"Hello,
I doubt that this story will be all that interesting to you, but just in
case you care, I'm writing to tell you about my Shawnee pig and to ask you a
question about proper paint removal.
My mother got a Shawnee pig cookie jar -- the one with the pink flowers --
as a wedding shower gift in 1946. We kids all loved the pig, which Mom used
to store plastic bags in. (Don't ask.) When I left home in 1982, one of the
first things I bought was a vintage Shawnee pig cookie jar, just like Mom's.
I still have it.
A few years ago, I bought a house in Ohio (I live in Phoenix) that had been
in our family for generations. My great-grandparents built the house when
they first came to America, and my father was born in the house in 1922. My
grandparents lived there when they were first married, and my parents had
the house right after they married in the Forties. The house kept getting
handed down from generation to generation, until it was sold in 1970. I
bought it in 1999 and have been slowly restoring it from the inside out. I
visit the house several times a year.
Last month, for my birthday, my father and mother brought me their original
Shawnee pig as a gift. They knew I'd be going that week to my house in Ohio,
the house where the pig had originally resided. I hand-carried him "home,"
and when my sister came to visit me in Ohio later that week, she and I made
a big, silly deal out of placing the pig on my new kitchen counter.
Anyway. Sometime in the 1970's, Mom painted over the pig's scarf with craft paint. (I've noticed lots of Shawnee pigs in antique stores over the years that have been given home paint jobs. Sad.) I am able to scrape Mom's paint off pretty easily with my fingernail, but I'm wondering if there's an easier, safer way to remove acrylic paint without harming the original surface of the ceramic.
Postscript: I've not begun collecting other Shawnee. I purchased a clover pig cookie jar for my mother a number of years ago, to go with her flower pig, and bought myself a flower pig for my Phoenix home. My mother still has the clover pig, of course, and as you already know I have the original pig back in its original home in Niles, Ohio. I also returned other Shawnee items to that house, all of them from Mom's wedding shower of 1946: the Puss in Boots salt-and-peppers; and one Riding Hood salt shaker. Robert"
We would like to explore some of the history of the decorating of the gold pieces, if anyone has any ideas or knows information they could share, it would be greatly appreciated. Lots of questions abound especially with some of the questionable gold items surfacing on Ebay - the general consensus after polling many long time collectors across the country is the seller from Kentucky that so many of you have been concerned with and emailed about auctions - while the pottery is authentic Shawnee, the theory is the gold and decoration are ALL or nearly all, more recently applied. If you go through Pam Curran's book and check the rarer pieces, this seller seems to have one of each, if not more - Indian Corn shakers, rare blue airbrushed Bo Peep, Corn with gold trim, solid gold and platinum. Very frustrating and overpaying for doctored pieces is going to turn away a lot of collectors. People who have collected for 20-25 years plus have not been able to acquire a lot of these pieces so it stands to reason, no one individual collecting another pottery line is just going to happen upon so many hard to find and rare pieces, it just DOES NOT HAPPEN. The money back guarantee really doesn't help much as most buyers don't realize they have been scammed until it is too late. Please be cautious. Know your sellers and study the pottery.
