Folk Art (Spring 1994)

FOLIC ART MAGAZINE OF THE MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART * SPRING 1994 * $6.00

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CSJ

FRANK J. MIELE gallery

Susan Powers, Ginger in a Blue Room, oil on canvas, 24 by 20 inches.

1262 Madison Avenue New York, N.Y. 10128 (212) 876-5775

STEVE MILLER • AMERICAN FOLK ART •

WANTED!!!

AMERICAN FOLK SCULPTURE OF THE FINEST QUALITY 17 East 96th Street, New York, New York 10128(212)348-5219 Gallery hours are from 1:00 pm until 6:00 pm,Tuesday through Saturday.

Other hours are available by appointment.

AMERICAN LIFE: Paintings, Sculpture and Objects in the American Folk Tradition April 6 - May 7, 1994 An exhibition curated by Fred & Kathryn Giampietro

Anonymous 0.1915 Carved and painted wood 68" high

SPECIAL HOURS BY APPOINTMENT DURING THE PHILADELPHIA ANTIQUES SHOW APRIL 9- 13,1994

Janet Fleisher GALLERY 211 South 17th Street PHILADELPHIA 1 9 1 0 3 (215)545.7562/7589

A

MMI

PHILLIPS

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY BY AMMI PHILLIPS (1788-1865)

EDWIN HILD

OIL ON CANVAS, 30" X 25"

PATRICK BELL ..iempipiWnrib

ONE OF A PAIR, PAINTED C.1815 INSCRIBED ON ORIGINAL STRAINER, "MRS. HARDY" EXHIBITING: THE PHILADELPHIA ANTIQUES SHOW, APRIL 9-13

OLDE

HOPE

ANTIQUES, INC.

6465 ROUTE 202 NEW HOPE, PA 18938 215-862-5055

AMERICAN ANTIQUES & QUILTS

Ami, d ,etak-

Abe. Atihk. AIN.. Aar

Exceptional pieced and applique quilt: "CRAZY. CITY. 1885. C. WINNE." Found in New York State.

Patchwork patterns include Houses, Tumbling Blocks, Geese-in-Flight, Variable Star, Basket, Pinwheel, Crazy Quilt and American Flags. 82 x 73 inches.

A textile folk art masterpiece.

BLANCHE GREENSTEIN THOMAS K. WOODARD 799 Madison Avenue New York, N.Y. 10021 •(212) 988-2906•

We are always interested in purchasing exceptional quilts Photographs returned promptly. Telephone responses welcome

FOLK ART VOLUME 19, NUMBER 1 / SPRING 1994 (FORMERLY THE CLARION)

FEATURES

Cover: Detail of ALBUM QUILT; Hannah Foote; Baltimore; 1850; 104 x 104". Private collection.

Photo courtesy America Hurrah Antiques, New York

Folk Art is published four times a year by the Museum of American Folk Art,61 West 62nd Street, NY,NY 10023,Tel. 212/977-7170,Fax 212/977-8134. Prior to Fall 1992, Volume 17, Number 3,Folk Art was published as The Clarion. Annual subscription rate for members is included in membership dues. Copies are mailed to all members. Single copy $6.00. Published and copyright 1994 by the Museum of American Folk Art,61 West 62nd Street, NY,NY 10023. The cover and contents of Folk Art are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any manner without written consent. Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily those of the Museum of American Folk Art. Unsolicited manuscripts or photographs should be accompanied by return postage. Folk Art assumes no responsibility for the loss or damage of such materials. Change of address: Please send both old and new addresses and allow five weeks for change.

Advertising: Folk Art accepts advertisements only from advertisers whose reputation is recognized in the trade, but despite the care with which the advertising department screens photographs and texts submitted by its advertisers, it cannot guarantee the unquestionable authenticity of objects or quality of services advertised in its pages or offered for sale by its advertisera, nor can it accept responsibility for misunderstandings that may arise from the purchase or sale of objects or services advertised in its pages. The Museum is dedicated to the exhibition and interpretation of folk art and feels it is a violation of its principles to be involved in or to appear to be involved in the sale of works of art.

For this reason, the Museum will not knowingly accept advertisements for Folk Art that illustrate or describe objects that have been exhibited at the Museum within one year of placing an advertisement.

ALBUMS,ARTIZANS & ODD FELLOWS:THE CLASSIC AGE OF AMERICAN QUILTS Elly Sienkiewicz

32

REVISITING AMMI PHILLIPS: 1-.11-1Y YEARS OF AMERICAN PORTRAITURE Stacy C. Hollander

42

THREADS OF EVIDENCE: ATTRIBUTING AN ANONYMOUS QUILT TO AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN MAKER Karl Kusserow

A CONSERVATION CRISIS: THE WORK OF FELIX "FOX"HARRIS, A CASE STUDY Lynn P. Castle

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50

DEPARTMENTS

EDITOR'S COLUMN

8

DIRECTOR'S LETTER

13

MINIATURES

18

BOOK REVIEWS

26

MUSEUM NEWS

56

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

61

MUSEUM REPRODUCTIONS PROGRAM

68

TRUSTEES/DONORS

70

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

80

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 5

JOEL AND KATE KOPP

AMERICA HURRA 766 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK NY 10021 tel 212.535.1930 fax 212.249.9718

CALLIGRAPHIC PEN AND INK DRAWING Circa 1840-18" x 18" Edith Halpert's American Folk Art Gallery label on reverse.

JOEL AND KATE KOPP

AMERICA HIJ l' RAH 766

MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK NY

10021

tel 212.535.1930 fax 212.249.9718

APPLIQUE COTTON TABLE COVER Mid 19th Century窶年ew York State 41" x 42"

EDITOR'S

COLUMN

ROSEMARY GABRIEL

FOLK ART

Rosemary Gabriel Editor and Publisher Johnson & Simpson Design and Typography Tanya Heinrich Production Editor Benjamin J. Boyington Copy Editor Marilyn Brechner Advertising Manager Craftsmen Litho Printers MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART

fter years of research and planning, the exhibition "Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture" is beautifully installed at the Museum, accompanied by a handsome full-color 80-page catalog to record this special event for all time. The exhibition's curator, Stacy C. Hollander, and research curator, Howard P. Fertig, have brought together for view an exciting group of fifty of Phillips's most important paintings and have documented more than six hundred. In this issue, Hollander's essay provides us with a concise introduction to the work of an artist who "demands serious critical attention. The best of his work resonates with the spirit of the subjects portrayed and is expressed in structured compositions that have earned Phillips a solid place in the canons of American art history."

