Whiskey nips, flails and jackalope tails ...That's what 'mantiques' are made of

Clustered near the center of the 45,000-square-foot Gateway Antique Mall in Ringgold, Ga., are about a dozen stalls where frills and lace are refused entry. This is a boy's club, a home for all things rusty, dirty and sharp.

Surrounded on all sides by other vendors selling costume jewelry and floral upholstery, this is a saw-toothed brotherhood of buck antlers and wooden fish lures, an altar to pitted iron, cracked leather and old oil stains.

These vendors were deliberately placed together to appeal to the mall's male clientele because "a man isn't going to walk the mall," says Virginia Mills, Gateway's manager. As a result, this area has become a de facto marketplace for the indefinable, hearty brand of collectibles known as "mantiques."

Although there is no sign to declare it, Mills calls this section "Manville."

"It's anything rusty," she explains, laughing. "Anything that has rust on it, they [men] love it."

Some people have difficulty pinning down a precise definition for mantiques, a mashup of "man" and "antique." Most agree that the term generally refers to the type of objects used to adorn dens, garages and other havens of testosterone-fueled nostalgia. A wide range of artifacts can qualify as mantiques, from vintage farm equipment and salvaged gas pumps to taxidermied animals, leather saddles and old Coke machines.

But because no two men are exactly alike, one man's vintage treasure can just be a piece of rusted-out scrap to another. As a result, vendors and collectors say, mantiques are the quintessential "I know it when I see it" kind of collectible.

Would Don Draper drink out of it? Was it ever -- or is it still -- lethal? Could a ship captain, a miner or a logger display it on their mantle without feeling a flush of shame? Could it cause tetanus?

Gateway Antiques has a variety of items that would work in a man cave.

Then more than likely, bub, it's a mantique.

As she winds her way through the mall, Mill stops outside a crowded stall that looks like the end result of a spending spree at a country general store fire stale. The shelves are packed with dusty bottles, old wash basins and -- the piece de resistance -- a massive blue-tinged tuna mounted on a pegboard wall below a dented stop sign.

"This is what mantiques means to me," she says, sweeping her arm across the rusty, dusty sprawl. "A mantique is something that wouldn't be pink.

"Oil cans and raccoon tails and old axes; that's mantiques."

Orna-man-tation

The word "mantique" first was used in the 1970s to reference the masculine offerings of a New York City-based antiques store, says auction and antiques expert Eric Bradley. The term received a more recent bump in popularity with the launch in 2010 of reality TV series such as "Auction Kings," "Down East Dickering" and "American Pickers."

Bradley works at Dallas-based Heritage Auctions. Several years ago, he noticed a nationwide boom in antiques dealers -- such as the inhabitants of Gateway's Manville -- that catered specifically to men. Deciding to look into the trend, in May 2014 he published "Mantiques: A Manly Guide to Cool Stuff," which includes chapters dedicated to various classes of manly collectibles, from old tools and surfing gear to the nebulously defined "curiosities and oddities."

Gateway Antiques has a variety of items that would work in a man cave.

A lifelong collector, Bradley says he was introduced to mantiques long before he had a term to apply to them. Growing up, his father collected a mish-mash of mantique curios, including -- among other things -- a prized stuffed jackalope.

"That was one of the few things that he brought to the marriage," Bradley laughs, "a jackalope, a pool table and four coon hounds."

The quest for bizarre artifacts, the ones just far enough off-center to be interesting, is part of what keeps collectors interested, he adds.

"I think [mantique collectors] are looking for odd, unusual, creative pieces that aren't driven by what Ms. Withershmeer paid for it at an expensive antique show," Bradley says. "They're not pretentious like that.

"They're not looking to brag about the value. They want to own unusual objects and share that knowledge with people."

Bradley's personal mantique collection includes tramp art (folk art to the snooty), whiskey nips (tiny booze bottles) and "weird hair gel." Recently, he followed in his father's pawsteps at a local flea market where he picked up a taxidermied toad made to look like it was making a phone call. It's now sitting on his bookcase, "much to my wife's chagrin," he adds, laughing.

But his Holy Grail? The one mantique Bradley would pick up no matter what?

"A Williams typewriter."

Many mantiques hark back to the collector's childhood.

A late 1800s model, the Williams flopped commercially, but its odd design -- the type hammers swing in from above the paper as opposed to below it -- makes it imminently collectible, he says.

"The engineering that went into that typewriter has always fascinated me," Bradley says. "I would love to find something like that all by itself and lonely at a flea market."

Blast from the past

Despite the appeal of one-of-a-kind pieces, dealers say, there are many types of items that are popular with a wide range of mantique collectors, from sports memorabilia and old hub caps to bottled Coke vending machines and jukeboxes.

Classic advertising, especially related to the automotive industry, is another hot commodity. Antiques dealer Bob Grove says he's probably the primary supplier of vintage signage to Chattanooga's mantique collectors.

At Joe's Mercantile, Grove's store and warehouse on Cherry Street, there are signs everywhere, alerting customers to nonexistent detours and bumps in the road and praising the wonders of Texaco gas and Sinclair oil. For many mantique collectors, nostalgia is a driving factor in starting and curating a mantique collection.

"If dad or an uncle had a service station, they remember that, so now they want to buy the gas signs or oil sign," Grove says. "If their dad or grandad was a tree cutter, they might hang a hatchet or an axe on the wall or something.

"Many people are playing back their childhood, to a certain degree. For the baby boomers, the neighbor's kids might have had something growing up, and now we're in a position to own it and put it in the man cave."

People tend to build mantique collections around a theme. If a man is shooting for a Old West den, he might pick up the saddle near the front of the store -- "it's just a wall-hanger," Grove cautions. And that might draw his eye to complimentary items, such as a movie poster for the Gene Autry film "Under Fiesta Stars" or a 1960s-era Hubley Rodeo model revolver cap gun, complete with leather holster.

Hunting for heirlooms

Despite its evolution from the word "antique," which U.S. Customs and Border Protection defines as objects that are at least a century old, dealers say mantiques don't necessarily have to fit the legal definition.

Grove says he recently sold memorabilia to a man whose man cave was themed on comic books, the earliest of which date back just 75 years. At Gateway, one occupant of Manville trades in action figures, some -- X-Men, He-Man -- mass produced only during the childhood of millennials.

Regardless of how old the items are, some mantiquers say they are compelled to collect for the same reason a hunter hunts and an angler fishes: the thrill of the chase. After all, Indiana Jones was basically the original mantique collector, Bradley reasons, and he didn't bother with the Internet.

"Sometimes, when you shop on eBay or in stores, it's almost like the treasure hunt has been done for you," he says. "It's just a matter of typing in what you want.

"When you go to a flea market or garage sale or country auction, you don't know what's going to be there. If you're in the right place at the right time, you get rewarded for getting your butt out of bed early on a Saturday morning and find the most spectacular things."

Contact Casey Phillips at cphillips@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6205. Follow him on Twitter at @PhillipsCTFP.