Tuesday, Jun. 16, 2009

Man finds art created by his father at Belleville yard sale

At the Highland Neighborhood Association yard sale in east Belleville a couple of weeks ago, at least one sale item went home to roost.

Peggy Glatz, who lives on Wabash Avenue, said she was watching over her sale when she noticed a man looking intently at an old cloth picture with a broken wooden frame.

"If memory serves me, I have offered that same picture for sale at the past three to five annual sales with not so much as a looker," Glatz said. "It had a sticker price of 50 cents."

She had no idea where she got it or even why it kept going into storage each time when other things that didn't sell were donated to charity.

"Frankly, I can't believe I kept storing it," she said.

Well, apparently she was keeping it so it could be reunited with Ben Shuppert, of Belleville, a yard sale aficionado.

Glatz said she hustled off her porch and gave Shuppert her standard spiel about how that picture should go home with him because he obviously was attracted to it.

"He asked about where I had gotten it," she said.

Glatz said she and her mom had gone to auctions and sales for many years which is part of the reason why she always has such a great collection to sell.

"He told me he knew who made it, who had stitched the borders around the cardboard backing," she said.

It turned out that the picture was created by Shuppert's father, St. Clair Shuppert in Granite City, most likely back in the 1950s.

"It's probably unique," Ben Shuppert said. "I don't know originally what it was. But Dad stuffed cotton in the horses to give it a 3-D effect. It hung on his bedroom wall. I always thought it was the ugliest thing."

In fact, Shuppert can't be sure, but he may have sold it at a yard sale himself after his father died. Glatz insisted that he have the picture back. She didn't even charge him the 50 cents.

"It was really touching," Glatz said.

She went go back into her house, grabbed a camera and pen and paper, took his picture and wrote down his story.

Shuppert said he will repair the frame and hold onto it.

"It came home to roost," Shuppert said.