Keep the Linthorpes

I was in my Senior year at the University of Texas Arlington, majoring in Art History with a minor in Business Administration. The Art Department was hosting the opening reception for a special exhibition of antique art glass.

I was standing alone, admiring a Favrile paperweight vase. This particular vase was inverted in order to show the true craftsmanship in its production. It took a master to produce a blown piece of glass that retained such clearly defined yellow Morning Glory flowers and vivid green leaves seemingly suspended in a clear background. It was amazing to think this delicate piece of glass had been created in 1913, eighty-one years ago, and it was as beautiful as the day it was formed. “From the collection of J. Thames” the same Thames for which this gallery was named. I had been reading about this particular piece and could not imagine buying something at auction for $32,000 and then loaning it to anyone!

“Dan.”

I had been lost in my thoughts and the sound of my name over my shoulder startled me.

“Oh, hello Dr. Moore.” I turned to see my favorite Art History professor accompanied by a well-dressed rather distinguished looking older gentleman.

“Dan, I would like to introduce you to Mr. Thames.”

“It’s John, Judy. Please call me John, young man.” He reached out to shake my hand. I awkwardly said something I don’t recall now, but I am sure it was equally as awkward as that first handshake.

Dr. Moore said that Mr. Thames, John, had recently realized the need for some help in documenting several of his art collections. She had mentioned me as someone who might be interested in working with him. Mr. Thames said he was interested in starting a collection of ceramic works designed by Christopher Dresser, but didn’t want to be as unorganized in building another collection as he had been with most of his others.

I told him that I would be very interested in helping. We spent the rest of the evening standing in the same place talking about art, his many collections, my plans for the future, and as they began turning out the lights in the gallery, he extended an invitation for the next day to come to his home and see challenge that he was facing.

Early the next morning, I was a bit perplexed when I arrived at the address, he had given me. I was expecting a gated community with enormous houses like so many of the neighborhoods in the span between Ft. Worth and Weatherford. Instead, I found myself in the historic district of Weatherford, but at a house that was relatively small and unassuming by comparison.

John was waiting for me on the front porch and rose to greet me eagerly as I approached the house. It felt as if we had been friends for years already. I came to realize that is the way most people felt after meeting him. He had a disarming way about him. People described him as eccentric, gregarious, engaging, complex, curious, above all generous: Generous to a fault, perhaps. But more than anything, the best word mentioned more than any other was “collector.”

He opened the front door and welcomed me inside.

The small foyer of the house had been converted into a makeshift office. A large roll-top desk covered with notes, folders, and documents dominated the entire space. I thought this to be quite unusual for someone’s home. Then I realized, this was not where he lived, this is where his collections lived.

Each room of the house was packed with art and antiques. The first impression was that of total chaos, but once we began walking through the house it became clear this was controlled chaos. Each room contained very specific collections, however unorganized they appeared.

What was supposed to the dining room was filled with paintings. Not on the walls, but leaning in layers ten and twenty deep against the walls. There were two levels of shelves about three feet deep completely circling the room. Each shelf was laden with the same arrangement of paintings, leaning against one another, ten and fifteen frames deep. In all I would guess seven or eight-hundred. Just walking through this room, I identified a Warhol, a Picasso, a Rothko.

From there, he led me into the kitchen. The kitchen cabinet doors had been removed exposing shelves full of china. Stacks of dinner plates, saucers, tea cups of every description, all hand painted with dragons, or fruit, or flowers.

We continued though the house and the pattern continued, each room held its own unique collection. Some collections very obviously valuable, some not. A closet full of buttons in glass jelly jars, a bedroom filled with toys, another, Favrile art glass. We finally arrived at the door to the last room. He opened it and said, “And this is where the Linthorpe collection will live.” A room of empty shelves and pedestals.

After the tour of his collections, he invited me to lunch to discuss the plan to build his collection of Linthorpe pottery. By the time we finished lunch, he had hired me to help catalog every item of every collection in the house. I started the next day after classes and continued part time until graduation. The collections continued to grow, and once I graduated, the work became my fulltime job. I loved going to work every day, working my way through so many treasures, recording the descriptions, the purchase prices, hearing the stories of how each item was acquired.

