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Hey Shortcut.. Sorry for the delayed response.
Ok let’s take this one step at a time. First let’s validate the print itself.
From a distance [photo] it looks like a pen and ink drawing with “washes”. With many pen and ink drawings the art contains solid black areas that are composed of thin “contour lines” [outlines] and solid black areas. You have both in this piece. Next in order to get shading / graduated tones an artist must either use a process of cross hatching of criss crossing lines or “washes”. You have several tones of grey in this piece. It is obvious that the artist did not use “cross hatchings” of various types to create the greys we see. So he used washes. Washes are created by taking the “black india ink” and diluting it down into several varying shades of grey by controling the amount of distilled water that is used. It is done by placing a few drops of india ink [highly concentrated] into a plastic egg tray. If the artist wants 6 shades, he places say 2 drops of ink in six trays. Then each compartment he places water with the ink. He starts with one drop in the first space, 2 in the second, 3 or 4 in the fourth and so on. This creates an ink mixture that will gradate from a darker grey wash down to a very light transparent wash.
He then works from light to dark, painting in with a soft sable brush the wider, larger areas of light grey. The mixture of ink with the most water and let’s it dry. Then taking the next darker wash and fills in smaller areas, working backwards from lightest to darkest.Ok this now establishes the original, done by hand pen-ink drawing with wahses. What comes next though is the tell tale sign of what you may have. You said you have “photo evidence” of the artist signing it. Great, but you don’t have evidence of him creating the original. So the following is what you need to know and to find out.
Many artist create black and white pen and ink originals then reproduce then into either small limited edition or larger run prints. this is how you will be able to tell. The lines are too thin for a screen print in most cases, stone lithography would work, but is way to time consuming and most people don’t have the facilities to do it. I know how, but no litho studio. Etching is easy to tell because of the embossed indentation the plate leaves in the paper after it has gone through the process and other ways to identify the ink layer, which I will save for another time.
So this leaves us with the needed following observation work. First if an lithographic offset item or an original. Pen and inks are hard to tell the reproduction process but if this is a repro. it works like this. An orthographic camera is used to photo the original. Ortho film is used to create a metal offset plate that will be mounted on a litho press and be inked up and an edition print run. Ortho film WILL pick up solid black areas and reproduce them dead nuts on in the finest of details without any “mechanical” creation of the image. But add in variations of greys, then it fails to reproduce those. The printer results in having to break those varying, graduated areas into a series of dots, by using what is called a “halftone line screen”. These screens are overlaid in the large format camera during the photographing of the original in order to create films that are plate ready. These screens run in coarseness from about 35-40 line screening up to approx. 300 line screening these days. The most common being 133 line screen [most magazines], 180 line screen to 220 lines per cm for higher grade magazines, [Vogue, etc.], then 220 to 300 or more for fine art, full color repros.
Now, at 133 line screen or higher, it is almost unperceptable to the naked eye and everything loks like it is a “continious tone”, but maybe not. This is why I always carry my two loupes with me when I pick.
So the big question is, are those Grey areas in your print solid “washes” done from a brush with diluted inks directly on the paper or reproduced “tones” of the original. Usually direct washes causes the paper to buckle due to the large amount of water that is applied to the surface.
So, now, get a magnifier, best if 10 x power an up. I suggest you go online an order a 6x or up what is called a “LinenTester” for about $6 and keep it with you when you go picking. But, for now, look at the grey areas. Are they dots, if so you have a reproduction. They value drops drastically. You basically are selling the “autograph” of the artist and he is probably of a more secondary market artist.
Many people when pricing art forget that you can take $500 to $750 go to a New York art gallery and by an investment piece of art by a “known reputable artist” and it will maintain it’s vale and come with all sorts of documentation about the artist. I can get a Warhol, Lichtenstein, Trova, and many, many others, signed in an edition for $750 to $1,000. So be careful on your pricing.
Now on the other hand, pilots and other cross collectors may have an interest in the plane itself, but there are photos available of WWII equipment for those collectors.
So long story ended. get a magnifier and first determine if you have an original or repro. and then let us know.
I apologize for the long dissertation, but my art school teaching genes come to the surface and run amuck when I see posts here on the Forum about art and prints and I can’t control myself sometimes. LOL 🙂
Hopes this sheds some light on this piece and helps others to become aware of how to observe some of the art they come across in the field.
