Jenness Cortez

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With the upcoming end to horse racing season in Saratoga, as proud upstate New Yorkers we have decided to share a few of the paintings in our inventory that are important to the racing culture.

Jenness Cortez (1944- ) is an upstate artist whose paintings depicting the athleticism of Saratoga's racing horses had made her a famous name in Realist art.

Cortez was born in 1944 in Frankfurt, Indiana. She began her art studies when she was 16, under the guidance of noted Dutch painter Antonius Raemakers. She attended the Art Students League of New York after graduating from the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, IN.

Following her formal education, Cortez moved to Albany, New York to work as a commercial and editorial illustrator for the biweekly community newspaper "The Washington Park Spirit." In 1974 Cortez was commissioned to create original paintings of endangered species in the Adirondack Mountains by the New York State Museum. Her paintings from that year are still apart of the Museum's permanent collection.
Cortez has been commissioned to create commemorative etchings of thoroughbred racing's Horse of the Year every year since 1981. This prints we have in our inventory are original works from Cortez spanning from the years 1983-1993.

Cortez's style is described as realist work that has been filtered through "the minds's eye."

Throughout the 1980s and her work in Saratoga, Cortez's fame gained momentum as she was commissioned on more commercial and gallery projects, which solidified her career as a prominent New York capital region artist.
In the mid 1990s, Cortez moved her interest to encompass landscapes and cityscapes, and more recently, still life.

Cortez is currently working on new projects from her studio in Averill Park, NY where her pieces are featured in she and her husband's gallery.

Own these original vintage estate-found prints from Jenness Cortez's Saratoga days: shop here. 

A Beginner's Guide to Turkish Coffee Sets

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Over the past few years, Turkish coffee has grown in popularity in English-speaking countries due to its unique preparation process and flavor.

Recently we have had a few Turkish coffee sets come to us as estate finds, and we thought it would be interesting to shed some light on the culinary tradition of brewing Turkish coffee.

Turkish coffee is not an actual type of coffee -it is a preparation method, so there is no specific type of coffee bean used when preparing the drink.
The process begins with a very finely ground coffee. Usually, grinding the coffee beans to a powder-like texture requires the use of a burr mill or a traditional Turkish hand grinder.

Next, heat water up on a stove in a cezve (Turkish coffee pot), bringing it to a brief boil before adding 1-2 heaping teaspoons of coffee (and as much sugar as desired) per serving he/she plans to make.
Once the coffee grounds sink to the bottom of the pot, the coffee maker can stir the mixture several times and put it over low heat.
Some techniques advise coffee makers to remove the coffee from the heat, stir it, then boil it once or twice more. 
 It should form a think froth or "kaimaki". if the water boils too quickly, the coffee will lose much of its flavor and the foam will evaporate.

The foam is the key part of Turkish coffee, so serving the drink is more of an art form than part of a recipe. The goal of serving Turkish coffee is to get equal amounts of rich foam in each cup. The result is a frothy, strong cop of coffee that can be enjoyed with a dessert or any kind of treat.

Though having your own vintage Turkish coffee set might excite those interested in antique cultural decor, there are certain precautions to take when actually preparing coffee in an older cezve.

If a cezve is copper or brass like the one picttured from our inventory, it is always a good idea to check the inside of the pot to look for scratches. Only a cezve lined with unscratched tin are safe for brewing and serving. 

There are many variations of coffee brewing that involve methods similar to Turkish coffee making, such as Greek coffee, Bosnian coffee, and Czech coffee. They all are all brewed in a slightly different manner, although they do all involve the main technique of pouring coffee directly into heated or boiling water to create a thick foam.

There are mystical factors that may play into Turkish coffee's growing popularity in America; the grounds left after drinking the brew can be used for fortune telling. This type of fortune telling using coffee grounds or tea leaves is called tasseography. After the coffee drinker finishes his/her cup, the grounds can be dumped into a saucer, and the patterns can be examined to determine aspects of the drinker's future.
Fantastic considerations aside, we think Turkish coffee is an excellent way to enjoy a strong brew, and with the impending fall weather approaching, Turkish coffee may be just what we need to stay toasty.

Take a look at our vintage Turkish coffee set here.

Vintage 1951 Amelia Opdyke Jones "Subway Sun" Ad Posters

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This is one of the more fun and interesting vintage finds we have seen recently: a set of four New York City subway ads printed in 1951. 

The set of 21" x 11" posters take the form of a newspaper header titled "The Subway Sun." Cartoonist Amelia Opdyke Jones (who always signed her work "Oppy") created these types of ads for the New York City Transit Authority in the 1940s and 1950s to promote good behavior and etiquette among subway users.
The New York Transit Authority originally hired Oppy to create cartoons to warm subway riders to the fare increase in the 1940s, however she Subway Sun ads were also eventually used to advertise technological improvements on the subway ("100 Years of Transit Progress"), as well as to encourage citizens to utilize the subway's services ("New York is Greatest - Go Subway").

Perhaps most famously in her Subway Sun ads, Oppy called out some of the more crass behaviors some NYC subway riders were becoming more infamous for in a funny-but-too-true style. In our set particularly, there is a poster with an illustration of a man falling down the stairs to the subway interest with the caption "You can get down quicker!" while a concerned woman descending the stairs in a less deranged manner looks on. To prevent confusion, warnings to "watch your step" and "take your time" decorate the poster's top corners. Oppy also illustrated ads addressing other undesirable subway behavior, such as riders putting their feet on seats, littering, and smoking.

The Monopoly-esque characters in the ads are largely recognizable as Oppy's work, and some have speculated that the women in the ads are often modeled after the artist herself. Many of the original Subway Sun ads are on display in the New York Transit Museum, but our small inventory is available for collectors or just lovers of vintage signage. Each individual poster is signed "Oppy" and marked for the New York Transit Authority.