It is one of those things that people used to collect, and now, like all the equipment I once operated in the military, is more likely found in museums.
Fifty years ago, I briefly lived in the Cape Cod studio home of one of the preeminent muralists of the late Nineteenth Century. Edwin Howland Blashfield may now only be known to some art historians or numismatists, but in his heyday, he was renowned for murals painted in the Library of Congress, US state capitals, for World War One-era posters and designing United States currency in the 1890s. Though we lived there only a few years, there were some items left behind by the prior owners that I decided to keep in the family. Old medicinal bottles, iron farming tools, a book of the artist’s work published in the 1930s, and some scraps of one of his charcoal drawings. We display his work, lithographs purchased via Ebay, and display a few items from collected family heirlooms passed down during the last several generations. Now, after many years in storage, I am motivated to start giving things away. The chairs the artist or his wife may have sat in, may inspire an art historian or museum curator. Or of these days, I will call an artistic neighbor we encountered who has refinished and repurposed furniture we need to rehome.
It's a Dog's Life 