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A
Brief History |
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I innocently stumbled into the world of collecting vintage Halloween
memorabilia in the 1980s. I was in a local store, Blue Eagle
Antiques, when the proprietor asked if I would help her move out
several boxes containing old Halloween decorations for her seasonal
displays. Being curious I went and opened up the boxes and was
dazzled by the strong imagery found on those vintage pieces.
Instantly hooked, I recall writing a check for nearly $350.00 that
day, which bought quite a lot from those boxes! Among my first
purchases was a complete set of eight of the early 1940s Beistle's
(HE Luhrs’ mark) black cat
die-cut band for $16.00. Those were indeed the days!
I was fortunate to have started collecting Halloween when I did.
This “Golden Age” of relative plenty, coupled with low prices and
quizzical looks from shopkeepers when asked about the availability
of vintage Halloween in months other than October, lasted until
about 1995. Being an avid collector, I was able to amass a
nice assortment of material priced quite reasonably during this
interlude. Then, in 1995, the first references devoted solely to
Halloween collectibles were published. The first was “Halloween in
America” written by Stuart Schneider. The second was “Halloween Collectables” written by
Dan/Pauline Campanelli. These works
contributed greatly to the meager knowledge base available to Halloween collectors
at the time. Once these were published,
prices - already on a fairly steep trajectory since 1991 - truly
exploded.
Halloween, as a commonly celebrated US event, truly came into its
own in the very early 1920s. Parties then were primarily for adults, with
guests settling in to play mahjong, bridge or other games. Tables
and walls would be decorated with a wide array of Halloween-themed
items, really setting the party’s mood. The games’ winners would be
given prizes to take home, like candy containers, lanterns or
noisemakers. Only later did “trick or treating” come into vogue,
with the holiday becoming then more firmly oriented toward children.
I tend to savor those items made in the interlude before Halloween
became so child-focused.
Halloween is the quintessential American holiday, although many of
the most prized items today were manufactured in Germany. How did
this come about? After World War I, Germany was devastated by the
follies of their own foreign policy but hampered in its recovery
efforts by the Versailles Treaty. Forced to pay reparations to the
victorious allies for the devastation of WWI, an outlet earlier used
assumed greater importance. Several American
discount-merchandising magnates like Frank W. Woolworth and
Sebastian S. Kresge more strongly encouraged German artisans at this
time to use their
creative expertise to craft unique and wondrous items for export to
the vast and growing American holiday market. What I consider to be
the zenith of German Halloween production in terms of variety and
design is from ~1919 until 1935, when the expansive tendencies of
the new German Reich brought this kind of trade to a close, not to
resume until after the partition in the late 1940s. We shouldn’t
think of the German production of Halloween memorabilia from this
early era in modern terms. Many, if not all, of the lanterns, candy
containers and figurals were made in homes or very small firms, from
either a fixed design or a mold, and all hand decorated. The overall
quantity of items produced was quite small given the conditions
present at the time of their creation.
There were two premier American die-cut and party supply
manufacturers from this era: the Beistle Company of Shippensburg,
Pennsylvania and the Dennison Manufacturing Company of Framingham,
Massachusetts. Both are still in business today. Many collectors
will note a mark on some of the better die-cuts from about 1940
through the early 1950s as “H.E. Luhrs.” The Beistle Company
exclusively used this mark. Mr. Luhrs worked his way up through the
firm, becoming president of Beistle in 1941. Beistle was known for
making very detailed paper die-cuts, lanterns and table items. They
were made in smaller quantities and are much desired by today’s
collectors. Although often not marked, the Beistle imagery and
design are certain indicators of their origin.
One thing I truly thank Dennison for was their nearly always annual
publication of their Halloween Bogie Books. Beginning in 1909 and
continuing through the mid 1930s (later incarnations were sized and
titled differently – but all followed the same format), these
magazines served as the primary sales and marketing tool for
Dennison’s Halloween products. For today’s collectors they serve an
entirely different purpose altogether: a primary source of
determining the manufacture date of items. Halloween items are, by
and large, difficult to accurately date beyond a typical range of
years. The Bogie Books help provide solid parameters for the dating
of Dennison products. (One note: many collectors assume the first
Bogie Book was issued in 1912. However, the very first was issued in
1909, with a three season gap until the 1912 edition was released.)
Tin noisemakers of an astonishing variety and ingenuity were made by
a number of American firms. Among the most sought after tin items
are those made by Bugle Toy, a company about which little is known. Other manufacturers included Chein,
Kirchhof and T. Cohn. You can find tambourines, clangers, rattlers,
ratchets and so on. Earlier tin items will have sculpted wooden
handles, with later items or versions having plastic handles.
The imagery of vintage Halloween items through the 1940s is
compelling and memorable. The hierarchy of imagery has always been fairly
logical: the pumpkin, or its more humanized incarnation, the
Jack-O-Lantern, forms the bottom of the pyramid as the most common
image. Ascending this pyramid, the middle layers would encompass
black cats, skeletons and owls. The upper-most layers would consist
of witches, veggie people and bats, with the pinnacle surely being
occupied by devils. This
means that within any given genre, devil imagery is the rarest to
find. Although not always true, this rarity generally means that
devil imagery commands very high prices.
The imagery of the older Halloween pieces is significantly at odds
with imagery common from the 1950s through today. This is certainly
one of the most important factors escalating the prices for
Halloween memorabilia. The imagery then was meant to provoke a
reaction – generally a horrific one! The pieces were, in many
instances, meant to scare. More recent Halloween imagery is, by and
large, pedestrian, cute and dull. Since Halloween items are
notoriously hard to accurately date, one rule of thumb I use is
this: the scarier the imagery, the older the item!
The main factor behind the swift rise in prices since 1995 for
vintage material is the true scarcity of display-quality items.
Unlike Christmas decorations that almost always became heirlooms to
be packed carefully away as the New Year dawned, Halloween
decorations were generally used once at a party, and then discarded
with no sentiment. Lanterns were designed to be illuminated by a
flame that either consumed the lantern or made it undesirable for
display. Die-cuts were often affixed to walls with liberal use of
tape, which through the years causes damage affecting their display-worthiness. Games were designed so that in the playing of them,
pieces would be torn from backing or cut away. Party table
decorations would be scooped up by a tired host and thrown in the
trash. Consequently, there is a true scarcity of quality, near-mint
condition, vintage Halloween memorabilia. |
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