Respectfully submitted.
mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaHey Sue.. Sorry for the late reply. Had Sales to tend to,, listing and still some tax stuff. You know the drill. You are right. I can’t find anything online, in our subscription databases, nothing on this hat or the logo. Just what the heck is it. Wife said maybe some sort of a foreign country’s local dance group costume hat, from way back when. But how to trace that is beyond us. Then the thought of some old lodge type of hat but no not that either.
There is no markings on it at all anywhere? Nothing to go on?
Sorry .. but seems like a strike out this time. If I get a revelation I will check again, but nothing at this time.
mike in mdc galleries in Atlanta-
This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
04/03/2017 at 6:09 pm in reply to: Scavenger Life Episode 304: Do a little bit today, then do a little bit tomorrow #15878I am with you Lee. I do a quarterly inventory of shipping supplies on a spread sheet and order what seems to be below my min. in each size. Every size is over the min. / max. levels. I have 478 boxes in stock, hundreds of poly and bubble mailers and 80 rolls of tape. I just order more tape and the new tissue paper, which was a dumb move.
I also posted way back about the tape’s quality level and how to break it down into MSI [thousand sq. inches for pricing]. You can go find that somewhere in past posts. But in any case it makes our boxes look like a “jack in the box”. Like a carnival box. And the tape is only a half of a mil. of adhesives and 1 mil in thickness. That is why they put 75 yards on a roll is because it is extremely thin. That is why Ryanne gets it coming loose. If the adhesive layer was thicker, it would migrate down into the porous fiber and give a better bond. It is so thin it is just giving a surface stick to the higher placed fibers. It will adhere better if you burnish it down but who has time for that.
I think I will follow Nancy’s process and after I get my next order, post it all for Sale and go buy what I was using before. Boxes will look more professional, will hold / stick better and we will feel better about our packages going out.
The tissue paper is too costly also, 240 sheets at $18.99 = $.08 a sheet. Maybe I will just use it up as dunnage stuffing and not buy any more of that either. I can get larger sheets of nice newsprint for half the cost.I concur with Ryanne and Nancy above. Being in printing for decades, both screen printing and lithography. We used fixed racks like these for small run print editions to dry prints on. Also we used them in our shipping dept. to collate advertising materials. Place a thick stack of sheets into each space. Start with page one in top slot, then page two, page three, etc. going down the column. Then we had two employees start at the top and work there way down by pulling one page at a time and when finished you have a “collated set of pages #1-whatever”. With two employees one goes down the first said then goes to the other side of the table, then the second employee starts on side one. this way you have two people pulling and stacking sheets at a time.
I would suggest and look at how the shape of the rack is and the dimensions to see if it is sized for an 8-1/2″x11″ or 8-1/2″ and 11″ to support the piles evenly. If larger then I would opt for the drying rack. Of course we had large electric conveyor belt dryers and also large rolling racks with 50 flip up racks per unit. But I think maybe use a combination of keywords.Hope this helps… mike at mdc galleries in Atlanta.
Hey Shortcut… I do have a couple of comments on the airplane print but have a few Sales we need to take care of. Maybe tomorrow after mid-morning shipping has gone out.
mike in AtlantaThanks Whiskey for the Kudos. Appreciate the fact that some do enjoy the details of some topics I comment on and that you took the time for a shout out.
Thanks,
Mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaWell it got me. I made an early morning sale on Bonanza. One of very few I do get. I went to my Seller Dashboard to complete shipping and was Greeted with tiny voices singing Jingle Bells. Took me a few minutes to click through all the Tabs I keep open in my browser looking to see if I had some sort of unwanted Java Script running. Finally closed the Bonanza tab and it stopped.
If it was an April Fools joke, they also have several other jokes, like auto discounting sales we make on there when we are NOT running a sale, also charging $.95 per shipping label we create using the Bonanza label printer and the fact that when we print a Bonanza label it is always oriented wrong for our printer set-up for Ebay and have to re-format to print their labels, then format back to an orientation for Ebay [always loose a sheet or two of labels with Bonanza]. I will stop short of saying Bonanza itself is a joke because we do sell maybe one item a month on there, but OK I did get a smile hearing Jingle Bells from a falsetto Chipmonk voice. Ha-Ha.
mike in atlanta-
This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
thanks.. appreciate you nailing it down dead nuts on… but am I reading this correct ?? You DO accept the first 5 and DON’T the last 6?? Do you have that reversed. I think you meant you DONT on the first group and DO on the last Group? I think so.
