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Special offer through the end of the month. 2 Books
Some
folks have already seen our ad in Yankee
for copies of The Christmas Cat in paperback,
signed by Efner Tudor Holmes, and The Dolls'
Christmas (1994) hardcover. We are offering
each at $20 and that includes shipping.
If you combine the books with other items, then there will be a shipping
fee. This offer is good through
December 31. Items
18225 and 22557 on website.
OUT-OF-PRINT CHRISTMAS CARDS
Our specialty inventory of
out-of-print Christmas cards has returned to our web site. We've just up-loaded a selection. Find them by clicking the buttons CARDS,
Single Collectible Cards.
These cards were
originally published from about 1960 up to the present time. Most are $6.00 each. Earlier cards tend to be filed under Rare
Cards at a higher price. 
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Current Events:
CHRISTMAS EXHIBIT IN LOUISIANA
Tasha Tudor's Spirit of the Holidays traveling exhibition has
recently been installed in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The impressive collection of Jeannette and
Jerry Knazek brings New England to the deep south for
the next 6 weeks
This is the exhibition
you may recall that was mounted at the Norman
Rockwell Museum
in Massachusetts 3 years
ago. It then traveled to Michigan
and Kansas City before coming to
the Historic City Hall Arts
& Cultural Center
in Lake Charles.
The exhibit opened November 6 and will be in
place through January 17, 2009.
Historic
City Hall is located downtown at 1001
Ryan Street, St. Charles. Call 337-491-9147 for more information. Hours are 10:00
a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Friday, 10:00
a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Saturday.
DOLL
COLLECTORS OF AMERICA, INC.
We are occasionally invited to present
talks on the art and life of Tasha Tudor.
John will deliver an illustrated talk to the Doll Collectors of America,
Inc. this Saturday December 6, 2008,
in Danvers, Massachusetts.
His talk will concentrate on Tudor's use of
her own family dolls in her art.
Sometimes whole books were devoted to dolls as in The Dolls' Christmas and The
Dolls' House.
We can also address
Tudor's Christmas card designs, flowers, fairy tales, the locale that she
painted and her life in general.
We
welcome your inquiries if you would like to arrange an appearance with your
group. We generally bring some special
items to show, as well as uncommon items for sale. An email can get the conversation started.
Tasha's dolls were included in
many of her books. Eleanor St. George
wrote about them in two books, ca. 1950.
And they have been exhibited from time to time, most recently at Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation. Here's a note
about their current disposition.
"I give and bequeath dolls and
doll accessories presently on loan to Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for
purposes of exhibition, to my son, Seth Tudor and daughter-in-law, Marjorie
Tudor, or the survivor." - State of Vermont,
District of Marlboro, Probate Court.
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We still have available:
1 piece of yellow ware formerly in Tasha Tudor's
collection.
This was once owned and used by Tasha Tudor in her
Webster, NH, home circa 1950-70, and subsequently owned by her daughter Bethany
MILK PAN Item
25775 $425.00
Call us for more details.
800-818-8419
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ADVENT
St. Nicholas Day Victoria 3:8 Photo © Toshi Otsuki 1989
Friday is St. Nicholas Day!
This is the day that Tasha Tudor prepared her Christmas cake (or Dundee Cake) for a "special" tea and the day to open the first door on the year's new Advent calendar. Tudor reckoned this to be the first day of Advent, the Christian season presaging the birth of Jesus Christ. Within the church, the season begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, creating a slight variance between the two observances. Advent calendars are rooted in the traditions of German Lutherans. Each picture has magical doors to open revealing a new gift for each day.
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INVESTING IN THE WORK
OF
TASHA TUDOR
Books can be more than
information. Many books represent
significant financial investments for their owners. If you are a long-time collector of Tasha
Tudor's books, you will have observed prices for her books rise with the
passage of time.
Tudor sometimes advised her
audiences that they should be setting aside books today for future value. She regretted not having saved a box of Pumpkin Moonshine first editions to sell
in her old age. But who would have
imagined that a seventy-five cent book in 1938 might someday sell for more than
one thousand dollars !
Tudor was right about putting away
new books today. If you didn't buy new books when they first appeared, you have missed
your opportunity. With her passing, collectors will never have
the chance to purchase a new Tudor book again.
There will undoubtedly be books by others - the definitive biography is
still to be written. But never again
will Tudor's "new" art grace another book.
Tasha Tudor's small books
captivated our mothers and grandmothers in the 1940s and their interest never
flagged. Many of you can attest to
family members who introduced you to Tasha Tudor and her intriguing ways. Customers frequently tell us about some
treasure they've owned for years. Time
has made them more precious.
We advise customers to buy the best copy of a book that one can afford. Ah, but what is best? Criteria begins with the
first edition. Those are the
prime examples for a collection. But
even the identification of "first" can
be elusive. Henry Z. Walck reprintings often appear to be
first editions. Do not be fooled; Walck
published only one true first edition of Tudor's work - More Prayers.
Condition
is the next consideration. Is there a
dust jacket? Most of Tudor's books had them originally. The jacket should be present and in very good
condition to maintain the highest value.
Other points of condition are cleanliness,
shape, writing, additions. A
book should be clean without any marks, wet stains or general smudges and no
musty smell. Shape means not being skewed from leaning on a shelf, or
supporting a heavy weight for an extended period. Writing might be a simple gift inscription,
or it could be a child's longer notes to self.