Quiltmakers here and abroad are familiar with the published works of Elly Sienkiewicz; she has written ten books on appliquéd quilts, and her name has become almost synonymous with the subject. Her essay "Albums, Artizans & Odd Fellows: The Classic Age of American Quilts" is a preview of a chapter in her next book,Baltimore Beauties and Beyond: Studies in Classic Album Quilt Appliqué, Volume III, to be published by C&T Publishing in 1995. It explores the influence of Odd-Fellow symbolism and Baltimore's grand exhibition era on the design of Album quilts. It reflects the renewed passion for and is illustrated with some truly lovely examples of this specific quilt form. Another quilt form that has generated great interest—and not a little controversy—among scholars and collectors is the African-American quilt. "Threads of Evidence: Attributing an Anonymous Quilt to an African-American Maker," by Karl Kusserow,examines a Kentucky quilt in the Museum's collection and makes a strong case for its attribution to an African-American quilter.

There also has been considerable controversy over the preservation of contemporary folk art environments. Once the creator is no longer living and no private provision has been made for the upkeep of an environment, it is difficult to answer the question of whether it is best to leave the work where it is. Without public or private funding to preserve and staff the site, the art would no doubt eventually deteriorate. To move the environment,in whole or in part, to a protected and supervised location, would necessarily destroy a portion of the artist's intent, but also would preserve the essence of the artist's vision for all of us to learn from and enjoy for a long time to come. In her essay "A Conservation Crisis: The Work of Felix `Fox' Harris, A Case Study," Lynn Castle, the curator of exhibitions and collections at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, has described for us the care and ingenuity exercised by her museum's staff in the installation and preservation of the fantastic totemic forest created by this selftaught visionary artist.

I wish to thank Todd Hensley, president of C&T Publishing, Martinez, California, for contributing the necessary funds for additional color pages in this issue. On behalf of the membership department, I would like to welcome our new members,thank those who have renewed their memberships, and those who have increased their membership contributions in this last quarter. I look forward to joining you again in our Summer issue.

A

Dr. Robert Bishop, Director 1977-1991 Administration

Gerard C. Wertkin Director Karen S. Schuster Director ofMuseum Operations Joan M. Walsh Controller Mary Ziegler Administrative Assistant Jeffrey Grand Senior Accountant Gregory 0. Williams Accountant Darren McGill Mailroom and Reception Christopher Giuliano Mailroom and Reception Collections & Exhibitions

Stacy C. Hollander Curator Ann-Marie Reilly Registrar Judith Gluck Steinberg Assistant Registrar! Coordinator, Traveling Exhibitions Margaret Alison Eisendrath Weekend Gallery Manager Gina Bianco Consulting Conservator Elizabeth V. Warren Consulting Curator Howard Lanser Consulting Exhibition Designer Kenneth R. Bing Security Departments

Beth Bergin Membership Director Marie S. DiManno Director ofMuseum Shops Susan Flamm Public Relations Director Alice J. Hoffman Director ofLicensing Katie Cochran Director ofDevelopment Janey Fire Photographic Services Chris Cappiello Membership Associate Jennifer A. Waters Development Associate Maryann Warakomski Assistant Director ofLicensing Edith C. Wise Consulting Librarian Eugene P. Sheehy Museum Bibliographer Programs

Lee Kogan Director, Folk Art Institute! Senior Research Fellow Barbara W.Cate Educational Consultant Dr. Marilynn Karp Director, New York University Master's and Ph. D.Program in Folk Art Studies Dr. Judith Reiter Weissman Coordinator, New York University Program Arlene Hochman Coordinator, Docent Programs Howard P. Fertig Chairman,Friends Committee Museum Shop Staff Managers: Dorothy Gargiulo, Caroline Hohenrath, Rita Pollitt; Mail Order: Beverly McCarthy; Coordinator: Diana Robertson; Security: Bienvenido Medina; Volunteers: Marie Anderson, Claudia Andrade, Judy Baker, Marilyn Banks, Olive Bates, Catherine Barreto, Marsha Becker, Ann Coppinger, Sally Elfant, Sally Frank, Millie Gladstone, Elli Gordon,Inge Graff, Dale Gregory, Edith Gusoff, Bernice Hoffer, Elizabeth Howe, Annette Levande, Arleen Luden, Katie McAuliffe, Nancy Mayer,Theresa Naglack, Leslie Nina, Pat Pancer, Marie Peluso, Judy Rich, Diane Rigo, Frances Rojack, Renny Santos, Phyllis Selnick, Myra Shaskan, Lola Silvergleid, Maxine Spiegel, Mary Wamsley, Marion Whitley, Helen Zimmerman

Museum of American Folk Art Book and Gift Shops 62 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10112-1507 212/247-5611 Two Lincoln Square(Columbus Avenue between 65th and 66th) New York, NY 10023-6214 212/496-2966

8 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

A

RICCO/MARESCA

Thornton Dial Sr., "Hank William's Daughter, Picasso And The Tiger That Hold 7'o The Pourer': 199 Enamel, plastic hose,foam rubber, broken glass, string, '

If

American Self Taught Eddie Arning David Butler Thornton Dial Sr.

Sam Doyle William Edmondson Ken Grimes

William Hawkins Dwight Mackintosh Laura McNellis

152 WOOSTER STREET/NEW YORK, NY 10012 / 212.780.0071 /FAX • 212-780.0076

Bill Traylor Purvis Young Willie Young

litte Lit#16

Toy locomotive, hand carved, cast iron wheels, original green paint with mustard striping, walnut, c. 1880.

P. 0. Box 1653 • Alexandria, Virginia 22313 • (703) 329-8612

DOUBLE

GALLERY

•AMERICAN FOLK ART/VINTAGE DESIGN•

Post Office Box 41645 Los Angeles, CA 90041-0645

Hand carved, painted furniture made in the 1930's by an Austrian immigrant living in King City, California. There are over 20 pieces available, including a dining room table with 4 chairs. Pieces sold separately. Please call for prices and more information.

By appointment only: (310) 652-5990 We Specialize in Unusual American Folk Art

10 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Nichols Antiques Specializing in 18th and 19th century American folk art

Sheet-iron weathervane, from the Ringtown, Pa., Post Office-Country Store, circa 1900-10.

Front at left, back at right. Height: 69". Width: 20".

Lee and Thurston Nichols • 917 Mosser Road,Breinigsville, PA 18031 • 215-395-2748

Important Americana is Sotheby's cup of tea.

This charming portrait is an example of the outstanding Americana that Sotheby's specializes in each season.

A highlight from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, it is one of a selection of American folk paintings approved for de-accession by the Metropolitan Museum of Art at Sotheby's.

Important Americana auction: June 23, 1994 Inquiries: Nancy Druckman at (212) 606-7225, Sotheby's, 1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 Illustrated catalogues are available at our offices and galleries worldwide and through the mail. To order with a credit card, please call (800) 444-3709; outside the continental U.S., call (203) 847-0465.

American School, 19th century, A Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair Wearing a Blue Dress, Posed with a Miniature Tea Set and a Black and White Kitten, oil on canvas, 49 in. by 39% in.

