Lavern Kelley, The Farmer Who Knew

Lavern Kelley was a dairy farmer who lived just a few miles south of Cooperstown on a small family farm kept up by him and his brother. He had taken up whittling as a young boy after an appendectomy, and continued to carve his whole life. His subject matter was all around him, and included not only farm vehicles like trucks, tractors, and plows, but also people, which he began to carve in response to the requests of his patrons.

I knew Lavern for many years prior to his death in 1995. He was the nicest, most soft-spoken gentleman you would ever have the pleasure of meeting. Despite his fame, he was always humble about his abilities and was always willing to take the time to talk with people about his artwork. We used to have him appear at The Farmers' Museum's annual Harvest Festival to demonstrate his carving, and our visitors - particularly the children - were just entranced by the casual manner in which he sculpted basswood while carrying on a conversation.

He could also write. We have in our files several lengthy and remarkably well-written letters describing his work and his approach to particular pieces. They are worth sharing.

In 1988, the Fenimore Art Museum commissioned two pieces from Kelley. We did not specify what they were to be, only that we wanted two people about three feet tall each. The rest was up to him. Here is how he described his thought process:

When I was first approached concerning the commissioned two figures for the Fenimore Art Museum, I felt both elation and surprise. I had never had a commission of this size before. Since The Farmers' Museum, located across the road, and also a part of the museum campus with the Fenimore, keeps mainly to before the turn of the century in their displays, I thought it would be fitting to make the new pieces from that period.


Usually, a blacksmith was one of the most important people in town, so I settled on a blacksmith for the male figure. I felt this was fitting, too, because there is an active blacksmith shop at The Farmers' Museum. The female figure, however, posed a little bigger problem, since women were not as highly visible in that period. The two most obvious walks of life for a woman at that time would have been the housewife or the schoolmarm, at least that was all I could think of. I settled on the schoolmarm, and this also fitted in nicely, because there is a schoolhouse across the road at the museum.

Lavern worked on the blacksmith for about five months, in between his seasonal farm chores. The schoolmarm, completed in the winter, went faster. The finished pair have graced our galleries off and on for many years now, and every time I see them I think of the two museums on our campus - the Fenimore Art Museum and The Farmers' Museum - and the cultural ties between them that too few people grasp. I also think of the unassuming local farmer who saw it all so clearly and expressed it so beautifully in wood.

Counting Sheep

In my new position as President I never know where the day will take me. This morning I was working on an exhibition for the summer of 2012 on the subject of American Impressionism when I was called away to The Farmers' Museum (our sister institution of which I am also President) to watch young oxen being trained. On my way to the farmyard I noticed a co-worker hovering near the sheep's pen.

When I walked over to see what she was looking at, I saw a sheep with her brand new baby lamb. Naturally, I took out my iPhone and snapped the first picture of this new addition to the museum staff. Within the hour a second lamb was born, much to the delight of the families that happened to be nearby.

Any time something like this happens I am reminded of the original vision of the two museums here in Cooperstown -- The Farmers' Museum and the Fenimore Art Museum -- and how much they were always meant to complement each other. Folk art and paintings of everyday life at the Fenimore, living history and real animals at the Farm. This time was no exception.

When I saw the new-born lamb I thought immediately of the painting we have tucked away in storage, depicting a Cotswold ram at the Van Wagenen farm in Lawyersville, New York in the 1860s. It was painted by Thomas Kirby Van Zandt, and the note in our files indicate that the original owner thought it was a remarkable likeness of an animal known for its personality. Now we have another living example of an ongoing livestock tradition in upstate New York to give this artwork meaning and immediacy.

There's even another connection: Jared Van Wagenen, Jr., whose father owned the ram in the painting, wrote the classic book 'The Golden Age of Homespun" for us back in the 1950s. His descriptions of the era depicted in the painting, and recreated at The Farmers' Museum, have enthralled generations of readers. But even he would admit that you can't beat the real thing.

Big Church Little Church

Here is a small piece from the top shelf. In museum lingo, that means an object that is stored in an out-of-the-way location, in this case literally the top shelf of a tall shelving unit. Items way up there are difficult to see and examine, as it requires the use of a ladder to get close enough to see them. Like the Salon exhibitions of old, those things that are at eye level tend to get the most attention, while those that are closer to the floor or “skied” (placed high) tend to get only fleeting glances.

