Found: Orphaned Mexican Duck. Any Information will be Appreciated

          

We stopped at a garage sale this Fourth of July weekend and even before I got out of the car I spotted this beautiful Mexican pottery duck.

The sale had been going on for a few hours but nobody else saw anything special about this exquisite duck. (IMHO) I loved her at first sight.  She’s HUGE by most Mexican pottery bird/duck standards:  15 inches long by almost eight inches wide.  She’s about 10 inches tall to the top of her head.
I thought at first she might be a Ken Edwards piece, but she’s signed “Mateos Mexico.”  I’ve seen this kind of pottery many times, but nothing so big.  And I didn’t know the Mateos name.  So I went looking.

I couldn’t find much about my guy Mateos, but I think I can pinpoint this piece to the potteries in Tonala, Guadalajara.  At least I hope that’s where it came from, maybe because of this:

This small town on the edge of Guadalajara is an absolute goldmine of potters and pottery and has been an important pottery center going back 3,000 years. When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived on the scene in 1530 they promptly named Tonala the “Factory of Paganism” as it was then a center of production for the clay idols worshipped in surrounding villages.

Nothing like that pagan art!

I found a few mentions of a Tonala potter named Mateos, but most of them came from eBay descriptions so I couldn’t confirm.  However, I found a tantalizing clue on a blog called Jim and Carole’s Mexico Adventure.

[Salvador Vasquez Carmona] is teaching his craft to his sons and also has instructed numerous apprentices who later became significant ceramic artists in  their own right. One of these, Juan Antonio Mateos, showed up at 7:00 AM for his first day as instructed. After two hours Sr. Vazquez showed up and opened the shop. This same scenario went on for several days. Finally the apprentice asked why he was told to come at 7:00 when work didn’t begin until 9:00.  Sr. Vazquez told him that it was a test of his seriousness. Sr. Mateos later became a gifted potter in his own right.

Is this my Mateos?  Again, I hope so.  I’m under no illusions that my beautiful duck is a precious work of art.  No, I’ve actually found a piece very similar in design and size on eBay.  These were probably done for the tourist and/or retail trade, but I’m okay with that.  Beauty is beauty wherever you find it.

I do want to know who made it and when it was made.  I’m mad for anything vintage, so I hope it’s at least from the Seventies.  I have a feeling it’s fairly new, though.  The glaze appears fresh and there are no signs of staining or grime or cracking.  (Cracking on the unglazed bottom is expected on old Mexican pottery, I’ve heard).

So if you know anything more about her, please let me know.  Anything at all.  We’ll be fine, the both of us, with whatever you might come up with.

But isn’t it amazing that mi pata hermosa de México looks so at home in my up north cabin?  (I think she’s going to be very happy here.)

 

I made my first Treasury today!

I keep watching everyone make the most gorgeous treasuries on Etsy and I've always wanted to try it but I thought it would be really hard.  I remember when I first started on Etsy a couple of years ago how hard it was to even get a treasury on once it was made, but I finally decided to try one today.  It was about the most fun I've had in a long time, and it was very easy once I figured out what I was doing.

I chose a Polka Dot theme but as I was going through the polka dot listings I found I was drawn to the red, black and white ones and that's what I concentrated on.  It took about an hour to put it together, and then, just as I was about to save it, I somehow lost the entire page!   Aaaaagh!

So I started all over again, remembering some I had done, but finding other, new ones I actually liked even better.  When I finally hit the "save" button, I thought it was going to take me to a holding place, but lo and behold--my treasury was up!

Here it is: 

'Vintage On the Dot' by deerpathvintage

I'm dotty for dots. Maybe because my BFF in HS was Dot. Or because I love the Polka. Or because I grew up in the polka dot era. Did I mention that I love the Polka?

vintage 80s FUJIMORI FO... SpringChickenV... $15.00	vintage EMBELLiSHED BOW... shopREiNViNTAG... $30.00
6 ceramic lady bug bead... zombieparts $4.50	vintage 1950s halsam dr... MyraMelinda $8.75
Vintage 40's style ... MsTips $52.00	Vintage Shirley Temple ... Nachokitty $650.00
Dancing Articulated Clo... STLvintage $8.00	Vintage 1950s Red Half ... cemetarian $45.00
Vintage Oh Dot pillow readyfreddy $40.00	Adorable Vintage Button... VintageInTheSm... $12.00
Polka Dots & Ruffles -... thoroughbredth... $12.00	VINTAGE Minnie Mouse Wh... sundaesundaesu... $26.00
Black and White Polka D... janet5643 $31.00	White Black Polka Dot C... retrorocketgir... $40.00
Clowns Scare Me Clown P... sweetrice $14.99	Vintage PRIMARY DOTS Sc... GeneralWhimsy2 $8.00

Treasury tool is sponsored by Lazzia.com A/B image testing.

