Easter bunny’s been a collectible since 1500s

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The Easter bunny is an idea with origins in ancient times, when the rabbit was a symbol of new life and spring. The bunny as an Easter symbol had started in Germany by the 1500s. Edible bunnies made of sweet pastry were made in Germany by the early 1800s. The Germans who settled in Pennsylvania brought the Easter bunny with them in the 1700s. Children believed that if they were good, the Easter bunny would lay a nest of colored eggs for them. Children used upside-down hats as makeshift nests. Since then, the bunny has become an important Easter symbol. Collectors want Easter-bunny items as well as religious Easter items. Usually the bunny has a basket and eggs.

But all anthropomorphic rabbits are collected. Some bunnies were famous characters from children’s stories. Peter Rabbit and his friends are often pictured on children’s feeding dishes and furniture. Best-known are the English Beswick figures of Peter Rabbit characters.

We have two 6-inch rubber squeaky toys we have not been able to identify or price. One is a caricature of an American Indian squatting while holding a tomahawk in his right hand and a scalp in his left. The other is a bearded hobo wearing a suit, a green hat and tattered shoes. He’s holding a cigar in his right hand. Both toys are marked “Rempel Mfg., Akron, Ohio, Fred G. Reinert.” The Indian has a patent number: 2,469,892.

Rempel Manufacturing of Akron was founded in 1946 by Dietrich Gustav Rempel, a Russian immigrant. The patent number on your Indian toy dates it to 1949, and the hobo was probably made around the same time. Fred Reinert was the artist who designed the toys. Both of your toys have become linked to major-league baseball teams, even though the toys were probably not made as team mascots. The Rempel Indian, some fans think, represents the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo. The hobo is sought by fans of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. The value of your toys depends on who’s buying. We have seen both toys, in excellent condition, priced from $10 all the way up to $200.

My grandmother, who was raised in France, left me a fancy perfume bottle in perfect condition. The bottle is an interesting shape, but it’s the dauber that’s beautiful. It’s a small figure of a nude woman that reaches nearly to the bottom of the bottle. Have you ever seen anything like it?

Perfume bottles like yours are well-known among collectors. Heinrich Hoffman (1875-1939), a Paris glass artist, began working during the height of the art-nouveau movement. He shipped the molds for his designs to Bohemia, which became part of the new country of Czechoslovakia after World War I. There they were manufactured at a plant managed by his wife. The nude daubers were made in many different translucent colors. Look for Hoffman’s mark – a tiny open-winged butterfly – on the top of the stopper and on the bottle. Not all Hoffman bottles and stoppers are marked. Depending on the size and decoration of your bottle, if it’s a Hoffman original it could sell for $10,000 or more.

In the late 1960s, we bought a tall, narrow display cabinet with a single drawer at the bottom. Inside the drawer there’s a label that reads “Solid Mahogany, Knoxville Tables, Table and Chair Company, Knoxville, Tenn.” Can you tell us anything about the company?

The Knoxville Table Co., sometimes called the Knoxville Table and Chair Co., was in business in downtown Knoxville from 1900 to 1935.

I bought an old stoneware bottle for $2 at an auction. Later I found a picture of the same bottle in a book. The bottle in the book was found by a scuba diver in Lake George in upstate New York. The author wondered if the bottle dates from the Revolutionary War era. The brown bottle is about 9 inches tall and has a pouring lip. It’s embossed “Vitreous Stone Bottle, J. Bourne &Son, Patentees, Denby Pottery near Derby – P. &J. Arnold, London, England.” What did the bottle hold, and how old is it?

Bourne’s Pottery in Denby, Derbyshire, England, dates back to 1809, but the “J. Bourne &Son” mark was not used until about 1850. Your bottle is a master ink bottle, the kind used to fill inkwells in school desks. Bourne made large quantities of the bottles for P. &J. Arnold, a London shop, in the late 1800s. Marked bottles can be found in sizes ranging from about 5 to 9 inches tall. They are not rare, even in the United States, but you paid a bargain price. A 9-inch bottle usually sells for $15 to $30.

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