by Emyl Jenkins
The cab swerved suddenly, cut across traffic, and turned onto East Sixty-first Street over to FDR Drive to make better time. We wove from one lane to the next across the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving the glamour of the city behind. In silence we drove past neighborhood stores along Columbia Street. A few turns later we slowed to a crawl and then a stop.
Nine- and ten-story factory buildings were slammed up against one another. Even on a bright sunny day this would be a dark street. There was just room enough between the buildings for the fire escapes jutting out along their sides. Memories of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in lower Manhattan flashed across my mind. Now considered eyesores, those fire escapes had been mandated after scores of young immigrants, mostly Jewish girls, locked into crowded sewing rooms filled with highly combustible cotton fabric, had leapt to their deaths. There had been no TV cameras to bring the tragedy into America's bedrooms back then. Did that make the tragedy greater or less, I wondered.
The dark of the night, the white of the snow, and the quiet of the street gave me an eerie feeling.
"One Winston Place." The cabbie pointed to the ticking meter. "Twenty-two eighty-five."
My instincts told me to stay put in the cab with this man I'd never seen before and head straight back to Manhattan. Instead I asked for a receipt and began counting out the money I owed him.
"How do I get back?" I asked.
"Cab, I guess. How long you be?"
"Too long for you to wait. Thanks."
I got out and stood on the corner in this silent, cold place. The cab's red taillights were the only sign of life on the block and they were fading into the darkness. It was the snowflakes and me. So much for the romance of the moment. I felt like the poor little match girl, without the matches. God, how I hated it when Mother read that story to me, especially around Christmastime. I looked heavenward. A sudden snow burst spewed down, stinging my cheeks. I gathered my Virginia-winter tweed coat about me as tightly as possible. Damn, it was cold. Not only was the temperature rapidly dropping, the sidewalk was becoming slippery as the snowflakes melted, then refroze. Black ice they called it, and rightfully so. I inched close to the building to have something to catch myself against in case my feet skidded out from under me, then made my way to the concrete-framed doorway only a few feet away. The steps were even more slippery than the sidewalk. I reached out for the iron railing, and my gloved hand slid right off. I grabbed it with a firmer grip.
I leaned long on the doorbell once, then twice. I waited. I raised my hand to knock, and then I realized that if Sol Hobstein couldn't hear the doorbell, he surely wouldn't hear me knock. I thought about taking a shoe off to bang on the door, but my feet were already freezing. As I pressed the bell again, bright lights flooded the doorway, disorienting me all the more. Bolts and chains clanked on the other side, and I squinted in an attempt to better see the man standing opposite me.
"About to give up on you."
I heard the wheezing and knew it had to be Sol Hobstein. Obviously he was out of breath from his walk to the door. He stuck his head out into the newly fallen night. "Hmmm ... snow. Sticking? Come in."
Only then did he move to one side, making room for me to slip past him and into the narrow corridor. Even lighted, the grungy interior was dark and gloomy.
Solomon Hobstein had once been of medium height, but his shoulders were bent with age. He looked to be in his late seventies, maybe early eighties. Despite the many folds around his deep gray eyes and the loose jowls, his high forehead was wrinkle-free. His face retained traces of that lean, finely chiseled bone structure common to so many northern European Jewish men. He surely had been extraordinarily handsome when he was young.
Methodically Sol Hobstein began redoing the bolts and chains.
"Come on back."
He led, and I followed his shuffle. Sol Hobstein's gray hair spilled over his frayed collar onto his sweater that hiked up high in the back, partly from its age and partly from the slope of his shoulders. He was dressed in the old, gentleman-like style, a white shirt and tie beneath his sweater-the appropriate attire for an overseer or supervisor in the factories of a longago time. Other than my grandfather who had died years before, I hadn't seen anyone wearing plaid polyester pants since I was a little girl. An unexpected tinge of nostalgia swept over me.
