Icons of phrenology still popular as collectibles

Published 12:01 am Thursday, June 23, 2011

Phrenology, the study of the shape of the skull, supposedly could tell the shape of your brain and information about your behavior. The “science” became popular about 1810, years after it was developed by German doctor Franz Joseph Gali in 1796.

It remained popular until about 1840 as a way

to understand personality and to help with decisions when hiring employees or choosing a spouse.

It is now considered a pseudoscience and ignored by the medical profession. Doctors today use brain scans that show areas where feelings of anger, sadness, fear or information-processing originate.

So technology seems to have vindicated part of the theory of phrenology: It was right about areas of the brain, but wrong about the skull identifying the locations. You can still buy the icon of the phrenologist, a head marked with the various regions of the brain and the emotions controlled there.

Both new and old paper charts and decorative 3-D pottery heads are available. A pair of old phrenology-head inkwells sold for $1,750 at Doyle New York in April.

If you like the inkwell, be careful where you buy one. New ones are may cost as little as $30 and are almost exact copies of old ones.

Q: My 90-year-old aunt recently gave me her old Bye-Lo baby doll. The back of the doll’s head is marked “copr. Grace S. Putnam, Made in Germany.” Please fill me in on this doll’s history.

A: California-born Grace Storey Putnam (1877-1947) was divorced and trying to earn some money when she started designing doll’s heads. In 1922, she copyrighted (“copr”) a plaster doll’s head that looked like the head of an infant.

Within a couple of years, the doll, called “Bye-Lo Baby,” went into production with a stock cloth body. The first doll heads were bisque and made in Germany.

The doll was distributed by Putnam’s sole licensee, George Borgfeldt & Co., a New York importer. Bye-Lo Babies were on the market until 1952.

The value of your doll depends on its size, condition, age, and head and body types. Some Bye-Lo Babies sell for well over $1,000; others go for prices in the hundreds.

Q: I have a lamp with a leaded-glass shade on a tree-trunk-shaped bronze base. I was told that it was made by a Cincinnati company, but it looks a lot like a Tiffany lamp. It is 16 inches high and is not marked. Was there a company in Cincinnati making leaded glass lamps, or is my history wrong?

A: There was a company called Cincinnati Artistic Wrought Iron Co., which was opened about 1910. The company used very colorful glass and its lamps were similar to Tiffany’s, but they weren’t quite as well-made.

Bronze tree-trunk bases also were used by this company, an idea used earlier by Tiffany. A Tiffany lamp would be signed, but we have not seen a signature on a Cincinnati Artistic Wrought Iron Co. lamp. Still, your lamp could sell at a retail price as high as $7,000.

Write Terry Kovel, (The Herald), King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

On the block

Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions.

Hall China Co. cake plate, Autumn Leaf pattern, gold trim, made for Jewel Tea Co., 9 1/2 inches, $20.

Avon Cape Cod butter dish, ruby glass, Wheaton Glass Co., 1983-84, 7 x 3 1/2 inches, $25.

Merry Matic toy flash camera, plastic, battery-operated, silver ring around lens, red lettering, 1960s, 4 x 4 inches, $30.

Holt-Howard Merry Mouse salt and pepper shakers, Ceramistripe glaze, female mouse has red bow, male has blue bow, 1958 copyright, 4 1/4 inches, $40.

Hash-Brown Tri Cut Blend pocket tobacco tin, image of hookah with triangle behind it, Falk Tobacco Co., Richmond, Va., 1920s, $70.

Little Miss Revlon doll, blond, blue eyes, blue felt full skirt, yellow peasant blouse with rickrack trim, Ideal, 10 inches, $75.

Montgomery Ward & Co. 55th anniversary catalog, 1927, 600 pages, $85.

Davy Crockett pitcher and six mugs, figural, image of Crockett, coonskin cap’s tail forms handle, Horton Ceramics, 1955, 7 pieces, $115.

Tiffany & Co. sterling-silver dessert stand, Clover pattern, marked, c. 1935, 4 x 11 1/2 inches, $1,670.

Queen Anne desk on frame, carved mahogany, hinged lid, stepped interior with compartments and drawers, three drawers below, c. 1740-60, 42 x 29 inches, $8,880.