Collecting Snowglobes

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The most popular kind of snow globes ( also know as snow domes or snow shakers) that people collect are the Disney Snow globes.

They have a wide selection of snow globes devoted to Disney characters like Snowhite, Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the beast, the Lion king, Pirates of the Caribbean etc.

Before most snowglobes are of average size. Nowadays snow globes have this huge display on the outside and the little globe is put in the middle and come with musical boxes and figurines. See the picture above.

The precursor of the snowglobes were glass paperweights.

Snowglobes were first made and sold in France to tourists in the 1880's containing a model of Eiffel Tower commemorating a significant event in French History. Soon after, these tiny water filled globes were so popular in Europe made its way to America in the 1920's. Snowglobes were also served as advertising giveaways in the 1940's.The first plastic snowglobes were manufactured in the fifties.

Snowglobes were particularly sold in roadside attraction, famous landmarks, museums, old homes of famous people.

Vintage snowglobes that are considered rare and collectible usually depicted scenes representing remote, abandoned or no longer existed.

Snowglobes aren't just Christmas related. There are many sports team that have a snowglobe collectible for their loyal fans. There are snowglobes for NFL and Nascar fans or even containing replicas of famous sports stadiums.

It was believed that upper class Victorian families who had a thing for the kitsch bought and collected snowglobes made of glass.

When it comes to snowglobe collecting, one should keep in mind the temperature and space you have in your house. As your collection grows space would surely be running out.

When it gets too hot or too cold glass snowglobes may break if the liquid inside freezes or boils. Always remember, the liquid inside snowglobes will evaporate as time goes by.

The fascination of snowglobes and why people love to collect these things is because when we look into the snowglobe is like looking into another world that is continously winter. Shake it and its impossible to resist the silent peaceful magic unlike a real snowfall its get slushy and needs to be shoveled. You can't resist watching that drifting snow, totally drawn into the scene and feel the rest of the world recede us.

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Collecting Jigsaw Puzzles

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One of the world's largest jigsaw puzzles is composed of 18,000 pieces.If you are what they called a die hard puzzler, do you think you are up to the challenge?

The many appeals of jigsaw puzzles are that it is inexpensive form of entertainment. Forget shopping, going out to restaurants, movies,clubs or bars just to beat boredom when you don't have the dough.

Jigsaw puzzles is the solution. It can be both solitary or group activity. Once you have completed the puzzle you can mess it up again, and pass it on to another family member or friend for him or her to enjoy.See? its really cheap.

You feel a sense of accomplishment once you complete the puzzle. Its a great way to unwind and de-stress. Or be lost in thought, experience a flow and just be oblivious to your surroundings. Mind you, not many activities get you into that particular state of mind. Albeit, you can but it can be very expensive, illegal, immoral or fattening. Let me digress.

What jigsaw puzzles can do for you nowadays is a far cry from what it was originally intended hundrerd years ago. To learn geography, from large wooden cut out pieces of glued on world maps is nice, but later innovations made it smaller pieces on die cast cardboard and made it more adult friendly.

You can collect vintage wooden puzzles, card board jigsaw puzzles, interlocking or not ( easily broken up when you move the puzzle) or you may want to collect jigsaw puzzles from a certain maker, or the degree of difficulty ( irregular pieces wherein you can't start from the edge) it's all up to you. You go where your interests lie.

Study some price guides on the subject. With knowledge at your arsenal, you can confidently scour yard sales, flea markets, games, toys and ephemera shows or you can sit and click on ebay. This two pronged approach to collect jigsaw puzzles is always the best way to do it.

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Collecting Clarice Cliff Pottery

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Clarice Cliff the Stoke on Trent born art deco designer, revolutionised British pottery. It was the 1920's the decade of the Depression, when Cliff created of what was to become the unmistakably famous of all her designs called Bizarre.

The odd shaped defective wares that went with the newly acquired Newport Pottery factory,presented an interesting challenge for Cliff. She covered the imperfections of the vast stock of wares with vividly rich coloured hand paintings and boldly innovated it with geometric triangles with on glaze enamels that made the pieces even more brightly coloured.

She said "color seems to radiate happiness and the spirit of modern life". And that was what she created with her pottery. A sense of joy and limitless possibilities. According to her the British wives deserved a bit more gaiety in their lives.

If you have an eye for the collectable you wouldn't want to miss a Clarice Cliff made sugar sifters, biscuit barrels, sauce boats, conical shaped coffee pots, jampots, vases, bowls,statuettes, toby and lotus jugs, plates and tea sets.If the piece has a back stamp that says Clarice Cliff Newport Pottery England or Royal Staffordshire Ceramic/Dinnerware by Clarice Cliff then you have a collectible.

Cliff made roughly 700 designs in her lifetime. Her range of patterns like Applique, Inspiration, Fantasque, Crocus and of course Bizarre are among her most commercially successful.

A lot of design pundits in those days considered Cliff an aberration. For them, Cliff's artistic merits were arguable. Even Queen Mary dismissed Cliff's unconventional work "awful". Oh well, Cliff's creations may not look very refined to royalty but heck, Clarice was a free spirit.

She instructed her team of hand paintresses ( Bizarre girls) to make the paint thick and make the upward brushstrokes very obvious(which was at the time going against the rules). The Bizarre shop produced seemingly hand done wares for they never did the same thing twice.

More than eighty years since the heydays of Clarice Cliff, her ceramic pieces nowadays may fetch from $100 to $20,000. Cliff definitely captured the zeitgeist of her times. What's so amazing about this gifted woman is that.... to this day her work remains very collectible.

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