Slowly, my anxiety about being in this place with a stranger faded, only to be replaced with curiosity. Crates and boxes were stacked three and four deep along the walls and in the middle of the vast space. Some were covered with plastic. Others appeared unsealed-empty perhaps? Waiting to be packed? As we walked past, I tried to make out the black printing on the side, but it was impossible in the faint light. Rolls of brown and white wrapping paper lay scattered about on the floor. The whole place had a rank and musty smell.
Hobstein ushered me into his office, a small space, considering the size of the building that obviously now was being used as a warehouse. A single lamp on his desk lighted the room. He pointed it in my direction. Clearly, it was so he could see me better.
"Yes. You have an honest face," he said, his deep-set eyes squinting at me. Satisfied, he motioned to a gray metal chair across from his desk. "Sit."
He remained standing until I was seated. A gentlemanly thing to do, I thought.
"What do you know about Kidders?" Sol Hobstein asked me once he'd seated himself.
"The repro company?"
He nodded.
"They're a pretty big operation," I said. "I see their stuff all around. Export-type bowls, fake Sevres vases ... a few Capo di Monte figurines. Mostly porcelain, at least what I've seen. I've heard they've started to bring out some Depression-glass patterns using old molds they bought. Some construction workers found the originals in a building being razed to build a parking deck."
"You saw the story, too." Hobstein grinned. He took a Camel out of a pack from among the piles of papers. "Trying to break the habit," he said.
He put the unlighted cigarette in his mouth and coughed long and hard, his stooped shoulders shaking.
"If I recall correctly," I said, "the new pieces are a slightly different color from the original glass," I said. "A serious collector or dealer would know the difference, but Joe Blow wouldn't. But even the real pieces aren't that expensive. The fakes sell for as much as the real pieces, and it's not that much. Twenty-five, thirty-five dollars. Maybe up to a couple of hundred for a rare piece. It's not like it was a big scandal-like a fake Picasso selling for a million, or a nineteenth-century Chippendale-style chair being sold as an eighteenth-century period piece for fifty thousand. There are so many expensive fakes being sold out there, I don't think anything ever came of the glass pieces being made from the old molds. The way I remember it, the story was more about the construction workers finding the molds and a historic marker going up on the site of the old factory than it was about another fake coming on the market."
"Well, young lady. It's okay for you to think the pieces aren't worth that much. But I'll tell you, those thirty-fives and fifties add up. Sometimes to a fortune. Especially when you have the original molds." Above the dark circles, Sol Hobstein's deepset eyes twinkled. "And that's what I have."
"Glass molds?"
"Something much better. Much finer."
He rose from his desk, pulled out a Bic from his pocket, flicked it aimlessly, then put the cigarette and lighter down. "Come with me," he said.
We retraced our steps through the storeroom, but this time we turned to the right.
"Mr. Hobstein, did you ever hear of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?"
"Yes. Some people still talk of it. The old ones. They had friends or sisters, or knew of someone who died in the fire. Why do you ask?"
"My great-grandfather was visiting in New York when it happened. He never stopped talking about how he'd heard the sirens wailing in the sunset hour and on into the cold night that March day. His whole life long he told stories of how the trapped girls jumped to their deaths. The useles
s loss of all those innocent young women's lives must have touched him very deeply. I just wondered if that story still lives on, especially now, after the Twin Towers tragedy."
"Yes, the story lives, but not much longer. When the last ones who heard the story, like you did, are gone, it will die. It is in the past," he said, dismissing the event that I would have thought would be meaningful to him.
We came to the end of the long corridor. Standing before double doors, Solomon Hobstein removed a watch chain from his pants pocket. At the end hung a Star of David and three keys. He took one in hand.
"It will be dark and cold in there. Your eyes will adjust. Mine do. One day I'm going to get Joey to help me get the ladder and replace the bulbs."
He turned the key and pushed firmly against the door.
"I'll go first. Wait for me to call you."
As the door creaked open, I saw that the floor sloped down, like a ramp, into a vast darkness. Sol Hobstein proceeded more sure-footedly and quickly than when he had walked across the flat floor. I stopped myself from calling out words of caution.
