Most of us are familiar with quilted bed coverings, which have a history going back centuries. We’re also familiar with the prices the best of antique quilts can command today. Quilts can be found in many classic forms and colors in specially tailored alterations of these forms so that no two quilts in the same design ever look the same. Many of the older quilts contain arcane references to family histories or, in the case of Underground Railroad quilts that could be hanged outside, hints on ways for runaway slaves to make their way to freedom. For more information on bed-size quilts, see Sandra Starley’s column, “Covering Quilts,” published regularly here in Discover Vintage America.

My focus in this article is on smaller wall cloth and wooden building hangings that model quilts.

Small Cloth Quilted Wall Hangings

Antique bed-size quilts are sometimes displayed as wall hangings. Small pieces of quilting or embroidery, sometimes framed in embroidery hoops, appear to be a fairly modern take on the ancient art of quilting. At least, I couldn’t find any references to these smaller decorative accents dating before the mid-to-late 20th century. These will often be framed by embroidery hoops that can also be used to create neat squares that can be sewn together for larger quilts. The hoops used for wall hangings are often trimmed with lace or other fabric. Seen here is an unusually large quilted hoop that hangs in my kitchen. This one is double-sewn around the edges of the pieces used to make the picture.

Another example I have of a quilted wall hanging is a square piece (18”) signed Cheri Tamm Raymond, Newport, NH, 1983, making it more than 40 years old. In my experience, though, these small wall hangings are usually not signed.

The oldest small cloth wall hangings, some of them genuine antiques, may result from efforts to preserve sections of larger quilts too damaged to save. Find antique examples of small wall hangings on the Rocky Mountain Quilts website: rockymountainquilts.com.

Barn Quilts

Because wooden evocations of quilting are designed to accent barns and other outbuildings, they are larger than internal wall hangings. They are square, 4-feet-by-4-feet or 8 feet-by-8 feet and brightly colored, which makes them stand out against the uniformly and often sometimes drably painted buildings that they decorate.

This art form dates from about 300 years ago. It’s believed that they originated with immigrants settling in Pennsylvania. Those most commonly seen today have their origin in 2001 from Donna Sue Groves, who made one for her parents’ barn and sparked the modern craze for a reissue of this art.

The oldest of these had the same kind of function as cloth quilts, and they often repeated the artistic motifs of the cloth ones. Sometimes, these contained important messages, such as identifying farm ownership for travelers. They may have served as good luck charms to attract good luck and ward off the bad. It has also been suggested that the barn quilts, much as the cloth quilts that hung on porch rails outside houses, were signals to those fleeing slavery, telling them where to find shelter and food.

Wall tiles aren’t just an antique decorative accent but a treat for modern collectors. They have a long history: Ancient tiles were being used for paving various surfaces as early as centuries before Christ. But most of the oldest wall tiles seen today date from the 1880s and have become collectible in their own right as well as sought after for home décor. Some older tiles were made of metal, but collector interest today is focused on the ceramic tiles. They were originally used as backing behind stove pipes, as flooring, or as decorative accents in hallways or around doors. These inlaid tiles were described using the adjective “encaustic.” As described on Giovanni’s Tile Design web site, giovannistile.com/blog/the-history-of-decorative-tiles, encaustic tile combines a plain clay base with a stamped area that is filled with colored liquid clay and fired to fuse the different layers together. These encaustic figural art motifs are the tiles of most interest to collectors today.

Antique ceramic tiles were usually about a half inch thick vs. a quarter inch for modern tiles. Still, the thicker width of old tiles did not protect them from damage; it is often difficult to find undamaged tiles today, especially sets of matching older tiles for contemporary home renovation projects. Damage could happen over time while the tiles were in place, or they could be damaged in the process of dismantling and removing them. Tiles taken directly from walls will often have on their backs the cement used to install them, which prevents identification of the maker’s mark and patent and pattern numbers that are usually included on the backs of the original tile. Collectors prefer clean backs that reveal these manufacturing details.

Manufacturers Worldwide and Close to Home

Decorative tiles were a worldwide manufacturing phenomenon. Most of the more famous tile manufacturers were based in the United States, England, Portugal, Morocco, and Japan. Over time, the term “Moroccan” has been used to denote a style rather than a point of origin. But the most famous and original Moroccan tile maker is Zellig, which was actually founded in Morocco and has been functioning for centuries right up until today.

