Collector: Melode Hall
Sometimes you have to bring your work home with you and sometimes you choose to.
Melode Hall spent 19 years in the commercial insurance business before retiring to start her own business, Scrapbooking on Geiger. She’d enjoyed working in the insurance industry and when her former boss in Anchorage, Alaska, sent her a gift, she was intrigued.
The gift was a metal fire mark sign. Fire insurance marks are metal plaques marked with the emblem of the insurance company that was affixed to the front of insured buildings as a guide to the insurance company’s fire brigade. These identification marks were used in the 18th and 19th centuries in the days before municipal fire services.
Later, when working in Spokane at Rogers & Rogers Insurance, the office staff asked her to shop for a vintage sign to give one of their bosses for Christmas. They knew Hall and her husband Ric enjoyed antiquing.
“We found a sign and gave it to our boss,” Hall said. “That sparked my interest to start my own collection.”
Her first find was in a Portland shop – a framed London & Lancashire sign. From there, her collection grew and now numbers 949 pieces from tiny erasers to a large metal State Farm sign her husband turned into a table.
“I also have 635 paper items,” she said. “They are in album sleeves or mounted with clear acid-free photo corners – therefore no damage to any piece. I believe this is important to preserve their originality and integrity.”
The albums contain her oldest items, including an 1856 cotillion party invitation hosted by the Hoosier Fire Company.
Her collection fills a large room in her home office. Tall wooden shelves and glass-fronted cabinets contain rulers, paperweights, key chains, thimbles, banks and more.
A lighted Woodsmen Accident and Life Company clock ticks out the time and just inside the door, a perpetual calendar from The New Zealand Insurance Company tracks the date.
Hall pointed to a State Farm beach towel.
“I found that in Denver in the original packaging,” she said. “It was only $20! A steal! Someday I hope to find an insurance tablecloth – I haven’t found one yet that was a price I wanted to pay.”
Like most collectors, the thrill of the hunt inspires her.
“Every piece has a story,” she said.
She and her husband plan their travel destinations around the antique shops they want to visit.
“I actually got to go to Lloyds of London,” she said . “I got an eraser as a souvenir.”
While in-person shopping is her preference, she did find a large collection of insurance signs on eBay.
“A guy in Indiana was selling 42 signs,” she said. “I called a friend who lived 17 miles away and she picked them up.”
Her cousin got the four large boxes from the friend and shipped them to Hall.
She has many items from her former employer, Rogers & Rogers.
“When I worked there, it was the oldest insurance company in the area,” she said. “They paid out after Spokane’s Great Fire.”
Other notable Spokane landmarks appear in her collection, like a perpetual calendar she found in Everett. It features what was once known as the Western Union Life Insurance building, but is now known as the Chancery.
Unusual items include a long-playing Christmas album “The Equitable Chimes,” which was produced by the Equitable Life Insurance Company in Spokane. She even has a 1924 Metropolitan Life Cookbook from Spokane’s Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
While some peruse Black Friday sales at area department stores, Hall and her husband spend the day browsing local antique shops. Her most recent finds came from a shop in the U-District in November.
“In Spokane, we only shop twice a year because there’s not enough turnover for the things we collect,” Hall said.
The allure is discovering unique items.
“I get so excited,” she said. “It amazes me when I see something I haven’t seen before.”
For example, a set of six table knives in a decorative box.
“I haven’t bought them yet, but I would love to have them,” she said.
Her collection is carefully curated and reflects happy memories .
“I loved my job,” she said. “This reminds me of all the good times I had in the business.”