Soooo. . . . now that I've done one of them I'm going to be wanting to do more.  (This treasury included several pieces from the Etsy Vintage Team.  I think I'll do my next one to include pieces from Vintage Village.  Not surprisingly two of my favorite places.)

Mona

Holiday Sale at Deer Path Vintage!

Big News!  Everything in my shop is marked at 15% off right now.  Please note that the prices already reflect the discount.

The website "Etsy on Sale" has a new app where we can discount any or everything in our shops when we're having a sale and it shows up on our Etsy pages.  Nice! (They also create a page just for our shop listings--extra nice!)

Please note that the sale ends on December 20, which is also the date I'll be putting some of my items in hibernation until spring. (I'm a snowbird heading south then, and I can't take my whole shop with me, so if there is anything you're interested in, it's time to buy it now.  I will be adding different items once I get to my winter digs, so please keep watching. . .)


. . .Happy Holidays. Stay safe, stay well, stay happy.

Mona

Gorgeous Gift of the Month

This beautiful glass vase was made by Bengt Edenfalk for Skruf Sweden some time between 1953 and 1978. It is shaped like a rustic log round and is in absolutely perfect condition. Each side is slightly different.

Measures just over 5 inches tall. Signature is etched into glass above the Skruf logo.

See it in my shop here.

The Snowbird brings winter with her!

Alas, my shop, Deer Path Vintage, is feeling a little empty now. That's because I've flown the Up North coop and migrated south for the winter with the rest of the opposed-to-the-cold birds. I couldn't bring my entire shop with me, but I didn't want to close it up entirely, so I've had to limit what is on the shelves right now. I'll be back up north right after Easter, and I'll be putting many items back--besides adding some new old things.
I do love this creamer and sugar set. Homer Laughlin, of course, and anyone who knows me knows how I love HL. I just don't have room for everything any more, or I would keep it, for sure.

Homer Laughlin for Cunningham Pickett, "Cardinal" design

I love these Poole Pottery dishes, too. They're hand painted and each piece is slightly different. I have two dessert dishes and two dessert bowls and I really love the look and feel of them. Poole is as British as Homer Laughlin is American. Vive La Difference!

Poole Pottery "Constellation" pattern - 1952-55

But let me get back to explaining my title. We came south for some warmth, but I think we brought the cold with us. Everywhere we go, the locals are complaining about the weather--record cold this year, and even three inches of snow one day! I keep my mouth shut. I don't want to tell them that it may have been us.

The local kids got the day off, and some of them had never seen that much snow before. They had to hurry up and build their snowpeople before it melted. Which of course it did by the end of the day.

Snow on the palms 1-13-10

A rare South Carolina beach scene

I've been wandering around the thrift and antique shops here and I'm really pretty astonished at the prices people put on their things. I can understand that times are tight and they want to make a profit, but I have to bite my tongue whenever I reach for a tag that reads three to five times the actual worth. A little research would save them from having to live with those pieces from here to eternity!

Mona

What a difference 20 years makes!

I've been thinking a lot about Etsy's decision to use "20 years or more" as the mark of a Vintage piece. When I first saw it, I had to laugh. I thought, "That's just silly". But at the same time, I wholeheartedly went along with the idea, because it meant I could list more items there.

After many debates about, say, 1988 being Vintage, I think I'm finally beginning to see the light. Here's why:

Great changes have taken place in 20 year spans. Not only societal and historical changes, but major changes in home and fashion styles. I can't help but think about the giant leap society took between the 20 years from 1900 to 1920. At the turn of the century, they were just barely out of the Victorian era, still wearing blowsy shirtwaists, bustles, and full length bathing suits. But by the 1920s they have moved on to bathtub gin, short flapper dresses, and cupid's bow lips.

When I was a young housewife in the mid-50s, anything from the mid-30s was considered positively antique--so out of it and old fashioned! We were well into modernistic, streamlined, Scandinavian influences and people were throwing out that 30s junk by the carloads. (Especially the clunky Mission Oak furniture we now associate with Stickley and other sought-after Craftsman era makers. It was way too big for our little ranch homes.)

By the late 50s and early1960s, we were throwing out the old cast-offs from the 1940s--those stuffy old mohair sofas, those rose-strewn rugs, those chenille bedspreads. Who would want that tired old junk? We didn't become nostalgic for it until years later, when it suddenly became popular again. It's that cycling of the old stuff--our grandmother's stuff-- that we've come to call "nostalgia".

In the 1980s, we were throwing out the 60s and 70s stuff, including the eye-popping psychedelic remnants of a free and easy culture, and heading toward the more abstract, the more natural, earthy (or earth-bound) aspects of a hippy generation that leaned toward hand-thrown pots, macrame, and unpainted barn siding.
And now here we are, in the 21st Century, already getting nostalgic for that past century. . .

I wonder what life will look like 20 years from now?