Perhaps the most famous of American decorative tile companies was the J. & J.G. Low Co., founded in Chelsea, MA, in 1877; it closed in 1902. Other American companies founded in the late 1880s included the American Encaustic Tiling Co. in Zanesville, OH (which later morphed into the Shawnee Co.) and Grueby Faience Co. in Revere, MA (closed in 1921). The backs of American Encaustic tiles are marked simply with the company’s initials A.E. (An English company called Alfred Meakin from the 1920s is also marked simply with initials A.M. The use of just the initials may seem to us today a bit of braggadocio by companies so proud of their work they didn’t even have to use the whole name, but it’s more likely that early tile making was restricted to just a few companies, making the use of the initials more readily identifiable at the time).

These days, what with open-concept home layouts and modern-style sliding and other doors, we don’t have much use for doorstops anymore – except of course – as a collectible! As the name implies, doorstops, which were usually made of iron to make them heavy enough, were made to keep doors open when breezes or just the weight of the door would tend to make them close automatically. Sometimes, people just used a big rock for the purpose. In fact, the most expensive “doorstop” in the world is a 3.5-kilogram (more than seven pounds) piece of amber, millions of years old, dug up by an elderly woman from a stream bed in Romania and that she used as a doorstop. It’s valued at over $1 million! After she died, the piece was sold to the Romanian state and is currently being kept at the Provincial Museum of Buzau.

The first doorstops actually made as such came into vogue in the late 18th century, which is when doors began to be designed with hinges to close the door automatically. The earliest doorstops, made of brass in England, were used to keep doors open in order to freshen the air in rooms. Cast iron had replaced brass by the 19th century. Antique cast-iron doorstops were made in every conceivable form, both painted and unpainted: animals, baskets of flowers, houses, ships…You name it and there was probably a doorstop made in that form. Heavy cast-iron flat irons that were actually used in pre-electric days to iron clothes after the metal was heated over a stove have also been used as doorstops.

Perhaps the best known among antique doorstops were those made by Hubley, founded in Lancaster, PA, in 1894. Hubley’s earliest productions were cast-iron toys, but it began making doorstops early in the 20th century. One of its most popular forms was a Boston bulldog on a stand.
The oldest Hubley doorstops have a maker’s mark on the bottom and a mold number on the hollow inside (although later Hubleys had a paper label on the back instead of the earlier engraving). Depending on the form, some doorstops (such as the full-form bulldog and other animals) have a middle seam, which will be very tight in a Hubley.

Many of the cast-iron doorstops found today are reproductions. Antique doorstops in a three-dimensional form usually have a screw to keep the two sides together. The most important clue to antique status is the screw head. This will be a straight, slotted screw, not a Phillips-head screw seen on later imitations (kellyelko.com/antique-cast-iron-doorstops). Antique doorstops also have a very smooth surface, whereas later versions have a rougher or “pebbly” feel. These authenticity factors are important to know in order to distinguish old Hubleys and other antique doorstops from later imitations. Some doorstops, e.g., in floral forms, are figural on only one side and are forged in one piece.

Hubley wasn’t the only maker of doorstops that have achieved antique status today. Some other companies included National Foundry, Albany Foundry, Greenglatt Studio, and Bradley and Hubbard.

When I began collecting mid-century American-made kitchen and dinnerware sets, I quickly learned that even items made by entirely different manufacturers could be pleasingly matched on the same table. Fast-selling dinnerware sets were imitated by competing companies. My first discovery of this phenomenon was in Brown Drip pottery dinnerware, made by Hull (from the 1960s to ‘80s) and McCoy potteries (from 1968), both no longer in production. These are so closely aligned in color and foam treatment that they are virtually indistinguishable from one other without flipping the items over to check the mark. What this allows one to do is mix and match the items so as to make complete sets despite their not all being in the same brand (Such is not the case with Pfaltzgraff brown foam from the 1940s, where the brown in the body is so dark as to be nearly black that tends to clash with the lighter brown of the other two brands. As with the other two companies, though, Pfaltzgraff is no longer in production).

Then I found a hen on nest casserole dish that looked very much like my brown foam sets. It turned out to be made of glass rather than pottery, but its mix of brown and tan colors displays quite nicely among my Hull and McCoy. The hen on nest has a Westmoreland mark.