"Almost there. Let me make a light."
Fluorescent bulbs flicked on and off until they caught.
"Wait. There's another one," he said. In the silence I heard another light switch click on. "There."
A row of hare lightbulbs hanging down from the rafters added a few more dim watts to the room.
"You can come down now."
There was no hand railing and I teetered along the slope the same way I had on the icy sidewalk. Sol Hobstein was waiting for me at the bottom, his wrinkled hand extended. I don't know whose palm was colder or quivering more, his or mine. I grasped his hand and stepped onto flat ground.
"Careful now," Hobstein warned, his voice suddenly youthful in excitement.
Heeding his words, I looked down to see where to step next. When I did, I let out a gasp.
By my feet, pieces of bodies lay twisted and tangled around one another. White arms and legs were scattered on the concrete floor. Delicately molded heads separated from their torsos peered out at me from a cardboard box placed off to one side. Another box held more arms and legs jumbled around one another. A few feet away, on a card table, like Rockettes waiting for their cue, stood a half-dozen or so fully assembled female figures. Around their feet lay miniature tambourines, umbrellas, spheres, balls. On yet another table stood male figures, mostly classical sporting types, surrounded by spears and disks and javelins.
I turned. Behind me, on a slab of sheet metal supported by sawed-off four-by-fours were parts and pieces of full, lifelike figurines laid out with spaces in between-like pieces of so many puzzles, waiting for someone to match them up. Scattered about were threaded bolts and squared-off nuts.
The surreal scene was reminiscent of the horrific pictures I had mulled over in the old World War II Life magazines that I'd found in my grandparents' basement so many long years ago. I was just five or six. I was supposed to be napping, the way all Southern children did in the hot summertime. But I had crept off the pallet Mother had made in my grandparents' home and slipped down into the basement. It was there, in a far corner, that I had discovered the stacks of magazines carefully piled in orderly fashion, week by week, year by year. Pictures of the victims of the gas chambers had made an indelible impression.
Mr. Hobstein's soft chuckle brought me back to the present.
I looked around me. The monetary worth of the treasures all around me was staggering. No wonder he was so gleeful.
I leaned over and carefully picked up first one, then another, of the heads from the box. Aesthetically each tiny face was exquisitely formed-the demure smiles, the pouting lips, the playful looks, the impish eyes, the victorious countenances. All were little masterpieces. Each face depicted human emotions frozen in time. Each was crafted by some long-forgotten hand.
"Aren't they beautiful?" the old gentleman asked, his voice full of reverence and awe.
Mother's voice rang in my head as her favorite lines from Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" drifted into my consciousness.
For ever warm and still to he enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; ... When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain ...
... a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" .. .
"Beautiful? Truly. And wonderful. They're wonderful," I whispered.
"And there are hundreds of them!" Mr. Hobstein raised his arms as gracefully as a ballet dancer. "I've been working for days, weeks, months, trying to put a few together," he said, picking up one of the bolts and slipping it up through a slim female torso. "It's not easy."
I wanted to linger, to take in the wonder of all that was around me. I had to savor this rare and important discovery.
Chapter 7
Dear Antiques Expert: I've just started getting interested in antiques but I really love the Art Deco style. On a recent TV show about antiques, the appraiser identified a European piece as Art Nouveau. Is that the same thing as Art Deco?
Art Deco's straight, angular lines are much more familiar than the loose, curvy lines of the Art Nouveau style, particularly in America. Art Nouveau furniture, jewelry, and metalwork became popular in Europe at the end of the 19th century but never caught on in the United States. The exception was the Art Nouveau "woman," as depicted by the American illustrator Charles Dana Gibson. His drawings of beautiful women with long flowing hair became the American "ideal" and were called "Gibson girls." Otherwise, the Art Nouveau style must have been too sensuous for America's turn-of-the-century Puritanrooted mind-set.