(125.7 by 99.7 cm.). Auction estimate: $5,000-8,000

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DIRECTOR'S

LETTER

GERARD C. WERTKIN

n 1968, the Museum of American Folk Art presented a major retrospective of the work of the great nineteenth-century portrait painter Ammi Phillips. Since that time, the Museum has acquired Phillips's well-loved Girl in Red Dress with Cat and Dog,the promised gift of an anonymous donor, and a handsome pair of portraits of an unidentified man and woman, the gift of Joan and Victor Johnson. After the passage of twenty-five years and the development of substantial additional information about the painter, it was appropriate to revisit this artist and his work. I am delighted to report that as I write these words the exhibition "Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture" is now installed in the Museum's galleries.

The principal sponsor of the Phillips exhibition is The J. M. Kaplan Fund. In the words of Joan K. Davidson, the Fund's president, this major gift celebrates the Museum "and its grand vision" as well as the ninetieth birthday of Alice M. Kaplan, who served the Museum as a trustee for many years. When Mary Black presented the Museum's first Phillips exhibition in 1968, Alice Kaplan worked with her as Honorary Curator. It therefore was especially fitting that the Museum and The J. M. Kaplan Fund should work together on this project. It is with deep and abiding gratitude that I express my thanks to Joan Davidson and the other Trustees of The J. M. Kaplan Fund. My thanks also goes to the New York State Council for the Arts, the American Folk Art Society, the Cowles Charitable Trust, Helen and Steven Kellogg, Henry and Mary Rodgers Guettel, Kay Insurance Co., and other Museum friends for their support of this significant presentation.

In conjunction with "Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture," the Museum has published a splendid exhibition catalog. To help support the organization of the exhibition and the publication, a limited edition of two hundred cloth-bound copies has been printed; these are available for contributions of $125 per copy.

These are already in short supply and I urge you to use the coupon in this issue of Folk Art to reserve your copy now.

The story of the Grenfell Mission was ably told by Paula Laverty in the Winter 1993 issue of Folk Art. Laverty is also serving as guest curator of an exhibition of Grenfell mats now being presented at the Museum. I am grateful to her and to Colleen Lynch, who served as consultant to the exhibition. I should also like to extend warm thanks to Patricia Lynch Smith and Sanford L. Smith for their generous contribution to this project, and to Alan Sullivan, Consul General for Canada, and other friends for their support and encouragement in making this fascinating exhibition possible.

These remarks are being written two days after Part I of the sale of the collection of Bertram K. Little and Nina Fletcher Little at Sotheby's here in New York. The Littles assembled one of the most significant collections of New England folk and decorative arts. The collection was especially notable for its breadth and focus, as well as for the meticulous scholarship with which it was researched. Mr. and Mrs. Little died within four months of each other in 1993. While a substantial part of their collection was bequeathed to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, their family elected to disperse other parts of the collection through auction. It is with pride and pleasure that I announce that the Museum has received an anony-

I

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WEARING A GOLD-COLORED DRESS Ammi Phillips Region unknown c. 1838-1840 28 V." Museum of American Folk Art, New York, gift of Joan and Victor Johnson, 1991.30.1.

33

mous gift of two early portraits attributed to the Connecticut artist Reuben Moulthrop(1763-1814), which brought the highest price of any lot in the sale. Depicting Mr. and Mrs. James Blakeslee Reynolds of West Haven, Connecticut, these portraits are the earliest major paintings in the Museum's collection. They will be illustrated in a forthcoming article in Folk Art on Moulthrop by Stacy C. Hollander, the Museum's Curator.

It is with profound sadness that I record the death in November 1993 of Adele Earnest, a founding trustee of the Museum of American Folk Art. Only recently, in the Fall 1993 issue of Folk Art, I recalled Adele's inspired leadership since 1961, when the Museum received its charter. She led an unusually long and productive life and remained active in retirement until a week before her passing at the age of ninety-two. The Museum is the repository of her papers and records relating to the field of American folk art. These archives were gratefully received last year at the time she moved to Washington. For Adele Earnest's founding vision and her important contributions and enthusiastic participation in the growth and development of the Museum,all of us are deeply grateful. To her son and daughter-in-law, Gene and Mayo, and to her business partner of many years, Cordelia Hamilton, I offer our heartfelt condolences.

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 13

Kelter-Malce Antiques 74 JANE STREET NEW YORK, NY 10014 212.675.7380 BY APPOINTMENT

Louis E. Thompson (1894-1963); Baltimore, Maryland.

Carved and painted wood, clay, and stone; 20" tall, 18" wide,8" deep; signed L. Thompson, 1942.

We have several sculptures by this African-American artist.

THE

AMES GALLERY

2661 Cedar Street Berkeley, California 94708 510/845-4949 Bonnie Grossman, Director • The Gallery specializes in the works of contemporary naive, visionary and outsider artists.

We also offer an extensive inventory of exceptional 19th & early 20th C. handmade objects including carved canes, tramp art, quilts and whimseys.

14 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

From our collection offrames

Photo:Ben Blackwell

Carved polychromed wood, found in Indiana, c. 1870, ht. 21"

DAVID WHEATCROFT 220 East Main Street, Westborough, Massachusetts 01581 508-366-1723

C,feLudteites.by LONNIE HOLLEY • CLEMENTINE HUNTER JAMES HAROLD JENNINGS • WOODIE LONG ANNIE LUCAS • CHARLIE LUCAS B.F. PERKINS • SARAH RAKES JUANITA ROGERS • BERNICE SIMS JIMMIE LEE SUDDUTH • ANNIE TOLLIVER CHARLES TOLLIVER • MOSE TOLLIVER BILL TRAYLOR • DEREK WEBSTER MYRTICE WEST • PAULINE WILLIS PRISON ART AND OTHER ARTISTS

CHUCK CROSBY, "Big Lady, Little Man"

1^,,' ,•••••••Marcia Weber/Art Objects, Inc. 3218 Lexington Road • Montgomery, Alabama 36106 • 205. 262.5349 • Fax 205. 288.4042 Ongoing Exhibitions by Appointment

Mary T. Smith (1904-

)

Collection includes: J.B. Murray, Howard Finster, David Butler, Sam Doyle, Clementine Hunter, Nellie Mae Rowe, Jimmy Sudduth, James "Son" Thomas, Royal Robertson, James Harold Jennings, Mose Tolliver, Lonnie Holley, B.F. Perkins, Luster Willis, Raymond Coins, Charlie Lucas, Junior Lewis, William Dawson, Leroy Almon, Sr., M.C. 50 Jones, "Artist Chuckie" Williams, Ike Morgan, Herbert Singleton, Burgess Dulaney, Dwight Mackintosh, Sarah Rakes, S.L. Jones, Rhinestone Cowboy and others.

GILLEY8 "Mr. Tree" 39/ 1 2 x 32 Mixed Media

16 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

GALLEY

8750 Florida Blvd.

Baton Rouge, LA 70815 (504) 922-9225

THE HIGHER YOU CLIMB, 1977, #432, 40" x 30"

Howard Finster Over 35 very early works available.

