Product Description
Walter Nichols Chinese Art Deco rug c. 1935
Walter Nichols Chinese Art Deco rug c. 1935
WALTER NICHOLS China
Chinese Art Deco stripe & chevron rug c. 1935
36″ x 54″
Walter Abner Burns Nichols was one of the most colorful of the American adventurer/entrepreneurs in 1920s China. The Nichols name has come to be used almost synonymously with the ‘Chinese deco’ rugs manufactured in Tientsin, China in the 1920s and 1930s. Nichols did not originate the Chinese deco style, but he did a great deal to popularize it and to maintain its high standards of manufacture.
Nichols began in his youth as a first-class wool grader who went to Tientsin around 1920 to work for the Elbrook family of wool merchants. Nichols started his own business a couple of years later. In a brochure he produced in the late ’20s, with the assistance of Pande-Cameron, he announced: “In 1924 W.A.B. Nichols of Tientsin, North China, introduced the Super Chinese Rug which has become world famous. It is known in every market as the most durable and beautiful product of the modern Chinese weavers art and adorns the homes of people all over the earth.”
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Margaret Postgate / Cowan Pottery Studio American Art Deco Cubist Elephant bookends c. 1929
MARGARET POSTGATE (1879-1953) USA
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COWAN POTTERY STUDIO USA
Cubist Elephant bookends 1929
Ceramic bookends with a black gunmetal glaze
Signed: Cowan studio mark (under glaze) Cowan bookend numbers 840 and 841
For more information and illustration see: Cowan Pottery and the Cleveland School, by Mark Bassett and Victoria Naumann (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1997).
H: 4 1/2″ x W: 5 1/2” x D: 3 3/4”
Margaret J. Postgate was born in Chicago, IL on September 29, 1879 and died at a hospital in the Bronx, NY in 1953. Her family moved to Manhattan around 1910 and then Brooklyn around 1925 and she remained a Brooklyn resident right up until her death. Her parents were both born in England: John W. Postgate and Margaret Postgate nee Derry. She had siblings, a brother George and one or two sisters, Mary and/or Mae. Margaret studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 1925, 1925, and 1926 she participated in soap sculpture carving competitions, some sponsored by Procter & Gamble Corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pamphlets exist as well as exhibition brochures and others on “how-to” carving penned by Postgate. Margaret Postgate designed for Cowan from 1929-1930 where she adapted a few of the designs she had rendered in soap for ceramic sculptures for the Cowan Pottery. She also executed a few pieces of sculpture that were cast in bronze for the bronze division of the Gorham Manufacturing Company.
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Ohlsson & Rice Rare Streamline American Art Deco Tether Race Car Model No. 88 with Trailer c. 1950
OHLSSON & RICE (founded 1941) Los Angeles, CA
Tether Race Red car Model No. 88Gas powered tether car racer 1950
Steel and various metals with the car and trailer details painted red, rubber tires and cork details
The license plate reads: California, 19-50, 61U421
H: 5″ x L” 13 1/2″ x D: 7 1/2″
Price: $3,000
In 1941 Irv Ohlsson teamed up with Harry Rice, and the firm of Ohlsson & Rice was founded producing model race cars and propellers. No other engines at the time combined the reliability, ease of maintenance, simplicity of operation and unlimited life of the Ohlsson & Rice engines. The Second World War put a temporary hold on their success, however, as all manufacturing facilities were turned over to military production. By the time the war shut down their production, they had produced about 75,000 engines.
As soon as the war was over, Ohlsson & Rice got back into production. Even with a shortage of needed materials and machines somewhat worn out by 3-shift a day wartime production use, they jumped back into a market that had a seemingly endless demand for their products. Modelers were hungry to get back into flying, and O & R took advantage of the market by buying the machinery needed to meet the huge demand.
Ohllson & Rice die cast tether cars were first manufactured in 1946. The early model cars had solid rear brake drums. open air front grill, 10 air vent slots in the seat, windshield, manual fuel pump, external hand brake lever, 4 nerf bars or radius rods, and plated front axle. The cars were fitted with a .23 or .29 Ohlsson and Rice engine. The easiest way to tell their plane engines from the car engines was the exhaust port. The cars have a straight cut exhaust and the planes had an angled cut port. However they are interchangeable except to be estetically correct. Basic colors included white, black, red , blue and yellow. The .29 engine were available in either spark ignition models or with a glow plug. In the early days Ohlsson and Rice had trouble with their engines and discovered a lot of the problems were due to inferior fuel sources. To rectify this they started to manufacture their own Nitro Glow fuel. This seemed to cure their engine problems. The later models in the fifties went to a closed front grill , 1 air vent slot in seat, hollow brake drums, no windshield and a smaller .049 engine. The last of the midget racers were made in 1959.
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