Convict made Bricks from Ohio Brick Collecting

Apparently Ohio established a convict brick plant in 1914 or so.  A light, chatty article from that date claims the brick makers worked 6 days a week, had their own baseball diamond and a band which performed concerts.  70 prisoners maintained the plant, and apparently there were no guards.  Other convicts supervised the work. 

I find it brick hard to believe things were that lovely.  Certainly there is better ways to reform a prisoner than having one work a kiln six days a week, but then I wasn't there.  Thankfully.  A few folks who ran brick factories commercially were a bit peeved, but the convict bricks were determined to constitute such a small percentage of the market, they were allowed to compete.

Georgia had convicts make bricks as well, but I don't see any indication they had a baseball team…

The Ohio convict bricks are dated here in 1928.  They were used to line tunnels and municipal projects.

Two Handmade Bricks made by Convicts  Ohio  Collection Jim Linderman





There is a Brick Collectors association.  The ICBA website even has an interactive brick database!  Check out the screen grab below.  You can sort by state…this happens to be Ohio. 

DIRT Collection

Collectors and Collecting.  Presenting my Dirt Collection.

I won't say this is the first time I have paid for dirt, as my garden needed soil to counteract the sand.  I felt stupid buying dirt, as there is so much of it around...

But this is the first time I can honestly say I have owned a collection of dirt.

Seems like every state was swept up here, then specialty items started appearing.  Dirt from Disneyland.  Dirt from the highest point in so and so, the furthest point in somewhere else. Well over one hundred examples, each one numbered and labled with a hand-typed "cursive" red font from a typewriter.  Each little plastic pill bottle scooped full and carried home.  

We used to have our choice of two fonts, but they could have gone with the dymo labelmaker too. 

Said to have been collected by a husband and wife team of traveling CLOWNS!  The estate sale had their costumes and such too.


DIRT collection Jim Linderman  No date (ancient...dirt is really old)  

Books and  Ebooks by the author are available to browse or purchase HERE

Pictures Always Lie Press Photographs from the Past and a Piker Pushing a Peanut

I'm a bit tied up, so the post today is a slight rehash, but never, I promise, have I posted a picture of a prone piker pushing a peanut across the country with his nose. Note how Nehi butted in with their sign carrying flivver. The point here is that press photographs were always cropped, painted, embellished and fixed...and we thought a picture couldn't lie?

FAR from it.

I guess you don't always see a man with a Bee Beard either...but some drone in the photo department thought he could improve on it with a black halo.


See you in a few days.


Group of Original Glossy Press Photographs embellished by hand, circa 1930 - 1960. All Collection Jim Linderman


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Big Giant Kachina and a Cigar Store Indian Authenticity Spirit Trade Sign and Antique American Indian Art

Many a young girl received a doll today, Merry Christmas, by the way. They may teach, but they aren't spirits.

Hopi and Zuni dolls are and were used to allow young women from the tribe to participate in sacred dances performed by the men. A rich, complicated cultural ritual I am not qualified to discuss, and I am not really sure anyone of European origin can, to tell the truth. We can "own" kachina dolls, but can we understand them? I guess as interlopers. There are some 400 identified, each with distinctive features represented by adornment and design.

Once you have an appreciation for cottonwood carvings from 1900 and before with flaking natural pigments, you may desire to own them as well. Not easy today, as the early ones, or what could be called "real" ones are for the most part tucked away. There are different levels for collectors...19th century, of which I have cribbed a few here from the catalog of an exhibition at the Galerie Flak in Paris from ten years ago (link here to the catalog) those from 1900 to before World War two, and those since. The later ones are purely decorative and produced for tourists, and although fine carvings are still produced by Native American artists they are far more elaborate in design and far less transcendent than the early ones.

The earliest kachinas were flat, simple, rudimentary wooden objects with sparse adornment but great magical power. The later ones can be beautiful but are more decorative, and it is quite common for dealers to date them earlier than they really are. There are literally hundreds of identified and collected kachina carvers working today, and there are festivals and such to display their work. You can even take a bus tour right to the carvers, they don't have to set up outside train stations any more to sell to Paleface. (I am sorry to use what is now a derogatory, and likely Hollywood invented term, but after what we did to those who took care of our land before we got here, and what we have done to it since, let's face it...some of us have earned names worse.)

The photograph above is dated 1944 on the reverse. It is, of course, a Southwestern trading post with a symbolic gigantic Kachina out front. (A "Cigar Store Indian" as it were...another large sculptural object with racial and cultural baggage!) The rugs would indicate this is a shop of Navajo goods...I hope the women asked if they had any old Hopi or Zuni ones behind the counter, as the Navajo didn't make them then, but they do today. I understand now you can even find Kachinas carved in Korea. Ugh.

Snapshot 1944 Collection Jim Linderman

Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books

Collector Goes Overboard. Cigar Band Man

I spent plenty of time at the 26th Street Flea Market and the Pier Shows in NYC. I was a regular. I don't know if folks noticed me and said "there's that guy again" but I certainly said it to enough to myself. My favorites? The one legged man entirely dressed in a pirate uniform asking each dealer for cast iron cookware. The large man asking repeatedly "poker chips? poker chips? poker chips?" while dressed in a dingy t-shirt which read of course "POKER CHIPS" and the most flamboyant fellow in stripped tights...and I mean tight. Here is another fellow who seems to have taken his hobby a bit too far...a man dressed in cigar bands. At least he is appearing at the International Cigar Band Society convention in New York City in 1947. I hope he took a cab right to the show, but if not, I guess no one would have looked twice.

Original Press Photograph, Man with Cigar Band Clothing 1947 Collection Jim Linderman

Painted Ladies Mail Art Mystery

Curious. I guess 1910 was a good year to paint huge hats on postcards. All are American, from various printers, but each has been doctored to the extreme. All were mailed, making the modern day contemporary "mail art" movement seem tame. I have no idea why these victorian ladies with hats galore were painted, but it is a trail I intend to follow. I suspect they COULD have been enhanced as a form of tramp art...painted by local artists on the street and peddled for pennies, a "value added" trinket. They are by various hands, but all similar. Any help out there?

Six Hand Painted Victorian Post Cards circa 1910 Collection Jim Linderman

Going To Mars 350,000,000 Miles in 5 Minutes by Professor Hunt

Professor Everett Hunt's homemade and handmade book, at least a few pages from it. The text consists of a newspaper article with Indiana byline. Several illustrations. Headlines inserted into slots. A bit of indecipherable text. That the article has an April 1 date is, I believe, a coincidence. Date Unknown.

"Going To Mars 350,000,000 Miles in 5 Minutes" by Professor Everett Hunt. Handmade book. Circa 1930? Collection Jim Linderman

Another Bob (Horrors in Wax #3)

Say...isn't that something? Bob "Ski-Nose" Hope's head packed securely for a trip to the wax museum back room. Mr. Hope lived until the age of 100 yet never told an old joke. This is a press photograph, earlier known as wire photos, radiophotos, telediagraph and belinograph (jeepers, am I looking up words today) There has been some question as to the legality of buying and selling press photos, they have copyrights after all...but I guess if the agency wants this one back, they need just ask.

"Heading for Cold Storage" UPI press Original Photo 1968 Collection Jim Linderman