Also Works By J. B. Murray Mose Tolliver B.F. Perkins Jimmy Sudduth

C.S. Singer American Folk and Outsider Art 3340 Harvest Way +Marietta, Georgia 30062 +(404) 565-8263

LYNNE INGRAM SOUTHERN FOLK ART

Josephus Farmer(1894-1989)

1798 Cotton Harvest

1970s

115" x 47" x 15'

enamel on redwood

Contemporary art by the self-taught southern hand

By appointment only • 174 Rick Road

Milford, New Jersey 08848 (908)996-4786

Fax(908)996-4505

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 17

MINIATURES

COMPILED BY TANYA HEINRICH

Patchwork Souvenirs A selection of unique commemorative quilts can be seen in the traveling exhibition "Patchwork Souvenirs: Quilts from the 1933 Chicago World's Fair," which opens at the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, Mass., on March 20 and will run through July 17. Over half of the 30 quilts featured are commemorative quilts incorporating themes of progress. In addition, awardwinning traditionally patterned quilts are displayed as evidence of quilting's high standards in the 1930s, along with photographs and artifacts documenting the 1933 World's Fair.

Sears, Roebuck and Company sponsored a contest at the fair for the "Best Quiltmaker" in the country, with rules promising a grand prize of $1,200. The quilts inspired by the Sears contest, and with them splendid and unusual souvenirs from the fair, have endured.

In all rounds of the contest, the judges favored the most elaborate quilts executed in traditional designs and techniques.

"Patchwork Souvenirs" features some of the commemorative quilts overlooked by the contest judges, who showed little interest in innovative textile design.

Although many of these quilts are records of the 1933 Chicago World's Fair itself, they were treated, at best, as curiosities. The book Patchwork Souvenirs ofthe 1933 World's Fair, by Barbara Bracicman and Merikay Waldvogel, and published in conjunction with this exhibition, is reviewed in this issue. For more information, call 617/861-6559.

FORT DEARBORN Mary O'Halloran Fitzgerald Chicago, Illinois 1933 AppliquĂŠd cotton 80 80" Collection of Knoxville Museum of Art

18 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

MAN ON A BENCH (Also known as THE PARK BENCH) Horace Pippin West Chester, Pennsylvania 1946 Oil on fabric 13 18" Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel W. Dietrich II

Horace Pippin in Philadelphia The exhibition "I Tell My Heart: Chester, Penn. His art reflects the The Art of Horace Pippin" American spirit of everyday famopened at the Museum of Amerily life in intimate interiors, still ican Art of the Pennsylvania lifes, portraits, and landscapes.

Academy of the Fine Arts in His boldly colored, compelling Philadelphia on January 21 and compositions also depict the will run through April 17. The mysticism of religion, social exhibition, the largest retrospecinjustices, and the brutality of tive of the work of this important war. He taught himself to paint to and widely celebrated self-taught strengthen his right arm, which African-American artist, was was wounded in World War I. organized by curator Judith E. Documenting the exhibit is a Stein. It features 100 of Pippin's fully illustrated catalog published paintings, drawings, and burntby Universe Publishing. After its wood panels, many of which opening at the Museum of have not been exhibited since his American Art, the show will death in 1946. travel through 1995 to The Art Horace Pippin (1888-1946) Institute of Chicago, the lived and worked in rural West Cincinnati Art Museum,The Queries Research is being conducted on variousforms offolk art commemorating the Civil War in preparation for articles and ultimately a book on the subject. If you have any information about or photographs of pre-1900 paintings, drawings, carvings, or hand-crafted items commemorating battles, soldiers, regiments, or other subjects related to the American Civil War,please contact: Dain K. Calvin 1111 North Third Street Phoenix, AZ 85004 602/258-1121

Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. For more information, call 215/972-7600.

Folk Art at the Noyes Three different exhibitions of folk art are on display at the Noyes Museum in Oceanville, N.J."A Celebration of Life: The Folk Paintings of Malcah Zeldis," which will be on display through April 10,features bold, bright paintings that are narrative depictions of episodes from the artist's life, as well as her personal heroes, fairy tales, and significant historical and religious events."New Jersey Folk Art" includes a selection of traditional and whimsical nineteenth- and twentieth-century folk pieces gathered from the Noyes Museum permanent collection.

This exhibit is open indefinitely.

"Decoys from the Noyes Museum Collection" is an ongoing survey of the very best nineteenth- and twentieth-century decoys from the museum's extensive holdings, including decoys representing all three generations of the Shourds family. For more information, call 609/652-8848.

THE HOLY DOVE OF GOD Howard Finster 1983 Nails and paint on wood 11 3/. 4 14 3/4" The Volkersz Collection

Three Chicago Artists The work of David Philpot, Mr. Imagination, and Kevin Orth will be featured in the exhibition "Reclamation and Transformation: Three Self-Taught Chicago Artists" at the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago. The exhibition opens April 5 and runs through July 31. These artists all create their work from materials they find in the streets, alleyways, industrial yards, and vacant lots of the city. Their art has provided them with a means of self-transformation, and they have in turn used their skills and talents to help reclaim and transform their communities, Left to right: cane by Kevin Orth, staff by David Philpot, cane by Mr. Imagination.

working with students in Chicago's public schools and community centers.

David Philpot carves walking staffs from the ailanthus tree, a weedlike plant that grows on vacant land. Mr. Imagination makes paintbrush portraits, carved sandstone reliefs, and bottlecap thrones and clothing items. Kevin Orth takes commonplace found objects and challenges our original perceptions of them.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated catalog by guest curator Tom Patterson, as well as a symposium, with the main lecture given by Tom Patterson, on April 20 at the Arts Club of Chicago. For more information, call 312/664-3939.

ziorezernasniEWNV•pmaqainrir

The Volkersz Collection "The Radiant Object: SelfTaught Artists from the Volkersz Collection," a traveling exhibition, opens at the Missoula Museum of the Arts in Missoula, Mont., on March 25 and will be on display through May 21. The collection of 70 drawings, paintings, sculptures, and constructions includes the works of such artists as Howard Finster, Jesse Howard, B.F. Perkins, Juanita

Rogers, Nellie Mae Rowe, Mary T. Smith, Robert E. Smith, St. EOM,and Sarah Mary Taylor.

Some selections from the Volkersz collection are currently included in the nationally touring exhibition "Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present," while others traveled throughout the United States from 1986 to 1988 under the title "Word and Image in American Folk Art." For more information, call 406/728-0447.

Metal Masks on Wood by

Jerry W. Coker from Arkansas From our inventory of outsider and folk art.

We also have works by: F.B. Archuleta, Larry Bissonnette, Georgia Blizzard, Rev. Herman Hayes, Ralph Auf der Heide, Max Romain, B.F. Perkins, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Sarah Mary Taylor and Purvis Young.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, from academic to outsider, from famous to emerging, from 18th century to contemporary— we have a wide range of works all chosen for their originality and exceptional quality.

MAR!ON HARR!S WOODHAVEN, SIMSBURY, CONN. 06070

U1 203-658-9333 Please call for further information. We ship anywhere.

