Taylor Silverstein
This website has moved.
TaylorSilverstein.com is no longer in use. The website is now at silverste.in. Investments are at ventures.silverste.in.
Continuing in 10 seconds
10
Continue to silverste.inOr open ventures.silverste.in
Collection
Taylor Silverstein owns none of the objects discussed on this page. The record counts only what he actually holds. At present that number is zero. It will change when an object is acquired, and not before.
Countries, companies, fashions, technologies, and sometimes the people who used them, disappear. A thing can stay. If this collection begins, it is for those things, and for the stories that became attached to them. People keep an object because it still refers to a person, a job, or a year, not because it is rare. A pen is ordinary until it belongs to a story someone lived. A Bear Stearns pen is stationery. To someone who used to work there, it is a desk, and March 2008, when the firm collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan. An Enron pen from 2001, or a WorldCom pen from 2002, works in the same way. A Blockbuster T-shirt is a Friday night to a lot of people. They are not keeping a logo. They are keeping an evening.
Two paintings are recorded here because of that interest. Taylor Silverstein does not own either of them. He would like to. Ownership is stated plainly so that interest is not mistaken for possession.
The Hands Resist Him was painted by Bill Stoneham in 1972, in oil on canvas. It shows a boy and a doll-like girl in front of a glass-panelled door covered with hands. Stoneham has said the boy is based on a childhood photograph of himself, and that the picture is about a boundary between ordinary life and another realm of possibility, or of fantasy. In 2000 the painting was listed on eBay with claims suggesting paranormal activity. The listing spread, and the picture became widely known as the eBay haunted painting. That name belongs to the later story. It is not a finding that the painting is haunted. People who only saw the photographs claimed they felt ill, fainted, or heard something. Those claims were not independently shown. Stoneham's account of the picture stays separate from that legend.
The Anguished Man is oil on canvas. The artist is unknown, and the date is unknown. It shows a distorted figure with an open mouth, painted against blue. Sean Robinson of Cumbria owns it. He says he inherited it from his grandmother, and that she told him the artist mixed his own blood into the paint and died by suicide soon afterwards. That is his account of a family story. It has not been established independently. Where the painting was before that family is not documented on this page. In 2010 Robinson began posting videos of the painting on YouTube. He reported crying, mist and shadowy figures. He has also said the painting fell without explanation, and that he once saw the figure of a man. The reports come from Robinson and his family. No independent investigation has verified them. The painting is often described as supposedly haunted, or as a possible hoax. This page records that. It does not treat it as fact. Robinson has said the painting is not for sale.
The two pictures are here for the same reason. Each is a physical object that acquired a public story larger than the paint. One became widely known through an eBay listing and early internet folklore. The other's reputation grew through a family account, online videos, and paranormal culture. Whether anyone believes a supernatural explanation is a separate question. A claim of a haunting is recorded as a claim.
Nothing in the following list has been bought. These are subjects he is interested in, not an inventory. He is interested in allegedly haunted paintings and objects, horror memorabilia, and physical things surrounded by folklore, because a story can stick to something people can point at. He is interested in material from countries or states that no longer exist in their former form, including the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Holding or documenting historical material does not endorse the government, the ideology, the military, or the events attached to it. The object would be evidence of a time, not a salute to it.
Historical and war memorabilia, if any were ever acquired, would be shown with context: who made it, who used it, and what it belonged to. Political symbols and military material would not be treated as a style. They would need a date, a place, and a plain account of what they are. He is also interested in old memorabilia from companies and shops people still remember. He would like to buy the object, not the company. A shirt is not a claim on a name. None of it is in this collection. The same interest covers obsolete technology, packaging, signs, and ordinary objects that put someone back in another year. The point is familiarity, not rarity for its own sake.