A Clue from My Childhood

I think my love of cartoon modern began with the Clue game board my sisters and I used when we were kids. I'm not sure when it was first designed, but clearly, it's from some time in the 1960s.

The outside of the box, with its giant magnifying glass, has a lot of visual impact.


And the character designs are so stylish.


I was fascinated by Miss Scarlet's dress (who knew a woman could be made from two triangles!), though it was probably Professor Plum who had more influence on my fashion sense.



P.S. -- This box isn't actually from my basement. I saw it at the Hixton (Wis.) School House Antique Mall. I love that store because it fills an entire small high school, including the linoleum-tiled gymnasium that also served as the seating area of the auditorium. It even fills the stage itself.

It makes me sad and glad to walk through the maze of rooms, looking at 20th century detritus, while imagining the students who spent the formative years of their lives there. I wish I knew where Hixton's children go to school now.

An Antique Antenna

I recently got a chance to stop once again at the School House Antique Mall in Hixton, Wisconsin. I saw a lot of interesting things, but I've got limited bandwidth for posting, so I only have one photo tonight:

We had one of these in my rural New York home in the 1960s. I don't think I've ever seen one except the one that used to sit on our television all those years ago. My dad also built a Heathkit converter box so we could receive the UHF channels with the antenna.

It was a strange piece of technology to see as an antique, but that's what it is by definition: It's more than 50 years old.

Antiques from Two Towns

My recent foray into Wisconsin took me to two antique stores: School House Antique Mall in Hixton, and a new find in the back of the Viroqua Public Market. 

School House is bigger, cheaper, and more out-of-the-way, while the Viroqua store is more curated, expensive, and in a bit of tourist destination. Though it's also out-of-the-way in a different manner, since the Driftless Region isn't exactly in the middle of everything.

I didn't keep great track of which photo is from which place, but I'm pretty sure I have the School House photos first.

I was tempted by this hand-painted ceramic umbrella stand with bas-relief animals all over it, but I talked myself out of it. I don't have enough umbrellas that are that long:

Some very cool hand lettering:

A charmingly ugly pirate. I haven't heard of Shearwater Pottery before, but it looks like this piece is worth $55:

Probably the funniest thing I saw. This is a regular paper coffee cup, with fold-out handles, from McDonald's, I'm not sure how old it is. 20 years? Probably never used. It was either $2 or $3:

 

A very cool fire extinguisher:

Eat your oats, and check out the (probably) asbestos ceiling tiles of the school house's theater stage while you're at it:

Then it's on to the Viroqua Public Market store, which is inside of a large brick building that used to house an auto garage, and more wooden crates.

First there was one for some special corsets that have no brass eyelets:

And then there was a small crate with dove-tailed corners. It made me realize I never thought about how root beer was made:

Last but not least, there was this paperboard box for a toxic product (belladonna!) that I thought would have been left in the dustbin of history:

But I see that belladonna plasters are still sold by quacks to this day, particularly, it appears, in the U.K. Over-the-counter sale of belladonna is illegal in the U.S.

Prunes, Iron, Albums

It's summer, and that means a family reunion trip into Wisconsin, and — as in most years — a stop at School House Antiques in Hixton.

This year, I only bought one small thing, but I took a few additional photos.

First, a set of kitchen canisters. It's not the design that got my attention, particularly...

...it was the third canister from the left. I don't think I've seen a canister labeled for prunes before. Is that something you've seen before?

Then there was this fancy ironwork at the base of a sewing machine:

The machine itself was very different looking from other early sewing machines I've seen, and I now understand that Bradbury was a British sewing machine company.

Finally, my eye caught on this mid-century album cover:

The designer's name is at lower left —Steinweiss. Alex Steinweiss, it turns out, is the person who is credited with inventing the concept of the record album cover. He was the first art director at Columbia Records, where he also developed the paper sleeves used on 33 1/3 rpm records after that format was introduced. 

He designed more than 2,500 album covers. Born in 1917, he lived to be 94 years old.