THE AMERICAN TOBY JUG MUSEUM

Len writes:

 

Stephen Mullins collected Toby jugs.

That's true, though kind of like saying Michael Jordan played basketball. Some people are the greatest at one thing. Mullins was a champion swimmer, and for most of his life on Chicago's North Shore, he was a successful Evanston real estate developer. But he was exceedingly good at acquiring Toby jugs. He was so skilled at this that his collection outpaced the size of his sizable home, then his office, so Mullins reworked a former bank into a six-story building on Chicago Avenue in Evanston to keep his collection. It's still there, at the corner of Chicago and Main; there's condos in it now and a Subway franchise, so it's not just storage space for Toby jugs. But really, says his widow, Carol Mullins, her husband wanted it as a dedicated space (with custom shelving) for Toby jugs.

Indeed, at Carol's home, in the living room, there is one prominent jug on a shelf. It has the likeness of her late husband, wearing a sweater the exact green of his beloved Dartmouth College. Inside the head, where you sip your drink, Mullins' ashes are kept.

What, you are asking yourself by now, is a Toby jug?

A Toby jug is one of those old-timey ceramic mugs shaped to look like a person — traditionally, a caricature of a British drunkard, ruddy complexion, tricorn hat, long coat, on a stool, cradling a mug of lager. Across the 250 year or so history of the Toby jug, there have been jugs with the likenesses of Winston Churchill and Barack Obama, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, Gandhi, Hitler and Spuds MacKenzie. A Toby, to be specific, shows a full figure likeness, and a "character mug" shows only the bust of a figure. But Mullins bought both, and anything else (pitchers, thimbles) remotely related.

So, about 19 years ago, in the building he made for his collection, he established the American Toby Jug Museum as a nonprofit foundation, with free admission for all. It's still open, just five hours a week, at the very inconvenient time of Tuesday afternoons. The elaborateness of this gesture is so oddball to so many passersby that the museum became a routine mention in any roundup of Weird Midwestern stops. "To be frank, the place has become a roadside attraction of sorts," said his daughter Beth Mullins Scales.

Before Mullins died in 2019 of complications from colorectal cancer, he established a trust to keep the American Toby Jug Museum operating five years after he was gone. It still gets about 3,000 visitors a year, and there seems to be enough money to keep it going longer. But come March, those five years will be up and the museum will close.

Rather than flood the collector market, Pearson — who also owns Kevin Francis Ceramics and Face Pots — has helped connect the museum's holdings with specific collectors; Gene Kelly's widow recently called to purchase a jug with the likeness of the star. Some have sold for as much as $25,000, though many go for far less. (The museum offers a table of also-ran jugs at $10 a pop.) What doesn't sell before the museum closes in spring — which is most of it, Carol presumes — will go to a friend and antique dealer in Florida, who plans to sell the jugs at collector's shows.

Truly, there is something for everyone.

To read the complete article, see:
The American Toby Jug Museum in Evanston is closing. What does one do with 8,500 Toby jugs? (https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/09/27/the-american-toby-jug-museum-in-evanston-is-closing-what-does-one-do-with-8500-toby-jugs/)

 

Lloyd Macklowe and his wife, Barbara, had so little cash when they began furnishing their Manhattan apartment in 1965 that they paid for a $55 ceramic Tiffany vase in $5 weekly installments. But that modest purchase was just the beginning: It inspired a collecting frenzy that transformed the couple into dominant dealers in Art Nouveau decorative arts and antique jewelry through their Macklowe Gallery, which became an East Side mecca for deep-pocketed buyers.

The gallery became the largest dealer of authenticated lamps from the Louis Comfort Tiffany studio. It placed important objects in, among other showcases, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Australian National Gallery.

By 2015, The Wall Street Journal wrote, their Fifth Avenue apartment contained "one of the most important collections of French Art Nouveau furniture."

The Macklowes also expanded their real estate holdings, owning additional homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and East Hampton, where they had an estate that sold last year for $35 million.

The gallery's clients have included Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Jobs, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Paul Stanley, of the rock band Kiss.

To read the complete article, see:
Lloyd Macklowe, Leading Purveyor of Art Nouveau, Is Dead at 90 (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/26/arts/lloyd-macklowe-dead.html)

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