Time passes, people move on in their lives, and so it was with John and me. My career as an Art Appraiser with Sotheby’s in New York would not have been possible without his connections. His willingness to help people achieve their dreams was just one of the amazing things about him.

I sat at the dusty rolltop desk where I had spent so many hours in my past helping John, my friend and mentor, catalog each item in each of his collections, contemplating the past week, and why I was back here again.

It had been nearly ten years and yet everything felt as though it was yesterday when I finished recording the last item in the last of the little black Moleskine journals that stood along the back of the desk.

Last week I received a call from his attorney to talk about settling the estate. It came as a shock to me. I didn’t know that John had died. We would often go months without emailing or talking on the phone, so I had not thought a thing about not having heard from him in a while. I was devastated when I learned that he had died three months ago, just days after we last spoke. I learned that he had contracted the Corona virus and in just two days had succumbed to the illness.

His attorney said John had specified in his will that I be the one to disburse each of his collections to museums and other collectors as I saw fit. He also told me that the mortgage had not been paid in months, there was not enough money left in John’s accounts to keep the house where everything was stored, and time was running out to get everything moved before the bank foreclosed. It was sad to think that someone born into great wealth had become so focused and obsessed with building a massive art collection would do so at the expense of everything. John had no family and he came to think of this horde as his children, his grandchildren.

I spent a few hours thinking about everything he had done for me. The next few days seemed to drag by, gathering my thoughts, as I prepared to make the trip back to Texas and reenter the world of John Thames.

I barely remember the journey; LaGuardia to the Dallas / Fort Worth airport, a rental car with an hour’s drive West to Weatherford, Texas. And just like that, I was back.

I was looking through one of the little black Moleskine books that was on the desk. This one was dedicated to the Linthorpe ceramic collection we had built together, one of his favorites. Each one purchased was recorded with the mold number, glaze marking, purchase price, and where it had been acquired. Page after page, seeing my own handwriting, I remembered every one of them and the joy they brought to him.

I flipped through to the last recorded purchase expecting to find “Mold: 779, Glaze: O, $650, Knox Estate.” To my surprise I found an entry in John’s handwriting, “Mold: WDH, Glaze: THKS, $20, Harrison.” His entry made absolutely no sense. The Mold listed was not a Linthorpe mold number, it was MY initials! As for the Glaze? THKS is how John would abbreviate “Thanks” in his correspondence with me. The origin of the purchase, “Harrison”, that was MY last name, and as for the purchase price of twenty dollars? The most common Linthorpe piece could be found starting at twenty times that price. I laughed to myself, twenty dollars is probably the only kind of “Linthorpe” I could ever afford; an obvious knock-off.

I decided to go take a look at this mysterious acquisition.

As I entered the Linthorpe room I spotted it immediately, an obvious imposter, centered among the exquisite authentic Christopher Dresser designs. It was a fat, round vase with a tall slender neck, glazed in a bright lime green. I picked it up by its neck to inspect it and heard something shift inside. I shook it a bit; there was something inside.

I peered down the long neck and saw a severely bent small black Moleskine book in the bottom of the vase. My curiosity was piqued. I had to know why and how John would put one of his catalogs inside a fake cheap vase. Without even giving it a second thought I dropped it to the floor, shattering it in pieces.

The little Moleskine book had been bent and tortured to force it into the bowl of the vase. I picked it up and brushed off the ceramic shards.

The first page, in John’s familiar handwriting: “Dan, you are the son I never had.”

The second page continued: “Please forgive this last request, finding homes for all of my treasures.”

The next page: “This is for you and no one else.”

Then: “Thks, John.”

As I turned to the fifth page, one just filled with numbers, a small key fell from the back cover of the book. I knelt down to pick it up, fighting tears, I fumbled with it. Picking it up, I could feel the embossing on the key. It read “First National Bank, Weatherford, TX.” A safe deposit key.

Looking through this little crumpled book, I realized these numbers, page after page of them, were deposit amounts and dates. I quickly flipped to the last page, the total of five million, three hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars, and one last note from John.

“Don’t tell the lawyers, and keep the Linthorpes.”