Niloak Missionware Humidor, ca. 1920
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GUEST:
All I know about this piece is it's Niloak. It is called a humidor and it has been in my dad's family, his mother had it in Elaine, Arkansas, because we're all from here. He remembers it as early as 1940.
APPRAISER:
Indeed this is a humidor, how can you tell it's a humidor?
GUEST:
That I do not know.
APPRAISER:
From the lid. That is the dead giveaway of a humidor is when you have a lid that is pierced and hollow and you would be putting a sponge in there, a wet sponge.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
That would keep the contents moist. We don't see a lot of Niloak humidors. The name Niloak is actually Kaolin spelled backwards. Kaolin is one of the most important ingredients when you're making pottery. Niloak was in business in Benton, Arkansas.
GUEST:
Correct.
APPRAISER:
They started doing this line, this particular line of hand thrown, swirled, pieces of all these different clays are together.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
There's no glaze here, these are all clays that are swirled together and hand thrown. They started doing this in the teens, just early teens, about 1910. They did that for several decades and they needed probably at the end of the 30's. This is a very nice example, so sometimes you see them and they're a little bit more plain, they have fewer colors. You have a good mix here of the blues and sort of the coopery red and the ivory, it's very nice. These days a Niloak humidor like this, in this line which is called Missionware.
GUEST:
Okay, Missionware.
APPRAISER:
Would probably go at auction for about $400 to $600. Ten years ago, 20 years ago, it would have been more than that, it may have been up to twice as much as that.
Appraisal Details
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