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART IR

MINIA

TURES

MAX ROMAIN

Baltimore Revivals

"Liberty" (1991) Oil on paper, 12"x18".

EPSTEIN/PO WELL Jesse Aaron David Butler Rex Clawson Mr. Eddy Roy Ferdinand Victor Joseph Gatto (estate) Lonnie Holley S.L. Jones Lawrence Lebduska Charlie Lucas Justin McCarthy Old Ironsides Pry Popeye Reed Max Romain Jack Savitslty Clarence Stringfield Mose Tolliver Chief Willey George Williams Luster Willis ...among others

EPSTEIN/POWELL 22 Wooster St., New York, N.Y. 10013

By Appointment(212)226-7316

20 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Contest-winning quilts from the Baltimore Album Revival Contest, a juried and judged quilt show and contest based on the book series Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, by Elly Sienkiewicz, will be on display in Lancaster, Penn., from April 7 through April 10. The contest will be commemorated by a C&T Publishing release entitled Baltimore Album Revival!

Historic Quilts in the Making, by Elly Sienkiewicz.

The contest will be part of a weeklong celebration called "The Lancaster County Quilt Festival," to be held April 1 through April 10. The event is hosted in conjunction with the seventh annual "Quilter's

TO BALTIMORE, MY WAY Sylvia Gentry Richardson Marion, Virginia 1993 AppliquĂŠd cotton 72 x 72"

Heritage Celebration," which runs from April 7 through April 10. The winning quilts will be displayed along with several Baltimore Album quilts, circa 1846 to 1854,from the collection of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore. For more information, call 800/284-1114.

Griffiths Collection "Folk Art from the Collection of Sally M.Griffiths" will be on display at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, Tex., through April 10. The exhibition, which opened January 14, consists of 155 works representing more than 60 self-taught artists expressing unadulterated intensity and candor. This grouping consists of folk artists found in both urban and rural environments and features such artists as Victor Joseph Gatto, S.L. Jones, Justin McCarthy, Prophet Royal Robertson, Jack Savitsky, and

Herbert Singleton. The collection, which began with Griffiths's purchase of a painting by Alma Gunter in 1977 at the Dogwood Art Festival in East Texas, also includes notable Texas artists Ike Morgan, Xmeah ShaEla'ReEl, David Strickland, and Reverend Johnnie Swearingen, among others. Recurring imagery lends a natural organization of four distinct categories to the exhibition: animals, religion, patriotic and political culture, and popular culture. For more information, call 409/832-3432.

Ward's Island Exhibition The East River Gallery at Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Ward's Island is celebrating its grand opening with the exhibition "Recent Work: Painting, Drawing,Sculpture," which opens March 15 and will remain on view through June 15.

Curated by Ben Apfelbaum, this exhibition provides a unique

opportunity to view work created by the center's resident artists, adults who are seriously and persistently mentally ill or psychiatrically disabled.

After the opening, the gallery, located on the 13th floor of the Meyer Building, will be open by appointment. For information, call 212/369-0500, ext. 3250.

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African-American Folk Art "Community Fabric: AfricanAmerican Quilts and Folk Art," an exhibition featuring recently documented quilts, drawings, carvings, canes,ceramics,fans, and decorated boxes, opened February 13 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and will be on display through April 10. The installation, organized in collaboration with Dr. Maude Southwell Wahlman,examines the dynamics of community traditions and the aesthetics of AfricanAmerican artisans working in the rural South from 1900 to 1980.

Many of the 50 quilts on display, which are characterized by strips of bold color, deliberate asymmetry, and rhythmic patterns, encompass both abstract and representational motifs and reveal strong ties to African textile design. The other objects in the exhibition, which were produced in the same communities, show striking similarities in both color usage and pattern preference, such as silhouetted forms and strip patterns comparable to those found in West African textiles. For more information, call 215/763-8100.

SNAKE QUILT Susie Ponds Waverly, Alabama 1979 Pieced cotton 64 82" Collection of Maude S. Wahlman

MANHATTAN ART&ANTIQUES CENTER The Nation's Largest and Finest Antiques Center.

Over 100 galleries offering Period Furniture, Jewelry, Silver, Americana, Orientalia, Africana and other Objets d'Art. Open Daily 10:30-6, Sun. 12-6 Convenient Parking • Open to the Public

1050 SECOND AVENUE(AT 56TH ST.) NEW YORK, N.Y. Tel: 212-355-4400 • Fax: 212-355-4403

PRESENTS

LAURA FISHER Eddie Arning 1898-1993 Eddie Arning,known for his highly original crayon and craypas drawings, died on October 15, 1993, at Westview Manor, a nursing home in McGregor,Tex., after a brief illness.

Until he was 30 years old, Arning lived and worked on his father's farm in a German-speaking farming community near Kenney,Tex. Bouts of depression and erratic behavior led to his being commited in 1928 and again in 1934 to a state hospital in Austin, where he remained for more than 30 years. In 1970, Aming was officially discharged and moved to a nursing home where he had been "furloughed" in 1964. Except for a three-year stay with his sister, Ida Buck, beginning in 1973, he continued to live in nursing homes for the rest of his life.

While residing at the nursing home in 1964, Arning was encouraged to draw by Helen Mayfield, an art teacher who worked as an occupational therapy aide at Austin State Hospital.

Collector Alexander Sackton and his wife,Ivria, along with Robert and Betty Cogswell and Helen and Martin Mayfield, assumed various responsibilities regarding Arning's artistic needs, keeping him supplied with paper and crayons. Sales from his drawings helped Arning meet his nursing home costs and offered him some

GALLERY #84

Unusual and fine Crazy Quilt, inscribed "My Dear Boy, Frank Hepburn Waite, born July 5, 1863—the handiwork of his mother in the year of our Lord 1885" in one of four cross-stitch corner blocks containing a family record and verses.

Antique Quilts Hooked Rugs Coverlets Paisley Shawls Beacon Blankets Vintage Accessories American Folk Art

Monday-Saturday 11 AM-6 PM

Tel: 212-838-2596

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 21

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Ginger Young Southern outsider art, pottery, and canes.

By appointment 202-543-0273

Jake McCord, Sonie, 1993, 13" x 18", Housepamt on wood

Works by more than four dozen artists, including: Minnie Black

R.A. Miller

Georgia Blizzard

Roy Minshew

Tubby Brown

Frank Pickle

Richard Burnside BurIon Craig

Sarah Rakes Royal Robertson

Chuck Crosby

Marie Rogers

Howard Finster

Bernice Sims

Jack Floyd

Q.J. Stephenson

Denzil Goodpaster

Jimmie Lee Sudduth

Lonnie Holley

Mose Tolliver

James Harold Jennings

Myrtice West

Anderson Johnson

Knox Wilkinson Jr.

Woodie Long

George Williams

Call or write for a free video catalogue or a complete price list: Ginger Young PO Box 15417 Washington, DC 20003 202.543.0273

22 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

independence. He stopped drawing in 1973.

