There was so much to look at, I didn’t know where to start so I asked Ken for the guided tour. You can take the tour yourself in a series of linked photos that cover the room in a 360° arc, and then come back here to continue reading the stunning dialogue...!
As you can see from the photos, considerable display space is given over to
signage and bottles, but as we made our way through the room,
I was treated to cases brimming with glass flower holders from early
automobiles, beaded purses, antique toy cars, hat pins and half-dolls,
souvenir plates, spittoons, steins and jugs. The gaming table at the far end
of the room is itself a display, the glass top covering cubby holes stuffed
with mirrors, poker chips and packs of playing cards that advertise whiskey.
The centerpiece of the collection is, of course, the bottles. Sadly, while they do make an attractive display, the only one I recognized was The Genuine.
As I stared down at this greenish-yellow flask, Ken related the tale of how he acquired it. I absently-mindedly wondered what conceivable tactic I might use upon returning from a bottle show and then trying to explain to my spouse that I’d just dropped a year’s wages on a bottle. Maybe the band-aid approach would work best – as fast as possible, hoping that the pain would last but a moment.
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Ken also has a superb display of back-bars. While whiskeys in various shades of
amber and olive do little for me, I can readily appreciate the beauty of
cut-glass decanters with brand names richly applied in white enamel. Plus
they’re still relatively inexpensive as pre-pro collectibles go. Ken has a
first-rate collection that includes back-bars branded with detailed color cameos,
plus a handful of rare amber back bars, something I’d not seen before. As I
stood in the farthest corner of room, surveying its contents and trying to sear
the experience of "being there" into my memory, Ken was telling me of even greater
collections in the San Francisco bay area. I pointed out the irony of so many
priceless accumulations of glass being concentrated in a region of the country
noted mainly for its vulnerability to seismic activity -- and Ken smiled and
pointed to the patches of Velcro on the doors of all of the displays. These had
been added following a minor quake some years ago, when some of his bottles had
tried to walk off their shelves and topple onto the cases below.
Velcro has been put to good use in the display of tip trays and serving trays,
which dot the room like limpets on rocks, attached to the sides and glass uppers
of the movable floor cabinets. Since shelf space is now at a premium, this was a
reasonable way of getting them out in the open, although this may be the final
straw that forces an expansion outwards to accommodate the steady of growth of
Ken’s vision.