By Rebecca Rego Barry — Walking home down Clinton Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side one day in 1999, writer and filmmaker Laurie Gwen Shapiro encountered a tall, dark, and handsome man on the sidewalk swallowing fire. "Wow!", Shapiro exclaimed, "Who are you?" It was beloved sword-swallower, magician, and collector Johnny Fox. After Shapiro and Fox chatted for a bit, he invited her into his museum. Shapiro looked at the brightly colored storefront behind him called the Freakatorium: El Museo Loco, and then back...

Amazing! Spectacular! Step Right Up and Get a Piece of the Greatest Shows on Earth

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — For millions of American kids, Ringling Brothers’ shows were a highlight of childhood—a magical experience of heart-stopping acrobatic feats, majestic trained animals, and silly bumbling clowns. Yet those shows came to a stop in 2017, when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus held its last show after operating continuously for 147 years. Though circuses will live on, adapting to current audiences and culture, it is clear that the classic era of animal menageries and sideshow...

The Disappearing Art of Porcelain Signs

By Dave Margulius — I liked to collect things even as a child. Things that didn’t cost anything, like different colors of stones. There was something about the advertising that I liked, so in the mid-1970s, I started to pick up porcelain signs. I got heavier and heavier into that, and by the 1980s, I had a fairly substantial collection. As a result of collecting telephone signs, I would run into other advertising specialists, and I started seeing the kind of stuff that other people were buying and looking...

Signs, Tins, and Other Advertising Antiques

By Maribeth Keane — How did I get started collecting advertising antiques? My dad was a lecturer and tutor in graphics and art from the 1960s onwards, and was into vintage automobiles and advertising, like vintage signs, pumps, and globes. So I spent the large portion of my childhood going to auto swap meets and antiques fairs, I think it all started from there. The first thing I collected was old bottles. In one of the books I read as a child, there was an aqua green bottle and I thought it was great and I...