Arning favored bold colors and decorative patterning, which were combined with an unerring sense of design. The artist rendered geometric shapes that were both abstract and representational. Like so many self-taught artists, he used print sources for inspiration, transforming them in his distinct vocabulary ofform.

His figures seem suspended in space, and the timeless faces contain dark staring eyes presented frontally, even though the view is often in profile.

Drawings by Arning are in the permanent collection of many museums,including the Museum of American Folk Art, New York; the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Va.; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and the San

Antonio Museum,San Antonio, Tex. Arning has also been highlighted in two important one-person exhibitions:"Eddie Arning: Selected Drawings, 1964-1973" at the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, 1985, and "Eddie Arning" at Hirschl & Adler Folk, New York, 1988.

Nine Figures Climbing Trees, a major drawing by Arning, is one of eleven of his drawings in the Permanent Collection of the Museum of American Folk Art. Arning is represented in the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Encyclopedia ofTwentiethCentury American Art and Artists, by Chuck and Jan Rosenalc. The artist is survived by a sister, Ida Buck,and several nieces and nephews. —Lee Kogan

Albert Hoffman 1916-1993 Albert Hoffman,a New Jersey carver, died of a massive heart attack at his home in Galloway Township on December 1, 1993.

He was noted for his relief and three-dimensional religious sculptures as well as anecdotal secular works often depicting Native-Americans.

Born in Philadelphia on September 15, 1916, Hoffman was part owner of a scrap-metal yard in Pinehurst, N. J., until his retirement in 1990. He began to carve when he was thirteen and continued throughout his life to transform pieces of wood into sculptures that he conceived from "ideas out of my head." He said, "You have to have a certain feeling when you carve wood or the piece doesn't look like what you imagined in your head. There has to be emotion." Although he used mostly redwood, he also worked

with other materials, frequently driftwood that he gathered from walks on the beach. His relief carvings are bold, vigorous, and often painted.

Hoffman won top prizes at many local art shows since 1970, including juried National Boardwalk shows in Atlantic City. The artist is survived by his wife, Polly, a son, Irving, and a daughter, Marcy Weinberg, by a former marriage. —Lee Kogan

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The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. George W Scott, Jr. including American Folk Art, Furniture, Prints, Rugs and Decorative Arts Auction to be held Saturday,June 11 and Sunday, June 12, 1994 on premises in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

For inquiries regarding this sale, please contact Christie's American Decorative Arts Department, 502 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10022, telephone 212/546-1181. For catalogues, telephone 800-395-6300.

CHRIST!E'S

THOMAS KING BAKER (1911-1972) An Eccentric Original Tom Baker might have been known for any number of things in Kansas City but artist would probably not have made the list. Businessman,lover of music and literature,collector and traveler but not likely painter. Yet, when he died in 1972 this self-taught artist quietly left a remarkable body of artworks created in the seclusion of his basement over a 25 year period. He invented a purely personal solution to picture making which combined extreme sophistication and cultural savvy with the naivete and frankness of the untrained. We are pleased to represent the estate of Thomas King Baker. A 26 page color catalog is available for ten dollars.

Exhibiting: Art 1994 Chicago, The New Pier Show•May 4-9 v

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THOMAS McCORMICK WORKS OF ART a private gallery showing 19th & 20th century art by appointment 2055 North Winchester, Chicago,IL 60614 tel 312-227-0440• fax 312-862-0440

FOR THE FINEST SELECTION OF SOUTHERN FOLK & OUTSIDER ART 0 i. yr'

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"Angels Guarding Melons by Sarah Rakes 36" X 46" acrylic on canvas

1(205)270-9010

24 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

2781 Zelda Road 1 (800)345-0538 in Alabama

Montgomery,AL 36106 1(800)235-6273 in USA

Fax 1(205)270-0150

Robert FOLK Contemporary Folk Art • Haitian Spirit Flags Southern, Folk, and African-American Quilts

Sybil Gibson. Surfacing. Tempera on paper, 30 x 17 inches, ca. 1980.

Sybil Gibson was included in the Florida State University exhibition, "Unsigned, Unsung, Whereabouts Unknown," 1993, and the recent "Passionate Visions of the American South" at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Both exhibitions were accompanied by catalogues.

A group of exceptionally fine works, reflecting a variety of subjects and dating from 1970 to 1985, will be hanging through mid-April.

2314 Sixth Street, Downtown, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35401 • Home Phone 205-758-8884

Open weekends only and by appointment • Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 2 to 5 p.m.

BOOK

REVIEWS

The American Quilt: A History of Cloth and Comfort 1750-1950 Roderick Kiracofe, with Mary Elizabeth Johnson Published by Clarkson Potter Publishers, New York, 1993 $60.00 hardcover Frequently called "quilts in context," the concept of examining quilts from a cultural and historical perspective gained credence during the quilt revival of the 1970s. At the time of its publication in 1974, Quilts in America,

by Myron and Patsy Orlofsky, was the most comprehensive and definitive work to examine the social, political, and economic climate of the world of quiltmaking.

Barbara Brackman's Clues in the Calico, published in 1989, corrected misinformation in the quilt record and exposed a number of quilting myths. Ms. Bradman also included an explanation of textile production, including printing and dyeing techniques. And there are sundry other notable publications that have added to our present store of quilt knowledge, especially the efforts of regional and state quilt study projects, individual quilt researchers, and symposia organizers.

The American Quilt, by Roderick Kiracofe with Mary Elizabeth Johnson, is the latest addition to our collected knowledge of the quilting tradition. It is a synthesis of the abovementioned and numerous other publications, with an appeal to an audience less familiar with "quilts in context." From a visual viewpoint, it is a beautiful book.

The clarity of reproductions highlights intricate quilting stitches; the full-page bleeds, double spreads, and silhouetting of details add variety and interest

20 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

to the page layouts. Not only are quilts reproduced, but vintage photographs, engravings from period manuals, and pages from manufacturers' swatch books add to the graphic content. One wishes the fabric timeline had been allotted more space and illustrations, for with the snippets of fabric reproduced from quilts in the book, it is a useful dating tool. Even the notes and bibliography are enhanced with black-and-white illustrations.

The historical presentation is chronological, beginning with the story of the manufacture of textiles followed by discussions of various quilt categories within an overview of social and women's history. Printed on ivory stock to set them apart from the general discussion in the chapter are distinct categories organized according to the design or set of the quilt top, the special purpose for which the quilt was made,the maker's ethnicity, the regional/cultural differences, and the color schemes.

Specific examples include Log Cabin quilts, Mourning quilts, African-American quilts, Hawaiian quilts, and Blue and White quilts, to name only a few.

Occasionally, the placement of these self-contained insertions interrupts the flow of the chapter discussion. The "who's who of twentieth-century quilt personalities" is a concise summary effectively closing the last chronolog-

ical chapter. The special sections on how to date a quilt, how to conduct research, how to care for a quilt, where to see museum examples, and finally where to buy quilts are also helpful for those new to the world of quilts.

