Backdoor Antiques has new focus

Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Gloria Austin
NEW ACQUISITIONS — Richard Carpenter, owner of Backdoor Antiques, recently acquired an interesting album, with World War II photos written in Japanese.
By Gloria Austin
Staff Writer
    NEW LIMERICK — Backdoor Antiques recently closed its Market Square location and owner Richard Carpenter is now buying more than selling his products.
    Houlton Stamp and Coins is still downtown buying and selling vintage items.
    Carpenter discovered with a full-time job, he was unable to keep the hours he would have liked to, in order to be on-hand at the shop answering customers’ questions, along with the fact he would rather accumulate goods than redistribute them.
    “I am more of a collector than anything,” Carpenter said. “I am an Aroostook County history buff.”
    Carpenter’s interest in accumulating old-fashioned goods started with bottles when he was 9 years old.
    “It just progressed to antique furniture and other things,” he said. “My most favorite item is my postcard collection, which has all of Aroostook County.”
    Carpenter’s Houlton postcards are so unique that he has shown some other collectors, who have never seen anything like them before on the market.
    “I like anything that is local history,” said Carpenter. “I like postcards, old photographs and old signs made of wood or porcelain.”
    Much like the “American Picker”, Carpenter is always on the lookout for atypical items that may not be worth as much in monetary value as in historical importance.
    Recently, he came across an intact photograph album of a Japanese man’s life from possibly a youngster to school onto the military. Other photographs depicted life in Japan, as well as World War II. Each photograph is described, but unfortunately, in Japanese writing.
    Carpenter would love to find out who brought this album stateside to learn more about the Japanese man, who possibly could be a war dignitary by the commendation medals he wore.
    That very example is why Carpenter loves what he does. It is finding the unordinary to preserve history through the generations.
    “Items are of a certain time period,” he said. “It’s great to look back on those times.”
    Remembering a family’s legacy through a faded marriage certificate from the 1800s, a county or a country’s heritage, is priceless when illustrated by well-kept photographs or objects that have been safeguarded through the years.
    “I am hoping to get more Houlton items,” Carpenter said. “I would even like things from New Limerick, which I have never seen anything from its history yet.”
    Another category that piques Carpenter’s attention is ephemera, which is the study of paper such as old letterheads to brochures or newspapers. Carpenter has assembled quite an anthology.
    “I collect old receipts and I have some early Houlton pieces in several albums that date back to the pre-1900s,” he said.
    One piece of Houlton history is an 1856 letterhead from Dr. Theodore Cary, founder of The Aroostook Times, and newspaper receipts, such as one from 1863 for the printing of petitions billed to the County of Aroostook, which was handled by the Houlton Court House.
    However, Carpenter’s most cherished piece is an 1851 inquest to the death of Michael Cotton of New Limerick. The document produced evidence that Cotton took his own life with a straight razor, as seven men, including Luther Snell, owner of the Snell House, witnessed and signed names to the fact.
    Beside each of their signatures, a person pasted a diamond shaped piece of paper, which by the time the witnesses were done authorizing had seven diamonds beside each signature.
    Not only is Carpenter a collector, he is an artist. He is known for his artistry of intarsia, which is the fitting together of small pieces of veneer to replicate a scene or an object. Carpenter is continuing to add pieces to his already extensive 13-piece collection.
    “I’m working on the Snell House right now,” he said. “It’s about 65 percent complete. Then, I want to construct the Fox Brothers Corner — a men’s and boy’s clothing store — where Modern Beauty is located today.”
    The last piece added was a replica of the south side of Houlton’s Main Street in Market Square as it looked in the early 1900s.
    Carpenter researches the history of Houlton to find original photos and postcards that give him the details that he needs to make the wooden picture as authentic as possible.
    Some of Carpenter’s vintage, smaller items are in a display case at Shiretown Coins, while the other pieces are kept safely in storage.
    Among Carpenter’s specialties are attic finds; old tobacco tins; Bangor and Aroostook items; Maine postcards; old bill heads or receipts; tin toys; gas station memorabilia; Maine license plates; old bottles, photographs and signs and World War II trench art.
    If anyone has historical pieces they would like to sell, call Carpenter at 532-1082 or 694-3867.