NOT TODAY, EBAY (41)

By: Joshua Glenn
November 9, 2026

One in a series of posts via which Josh Glenn will share recent examples of stuff that he was tempted to purchase via eBay… but, heroically, didn’t.

Keydel 1921 Swiss Weather Prophet Hygrometer Wood Chalet House Hansel Gretel

$39.95

When I learned that John Crowley had died, I immediately picked up my 1980 Bantam paperback edition of his 1979 novel Engine Summer and started reading it for the umpteenth time.

Harold Bloom called Crowley’s 1981 fantasy novel Little, Big the most enchanting twentieth-century work of fiction, and I can’t argue with that. I have such vivid memories of reading that book — I assume because the world around me (a dock on a lake in Maine) became so fraught and charmed as I read it. But Crowley is badly underrated as a science fiction author — each of his sf pieces is a jewel, Engine Summer being the crown jewel.

Part of the charm of Engine Summer, as I’ve written elsewhere, is this stuff: “Rush is curious about the pre-catastrophe past, relics and rumors of which confound and amaze him.” One of those relics which I’d forgotten about is described like so:

The thing on the wall was made of plastic. It was like a tiny house with a high-peaked roof; but it was flat, with only a little shelf that stuck out in front of it. It had two doors, one on each side. Three people lived in the house, one of whom — I watched with hair rising on my neck — at that moment was backing into the right-hand doorway with tiny jerking motions, while the other two came jerking out the left-hand door. The one disappearing inside was an old woman, bent and hooded and gnarled, leaning on a stick; the two who began to appear were children, with their arms around one another.

I did a little research and discovered that this device must surely be a rustic chalet-style “weather house” — which uses a tension-sensitive catgut string to forecast humidity changes. These were often themed after the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel. An example of German / Austrian / Swiss folk art (and, eventually, kitsch), wooden versions date back to the 18th century.

Beginning, I think, in the 1920s and ’30s, versions of this sort of object — though made of plastic, or mostly plastic, though “carved” like folk art, and thus examples of kitsch — were widely available in the United States.

The one shown above is at least partially wooden, not plastic. And the old woman doesn’t have a stick. (Below: One does find examples where a witch-like woman holds a broom.) The search continues!

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NOT TODAY, EBAY (41)

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