Although the photographic layout is certainly well conceived, the text would have benefited from more careful research and editing. The date for Thomas Bell's roller-printing patent is 1783, not 1785. The statement that "the technique of block printing was all but abandoned for a time between 1760 and 1850" is a misleading generalization; although there was little commercial block printing in America prior to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, both John Hewson's printworks and that of Bedwell and Walters were using wooden blocks.

Often, these blocks were used to add details to roller-printed goods, and the Perrotine Press, invented in 1834, mechanized the block-printing process.

Books on textile printing show a variety of block- or partially block-printed designs, which were used in apparel or home furnishing yard goods and became the fabric of quilts.

In a discussion of the use of flour and feed bags in quiltmaking, it is stated that the floral or geometric designs did not appear until the early 1930s. An example of a quilt containing "printed feed and flour sacks" dated with the spread 1910 to 1935 contradicts this statement,for standard practice for assigning a date to a quilt is that it cannot be earlier than the latest fabric swatch in that quilt.

Quiltmakers, researchers, dealers, and historians have all contributed to our current understanding of quilting terms, but there remain inconsistencies and

differences of opinion regarding definitions. Some have set a standard by simplifying terminology, but until most adopt such simplification, a glossary, which unfortunately is lacking here, is a necessary addendum to a quilt book. A case in point is the confusion regarding the definitions for appliqué. Caulfield and Saward's The Dictionary of Needlework: An Encyclopedia of Artistic, Plain and Fancy Needlework, published in 1882, is often cited for dividing the appliqué process into two techniques, inlaid and onlaid. The latter, as defined by Barbara Brackman, is conventional appliqué, and quiltmakers are in agreement as to the definition of this process. However, they differentiate between reverse and inlaid appliqué. Reverse appliqué is not defined in Caulfield and Saward's book, but according to The Quihers' How-To Dictionary, it involves "the cutting, turning under, and blindstitching of a top layer of fabric to reveal a shape created by the exposed underlayer of fabric." Inlaid appliqué, as carefully summarized in Caulfield and Saward, is not the same process.

In The American Quilt, the repeated statement that technique "includes reverse or inlaid appliqué" is confusing. Are they synonyms, or are they separate methods? Another example of ambiguity is the reference to "stumpwork", a seventeenth-century embroidery technique discussed in the context of nineteenth-century Baltimore Album quilts. What does stumpwork mean in relation to quiltmaking?

Another point of contention is the so-called "cotton seed controversy." Quilts have often been dated by being held up to the light, so that debris in the batting can be seen. It is believed by

American Folk Art Sidney Gecker

Shenandoah Valley Washbowl and Pitcher Set Attributed to Jacob Eberly Strasburg, Virginia Circa 1880

226 West 21st Street, New York, N.Y. 10011 (212) 929-8769 Appointment Suggested

BLITZ ANTIQUE NATIVE AMERICAN ART LTD.

Painted Toy Teepee Cover Southern Plains last quarter 19th c.

P.O. Box 400 • Crompond, New York 10517 • (914) 739-9683

BOOK

REVIEWS

many that in this way one can see cotton seeds within the batting— proof that the quilt was made before the invention of the cotton gin.

According to the authors of The American Quilt, some quilters did leave seeds in their homemade batts. The discussion in the text adequately addresses these issues(as have quilt historians Florence Peto and Barbara Brackman, both of whom are acknowledged herein). But whether one believes cotton seeds are the size of navy beans or peas or even apple seeds, they are rarely "tiny," as described in The American Quilt. They are certainly not the "specks" and "flecks" often cited as evidence for pre-Eli Whitney quilts.

Despite these criticisms, The American Quilt is a handsomely illustrated volume with adequate discussions of the various categories of quilts. It may not add anything new to our knowledge of the subject, but it is a beautifully presented synthesis of quilt information in context.*

Patchwork Souvenirs of the 1933 World's Fair Barbara Bracicman and Merikay Waldvogel Published by Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 1993 $26.95 hardcover $19.95 softcover

It was a press agent's dream. It was financed by inventive wizards of management. It raised the hopes and dreams of thousands of American families. It caught the imagination of an eager public. It was an unparalleled success. For all these reasons, the 1933 Chicago World's Fair became a significant chapter in the history of popular culture and folk life.

Initial planning for "the world's greatest exposition" began in the 1920s with proposals for monumental structures and sophisticated entertainment to celebrate Chicago's hundredth year. The proposal was accepted in 1927 when prosperity flourished, only to falter when the —Sharon L. Eisenstat stock market failed two years later. Through skillful fund-raising and clever persuasion, leadSharon L. Eisenstat is a graduate of the New York University Master's ers were able to continue conprogram in Folk Art Studies and is struction at the fair site, selling one ofthe authors ofFive Star Folk completed exhibition space to Art: One Hundred American fund the next building in line.

Masterpieces. She is currently workScience and industry were ing with Elizabeth V. Warren on a as major themes for the instituted book about the Museum ofAmerican On opening night a exposition. pubbe to collection, Folk Art's quilt beam from the star Arcturus, lished by Dutton. magnified through a telescope lens to reach an "electric eye," turned on the searchlight atop the Hall of Science. In accord with the scientific theme, Arcturus became a symbol of the 1933 World's Fair and a subject for numerous publicity writers.

Modern architecture and the wonders of electricity and industry attracted enormous crowds eager to envision their own

211 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

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futures. Others savored the experience of foreign travel by visiting an assortment of international villages where they could obtain exhibits, entertainment, and food.

The Chicago-based Sears, Roebuck and Company, veteran of various promotional contests, gained the fair management's approval to sponsor the official Century of Progress Quilt Contest. By setting up local and regional contests with a final national judging and offering $7,500 in prize money,the contest's planners caught the attention of quiltmalcers nationwide.

The prize money could provide the necessary funds for a new car, partial payment on a house, or relief from the losses of the Depression. Never has there been a contest to equal that of the Sears Quilt Contest of 1933.

Barbara Braclunan and Merikay Waldvogel have made a long search for contest quilts and their makers,for facts to dispel myths, and for reactions to questionable procedures and happenings. Patchwork Souvenirs ofthe 1933 World's Fair: The Sears National Quilt Contest and Chicago's Century ofProgress Exposition is the compilation of their study as revealed through archival records, newspaper accounts,correspondence, interviews, and other documentation.

While the fair's modern, allelectric home epitomized new design and innovation, the quilt

contest judges valued traditional quilts, even awarding prizes to kit-made entries over splendid original works. The authors state that rejection of the nontraditional examples, mere curiosities in the eyes of the judges, prolonged the use of commercial patterns and limited creativity for a lengthy period.

Those who attended the Chicago World's Fair may still recall the marvels of industry and science, the new domestic environment, and exotic foreign settings. And some will remember the display of prize-winning quilts. Finally, after sixty years, proper recognition is being given to the daring adventurers who broke away from old forms to create new textile art arising from personal experience and invention.

