Crossing the Atlantic at the Winter Antiques Show

I just returned from my annual January visit to New York City and the Winter Antiques Show, and have several interesting discoveries to share. This is a show not to be missed; there are dozens of dealers representing a wide range of interests from fine art to ancient art to tribal art and, of course, American folk art. You may or may not go there to buy, as the prices are consistent with what you might expect from an antiques show on Park Avenue, but the looking is its own reward. You can educate your eye more fully in an hour here than in weeks of seeking out individual shops in the many regions from which these dealers come. And the setting is glamorous, as you can see by the entrance to the show below.

While wandering through the show, I kept an eye out for pieces that had certain similaities with ones in the Fenimore Art Museum collection. Here's a good one.

This life-size carved wooden figure depicted a mariner holding a sextant. It is beautifully carved, probably in a large ship carver's shop. At first glance i would have thought it to be American, but according to the label it is English. The piece is attributed to a carver named Thomas Hall Tweedy, who reportedly carved it for a natical instrument maker's shop (the dealer even gave the name of the shop: John Cail!) in Newcastle on Tyne.

This figure undoubtedly sat outside the shop on the sidewalk, like a cigar store figure. But it reminded me so much of a little figure in our collection I just had to photograph it and share it here. Our figure is even mentioned in the dealer's label for the large piece.

Our little mariner is only about 25 inches tall, but it depicts the mariner holding the sextant in the same manner as the large figure. Our is, of course, much more primitive than the large one. But very appealing for those who have an eye for folk art. Our piece was found in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and is thought to have come from a nautical instrument maker's shop in that important coastal city. The small figures would generally be displayed either on countertops or, as I have seen in one period photo, outdoors on a cantilevered mount above the shop doorway.

However separated by thousands of miles of ocean, these two pieces remind us of the seafaring culture that binds the hemispheres. This notion has gained such credibility in recent years that historians speak less and less of American or European history and instead study Atlantic history. Or, as the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, is fond of saying: the sea connects us all.

Man of Mystery

This fantastic little carving came to us by bequest from Mary Allis, the legendary Connecticut dealer who was instrumental in arranging for so much of our folk art collection to reside in the Fenimore Art Museum. It was Mary Allis who put Jean and Howard Lipman in touch with our benefactor, Stephen Clark, in 1950. And it was Allis who found the treasure trove of folk paintings in an old barn on the property of Mr. and Mrs. William J. Gunn and brought them to Mr. Clark's attention. Our collection would not be anywhere near as important as it is without her.

As for this piece, very little is known about it, but it shows the kind of careful, bold patterning and forthright expressiveness that Allis always sought in great folk art. It stands about 15" high, and depicts a gentleman in colonial costume leaning on his cane and holding a tri-corner hat. It is difficult to date the piece, although of course the clothing is 18th century. We just don't know if the artist was working at a later date.

Regardless of the date, it is certainly something made by a professional (though not classically trained) carver, possibly for commercial purposes. Figures like this one adorned the countertops of American shops from the 18th to the early 20th centuries. A similar figure in our collection may have advertised a gentleman's sporting goods store. Whether this figure advertised a clothing shop or had an entirely different purpose is still to be determined. Mary Allis did not, unfortunately, indicate where she acquired this sculpture.

I particularly like this man's face, with his upraised eyebrows and rosy cheeks. His hair is also quite nicely carved in long, flowing lines. All of which contrasts with the blocky feet that the artist did not do anything to even approximate a naturalistic appearance.

Someday we may find out where this gentleman lived and what he did for a living, but for now he is an enigmatic wonder of the folk art collection, unwilling or unable to reveal any clues to his past.

A Man and His Dog

Man with Gun and Dog.

That's pretty much all we know about this 22-inch tall figure in the Fenimore Art Museum collection. It looks to me like a well-dressed gentleman with his Dalmatian and long rifle out for a day of sport hunting in the countryside. He wears a nice suit and necktie along with a cap, all of which seem to indicate an early twentieth-century date for the piece. But we don't really know who made him and for what reason.

The figure is nicely carved, and there is a lot of personality and individual style in the carving of the facial features and the body of the figure. The dog is delightful and charmingly undersized in relation to the man, perhaps because the carver chose a smaller base than would accommodate a more realistically size canine. The carver also went to a great deal of time and effort to create the gun that the man holds at his side. It has a fair amount of detail and is even hollowed out.

