THE KOVELS | Antiques and collecting Silhouettes are known for having shadowy past

A silhouette is a shadow portrait.
The first known ones, found in ancient caves, are black outlines of animals that look like shadows on the wall.
Cut-paper silhouettes were popular in the 18th century. They were not as expensive or time-consuming as an oil portrait, so they were favored as a quick record of the family.
Some artists had the help of a chair that used a candle to throw a shadow of the subject onto plain white paper. The shadow likeness was then traced and cut.
The best profilists were famous artists in their day. Perhaps the best-known was August Edouart, who cut profiles of about 3,800 Americans.
When photographs became available, the silhouette went out of style.
Just for decorating
But a commercial type of decorative silhouette came into fashion in the 1920s.
Many of these were reverse paintings on either flat or curved glass.
Multiples were made by printing the picture on the glass, then hand-coloring highlights.
The pictures were decorative, not depictions of real people. The backgrounds were sometimes painted, sometimes colored, sometimes made of crumpled tinfoil.
Sentimental pictures of Colonial figures, children at play, Art Deco-style women at dressing tables, or animals were popular.
There were also silhouette-decorated poems about home or Mother, and advertising pieces with a store name and often a working thermometer.
Many are marked with the name of the manufacturer.
These inexpensive printed silhouettes remained popular until the 1950s.
Revival
Collectors have rediscovered them in the past 10 years.
During the mid-20th century, silhouette artists started to cut pictures at large public events, like fairs, or during Christmas season at large department stores.
These flat paper pictures are in limited supply but have not attracted large numbers of collectors.
Q. I found a little gold-colored Coca-Cola charm in a box of stuff my dad stashed away. It's 11/2 inches tall and shaped like a Coke bottle. There's a small loop at the top that could attach the charm to a chain or bracelet. When I was a kid in the late 1940s, I saw similar charms in gumball machines. Can you give me any information?
A. Coke-bottle charms like yours were used on Coca-Cola charm bracelets, tie clasps and key rings. They were also sold as single charms. During the 1940s and '50s, the Coca-Cola Co. ordered dozens of gift items that were sold to its bottlers throughout the country. Coke bottlers could give them to their family members and their best customers. A charm like yours sells for $10 to $20.
Q. I have some Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals with Gund labels. Can you tell me what they're worth?
A. Gund Manufacturing Co. of New York City was licensed to manufacture Disney character toys from 1947 to 1955, again in 1959 and then from 1968 to 1971. Winnie-the-Pooh was the title character in two 1920s children's books by English author A.A. Milne (1882-1956). Pooh did not become a Disney character until 1966, when Disney released an animated featurette titled "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree." So your stuffed Disney-style Pooh characters must have been made by Gund sometime between 1968 and 1971. They would not sell for more than a few dollars each.
Q. I have an old embalming kit that was given to me in 1980 by the owner of a funeral home in Virginia. A curator at the Civil War Museum in Frederick, Md., says it dates from between the Civil War and 1900. The case is 14 inches high by 151/2 inches long by 61/2 inches wide. Stored inside are six small bottles of fluids, draining tools and injecting tools. Can you tell me more, including how I could sell it?
A. Your kit includes the tools and chemicals needed to practice the modern method of "arterial embalming." Portable embalming kits began to be widely used in this country during the Civil War. Families wanted the bodies of their sons shipped home for burial, and that could be done safely only if the bodies were embalmed. After the war, the practice of embalming spread. Kits like yours were used by embalmers who went to homes to prepare bodies for viewing in the family parlor. A museum might be interested in displaying your kit. If you want to sell, you could try an Internet auction. An early-1900s kit recently sold online for close to $300. If the bottles in your kits still hold chemicals, be careful. They might be dangerous.
Q. What can you tell me about a 9-inch ceramic mammy figurine that a former employer gave me? Mammy is wearing a blue dress, a white apron with red and blue flowers, and a white scarf with blue polka dots. She is holding an empty laundry basket. The bottom is marked "Mandy, Brayton Pottery."
A. Durlin E. Brayton founded Brayton Laguna Pottery in South Laguna Beach, Calif., in 1927. By the late 1930s, the business had grown into a large company. Its vivid and high-quality dishes, vases, tiles and figurines were big sellers. Your mammy figurine, called "Mandy," is a soap-pad holder designed to sit next to the kitchen sink. It dates from the 1940s and sells today for about $225.
Q. I own three comb-back Windsor side chairs with tags that read "Sikes Chair Company, Pattern 1412, Finish: Maple, Buffalo, New York." Can you tell me anything about the company?
A. Samuel Sikes founded a chair-manufacturing company in Buffalo in 1859. Probably during the 1870s, the firm's name became Sikes Chair Co. In 1933, the company was renamed Sikes Co. That dates your chair to sometime between the 1870s and the early 1930s. Sikes manufactured all sort of chairs. Some, like yours, were reproductions of early-American styles. Others were made in the Arts & amp; Crafts or Art Deco style.
Tip
If your old cast-iron pan without a wooden handle is dirty, clean it in a self-cleaning oven.
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