Writing might add value to the book in some instances. If a well-known artist of a later generation
has annotated Tudor's Little Women
with notes on style, that could add value.
The addition of library stamps, labels and card pockets lower a book's
value. Buy an ex-library
book only as a reading copy until you can find a better one. Owners sometimes tuck newspaper clippings and
other ephemera in a book. Clippings tend
to yellow and discolor the book and should be stored in another medium if the
clipping is of interest.
Provenance
is the proven chain of ownership of an item. It can add
real value when owned by a significant person and might be overlooked if one is
unfamiliar with an artist's circle of influence. In the past year, we sold books from the
libraries of Doris Purvis and Mary Mason Campbell. Each item commanded a higher price because of
the association with two women who were Tudor's
long-time close friends. A book dealer
once called to offer us a less-than-pristine copy of Pumpkin Moonshine. It was an OK book even though kids had written
their names in it. We're always looking
for early copies of PM, and bought it
sight unseen. When it arrived we
confirmed that two children had written
their names inside the front cover: Efner and Tom McCready - two of Tudor's
children. The evidence showed this book
had once been in the family library. It
became more valuable for knowing whose names these were.
Sometimes a special edition will be issued and become quite
valuable indeed. Tudor's Mother Goose (1944) was published with a
limited edition of 500 copies during World War II. Each copy entered the market printed on a
heavy paper, signed by Tudor and in a special slipcase. These copies are thicker than the general
trade edition. And with time, many of
the green cardboard slipcases have been lost or damaged. Forty years later, there were prepared at
least 2 copies of Tudor books which we presume to be unique. They were bound in leather by the publisher
Philomel, stamped TT, and presented to Tudor as keepsakes at the time of
publication. They combine rarity with
excellent provenance: Philomel, to Tudor, to her business partner, to Cellar
Door Books. Another example of limited
leather bound editions is Tasha Tudor:
The Direction of Her Dreams. 50
copies were numbered and signed by the 7 contributors on a specially prepared
limitation page. That page appears in
only those 50 copies of the book. Cellar
Door Books still has a few copies of that book available. Achille St. Onge also prepared special
bindings of his enchanting small books The Night Before Christmas, and The Twenty Third Psalm.
Any of these items would make a
stunning addition with long-lasting value to your Tudor collection.
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ORIGINAL ART BY
TASHA TUDOR
Purchasing a piece of Tasha Tudor
art brings pleasure to the eye, of course.
Original art from Tasha Tudor's own pens and brushes is the ultimate
collectible. Such items - known as "works on paper" - are
as close to the artist's creativity as one can get. Tudor regularly produced suites of art as the
illustrations for a particular book. She
prized them as the hard-earned product of her artistic ability, and hours of
work. She demanded that they be
carefully handled and returned to her. Many
went to the Dutch Inn Gift Shop in Pennsylvania. From there they entered innumerable
collections and only occasionally surface.
Some are consigned or sold to us by collectors who are ready to dispose
of their collections, and by heirs faced with the same task. 2008 prices for watercolors can range from
$5000 to $15,000.
Tasha Tudor's preliminary drawings
on tissue paper are another way to collect her original and seminal art. She referred to them as "roughies" and
sometimes developed a good design on her own form of carbon paper by scratching
pencil lead across the back. She could
then transfer the design more than once without having to completely redraw it
each time. It saved her effort and
preserved the balance of a composition for secondary use. We have sold examples of "roughies" and
occasionally see them offered by other vendors.
They sell in the $500 range.
Finally, pencil or pen and ink
illustrations also appear on the market.
Sometimes an original pencil sketch can be seen underlying the later ink-drawn
picture. Until the 1980s, publishers frequently
pinched their own pennies by commissioning only half of a book's illustrations
as watercolors; the remaining half would be in pencil. Watercolors require four-color separations to
produce the final book; pencil drawings need only the regular black ink press
run and are cheaper to reproduce. The
normal fashion of printing was to print one side of a sheet of paper in color,
the reverse would be black and white. And when folded to create the final
signature for binding, alternated pages of color with the pencil drawings. See The
Lord Will Love Thee as an example from the 1950s. Good pencil drawings can reach to $4500
with most selling for about half that amount.
It is a small point, but art that
was actually published tends to command a better price than works that were
not. The proven connection between the
artist and a published work tips the scales toward a slightly higher value. But the unpublished work may provide new
insight into the artist's thinking about how a painting developed.
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Thanks for Coming !!
It has been nice meeting so many of you who stopped by
to visit and shop. Cellar Door Books is by appointment only. We always welcome visitors but be sure to call in advance to set an appointment. That ensures that we'll be "on the job" when you arrive. We'll give you lots of reasons to take happy memories home to California, or South Carolina, or Michigan, or any other place in the world you may live.
Happy Holidays to you and your families from all of us at Cellar Door Books. John, Jill, Becky and Trudy
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We hope you will enjoy hearing future news and upcoming events.
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John and Jill Hare
61 Borough Road
Concord, NH 03303-1833
Toll free: (800) 818-8419
Entire contents © 2008 Cellar Door Books
 Visiting New England? You're invited to stop by Cellar Door Books by appointment. We are an hour and a half east of Marlboro VT, and an hour and a half north of Boston.
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