mold." Yes, I know it means they're blow molds, and this one is Joseph, but Joseph Blow Mold just strikes me as really funny.