The sale of household goods, sometimes required in settling an estate, attracts many curious people in hopes of making a rare find.
Crystal and silver are high on the wanted list. An ancient 10-gauge shotgun in prime condition is often high on the wanted list for collectors, keeping an auctioneer busy as bidding competition sharpens.
Whether it's a home goods sale, yard or tag sale, don't pass up a close inspection of old photographs, especially soldiers of any war, be it tintype somber gray tones often associated with Rebels in the War Between the States, or a Union soldier in his blues.
Photographs, hand-tinted oils, are becoming an art form in the Catawba Valley and it was due to a photographer's innovativeness.
It all began 110 years ago, a good 15 years before dark war clouds gathered over Europe, signaling the inevitable killing grounds and the beginning of World War I.
C.M. Hardin, a Tennessean, arrived in Hickory in 1900. He bought the studio of A. MacIntosh, the city's first photographer. His studio was located next door to the lavish Elliott Opera House, located in a block now occupied by Bank of Granite on Third Street, downtown.
In 1901, the opera house, hailed as one of the state's finest, burned under suspicious circumstances.
Business boomed for Mr. Hardin and his bride of a year, who dragged their studio equipment onto the sidewalk, which was quickly watered down by firefighters from a nearby station, using water from a water-filled cistern within a block of the fire. A sudden rainstorm almost ruined the photographer's cameras.
Hickory's pioneer photographer increased his knowledge of the craft and equipment. After viewing a photo enlarger at a convention, he went home and made his own. He made prints by direct printing, considered new and more effective.
Hickory's first X-rays were made possible with a machine designed and built by Hardin and Dr. J.H. Shuford Sr.
Hardin was extolled in The Record in 1965 as Hickory's pioneer portrait photographer under a heading of "Hickory's Beauty Preserved," crediting him as a different type of reporter, beginning in 1900.
When an important event was happening, Hardin was there. Meanwhile, the photographer passed up full-color films, fearful they would fade.
The most famous photograph produced by Hardin was of Hickory Inn, one of the state's poshest hotels. Fire was belching out of windows on all four floors.
The studio dealt with the color issue by tinting black and white prints with oil paints.
His fear came to fruition when full-color began fading.
A story was passed around among people in the business concerning a photographer whose color prints faded. He was so despondent that he killed himself.
To do the color tinting, granddaughter, Peggy — who years later became Mrs. Benny Goodman — worked in a back room because of her tender age.
The Kodak camera that C.M. Hardin brought to Hickory in 1900 will soon become an item in the Hickory History Center in back of the stately Harper House at the corner of Center Street and Third Avenue, NW.
Hickory is rife with hand-colored photo prints. The quest is finding and collecting this Foothills art form.
Charles Deal is a former newspaper editor and publisher. Reach him at chazdeal@aol.com.
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