Featured Crafts

A Modern Hope Chest - I already had an older cedar chest, handed down to me from my father's mother. It had some old keepsakes in it--a framed pressed flower, a Dutch Bible, a household expense record my grandpa had kept long before I was born. To these treasures I added my mother's wedding dress, my high school year books, ...

American Tinware of Days Ago - Commonly associated with Yankee peddlers, American tinware often was distributed by them as they went from home to home around the countryside. Frequently they were hired by the makers of tinware and traversed the Atlantic seaboard on foot and with carts and horses. Later they carried their goods westward. Tinware ...

Authenticity of Eskimo Inuit Art & Native American Art - Other fakes are actually made of cast stone simulating actual Inuit Eskimo art carvings and wood for imitation Native American carvings. These fakes, which are harder to distinguish from authentic artwork, are often hand carved reproductions of an original piece of artwork. Workshops have illegally ...

Book and Collectible Searches - 1. Condition of the item 2. The publisher or company 3. The year 4. Shipping Costs Especially with books, you may find quite a few shops that carry a particular title. If you are willing to take a copy that is a more worn you can often opt for the lowest price. With auctions or buying direct, always ...

Brief History of Trade Cards - By the 1880s, trade cards had become a major way of advertising America's products and services, and a trip to the store usually brought back some of these attractive, brightly-colored cards to be pasted into a scrapbook. Some of the products most heavily advertised by trade cards were in the ...

Caring for Heirlooms - Textiles are extremely fragile. Eventually the fibers in any cloth will begin to disintegrate. Nothing lasts forever, especially textiles. Our job, if we own one of these treasures, is to lengthen their life by protecting them to the best of our ability. A few enemies of our treasured quilts includelight, ...