I have glanced at this little church a number of times, and finally decided to brave the climb up the ladder to check it out more closely. As usual, I was surprised at what I found out.

It’s a delightful piece of homemade folk art. Someone, probably a local carpenter, made this realistic little building around the turn of the twentieth century with simple but clever joinery, incising, and planing. It stands about 14 inches high, and has a hinge at the back to allow it to be opened. You can see from the slot at the apex of the roof that this was made as a donation box. It is badly painted, perhaps later than when it was made, but it is beautiful nonetheless. 

The story behind is a nice one too, and quite relevant to our museum. According to the donor, Donald Molloy of Fort Myers, Florida, it was given to him by his grandmother, Viola E. Smith Lance, in about the late 1970s. She had received it from the Matthews family of Cornwallville, New York in the early years of the twentieth century. According to her recollections, Mrs. Matthews was a wealthy woman from New York City who spent her summers in the Catskill Mountains. She was very devoted to the church in Cornwallville, and made it a habit to keep this homemade donation box on her porch during the week so her well-off friends could contribute to the church’s collection any time they visited her. 

The church Mrs. Matthews used this box to collect donations for? It is the very one now located at the end of the village green at The Farmers’ Museum. This building originally served a congregation in East Durham, and was moved to Cornwallville to serve the Methodist Episcopal congregation there, and was purchased by the museum and moved to Cooperstown in 1964.

Along the way, the church collected more than money. It acquired a history, both tangible and intangible, that is still catching up with it today. This little piece of folk art  way up on the shelf rightly belongs with our Cornwallville Church. Despite its size, the little donation box adds great depth and meaning to the church, and reminds us how every great historical survival is the result of many small acts of devotion.

Mural Painting in Rural New York

Sometimes, when the grandest decorative traditions of Europe are picked up by American rural artisans, the results can be striking.

The painting of scenic wall murals has a long history in Western culture, dating from the hunting scenes in prehistoric caves and the many murals of pharonic Egypt and Classical Greece and Rome. In the Middle Ages, noble families hung large woven tapestries depicting historical and mythological scenes on their walls for decoration as well as insulation. By the 18th century, printed papers were made that continued the tradition of scenic views on interior walls and became extremely popular.

In the United States, scenic wallpaper had to be imported from England or France. It was relatively expensive and difficult to obtain. A few folk artists in New York and New England were quick to respond to the fashion and produced hand-painted landscapes in oil directly onto dry plaster to compete with imported wallpaper. The style flourished in the 1820s and 1830s.

The walls in this post (now at The Farmers’ Museum, across the road from the Fenimore Art Museum; see before view above and after restoration at right) were removed from the second floor of a house in Springfield, New York, eleven miles from Cooperstown. Ezra Carroll, a trader, and his father John purchased the house in 1815. The Carroll home was located on the Cherry Valley Turnpike, a well-traveled east-west route, near the store Ezra operated. John died in 1822 or 1823 but Ezra lived until 1844, and it was presumably he who commissioned itinerant artist William Price to paint the walls of the house.

The walls were removed and the Carroll House demolished in 1957. The Winterthur Museum purchased the murals in the central stair hall. Conservators stabilized, removed and transported the walls to Cooperstown and to Winterthur in stages. The murals were covered with protective wallpaper and insulation board and braced with 2 x 4s. The wall sections were then slipped on to steel channels, picked up by crane, and loaded on to trucks. Conservators reversed the process and mounted the murals on a new backing for display.

Very little is known about the artist William Price. He signed and dated the Carroll House walls but no record of him living in the Springfield area survives. There is a William H. Price listed as a painter in The New York City Directory for 1844 and 1845. He may also be a veteran of the War of 1812—note the depiction of Commander Perry’s victory at the Battle of Lake Erie on the front wall (at left), but research continues in identifying the artist.

In painting the vivid and somewhat fantastic murals he may have tried to duplicate elaborate French wallpapers, which also depicted landscapes and were very popular in the early 19th century. Price’s sources for his scenic views may have included both the local landscape and more exotic inspiration. The December 27, 1830 issue of Cooperstown’s Freeman’s Journal announces the pending publication of the Reverend Mr. Stewart’s account of his visit to the South Seas in 1829-30. Price may also have been influenced by literary sources such as Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726, as evidenced by the portrait on the wall to the right (seen below, between the windows), which towers over a tiny gentleman in the foreground.

