Prison Art in the Late 19th Century

            

Prisons across the United States were reformed in the mid to late 19^th century, with activists fighting for the humane treatment of inmates. As a result, many prisons developed new programs to encourage creativity; these programs included training in sewing, knitting, and art and painting. Some prisons chose to encourage inmates to contribute toward the cost of their imprisonment by enacting programs of manual labor. Prisoners worked on state-owned pig and dairy farms, in manufacturing plants, as janitors, and constructing furniture or other household items. Initially, the crafts and pieces created by inmates were sold to the general public. As the pieces had been made free via prison labor, the prisons greatly profited from the sale of goods produced within their factories. Eventually, prison-made goods were used only within the prison itself or other state organizations.

            Auburn Prison in New York is credited with beginning a woodworking program that many other prisons imitated from the middle of the 1830s onward (see the Auburn Prison art blog post here). Inmates were able to utilize water-powered sawmills and tools to create a wide variety of furniture pieces, ranging in sizes from small checkerboard game sets to large tables and chairs. The Southern Illinois Penitentiary (now known as the Menard Correctional Center) in Menard, Illinois, also had a furniture manufactory for inmates to participate in construction activities. Built on the banks of the Mississippi River, it is likely that inmates at the Southern Illinois Penitentiary also used the nearby water source to power the tools and sawmills necessary to complete their furniture tasks. Marquetry and parquetry, also known as ‘male quilting,’ were popular forms of artistic expression for inmates in prisons with woodworking shops. Parquetry is a veneering process in which small pieces of wood or other materials are arranged in geometric designs; marquetry is the same technique, but combined to create figural or natural scenes instead of shapes.

            This hall tree, measuring 80 ½” high, 35 ½” wide and 15” deep was recently sold at Garth’s Auction House in Delaware, Ohio and is now in a private collection. The hall tree was made at the Southern Illinois Penitentiary in the late 19^th or early 20^th century, and is constructed from walnut with wood and mother-of-pearl parquetry inlay design. The design on the piece is symmetrical, with motifs include starbursts, symbols that resemble compasses, and leafy designs – all rendered masterfully, and geometrically, by a former inmate. While no information exists on whether the piece was initially sold to the general public in southern Illinois or used in a state office setting, the piece is a striking example of beautiful folk art furniture by an often forgotten subset of our population.

by Jessica Mayercin, American folk art course, Cooperstown Graduate Program

A Checkered Past

My recent post about our new acquisition of a carved wooden plaque from the Elmira Reformatory caught the attention of several readers who wanted to see other examples of prison art in the Fenimore Art Museum collection. I’ve been meaning to post about a magnificent work that we have from the Auburn Prison (founded in 1816 and renamed Auburn Correctional Facility in the 1970s) in Auburn, New York, so this seems like a great reason to do so.

It is a large (23 ¼” square) and elaborate checkerboard complete with a separate box of 24 checker pieces. Every inch of the piece, no matter how large or small, down to each individual checker, is decorated with wood marquetry inlay in lively patterns. Using hundreds of tiny pieces of a variety of woods, the unknown maker created details such as pinwheels on the checker squares that match those on the checker pieces, a parquet design on the border around the playing surface, and many other fancy border designs around the outer edge of the board.

As far as we know, this piece was made before the 1870s, when it was given to a David Upton, an ancestor of the donors, “in payment of a debt.” It sat in the family’s Rochester, New York attic for more than 70 years. It was given to us in 1977 by Mr. and Mrs. Russell Crosby, in memory of Ruth Upton Morgan and Leah Upton Marlowe.

It is worth noting that the Auburn Prison espoused a system of prisoner reform that included labor and hard work. The “Auburn System,” as it was known, compelled prisoners to work during the day, with the profits of their labors going to support the operation of the prison. The prisoners worked in silence, as the prison rules forbade any conversation. They wore the prison’s signature outfit, the horizontal black and white stripes we now associate universally with convicts everywhere. When they walked from one part of the prison to another the prisoners were compelled to walk in lockstep, one hand on the shoulder of the prisoner in front of each.

Hardly an atmosphere for creative expression. But the Auburn Prison is known for the beauty of its hand-crafted products. Of particular note is the decorative cabinetry that reflects the same skill and care so evident in our checkerboard. Several of these pieces were featured in a 2003 exhibition, “Both Sides of the Wall,” at the Cayuga Museum of History and Art in Auburn. One of them is pictured at left above.

I have written often in this forum about the passion, vision, and commitment of self-taught artists. Our checkerboard, however, forces us to confront the issues of creativity in different ways. How do we account for uncommonly beautiful items made under forced labor? Perhaps the unknown maker of this piece, living in silence and marching in lockstep, poured all of his remaining humanity into the delicate tracery that delights our eyes today.

Elmira Reformatory: Behind the Prison Walls

January is a great time in New York City for museums and collectors looking to add to their holdings. Two major antiques shows, the Winter Antiques Show and The American Antiques Show, take place concurrently during the third week of January every year. I always go down to the city to see colleagues and peruse the offerings. This year was an exceptional one for new acquisitions for the Fenimore Art Museum. Here is one purchase that brought back memories of my childhood in Elmira, New York.

Elmira is home to many things, but it is best known to many people as the site of the Elmira Reformatory, a prison built in 1876 and situated on a hill just north of the city. I have many memories of driving by the reformatory and looking up at its formidable walls. We never had any contact with the inmates, although every so often you might see low-risk prisoners working in various locations around Elmira, always under guard. We knew – or assumed – that many of the prisoners had been brought to the Reformatory from New York City, but we never gave a thought to who they were. They were anonymous faces behind that massive building façade in the distance.

It took an accidental encounter at The American Antiques Show last week to give me some insight into the people behind the prison walls of my hometown. I was working my way through the show when my cell phone rang. Embarrassed to be taking a call in a busy aisle, I slipped into the nearest booth and went behind a partition to take the call.

While talking on the phone, I looked up at the back side of the partition and absent-mindedly read a label next to an object. The words “Elmira Reformatory” caught my eye. After I hung up I realized what I had surreptitiously found: a carved board about 25" tall depicting WWI soldiers made by an inmate at Elmira in the 1930s for the Reformatory’s Teacher of Social Services, a Peter J. Woloson. The carving had been owned by Mr. Woloson’s son, who was offering it for sale through the dealer.

This was just too coincidental, and the price too reasonable, to pass up. So here it is, now in our collection. The only documented piece of prison art from the Elmira Reformatory that I have seen in my many years of studying New York State folk art. I should note that Mr. Woloson’s son is still alive, and has many memories surrounding this piece. Memories that I intend to capture in the near future and preserve for posterity. My great hope is to find out the name of the inmate who did the carving.

And I’m still shaking my head at the notion that a phone call at just the right moment, and a quick decision to duck into just the right booth, led me behind the prison walls of Elmira for the first time in my life.