Photograph Of Isaac Jacob "Jake" Gold's Old Curiosity Shop On San Francisco Street In Santa Fe, New Mexico

UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER

Publication: Privately photographed, n d (ca 1885), Santa Fe

6" x 8" albumen photograph print mounted on a 9" x 11" board. Possibly an unrecorded photographic image. Jake Gold’s Old Curiosity Shop, also known as Gold’s Free Museum was the first Indian curio business in Santa Fe, with it being in business between 1880 – 1905. The first known advertisement for Jake Gold’s Old Curiosity Shop was placed in the February 27th edition of the Daily New Mexican where the business is advertised as “Gold’s Provision House” and although it sold groceries and provisions it also was “the only place in town where rare specimens of Indian pottery, ancient and Modern” could be purchased. Jake registered as a viandante, or peddler, or itinerant merchant in August 1876 when he secured his first business license. Jonathan Batkin in his book TOURISM IS OVERRATED: PUEBLO POTTERY AND THE EARLY CURIO TRADE, 1880-1910, writes “...the earliest known curio catalogue from New Mexico, a small piece of paper folded to eight pages, was published about 1887 by Jake Gold. Gold plagiarized almost every word of his text. His descriptions and illustrations of trapped-door spikers and nests were taken from Tammen’s catalogues, his texts and illustrations of Navajo weaving were taken from Washington Matthew’s “Navajo Weaver” (1884), and his text on Santa Fe was lifted from McKinney's Business Directory. Although Gold undoubtedly supplied curio dealers with pottery, it is not mentioned in this pamphlet….Gold claimed “his collectors are all the time gathering curios from the remotest parts of the Territories where strangers could not penetrate.” Unfortunately, Gold died at the territorial prison for the insane at Las Vegas, NM. His obituary from the El Paso Herald reads “Noted Santa Fe Character Passes Away in Las Vegas – He Once Lived in El Paso. Santa Fe, N.M., December 21. Jake Gold, known far and wide as the proprietor of the “Old Curiosity Shop” at Santa Fe, died at the insane asylum at Las Vegas. Death came at the age of 54 years, after a stormy career, in which he made a fortune and lost one. His father, Lewis Gold, was one of the first settlers from the states and a pioneer Hebrew in New Mexico. Gold lived in El Paso for several years back in the early days.”

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