America’s main streets and crossroads have long been fertile ground for image-makers. Where billboards and golden arches now stand, Federal eagles and Greek muses once lent a sense of the theatrical. Originally created primarily for the service of commerce as trade stimulators, these figural wooden carvings and metal castings have today transcended into the arena of American folk art.
“Sidewalks to Rooftops: Outdoor Folk Art,” on view at Colonial Williamsburg’s expanded and newly reopened Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, features more than 89 pieces of outdoor folk art. Through the exhibition, commerce and personal expression have been given a venue in which they can once again perform their silent, attention-getting acts before a welcoming public. The exhibit is on long-term viewing and will run through 2013.
The visual cues that drove a largely illiterate population to retail counters and professionals were a part of the American landscape from colonial days through to the early Twentieth Century. As the carved wooden and zinc cast signage gave way to more modern forms, astute collectors swept in to preserve all that had not been claimed by time, weather or neglect.
Curated by Barbara Luck, curator of paintings, drawings and sculpture, and Laura Pass Barry, associate curator, prints, maps and paintings, the exhibit presents show figures and signboards that run the gamut from figureheads and tobacconist’s Indians to carousel animals and architectural ornaments. Items of personal expression include weathervanes, whirligigs and masterpieces of contemporary outdoor folk art.
According to Luck, during preparations for the show, conservators determined that owners intent on refreshing their signs with new paint jobs had misinterpreted several of the historic pieces. Some have been returned to their original coloration. More will undergo restoration as time permits. Still others on view bear the scars of their service.
“Sidewalks to Rooftops” offers an insightful look at a continuum that began with maritime artists and has not yet found its end, at least not on a personal level. This is the story of America’s carvers, virtuosos adept at transforming wood into animated figures, caricature symbols, even puns. It is also the story of imaginative entrepreneurs on both sides of the commercial proposition who understood the value of polychrome come-ons.
By the Nineteenth Century, carvers had been elevated to the status of artists, although they fiercely maintained their place as tradesmen. Wood, rather than marble, was their medium. Their works were marketed through catalogs and sold across the country.
The genesis of the art is rooted in maritime carvings. Figureheads had long been seen as devices to ward off dangers at sea. They often also reflected the spirit of the crew. The Vikings, for instance, put dragons on the prow. The British thrust the lion rampant up front. American ships often sailed behind the Federal eagle.
Among the other icons of the emerging nation seen on prows were Pocahontas, George Washington and Andrew Jackson. The merchant class set its own standards, often using the figurehead to pay homage to the owner’s wife, daughters or sweetheart. It was an honor to be immortalized in wood, to ride the seven seas as inspiration to an adventurous crew.
The figurehead “Minnehaha” is an outstanding example of both the carver’s art and the modern conservator’s ability. William B. Gleason, a Boston carver of note who eventually turned to furniture carving, was commissioned to create a figurehead of the Indian maiden for the clipper ship of the same name. It was launched in 1856, just a year after the publication of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s hugely popular epic poem, “The Song of Hiawatha.” For inspiration, Gleason looked to the theater where the English actress Julia Bennett Barrows had won widespread acclaim for her recitations of the poem. Working from a photograph of Barrows, Gleason created a fictional image of Minnehaha.
After many voyages, the elements took their toll. Minnehaha was refreshed and reinterpreted in part. By the time she reached the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum’s permanent collection, her leggings had become flesh colored. Conservators discovered that the leggings were originally dark blue and restored them to their original hue.
As wind power bowed to steam, ships were redesigned. The elimination of a prow rendered the figurehead obsolete. This decline in commissions forced many ship carvers to seek work in the world of advertising.
Among the first of their iconic figures was the cigar store Indian. Its origin dates back to England, circa 1617, when small wooden figures, often black men wearing headdresses and kilts made of tobacco leaves and called “Virginie Men,” were placed on countertops to promote tobacco companies.
As their popularity grew, the figures varied from realistic portrayals of historical figures to idealized braves and squaws. Frequently the figures embodied contradictions, with garden-variety racist attitudes of the day carved right into the design.
Some name artists used Native Americans as models, creating specialties within the genre. Thomas V. Brooks made “leaners,” Indians resting their elbows on log posts, barrels or gigantic cigars. John Cromwell was known for his V-shaped headdresses. The French Canadian carver Louis Jobin often placed the left arm at chest level holding a robe while the right clutched a bundle of cigars. New York’s Samuel Robb crafted maidens holding bouquets of roses similar to one he had made for his wife’s tombstone.
The leader in tobacconist’s figures was William Demuth & Company, a New York firm. Demuth himself was a savvy marketer who relied on name carvers to create his product. When he realized the durability of zinc castings, Demuth developed the form with Moritz Seelig, a fellow German, working out of a Brooklyn foundry. In 1875, the Demuth catalog advertised 30 different zinc figures, twice the number of wooden ones.