The only suggestion that has occurred to us over the years is that this figure might have been a counter-top trade sign for a sporting goods store. I suppose that's a possibility, although these types of signs were not so much in vogue in the twentieth century. But it is not a commercially produced figure anyway, so it might have been commissioned by a store owner who approached a local carver to provide a nice and practical ornament for his shop.

It's also my guess that this man was hunting fowl, but I couldn't tell you for sure. The dog looks like a Dalmatian to me, and they were known to be good bird-dogs. He even looks as if he is pointing with his tail, working while his master poses.

The Merry Farmer

When I first started working here at the Fenimore Art Museum back in the 1980s, I hated this piece. It seemed like a second-rate, somewhat creepy figural carving of a farmer. Maybe it was the glass eyes that made it seem as if there was something not quite right about this character. At any rate, I have never exhibited the piece, and have, for long stretches, completely forgotten that it even existed.


But you know, something about doing this blog has made me rethink a lot of my initial reactions to the lesser known works in our folk art collection. It’s such a useful exercise to go back and look carefully at pieces you thought you knew and then write something coherent about them. I may be coming around to liking the 54” tall piece known only as “Merry Farmer.”

We know almost nothing about him. The research file is nearly empty, except for a 1966 letter from the dealer who sold us the carving. No ordinary dealer. It was Adele Earnest, who along with her partner Cordelia Hamilton ran the Stony Point Antique Gallery in Stony Point, New York. She also sold us our great Bull weathervane pattern I blogged about some time ago. Highly respected for her knowledge of folk sculpture, Ms. Earnest was a founding trustee of the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, and wrote two books on American folk art.

Anyway, this is what she wrote to Lou Jones, our Director, about this piece in 1966:

A "farmer" came into our hands the other day and naturally I thought of you. Wondered whether you could use him in association with any of your exhibits. He is wood-carved. The body and heard are one piece with the arms separate and swiveled. Don't know what he held in his hand - the hoe is ours. The color is good: - blue overhauls, red kerchief. Eyes are glass marbles. Had been used as a sign for a feed and grain store.

The last sentence got me to looking at this carving again. As an example of an outdoor sign for an agricultural enterprise it is a rare survival. And getting it out of storage and taking another good look at it led me to realize that it is actually a pretty good carving. Still a little scary to some, but forthright and authentic. I wish there were photos of it in situ at the feed and grain store. I can see why Ms. Earnest was attracted to the piece, although I think it’s hysterical that she gave it a hoe to hold.

"Millions In It!"

Folk art often has its roots in the popular culture of its time, and as often as not the folk artist surpasses his or her source material in aesthetic power. Such is the case with the Fenimore Art Museum's unforgettable shop figure “Colonel Sellers” a sculptural marvel created by an unknown artist sometime after the 1870s.

The character of Colonel Sellers has an interesting history. He was a minor comic character in Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 1873 novel The Gilded Age. The novel satirized the lust for wealth, primarily from land speculation. Colonel Sellers lived in poverty but with big dreams of striking it rich in patent medicines, corn speculation, or hog farming. He figured if the corn speculation didn’t work out, he could feed the corn to the hogs. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the Colonel was not destined for riches, and yet he was appealing in his undaunted optimism.

It was the play that far outstripped the novel in popularity, largely because of Colonel Sellers. The first theatrical performances had the Colonel in the background as intended, but he was so well played by actor John T. Raymond that Twain and Warner rewrote the play with Sellers as the main character. It was even renamed “Colonel Sellers.”

Raymond played the character of Colonel Sellers onstage more than a thousand times. He posed as the character in a popular cabinet card (above left), and this pose was copied by the artist J.S. Hartley as a statuette. Somewhere along the line, our unidentified shop figure carver saw either the photo or the statuette or an engraving of one of the other. I’m guessing it was the cabinet card, as the carver mimicked the light tan pants and dark coat. He carved a likeness in wood, 58” tall, and identified the character on the base (above right) along with his signature phrase, “Millions in it!”

But it’s the style of our carving that’s so captivating. Sharp, clean lines. A vigorous posture and gesture. This figure definitely would have caught the attention of passersby, especially on the streets of Sellersville, Pennsylvania (about a half hour north of Philadelphia), where it was reportedly found. How could you not buy patent medicines from this man?