Lydia E. Pinkham's
Cellulose Acetate (CA) Shuttle Forgery
A recent offering of a 'pickless' Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound tatting shuttle on ebay caught my attention. I have seen numerous Pinkham shuttles and photographs and all of them have had a pick, so I was suspicious as this was the first reference in nearly 80 years of documentation to a "pickless Pinkham". I wrote to the seller and got this response:
Subject: Pinkham shuttle
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 22:04:16 -0400
From: "Loretta Wilson" <loretta@bestweb.net>
To: "Daniel Rusch-Fischer" <stampman@ix.netcom.com>
Hi Dan,
There doesn't seem to be anything broken or cut off
of the shuttle. I don't believe they all have that little
point on the end. I have 5 of them and only 1 has a point.
Thanks, Loretta
I followed up with the buyer, Marti Vetters; who generously and patiently provided me with scans of the ebay shuttle. As shuttle collectors know, plain, "French Ivory (i.e., those that have variegated stripes imitative of animal ivory)" shuttles are fairly common and can often be gotten for $5-15. Little expertise would be required to transfer a scanned genuine image to one of these old 'blank' shuttles; however, due to cost, it would almost assuredly be done as a halftoned image. Using Marti's scans and those of genuine Pinkhams, I have come to the conclusion that this ebay shuttle is a forgery. Why would one do this? My guess is that increasing a shuttle's value by 10 times is enough motivation. You may make your own determination about genuineness, but the Whitehead & Hoag Co. specialized in photo-transfers to cellulose products (having made buttons for every presidential campaign from the antebellum period to Eisenhower). Compare the genuine photo-realistic portrait (set up from a genuine photograph of Lydia Pinkham) to the crude, coarsely halftoned reproduction on the forgery. Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware!
