Collecting with Myrtle Duff

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 16

Collecting with Myrtle Duff

Prices range from fifty cents to thousands of dollars, offering a fairly comprehensive range from salt cellars to Georgian decanters, and a wonderful, marble-topped mahogany sideboard to stand them on. In between are moderately priced treasures including a delightful old Sunderland lustre cup and saucer, and a Celtic silver brooch.

For students of local domestic history there are several of the old “Doctor’s Books” so helpful to many wives and mothers in the past when the nearest G.P. was far away, or family financial resources made a call to a medical man a matter for serious consideration.

One called “A Library of Health” was copyrighted in 1916 and warns in bold letters on its cover: ‘You can do nothing to bring back the dead but you can do . much to save the living from death.”

Another, “The: Ladies’ Guide,” by J. H. Kellog M.D., and member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, contains sections on “The Anatomy and Physiology of Reproduction;” “Errors in the early education of little girls” and “The Young Lady” and the injunction that “No young lady who had any appreciation of the suffering she would bring upon herself would consent

to marry a man who is addicted to the weed (tobacco).” It had not occurred to the good doctor that she might even further endanger her well-being by indulging in the habit herself.

The speed of modern modes of travel is brought home by the sight of several old travelling trunks. The one illustrated, a gentleman’s . travelling trunk, created from wood with exquisite workmanship and covered with brass studded sealskin, is the smallest of them. It has been restored, but the maker’s label inside the lid has been carefully preserved. It reads: “Heniy Nickless, Trunk Maker at the corner of St Paul’s next Cheapside. Makes and sells all sorts of Campaign trunks, Portmanteau trunks, Leather Portmanteaus, Leather Baggs, Cloth Baggs and Perriwig boxes.” Probably made in the late seventeenth century, there is no evidence to prove that it was brought to New Zealand in any of the famous First Four Ships. But Ken believes that at least some of the things for sale in his shop may well have arrived in ships which followed soon after. For this reason he has decided to rename his establishment "Fifth Ship Antiques."