This week’s holiday tip asks you to remember that if you want it to be unique, it has to be antique.
Now that you have shopped on-line and at the malls to get everyone everything that everyone else is getting, try including something different and personal.
Shop in your attic or in the antique shops to add that special touch.
For a special wine lover on your list, for instance, or for that host/hostess gift, combine your gift of wine with some special old wine glasses, decanters, silver and porcelain labels, wine salvers (table coasters for wine bottles), corkscrews, and figural pouring spigots, as well as any number of items with grape and vine motifs.
Antique shops can help add some classy go-withs for all sorts of gifts, including old perfume bottles, boxes, cake plates and servers, cookie jars and trays, jam jars, jelly compotes and jelly spoons, bonbon dishes, nut dishes, nutcrackers and picks, fruit bowls and fruit knives, planters and vases, book marks, book ends, and pen trays.
Accent your package wrapping with old figurines, dolls, ornaments, old pens and letter openers, costume brooches, bracelets and hat pins, tie clips, tie pins, and cuff links, toy soldiers, miniature animals, or tiny toy automobiles.
Christmas and Chanukah are about traditions, and antiques and heirlooms should always be invited to the feast.
Appraisals: In our mailbag this week is an heirloom that would certainly make a wine lover happy. It’s an elaborately decorated stoneware wine jug from Mettlach, Germany, and RH sent me an email photo asking what I thought about it.
As with most Mettlach pieces, especially their famous beer steins, this piece is heavily marked on the bottom.
Mettlach (the word means “mid-lakes”) is a city in western Germany near the French border. Its landmark building is an old Benedictine abbey, which is the “castle” depicted in its mark.
The number “1830″ is not a date but a style or shape mark. Mettlach pieces were made between 1850 and World War I, with the golden age between 1880 and 1910. The two-digit mark, “94,” however does tell us the date this jug was made was 1894.
I would estimate the showroom value of this beautiful portrait jug at $800-1,200. You can learn more in The Mettlach Book, available from Glentiques, Ltd., P.O. Box 8807, Coral Springs, FL 33075 (954-344-9856).
—Arthur Schwerdt, a certified appraiser, is the author of “The Antique Story Book,” and co-owner of The August Farmhouse Antiques on Route 9 in Swainton. Send your comments, questions of appraisal requests to aschwerdt@cmcherald.com.
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