What do lightning rod balls, Raggedy Ann dolls and car vases have in common?
Very little really, except that you can find them all in the collections of Guelph-Eramosa resident Joyce Blyth, currently on display at the Wellington County Museum and Archives.
Blyth’s eclectic collections are the first in a new series of exhibitions called Wellington County Collects at the museum in Aboyne. The series will showcase the private collections of Wellington County residents at the museum throughout the year.
“We are excited about the new display because now we have a space to work with the public and display their special collections to share with our visitors,” said curatorial assistant Amy Dunlop.
“From the weird to the wonderful, it doesn’t matter what the collection is. We are interested in the stories behind the objects.”
Dunlop said the series has been under discussion for some time and the idea of featuring community collections has been a priority for museum director Janice Hindley.
“She’s really passionate about it,” said Dunlop, who said the search for local collections has been an exciting venture.
“We talked to so many people in the county. We had no idea we had so many collectors.”
Dunlop said enough Wellington County collectors have been tentatively booked for exhibitions to keep the series going for the next three years. Each exhibition will be on display at the museum for four months and plans are in the works to have them each displayed for an additional four months at the Wellington County administration centre in Guelph.
The first collector, Blyth, is displaying a selection of the lightning rod balls, car vases and Raggedy Ann dolls she has acquired since she first caught the collecting bug decades ago.
“These are a few of my favourite pieces,” said Blyth of the items in the exhibition, which opened on Jan. 12.
Blyth’s hobby began when she started picking up various types of unique and antique items at auctions and flea markets.
“Things seemed to snowball from there and we ended up filling up our house with antiques,” she said.
Over the years, she settled into the three main collections currently on display at the museum. Of these, the lightning rod balls were her first passion.
“I bought my first lightning rod ball at the outdoor Aberfoyle Flea Market when it was held on the grounds of the Aberfoyle Mill. The beautiful ball just took my eye,” she said, adding she paid $5 for her initial collectable.
“There was a case of the silver mercury balls that had never been on a building and I bought one and that got me started.”
Lightning rod balls were used as ornaments on lightning rods. The balls have no practical function and are purely decorative. Blyth says that from the late 1800s to the 1930s, salesmen travelled the countryside selling lightning protection systems to farmers and small town residents. Dozens of colors and style variations were made and Blyth has about 100 in her collection. That’s probably only about a third of the various models in existence, she notes.
Blyth is always on the lookout for lightning rod balls “if they are affordable.
“I bought one for $30 at an antique market. It sold on eBay for $20, which was disappointing, but it is what is happening on the market right now.”
While she has picked up some of her collection at auctions and flea markets, most items have been acquired through trading, largely with American collectors.
“Collections of lightning rod balls in Ontario are rare, simply because there is not the source available. I did a lot of trading in the States, specifically the mid-western states of Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan,” said Blyth.
She noted the first lightning rod ball patented in Canada in 1878 was a small clear ball with the patent date around the middle.
“The balls in Ontario are plain as compared to the wide range of designs and colours found in the U.S. Most of what are left on the farm buildings in Ontario is the plain round opaque white or blue,” says Blyth, adding it is rare to find balls on buildings these days.
“The more colourful ones have been removed and are in private collections. The glass balls were also favourite targets for boys with BB guns.”
When she began her collection, much of the hunt took place outdoors on excursions with her husband.
“When I was collecting in the ‘70s I would go to the farmer and buy it from him. When Don and I went on car rides I would use my binoculars to spot if any were on barns or farmhouses because we could not see them from the road.
“One time I climbed up a television tower but when I got to the roof I saw the lightning rod ball was damaged,” said Blyth, who said the couple’s son, then a teenager, was sometimes enlisted to climb on rooftops to retrieve her purchases.
“It is funny but I never noticed lightning rod balls as a youngster,” she says. “We had a plain round white one on the family farmhouse in Erin Township.”
Car vases
Accumulating small cone-shaped car vases are another of Blyth’s hobbies. She picked up her first pair for $50 at a Pilkington Township farm auction in 1975.
“The farm wagon was loaded with all sorts of small items from around the farm and under a pile of objects were two striking cobalt car vases; which I pulled from the box. I can’t remember ever seeing these types of vases before, but I knew exactly what they were; I must have seen them as a small child on either my grandfather’s or father’s car,” she recalls.
“That Christmas my husband gave me an amber vase and I was off on a new collection. He would give them to me every Christmas for many years. We used to go to a lot of shows in the States where we would find them. Don’s friend also looked for them at shows for me too,” said Blyth, adding she no longer adds to her vase collection because they have become too expensive to be a good investment.
Made in a variety of colours and types of glass, car vases were sold individually but were often purchased in pairs. Fresh flowers as well as artificial flowers were used in the vases.
Blyth is not certain when auto vases were first introduced and speculates they may have been available in the horse and buggy era. However, she notes, they were shown in the 1916 Canadian Fairbanks-Morse accessory catalogue.
The vases became popular again in the mid-1920s. From 1927 to 1931, car vases were sold from the Eaton’s catalogue, priced from 85 cents to $1 each. The vases were made by a number of different glass companies in United States. The metal brackets that held the vases are rarer now than the glass vases.
“They would have been scrapped with the old cars whereas the pretty glass ornament was often saved.”
The vases are often associated with the classic Volkswagen Beetle, which came with a vase. Blyth was excited to learn the new version of the “Bug” launched in 1997 came with a vase, but was disappointed to discover they were “plastic and very plain.”
Raggedy Ann dolls
In the mid-90s, Blyth began collecting Raggedy Ann dolls, after she noticed the stuffed toys turning up at antique shows in the U.S.
“Collections in the United States are probably two or three years ahead of what were doing in Ontario,” she explained, adding that she started picking them up at garage sales back home in anticipation of an increase in value.
The doll has an interesting history, dating back to 1915 when writer Johnny Gruelle made one for his daughter Marcella, after she brought him an old hand-made rag doll and he drew a face on it. The male version of the doll, Raggedy Andy, was introduced in 1920.
Marcella died at the age of 13 after being vaccinated at school for small pox without her parent’s consent. Authorities blamed a heart defect, but her parents blamed the vaccination. Gruelle became an opponent of vaccinations and Raggedy Ann was used as a symbol of an anti-vaccination movement.
The dolls make up the smallest part of Blyth’s collection. She has about 20 of them, which she allows her granddaughters to play with.
With much of her collection currently at the museum, Blyth has a little more space in her home, where she says all three collections are kept on display.
“There’s nothing in boxes,” she notes.
That’s in keeping with one of her primary reasons for collecting the items the first place, which is sharing them with others.
Blyth’s collections will be on display at the museum until May 12 during museum hours.
