Perfume-bottle collectors like to specialize in favorite types. Some want figural bottles, some brand names.
Perhaps the most popular are the Czechoslovakian "large stopper" bottles. These fancy bottles were made of cut or pressed glass, sometimes clear, sometimes colored. Tops were often as tall as the bottle.
This pale yellow cut-glass bottle is topped by a clear stopper decorated with frosted flowers. The Czechoslovakian perfume bottle was sold at auction by Monsen & Baer, Vienna, Va., for $297.
Flowers, animals, women, geometric and other designs were used as decorations on the flat upper sections of the stoppers. The bottle was sometimes made with a matching design, but more often the bottle was a different design or color.
These perfume bottles were filled at home and kept on a mirrored tray on a dressing table. Many women had trays with 10 or 20 bottles, each filled with a different perfume. Very fancy bottles had added gold filigree decorations highlighted with glass "jewels."
The $1 bottle of the 1920s now sells for hundreds of dollars.
Because the bottles are attractive and showy, they were often kept in the family for several generations. Look around someone in your family might be saving a treasure.
Can you give me information about my unusual oak hall stand? It's 7 feet tall and has not only coat hooks and a lift-top seat but a tall clock in the center with mirrors on each side. My father bought it in the 1950s from a Texas antiques dealer. A German friend says it is European, but the clock is marked "Waterbury."
Your hall stand is unusual, but we have seen others with large, built-in clocks. They were machine-made in the United States between 1890 and 1910, when oak furniture was at the height of popularity.
The Waterbury Clock Co. of Waterbury, Conn., was established in 1857. By the late 19th century, Waterbury was manufacturing wall clocks in wooden cases as well as clockworks for other makers. So your hall tree might have been made by any of the many oak-furniture manufacturers throughout the country.
Large furniture pieces are sought by today's collectors. Your hall stand could sell for as much as $5,000.
I have not been able to figure out a value for my adjustable dressmaker's form. The tag calls it "The Progress Automatic Adjustable Dress Form" and says it was made "expressly for Sears Roebuck & Co." The maker is listed as the Ellanam L&M Adjustable Dress Form Co., Brooklyn, N.Y. The tag lists several patents between 1908 and 1912.
Your dressmaker's form was sold to homemakers and seamstresses across the country via the Sears catalog. It is given a prominent place in the 1914 Sears catalog, where its price is listed as $9.75. A Progress-brand model with fewer adjustments sold for $5.75.
If you lived east of Ohio, you saved on shipping costs because the form could be sent directly from the Brooklyn maker's factory. If you lived in Chicago, you could buy the form at the city's Sears retail store.
Collectors of sewing antiques might be interested in buying your dressmaker's form. If in excellent condition, it would sell for $50 to $100.
I have a large collection of Moss Rose china, but I can't find any history on it. Can you help?
Moss Rose was a popular 19th-century china pattern. It was named for a variety of rose with small, fuzzy, pink flowers that was popular during the Victorian era.
The pattern was made by many companies in Europe and the United States. Twentieth-century china patterns called Moss Rose picture the types of roses seen today.
I just found a plastic jar that must have held a tobacco product because it still smells of cigarettes. On the bottom, it is marked "Jarette, Genuine ColtRock, Hartford, Conn." It also has the Colt logo used on guns. Was this a gun accessory?
The Colt Manufacturing Co. that made firearms also made plastic accessories from 1920 to 1955. At first, they made a phenol formaldehyde plastic they called ColtRock, which was also known as Bakelite. In 1935 they switched to a synthetic-resin plastic.
The plastics division of Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Co. was sold in 1956 and changed its name to Colt's Plastics Company. It still makes plastic containers and tops.
Your "Jarette" is from the 1920s-30s. It was made in two sizes, 4-1/2 and 3 inches high. At least six colors of plastic were used.
The Jarette was used with tobacco and was part of a line of smoking-related products made of ColtRock. The Pipe-a-Dor was a jar on an ashtray, with indentations for pipes. The Tobac-A-Dor was a tobacco humidor that had a sponge in the lid. The Smoke-sette held cigarettes in a pop-up ring.
Another famous ColtRock product was "The Foursome," a four-way plug used on a table to plug in a toaster, coffee pot and other electrical equipment in the days when wall plugs were few. The plugs sell for $50 to $150; the smoking accessories range from $500 to $1,000.
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