Appreciate you breaking it out into “exact” details, so I will proceed to make the changes. I apologize if I took up any of your time. I know it is precious to you guys. Really appreciate everything I have taken away from you guys through the years.
mike in atl.Been a subscriber for many years. It is my first choice for pricing and also for getting a description and keywords even if the pricing is not used. On real old items who cares if the prices are 24 or 36 months old. If none have sold anywhere within a year and you find 6 that sold for $95 dollars 3 years ago, I think that is great information. I bump it up for 10% per year since last one sold and go with that.
I identify unknown things almost every day that otherwise I wouldn’t know what it was.
Just yesterday I was listing a small vase with a hand painted scene of a boy walking, done in a white enamel type paint. We bought for a few bucks at a thrift and was going to list at about $12.50. But thought I would look it up on Worthpoint real quick and viola’ turns out it is a Mary Gregory hand painted vase. Who would have known without looking it up and saw 4 that were the exact same thing and had sold within the last year or two around $50 each. I immediately changed our price and refreshed the listing up to $49.99. Now multiply that times many items.
we find many old things that we can only find on Worthpoint and also on Kovels. On our antiques that we sold in our 6 antique booths, Kovels was a life saver. Many people on Ebay don’t know what they have or what many things are or where they came from. On Kovel’s you can find all that out and get a current antique dealers selling cost on it. But yes we do also cross reference Ebay solds also but that is just the start of it.
Had my meeting with my CPA yesterday and he said, Holy Cow you have some serious profit margins. On $2,100 of items we bought last year we produced $24,000 in Sales and I attribute that to slowing down, doing longer and deeper research using multiple sources for research then pricing way above the highest price sold.
But speed does have it advantages, that equates to more items listed, leading to more sales. But yes we find it worth it. But if you only buy what you know then you don’t need anything. We have a Premium Store [$75 per month] with 770 items listed and still hundreds of items from our old booths to go.
Just an opinion for what it’s worth.
mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaYep understand.. but Hassle Free program gives us those 11 choices to click on. I had them all selected. So which ones out of those 11 do you have selected-clicked on? I would like to “un-click” some of those and are you saying to do so, I need to guess which of these 11 I would think the buyer would think was a seller error?
So I guess my error and I would accept full responsibility & allow Ebay to Auto accept and furnish buyer a return label would be:
* Doesn’t work or defective ..??
* Wrong item sent .. ??
* Missing parts or pieces .. ??
* Arrived Damaged .. ??Then I don’t click the following which would mean I will have to engage the buyer, have a dialogue, ask for photos, then decide if I will or will not accept their request for a return [which will probably end in an argument for sure]
* Doesn’t fit, Changed my mind, Found better price, Just didn’t like it, ordered by mistakeIf I don’t check these then I will get an email from the buyer, they explain there situation and then I make the judgement call.
So guess the question is which of these do you have selected? It is found in your Return Preferences.
To stay out of any Hassle at all I would accept all of the 11. If only those of my fault I would only select the 4 choices as above. Ever since we opted into the program I guess all 11 have been selected to authorize an auto return. mike in atl.Hey J&R and any other members .. Would like to take a Poll!!
I am rethinking my Hassle Free selections. I had all of them checked to allow Ebay to Automatically issue a return label. Then I had the choice if I would refund the whole thing, or not the return shipping or the 20% restocking fee. But all of these would allow Ebay to auto approve and issue them the email to print a return label and send back.
Out of the list below that Ebay furnishes which ones have you guys selected for Automatic Approval for Ebay to issue a return label without having you, the seller to approve before furnishing the return label to the buyer?
