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I once knew a naive artist. He made a number of oil paintings, and got a friend to photograph them. The prints were submitted to a gallery, who agreed to mount an exhibition.
Unfortunately the small size of the photos disguised the nature of the art, which was bleak and depressing. On opening night the invited guests huddled in the middle of the gallery, with their backs to the paintings, trying to avoid looking at the damn things.
After the exhibition closed the artist abandoned his art, left town and became a traffic warden in London. I dumped the paintings, except for one of a seagull flying over some grey sludge. Eventually that went in the bin as well.
I used my eBay moniker as the name for a Wikipedia account. I got caught up in a dispute between a deranged UK-based editor and an Alabama editor (as did several others). Crazy guy gets kicked off Wikipedia, takes his crusade to an anti-Wikipedia site, gets kicked off that for being offensive, and sets up a website specifically to attack the Alabama editor. Starts getting curious as to who I am, and also starts inviting prisoners in a jail near Manchester to contact him. At that point I finally realise that my eBay account has my home address, so I quickly change my eBay moniker before this effwit turns up on my doorstep with a bunch of thugs.
I learnt a lot about online expression of personality disorders from the thug life on Wikipedia.
The mention of garage clearouts reminded me of a possible business idea. A few years back there was a big drive by the UK government to get the attics of houses lagged with fibreglass insulation. A lot of houses had so much junk stored in the attic that it was impossible to lay the matting. Some drawbacks- stuff in the attic is usually covered with dust and grit, there’s usually no flooring so you have to step on the rafters, and the access hatch is often small and high up. I suppose in the US you also have to contend with rabid squirrels, raccoons and hoboes 🙂
Article from the Guardian- Grand Disasters.
05/24/2019 at 4:15 am in reply to: Don't you love when thrift shops tell you what you can do with your own items? #62390Hi Amatino. I think the UV torch is used on artwork to find areas of restoration. I know it’s used on postage stamps to show up security features (on British stamps, “phosphor bars” AFAIR) If what appears to be a contiguous area of paint shows up to have areas that glow differently then it’s been repaired.
I look at framed pictures obliquely to see if there’s any raised areas of paint- i.e. the picture’s a painting and not a print. Another use if it’s a print of an oil painting, with impressed brush strokes- you can see that the “brush strokes” don’t line up with the image. Or, say, if you’re looking at a signature in pen or pencil and it looks flat then it could be a printed signature.
The teeth thing is apparently a way of detecting repairs to pottery- the dealers on the television say the texture feels like a bar of soap. Never done it- don’t really want to stand in a shop nibbling an old cup 🙂
I took a coin into a dealer’s a couple of weeks back to check if it was silver. He smelt it. His wife explained that he can smell silver…
Many years ago I was taken to an auction by my grandmother. She told me that the dealers sprinkled pepper on their coffee. So, even in those days of gas lamps and horse-drawn aeroplanes, dealers were easy to spot.
05/21/2019 at 1:16 pm in reply to: Don't you love when thrift shops tell you what you can do with your own items? #62186It’s actually quite easy to spot a dealer. They turn pottery and furniture upside down, look at the flyleaves of books, and browse at a much faster speed than anybody else. The hardcore ones carry UV torches and jeweller’s loupes, look at pictures from a very oblique angle, run their teeth over the edges of porcelain and sniff the metalware. The antique runners (ones who buy to sell to dealers) look like Columbo on a bad hair day.
Then there’s the would-be dealers and amateurs, who have a peeved expression on their faces and are clutching a mobile phone.
05/21/2019 at 2:03 am in reply to: Don't you love when thrift shops tell you what you can do with your own items? #62157Went into a thrift shop yesterday to inquire about something they had in the window. Got to the counter, looked down and saw a large mechanical calculator. I said “Blimey!”, the lady serving said “Oh, we’ve waiting to get it priced; dealers pay quite a bit for that sort of thing.”
Only problem is, and it seems to be general, they knock about 10 to 20 per cent off a perceived retail price when marketing to resellers. Something’s listed on eBay (e.g. a guitar) for £80. The shop checks, and offers an example of the same model at £70, without taking into consideration the condition etc. (Rusty pickups, shop in the High Street, Ashby de la Zouch)
Oh, it’s green, yellow and red! Looked black on my monitor. The colours of Rastafarianism, which has a settlement in Shashamane Ethiopia since 1948. That’ll sell!
Used to be a Rasta house at the end of my street. The men wore long robes, carried long staffs and had their dreadlocks in two-foot high woolly hats.
Whole phrase is ኢትዮሚኪኒየም.
Using the Wiki table and Google translate, it gave “Ethiominimian” (don’t know how I came up with “fitejoni”!) Anyway, the first part [ኢትዮሚ] is “Ethioc” (checked against Ethiomedia’s name on their web page) as in ‘being Ethiopian’. No idea about the second part- Google suggests “Kenyan”.
First part says “Fitejomi” according to the chart on the Wiki page. It appears Ge’ez script is a way of writing Amharic. At least you know how old the scarf is!
The script’s probably Amharic, though the colours aren’t in the flags of Eritrea or Ethiopia.
Marks like the black marker on page edges are put on remaindered books (presumably by the distributor). I suppose someone runs a marker down the edge of a pallet of books. Sometimes there are holes or nicks in the book. Another thing is “price-clipped”- the dust jacket’s had the price removed from the front inside corner.
Yes, but the stock’s a bit pricy! And (apart from the books) mediocre. Good line in secondhand wedding dresses though (apparently). Room upstairs with about 50 dresses, donated by a Mr. Bluebeard.
If I want something I have to get someone else to price it, and then the purchase gets logged next to my name. Last thing I bought was a wooden box that had been languishing in the storeroom for a couple of years. The pricing got delegated to the assistant manager- took him a couple of weeks to come up with a price of £25 (had a name plaque on it). There’s actually very little staff purchasing- I kind of have a feeling of fairness towards any resellers or collectors that’d come in the shop and I suspect the others do. I’m at the receiving end on a Saturday, when I go to a flea market in Nottingham, and the vendor starts telling me “That shouldn’t be there -[so-and-so] should have picked it out”. Well, sack ’em and employ me instead:)
The mental and physical benefits are good. I get a constant reminder of what a death pile looks like, and I have to physically move half a ton of books to make room for me to work! The drawback is that the sales process is clogged. The manager’s aware that I sell stuff online, and they have accounts to do so, but there’s no room or time in the shop to make a go of it. Hence there’s probably a couple of hundred old books up on the shelves just sitting there. And shelves of board games and pottery that should really be taken to a car boot sale.
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