Antiques & Collecting: Pumpkin spice

The arrival of fall means two things: pumpkin spice in everything and jokes about pumpkin spice in everything.

The flavor may have exploded in popularity during the last decade or so, but it’s been around much longer than that.

This tin by the Frank Tea and Spice Co., which sold for $153 at Morford’s Antique Advertising Auctions, is proof.

The Frank Tea & Spice Company, probably best known as the inventor of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, was founded in Cincinnati in 1896 by salesman Jacob Frank and his brothers Emil and Charles.

By the early 1900s, it was the fourth-largest manufacturer of spices in the United States. Pumpkin pie was well established by then.

Indigenous Americans cultivated, cooked and ate pumpkin for thousands of years. British colonizers didn’t take long to use this American vegetable the same way they did most other foods: putting it in pies.

The first known recipe for a “pumpion pye,” as it was spelled then, is in a 17th-century British cookbook, but it’s not quite the same as the pie we know today.

The recipe instructs the cook to slice the “pumpion” and fry the slices, then bake them in a crust with apples and raisins.

A recipe for custard-style pumpkin pie like the one we know today appeared in the first cookbook written and published in 1796’s “American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons.

Favorite spices like ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon crept into these recipes by the 19th century, and this version of the pie has been gracing holiday tables ever since.

I am looking for a buyer for a leather jacket. It is handmade and signed with an old Bic pen “Hapiglop Woodstock.”

Hapiglop was a leather shop in Woodstock, New York, in the 1960s and 1970s. We have found out very little about them, but they apparently made and sold clothing like leather jackets and fringed suede vests that were popular with the hippie counterculture. Their clothing tags had “Hapiglop” written in a style that looked like handwriting.

Any clothing in wearable condition can be sold, and vintage clothing is extremely popular right now. Leather often gets better with age; many buyers prefer the worn-in feel and distressed look of vintage leather jackets to new ones.

Contact vintage clothing stores in your area to see if they are interested in the jacket. Another possibility is selling online on a website like eBay or Etsy, or one of the popular clothing resale sites like Thredup, Poshmark or TheRealReal.

Tip: Never store an old painting on canvas flat and face up on the floor. The paint may crack at the stretcher. Store it upright.

Current Prices

Bottle, flask, wheat sheaf, eight-point star on reverse, calabash shape, aqua, 19th century, 9 1/4 inches, $65.

Rug, Navajo, Ganado style, column of three diamonds, cream, red, brown and black serrated trim, wool, mid-20th century, 46 x 30 inches, $310.

Basket, round, lid, multicolor weavers, blue, red, yellow, teal, green, graduated, Penobscot Bay, 19th century, largest 13 1/2 x 18 inches, four pieces, $2,250.