collectors are a sad lot. my own affliction
runs to mid-century everything – citroëns,
scandinavian furniture, Gladys knight (on
vinyl naturally), tintin, pretty much anything
from the 1950s except for Duane eddy and
the korean War. my real drug of choice is
crockery, and susie cooper in particular.
the englishwoman’s clean designs are
perfection. i’ll cross glaciers for them. or
the chattahoochee river, as it turned out.
it had started, as so much does, with
ebay. based in new York, i was trawling its
magical vaults when i spotted an innocuous
little cooper plate, common and cheap. but
in the background, blurred but unmistakable,
was the hallowed motherlode: a hand-
painted art Deco lamp base by the artist
herself, as rare as an unrestored clifton
bungalow or springbok antipodean victory,
and easily worth r20 000.
the seller was listed as ‘badass-6’, the
hometown listed as Helen, Georgia. off
i went, without a moment’s thought.
Helen is one of those towns only america
could make, entirely counterfeit, a little
16th-century bavarian idyll fashioned as
a tourist magnet for suspicious mid-
Westerners reluctant to try the real thing
for fear of bratwurst and unreadable street
signs. it didn’t take long to find ‘badass-6’
– it was the name of the biggest guest-haus
in the dorf; its owner, slightly worryingly,
mrs ernestine Gallows.
i decided to check in and check out
the lay of the land. thrillingly, inside it
was full of treasures, though the decrepit
mrs Gallows was not one of them – a dyed
crone long past civility and far older than
her faux-cobbled town. For a mock alpine
room in a mock German chalet in a mock
schwarzwald town in the Deep south, she
demanded a vast amount of money.
‘no pay, no stay,’ she drawled in vintage
brooklyn parlance.
Hazed by greed, i checked in with the
new York nonagenarian in mock dirndl and
clogs and went in search of the lamp base.
the voice behind me made me jump.
‘are you an arctophile?’
my arched eyebrow clearly annoyed her.
‘teddy bears, jughead, teddy bears. Do you
like teddy bears?’
i did not. not since my panda had been
turfed out by mama bear when i was five.
However, i was not about to debate the
subtleties of infantile psychosis with attila
the Hun’s mother.
‘You like china?’
‘i like china.’
‘i have china. Wanna buy some?’
‘Do you have, um, any susie cooper?’
the ancient shuffled to a locked showcase
and opened it. inside were the cheap plates
and … that lamp base.
a few hours later in the local diner,
i gleefully admired my base, bought for $50.
i’d had to buy the plates too, but no biggie
to get one over the clueless old monster.
the waitress sashayed over. ‘Hey hon,
nice lamp. old ernestine, right? she sells
a bunch of them to you traveller types.
real little cottage industry. coffee?’
