Hi everyone. I decided to make the theme of this post “Thrifting the Unknown“. Buying items that you’re not entirely sure about at the thrift is a fairly large part of our biz. You can prepare and learn all you want – but there will always be something that you haven’t seen before or aren’t sure of. Probably will write more on this in an upcoming Tuesday Tips post, but for now – here’s a few goodies.

This David Stewart hippo planter is actually from last week’s thriftrun, but he didn’t fit with our globetrotting theme so we didn’t post him. One of the keys to finding more items at the thrift is learning to recognize unmarked pieces. (It also saves tremendous time not having to pick up every single item to look at the bottom.) This hippo was probably passed over by hundreds of people before we got to him – mainly because he was unmarked.

David Stewart was a pretty well known California potter, who worked w/ Margaret Wildenhain at Pond Farm. He later produced a large series of gardenware animals as part of a company called “Lions Valley Stoneware”. Most of them were probably mass-producced (sometimes in Mexico), but they’re becoming collectible, especially with midcentury collectors. They had foil paper stickers but were almost never marked – but we’re able to recognize them. Well, usually. Beware – there are some repros of this type of stoneware.

We picked up this pottery horse at the thrift for the reverse reason – because it WAS marked, but with a name that wasn’t familiar to us (and probably not to anyone else who saw it). In this case, we’re sort of familiar with this type of ceramics which we’re assuming is 1950s-60s California pottery in the style of (or often copied from) Barbara Willis.

Willis’s crackle glaze/bisque pottery can command hundreds of dollars, but is almost never found in the thrift nowadays. However, some of her imitators are still worth picking up, and we have a feeling that this may be one of them. It’s marked “Caldania” or “Cal Dania”, and we’re hoping to turn up some information in the future (none of the Cal Dania pieces we’ve seen look like the one we found).

Sometimes we come across items at the thrift that aren’t marked and aren’t really our specialty. For instance, this little unmarked glass duck looked familiar – I immediately thought it could be Scandinavian glass. In this case, I used some educated guesses (you can’t ALWAYS look things up on the iPhone) to make a decision.

It definitely looked like handmade quality glass, it had the Scandinavian look to it, and I thought I remember seeing it before. The bottom was ground off, but there were no marks – I knew that sometimes glass like this has stickers that have come off. Sure enough, after some research online – it appears to be made by FM Konstglas of Ronneby, Sweden.

There are some cases where you find a marked item at the thrift that may be valuable, but there’s just as good a chance that it might not be. This was the case with this Syracuse Econo-Rim restaurantware cup. Syracuse is a very well-known maker. While restaurantware isn’t our specialty, we know there are avid collectors of it and some pieces can be very valuable.

However, we’re also aware that value often depends on the line or pattern. We’ve found a few examples of this graphic, which appears to be a winged version of Union Pacific’s “Streamliner” – but still aren’t 100% sure of value. In this case, it was still worth it to pick up the cup whether or not it had value – especially since it cost only 50 cents!

Last up – this art deco vase is also from a previous run. This is an example of thrifting where, if amazing things fall into your lap, you just have to be prepared to take a chance. We aren’t familiar with this older style of pottery, but it was marked “Weller“. I knew that name as one of the more famous American potteries, though I didn’t know much about the pottery itself.

I also knew that there was a possibility of it being a FAKE or a repro. I did try to iPhone it in, but doing research was just too difficult on the small screen. In the end, I just took a chance since the price was reasonable. Certain things seemed consistent with great age – the quality of the glaze, the crazing, the heft, the wear and chips on the clay at bottom. I think a lot of people passed it over, because this “pink and blue” color scheme could easily be something from the 1980s.

We’re fairly certain now that this is indeed Weller, and from a line called “Lavonia” from the 1920s. While not as tremendously valuable as some other art deco pottery we’ve found, it was still a great thrift find.

OK, hope we’ve given you some inspiration. If you’ve had great experiences thrifting “unknown” items, we’d love to hear about it.

This post is linked up to ATG’s Thrift Share Monday.