"IT ALL STARTED BACK in the old country," Sol Hobstein began. "My grandfather Karl was just a young man when he showed great artistic talent. He was sent from our little village in Alsace-Lorraine to Berlin. There he studied sculpture with the greats of the time. He advanced very quickly and soon his works were being exhibited in the great Salon shows in Paris."
"When was this?" I asked.
"Ah." He rubbed his chin. "The first time, I believe, was probably in the early 1890s. He showed there often. And won medals of honor. Never the Grand Prix, but many other awards. It was in Paris that he met my grandmother, Aimee. She was as talented as he. More. They married and together they made these figurines for the finest homes in Europe. They were smart people, businesspeople as well as artists. Not only were they creative designers and carvers, they had a foundry where the figures were made. Together, Karl and Aimee took such care and pride in their work that other artists brought them their creations to produce. My family's molds were considered the best. That's how I came to have this treasure."
Sol Hobstein beamed with pride. He walked, danced almost, to a far table and returned with a small sculpture of a woman no more than eight or nine inches high. Her long hair enveloped her, accenting every feminine curve. The details of her body were covered by provocative, beautifully sculpted folds resembling sheer fabric.
"Aimee was also a jeweler. She loved to adorn the little figures she made with silver and gold when a commission from a duke or even a king would come in. See the tiny amethysts?" His index finger bent crooked with arthritis, Hobstein pointed to the deep blue-purple stones set for her eyes.
"Oh!" I leaned over for a closer look and marveled at the craftsmanship it had taken to create this Art Nouveau figure of bronze and ivory, made more fetching and feminine by the perfection of every detail.
Sol Hobstein smiled at my reaction. Then he frowned.
"Yes. All was fine until Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated. Everything changed. The war was all around. My family feared for their business and for themselves, but,"-he smiled again, and handed the little figurine to me, squeezing my hand affectionately as he did so-"ah, Aimee was very, very good. Her talents were so great that she and my grandfather, and by then my father and uncle, were given shelter by politically powerful patrons. That, my dear, is where the story begins. At least the story of what you see here." His aged eyes lovingly swept the room.
I smiled back at him, trying to convey that his trust in me was well placed.
"Night after night, they went out into the dark, Karl and Aimee. There, together, they dug a deep pit," he continued, his voice hushed. "Before they left for their safe place, they made a safe place for these little treasures. When the war was over they returned home. Soon business returned, but life had changed. Fashions had changed. But you know all that," he said, speeding his life's story forward in a simple sentence. "So Aimee and Karl set to work making figures in the new styleArt Deco."
Again Hobstein crossed the room. This time he returned with a larger figure, one of a dancer perched on an onyx base, balanced on the ball of one foot, her other leg drawn high beneath her. Her arms were outstretched, reaching far into the air. She was scantily dressed in a halter and shorts, her hair covered by a tight-fitting cap, a chorus girl from the twenties.
I laughed in amusement at the coquettish brazenness of the figure.
"You like this style better," he said, handing her to me.
"Not really. I'm an appraiser, remember. Appraisers can't have personal tastes, or if we do, we can't let them get in the way of our professional judgment. We're only allowed to pass unbiased judgment on quality. That's what determines a fair value for each piece, Mr. Hobstein. Quality," I said, all the while turning the figure over and over. "I'm simply enthralled, seeing all this, so many wonderful figures all at one time. The contrast in the styles. The beauty of the figures. It's, it's-"
"Amazing. Wunderbar!" He finished my sentence, paused, and then said, "Ah. You're right, you know. What you just said there about the contrast in the styles." He rubbed his chin, nodded his head, and said, "It really is interesting to see the Art Nouveau and the Art Deco together, isn't it?" as if he were seeing his own treasures through new eyes.
"Remember, what I told you," Hobstein said, "Aimee and Karl enjoyed such a fine reputation that other sculptors came to them. Not all these pieces were made by just my family. Why the piece you're holding looks much like ones made by Fritz Preiss and Professor Poertzel. Who made which figure? Who made this one, that one?" He shrugged. "So many records have been lost or destroyed over the years."