Posted 9 years ago
kiwipaul
(117 items)
These are the actual pictures from my archive, of a couple of items I owned in the early 2000's, and subsequently sold to raise funds to buy my business.
Both were designed by Albin Muller, an architect and designer who was a leading light of the German Arts & Crafts movement. He joined the Darmstadt Artists' Colony in 1906, and after the death of Joseph Maria Olbrich in 1908 he took over the role of leader of the Colony.
I was in Budapest in 1996 in a cafe/bookshop and picked up the Taschen book "Design Classics 1880-1930" and flicked through the pictures, which included one of these clocks. I was doing the many Budapest antique shops at the time, and the next shop I went into had this clock in pieces in a box on the floor. I nearly fainted, and ran back to the cafe to buy the book, and once I was sure what I was seeing, began haggling for the clock.
A few years later, in the relatively early days of eBay, maybe 1999, I found the kettle, which also appears in the same book.
While I would love to still own these, I can never say I regret selling them, because they contributed to a new chapter in my life, which I would not have been able to start without their sale.
Luck to begin a new life, hoping you will stay that lucky connoisseur ;-)
You know how it goes Kyra, "The harder you work, the luckier you get".
The story has a twist. The clock I bought in Budapest had the totally wrong movement shoe-horned in. When I got home I showed it to a clock restorer who told me I could spend a lifetime looking for the exact right movement where the center hole, winding hole, and regulating hole, plus pendulum gap, all lined up.
At the time I worked near Antique Alley, a famous Auckland shop packed full of goodies and junk, and I spent many a lunch-time going through their piles of stuff. One day I realised there was a shelf I'd never seen, tucked in behind the front door, which was hidden once the door was opened and latched back.
I asked the owner if I could look in there, and it was full of old clocks, and after sorting through them I found one which had a movement which was the exact fit.
It had been there all the time, waiting for me.
Great story and both are fabulous items. Even to have once owned them would be enough .... the pleasure gained from preserving and restoring them even better !!!!
AWSOME pieces !! ;-))
really beautiful! interesting story too!