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Treasures Tell a Story:

Wisconsin man's collection brings the past to life

By Leslie C. McDaniel

Photographs by Leslie C. McDaniel

Arthur Spanjar is a student of history. But the rural Wisconsin man doesn't spend his time poring over dusty tomes in a quiet library. Instead, his study focuses on objects, artifacts, antiquities, collectibles.

"What intrigues me is the history of all this," he said. "I'm interested in how the people lived, how they worked, what makes them tick, what they did and how they did it."

Arthur has surrounded himself with pieces of that puzzle. The past is his present: look no further than his living room, where a gleaming 1925 Mathis boat-tail speedster (complete with a fold-down windshield) is parked. In any other home, the car would be wildly out of place. But in Arthur's world, the car - accented by, among other things, a houseplant - is as natural an element as a coffee table would be at Martha Stewart's.

"It makes a nice planter," he said wryly.

The pieces in his collection are diverse and unique. They speak for themselves, without the embellishment of restoration. "I like it natural," he said. "I like it true. I want to keep the character. If you see an old toy, you see the dents, the wear and tear, the paint is gone... you can see the children playing with it... you can see their shoes, their jackets. If you restore it, there's no history anymore. It's all torn away."

"If it's mechanical, you want to bring it back to being functional," he said. But the restoration should stop there.

"Some of these people, they want to make Christmas trees (of collectibles). But those things, they never looked like that. When an engine was manufactured, it was not polished. They just smoothed down the rough edges, and put a name-plate on it. To 'restore' it - well, to me, that takes away from it, because the character of the piece is gone. You do more damage when you refinish it. Its own world is gone then; dead. It doesn't live anymore."

It's a cliche, but it's true: Pieces in Arthur's collection do bring the past alive. Take his air gas plant. Built in 1886 in Germany, it was designed to produce fuel for a household's interior gaslights. It is easy to picture a servant using the apparatus each day to prepare a home for nightfall. But the engine, which produced a mixture of air and vaporized petroleum ether, was not produced for the masses.

"It would only have been possible for the wealthy," Arthur said. "This piece is very, very extremely rare."


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