It’s hard to believe that stunning examples of 19th-century folk art like these can fall victim to changing tastes, but they did. Every so often, homeowners looking to redecorate their early 19th-century houses begin to strip away layers of old wallpaper and find traces of one of these lost murals underneath. When that happens, it’s best to stop and consult a conservator to avoid damaging the paint. You can find one at the American Institute for Conservation website.

Your second call, of course, should be to me.

Two Great Folk Artists at the Harvest Festival!

I spent the day at The Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown with the family, enjoying the historic buildings, the wagon rides, great food, music, and of course the Empire State Carousel, all at the annual Harvest Festival. What I also found, and had to share in a quick post here, was two terrific folk artists working in time honored traditions and offering their wares for sale.

The first is the decoy carver Jonathan J. Dowdall from Burlington Flats, N.Y. Jonathan was a cabinetmaker who has been carving his own decoys since he was a boy. He uses his own decoys to hunt, so he knows how these functional sculptures are supposed to work. Holding up one of his birds, Jonathan explained how, in the working models, he adds weights to the underside to get them to sit naturally in the water. The carving on his decoys is remarkable; the painting superb.

The other folk artist is Walter Fleming, who has been a tinsmith for more than 25 years. I used to have him come to Cooperstown to teach the craft at our annual Seminars on American Culture back in the 1990s. His booth had a lively array of miniature weathervanes and silhouettes. Walter also took some time to explain the workings of an ingenius French-designed automatic candle snuffer that he has reproduced.

One artist in wood, the other in metal. Both interpreting the long-standing practice of creating of useful sculpture and both grounded in a solid craft tradition. If you enjoy the artistic side of American traces and crafts, these are two contemporary artists you will want to see. The Harvest Festival runs through tomorrow, Sunday, September 13.

"Stimp": The Wall Stenciller of Bump Tavern

They are the most elusive folk artists, even though their output was prolific and widespread. I’m talking about the stencillers who decorated the plaster walls of homes, businesses, and public buildings in the early 19th century. Only a few have been identified, but if you have been to The Farmers’ Museum, you have probably seen the work of one of the most interesting and colorful of these characters.

Bump Tavern is very popular among the thousands of museum visitors that come to the museum each year, but few people realize that the wall decoration relates closely to a body of decorative work in Connecticut, where the Bump family came from. When the tavern was moved to the museum in the 1950s, workers discovered stenciling under wallpaper in three second floor rooms. The plaster was beyond restoration, so the museum decided to preserve one section of the original wall (viewable behind a hinged wallboard, above) and have the rest of the stenciling recreated by a member of the Historical Society of Early American Decoration.

Early scholars of American wall stenciling noticed the similarity of the original Bump Tavern stencil patterns with a number of homes in Litchfield County, Connecticut, including the Isaac Hartwell house in Washington. The stenciller is thought to have also worked in Northfield Farms, Massachusetts, where he decorated the Stratton Tavern (right and below left), and in Dover Plains, New York, where he stencilled the walls of the Perry House (above). Local tradition held that the stenciller of the Hartwell house was a man known only as “Stimp,” who drifted into town as an older traveling artist and decorated Mr. Hartwell’s parlor in the early 1830s. According to one local source’s childhood memory, Stimp went to his client’s home in 1834, “crazed with drink,” and tried to kill Hartwell. He was taken into custody, said to have been led to the village whipping post, and sent to the town jail. There is no other mention of his whereabouts after this incident.

In the late 1990s a local museum researched Stimp, and although the jail records were no help, they did find a Caleb H. Stimpson living in the area in the 1830s. There is no direct evidence to tell us that this was the Stimp in question, but it is interesting that there are also several Stimpsons, from Connecticut, who were among the early settlers of Windham and Ashland, New York, the original site of Bump Tavern. This research is summarized here.

So now when you wander through the second floor of Bump Tavern admiring the artist’s signature pinwheel and acorn borders, distinctive swag and tassel cornice patterns, and S-curved floral motifs, you can appreciate the New England ties of both the owner and the artist. You can also see how a 19th-century folk artist used his repertoire of images to decorate a complex space full of nooks and crannies. You can wonder why he left the job before it was complete (see below). And, lastly, you can imagine how an artist prone to drinking to excess managed to work day after day in a tavern with temptation stalking him in every corner.