Fiesta is a pottery dinner and kitchenware brand known for its colorful mix and match sets, whose earliest colors, beginning in 1936 and into the 1950s, have become very collectible: red, yellow, cobalt blue, green, and ivory and (added in 1937) turquoise. With a gap during World War II, the red continued in production through 1972. Other colors, e.g., rose and gray, are more recent. The earliest Fiesta pieces have an inked backstamp on the bottom that says GENUINE (in caps) and fiesta (in lower case). The Homer Laughlin Co. dates from 1877 and is still in business.

My parents were early collectors of Depression Glass, and when my mom was trying to clear out some collectibles (to make room for others!), she gave some Depression dinner sets to my three sisters and me. Luckily, we were each attracted to different sets! I had always loved the American Sweetheart Monax dinnerware, of which my mom had nearly a complete set. Monax is a white color that thins to an almost transparent opalescence around the edges. Mom also gave me her set of Monax Petalware made by MacBeth-Evans in the 1930s (making it nearly antique!), which features a similar opalescence and matches nicely to fill in empty spots in my American Sweetheart set – which was, incidentally, made by the same company in the same era. I have long been struck by the fact that Depression glass, cheaply made at manufacture, has lasted so well for nearly a hundred years!

Recently, I found in an antique shop a set of four stemmed tumblers in Fenton’s French Opalescent hobnail, which matches very nicely with my Monax dishes. This Fenton tableware was made between 1940 and the early 1950s. I confess I’ve never personally seen the dinner and other plates in this treatment, but they are listed in books such as Margaret and Kenn Whitmyer’s Fenton Art Glass Patterns, 1939-1980.

Candlelit fairy lights (AKA fairy lamps) were popular in the 19th century before access to gas and electrical lighting. George Miller Clarke invented fairy lights in England in 1844, just about the dawn of the Victorian era. These lights consisted of a base, into which a candle could be inserted, and a chimney or shade. They would provide light when placed at intervals in hallways or rooms.

Their appearance differed from kerosene lamps in that fairy lamps were more colorful and decorative but also smaller; typical kerosene lanterns were strictly functional, consisting primarily of a tall shade and oil reservoir made of clear glass.

After Clarke introduced the form, several other Victorian companies produced fairy lights, being careful not to infringe on Clarke’s designs. These included Pairpoint, Baccarat, Hobbs Brockunier, Central Glass, and Daum, among others (www.fairylampclub.com). Later producers included Indiana Glass, Westmoreland, and Fenton.

Even though it didn’t start making them until the 1950s, fairy lights made by Fenton Art Glass Co. have become popular with modern collectors. The company issued fairy lights to celebrate seasons from winter to spring and holidays from Easter to Halloween to Christmas to … well, you name it. Fenton was especially interested in celebrating Christmas as a Christian holiday, but it was also careful to make the decoration of most of its winter-themed lights generic so that they can be enjoyed by those of other faiths (or no faith affiliation at all). Let’s not forget, for example, that December also brings us Hannukah, the Jewish “festival of lights.”

This article focuses on fairy lights, of whatever maker, that were made to celebrate winter and its holidays, a time when these twinkling lights are especially welcome in the dark nights – and often sunless days – of the season. But first, some information about safe usage.

Safety First

The oldest fairy lights generally consisted of one solid piece of glass with a tall stem and a wide skirt. (It’s worth noting here that the first ones Fenton made had a candle access hole that was too narrow to accommodate a votive candle, the size of choice for fairy lights. The company subsequently widened their one-piece lamps just enough to accommodate a votive.) Other fairy lights come in several shapes and numbers of separate parts. Most consist of the base with a separately molded top (two-piece), others of the base, globe, and a separate candle base between them (three piece).

Glassmakers, including but not limited to Fenton, that made fairy lights for distributor LG Wright even made four-piece forms, in which the fourth piece was a clear glass cylinder to hold the candle that was inserted into the middle, recessed holder found in the three-piece models. Consequently, these lamps look like three-piece models when viewed from the outside.

The insert that was this fourth piece may have been Wright’s effort to protect the outer globe from flame damage, it having been discovered that votive lights can generate sufficient internal heat to crack the chimney part of the lamp. Consequently, today’s collectors of all fairy light forms prefer to use shorter tea lights that generate far less heat – or, better still, LED-battery votives that generate no heat at all.