Doesn’t fit
Changed my mind
Found a better price
Just didn’t like it
Ordered by mistake
Doesn’t work or defective
Doesn’t match description or photos
Wrong item sent
Missing parts or pieces
Arrived damaged
Doesn’t seem authenticA friend of mine said to select them all and let the customer return for any reason, then I just choose to apply the restock fee or return shipping or not. My wife says to only allow the obvious ones and the others have to come to us for approval. But that will mean contact the buyer and going through some communication as to why, and asking for photos, etc., etc.
So interested in what all of the members here have selected.
thanks MDC Galleries in Atlanta
Yep.. We lived in Canton, CT for 22 years. Hitchcock chair was just few miles up the road in New Hartford, Ct I think. Toured the factory once. Out in the boondocks by a river. Saw dust and wood chips everywhere. Been making chairs way back in 19th century. Google Hitchcock chair and see Wikipedia. If originals and not repros a pair should bring $1,000. Also check out Worthpoint and especially Kovels because if they are real and antique, ka-ching.
mdc galleries in AtlantaTry searching on Shogun, Shogi and Kabuki face chess pieces. The faces seem to have that type of character to them. The tree with the eyes and nose features looks more like something out of the Hobbit but is probably not if it is part of the Asian themed other pieces. You could try varioes keywords like “Tree of Life”, “Tree of Knowledge” or something like that.
mike at MDC Galleries in AtlantaHello again… Maybe Ebay has stopped showing HFR tag line copy. I noticed there are not any showing on my listings either. So is the program even still active with Ebay? If so I thought the Hassle Free was suppose to be a come on for the Buyers?
I would love to go back to approving all of the returns to us [even though we have only had a few]. But in the case of this guy with placing a hot iron on a plastic storage stand, I would love to tell him where he can “place that hot iron” and “no, I am not taking a return”. 🙂 LMAO.. but wouldn’t do that, not professional.. but would surely love to.
mike in atl.-
This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
J&R.. Just caught something you said during this podcast and now remember you saying something in another one. You have said several times that you are opted in to the “Hassel Free Returns” program and so are we. Yet you said in this podcast that you ask for a photograph and then decide to issue a return authorization – permission to return. Is that not in accordance with HFR? We got a request yesterday for a return and the HFR program automatically accepted the return and told the buyer he had 5 days to print out his label, which HFR furnishes them and return. THEN when we receive the item, we will inspect and decide on the retun amount, be that as a full round trip shipping and the item, or depending on what their claims were, we subtract our 20% restocking fee and return shipping or just skip the re-stock fee. Those we make the choice on. So HFR is exactly that, for any rhyme or reason, no questions asked, they can ask to return it for any reason [hassel free for them] and we don’t refund until we get it back and we decide how much to refund. Hassle free for us.
If you have the option turned on in the HFR area that you must approve the return first [like giving a RMA number] and you don’t want to agree and so no, isn’t that then NOT HFR for the Buyer? We used to have the ask us first option clicked on but we then did not get the Hassle Free Returns tag line copy showing in our listings.
So, I just cross checked 4 or 5 items in both of your stores and you are “NOT” sporting the “Hassle Free Program” anylonger, just a 30 day return policy. So is this a recent change and also a change of heart on the HFR program?
Just wondering. The item I am getting back is an iron and the buyer said it melted the plastic storage stand he sat it down on. Well it is a “storage stand” DDUUH! not a hot iron stand. It is supposed to cool down before you store it away. A Double DDUUHHH!!!, but the HFR program kicked in, we got a notice of the incoming return, buyer got a label and we will be waiting the 5 days to see if he ships it. The HFR program is suppose to take the whole back and forth out from buyer to seller other than his written explanation of why they are returning which is included in the Ebay memo.
So what do you recommend now? You can’t have it both ways I don’t think. In this case I would not have taken the item back due to “stupidity on how to use a hot iron”. He even said he thought the iron was dangerous. So have you decided to drop the HFR program and go back to first asking for photos. Then pointing them to the Resolution Center to open up a return claim, then you making a go – no go decision as to what amount or even if you are going to do a partial or full refund? I am sort of confused on your stance after hearing your new statement. Just curious.
BTW.. on a secondary note.. Almost all big box stores will take a return for any reason but none that I know of will give you your money back PLUS extra for the wear and tear on your car and the gas you use to bring the item back. Personally I think a return for any reason, even if a sellers fault, should be born by the buyer. But just my opinion.
mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta. -
This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by
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