Retailers other than tobacconists also used figures to advertise. Tea rooms featured idealized figures of Chinese men and women. Women’s clothiers put out well-attired “period girls” to attract the moneyed crowd.
Trade signs were no less dramatic than figures. In fact, some were so cleverly crafted with exaggerated images and out-of-scale numerals that the art overshadowed the message, causing viewers to do a double take.
Overall, up until the American Revolution, tavern signs often incorporated well-known English images, such as the lion. In one notable instance, William Rice, a Connecticut carver, produced a sign for Hawley’s Inn near New Boston, Mass., that paired a Federal eagle with a chained lion. It is generally thought that he may have intended the work to be a celebration of American independence.
The sign retains the original wood framing and iron brackets. Some of the pigments incorporate sand and fragments of glass, which provide stimulating texture and glitter. The glass may also have helped preserve the sign from weathering, Luck stated. Rice, it should be added, was among the few tradesmen/artists to sign his works. He also was among the most successful, placing more newspaper ads for his signs than many of contemporaries.
In the case of Horace Rockwell, one has to admire the artist’s moxie as much as his talent. The portraitist recycled another artist’s portrait of a cleric into a sign for his own painting skills. The original artist is unknown, and perhaps it is just as well, because Rockwell added an oval reserve around the top half of the painting and painted over the lower half. He also lettered the bottom of the panel. The fact that the image would be misconstrued as his own work apparently never crossed his mind.
The business of trade signs was so pervasive that even well-known artists, such as Edward Hicks, were known to have worked in the business. Best known for serene farmscapes and his depictions of the Peaceable Kingdom, Hicks began as an apprentice in the coach-making business. There, he lettered and adorned a wide variety of goods, from furniture to fire buckets to signboards.
When the demand for show figures peaked, circa 1840 to 1890, carvers looked far afield once again for their livelihood. This time they found carousel makers and traveling circuses ripe for their talents.
The exhibition includes five carousel figures, with three of the examples on loan from the Penny Prosperpi collection. (They are the only loan items in the exhibit.) These include a horse and a camel, both dating from about 1880 to 1900, and the latter a “leaf eater,” the term given a giraffe with his tongue protruding from an outstretched neck.
A goat from the museum’s permanent collection is attributed to the master Italian carver Salvatore Cernigliaro, who worked for the Dentzel Carousel Company of Philadelphia. The goat wears vaguely Alpine trappings and has a merry bridle bell.
Animals that rode the outside ring of the carousel had the greatest visibility, so carvers lavished them with the finest effort. An Indian pony attributed to the D.C. Müller & Brother Carousel Company has a raised tail and foreleg, tucked head, open mouth, flattened ears and an erect neck, body language that suggests he has been reined in to a sudden halt.
Circus wagons had a niche of their own, with artwork that portrayed many different aspects of civilization, as a brilliant carving from the shop of Samuel Robb illustrates. High aloft an animal cage decorated with musical themes is a gilded pine depiction of Terpsichore, muse of dance and choral music. Luck said that when Abby Aldrich Rockefeller acquired the figure in 1933, it was believed to have been a lawn ornament.
Weathervanes, though not often used as trade signs, have their place in the exhibit as well. With the earliest American vanes dating to the middle of the Seventeenth Century, they are descendants of the banner or pennant vanes that originated in Europe and England more than 500 years ago.
Flat, homemade vanes and those created by local blacksmiths depict everything from barnyard animals to variations on the Indian hunter. The earliest ones are made of painted wood, sheet metal or a combination of both.
By 1850, vanes were being mass-produced. Made of thin sheets of copper that were hammered into cast iron molds and then soldered together, they are quite prized.
When it comes to whirligigs, whimsy overrides anything practical. Whatever their form †soldiers, policemen, ducks †whirligigs serve no purpose other than to delight the eye.
While these items represent an art form that has given way to technology, folk artists continue to pursue their own personal expressions, as with the contemporary works attributed to Aldobrando (Aldo) Piacenza.
Born in Italy, Piacenza immortalized his homeland with murals painted on the exterior of his home in Highwood, Ill. He filled his yard with models of buildings he called birdhouses. Many of his miniature buildings replicated churches and cathedrals. Pisa Cathedral, on view in the exhibit, is but one remarkable example.
Today, as avatars and virtual worlds increasingly invade the screens that are home to America’s visual culture, “Sidewalks and Rooftops: Outdoor Folk Art” offers a refreshing return to an American landscape equally as fantastical.
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum is at 325 West Francis Street. For information, 757-229-1000 or www.colonialwilliamsburg.org .