In Patchwork Souvenirs ofthe 1933 World's Fair, Waldvogel and Bradman, widely published and respected quilt historians, present the amazing success story of a risky enterprise staged during the Great Depression and the tale of thousands of quiltmakers competing for a taste of fame. Intrigue, mystery, and complicity are not usual components of quilt books, but some strange happenings certainly occurred during the Sears contest. Generously illustrated with photographs of contest quilts and their makers and World's Fair memorabilia, Patchwork Souvenirs is a spirited account of an extraordinary event.* —Bets Ramsey Bets Ramsey,the Director ofthe Southern Quilt Symposium since 1974, co-authored The Quilts of Tennessee and Southern Quilts: A New View. She has curated numerous quilt exhibitions and writes a weekly quilt column in the Chattanooga Times.

call째fus america) filkart osomdessa bettie mintz p.o. box 30440 bethesda, maryland 20824 301-652-4626 fax 301-652-1362 Baltimore album quilt c. 1850-60 with Oddfellow elements.

Provenance available.

ANTON HAARDT GALLERY David Butler Thornton Dial Sam Doyle Minnie Evans Howard Finster Sybil Gibson Bessie Harvey Lonnie Holley Clementine Hunter James H.Jennings Calvin Livingston Charlie Lucas R.A. Miller

JIMMIE LEE SUDDUTH / "Indian Girl" / 24" X 24"

B.F. Perkins Rhinestone Cowboy Royal Robertson Juanita Rogers Mary T. Smith Henry Speller Jimmy Lee Sudduth "Son" Thomas Annie Tolliver Mose Tolliver Felix Virgous Ben Williams Chuckie Williams

1220 SOUTH HULL STREET MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA 36104 (205)263-5494

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 29

THE MODERN PRIMITIVE GALLERY PRESENTS MINNIE EVANS LEROY ALMON, SR. LEROY ARCHULETA RICHARD BURNSIDE BRUCE BURRIS PRIS BUTTLER ARCHIE BYRON VICTOR JOSEPH GATTO SYBIL GIBSON JOE HARDIN LONNIE HOLLEY S. L. JONES CHARLEY KINNEY ROLAND KNOX JAKE MCCORD ANTHONY MILELLA R. A. MILLER

MISTER EDDY VALTON MURRAY J. B. MURRY B. F. PERKINS 0. L. SAMUELS LORENZO SCOTT BERNICE SIMS ST. EOM JIM SUDDUTH SARAH MARY TAYLOR JAMES "SON" THOMAS MOSE TOLLIVER TERRY TURRELL WILLIE WHITE PURVIS YOUNG KURT ZIMMERMAN

1402-4 North Highland Avenue Atlanta, GA 30306 (404) 892-0556

Gaterie Bonheur Laurie Carmody Since 1980

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Antoine Oleyant, Haiti F.B. Archuleta B.F. Perkins Janet Munro Milton Bond Katarzyna Gawlowa, Poland Juanita Rogers Canute Caliste, Grenada Jack Savitsky Chuckle Lorenzo Scott R.A. Miller Jose Antonio da Silva, Brazil Mamie Deschillie Jimmy Lee Sudduth MOS Ferguson, Bahamas Horacio Valdez Milton Fletcher Voodoo Flags & Bottles Haitian Art & Masters Fred Webster Boscoe Holder, Trinidad Malcah Zeldis Georges Liautaud, Haiti Woodie Long Justin McCarthy Sybil Gbson Mexican Artifacts (and, many others) Rafael Morla, Dorninican Rep.

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' Dimensional Applique Baskets, Blooms, & Baltimore Borders Elly Sienkiewicz Pattern Companion to Vol. II of Baltimore Beauties and Beyond for making dimensional flowers and basketry. 50 patterns for blocks, borders, baskets, and blooms.

176 pp. 32 color plates, $24.95 Sc, $29.95 hc

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Baltimore Album Revival!

Elly Sienkiewicz Historic quilts in the making.

Reviews the magnificent quilts shown during C&T Publishing's Quilt Show and Contest in Lancaster, PA, on April 7-10, 1994.

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Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, Vol. I Elly Sienkiewicz Unquestionably the most comprehensive how-to book on hand applique.

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Baltimore Album Quilts A Elly Sienkiewicz ak lik Pattern Companion to Vol. I irk r of Baltimore Beauties and ik elk Beyond. Patterns for 56 more elk blocks, historic notes, symbols, and references.

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Albums Artizans & Odd Fellows The Classic Age of American Quilts ELLY SIENKIEWICZ

ALBUM QUILT Sarah Shaefer Baltimore 1850 103

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America Hurrah Antiques, New York Consider the blocks lettered from A to D left to right and numbered 1 to 4 from top to bottom. Block B4 depicts Baltimore's Monument to George Washington, begun on the tenth anniversary of his death, funded by a public lottery, and proudly beating Washington, D.C.'s monument to the finish by decades. ÂŁ3 is presumably the nation's Capitol.

C4 portrays a pumper truck, indicating ardent loyalties and support of volunteer fire departments. Block Cl shows hearts linked by brotherhood. D1 is the berried, heartshaped wreath tied by circumstance to fraternal burial rites and the memory of Baltimore's fallen Mexican-American War heroes. D2 may well reflect a "secret everyone knew," for it is an often-repeated block—an upside-down "G" for geometry or God; indeed its floral finial, three-linked in Odd-Fellowship's colors, may represent the "All seeing Eye of God," a symbol seen, but no longer intimately understood, atop the pyramid on our one-dollar bill.

32 SPRING 1994 FOLK AR I'

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ere at the turn of the twentieth century, our imagination has been captured by nineteenth-century quilts in all their diverse stylistic glory. In the world of quiltmaking, the nineteenth century is known as the "Classic Age of American Quilts," and quilts made during this period set a standard for all time. While a wealth of classic quilt genres parades before the mind's eye, the appliquéd Albums of mid-nineteenth-century Baltimore have intrigued us most. It is these quilts that seem, through 1994's major exhibitions, to be receiving their sister century's crown of laurel.

In art, distance counts. In measuring greatness, it matters what comes to be looked back on and singled out.

A work of art, whether fine or folk, must reflect its time, conveying to those distanced from it something about themselves. The appliquéd Album quilts of the mid-nineteenth-century do just that. Intrigued, we have learned to read much not only in the graphic clarity of their "picture blocks," but also in their symbolic tongues. Numerous governmental and religious institutions—depicted by appliquéd buildings—are represented in these Albums. A plethora of symbols in the Albums suggests intense loyalties to fraternal organizations as well—in the mid-nineteenth century, Baltimore relied increasingly on such groups to serve human needs that, a century earlier, in an agrarian economy, had been served by families.

Familiar fraternal symbols (like the Odd Fellows' three links or the Masons' square and compass)appear frequently in America's classic quilts, suggesting those organizations' pervasive influence on quilts far beyond Baltimore. The burgeoning institutionalization reflected in her Albums was Baltimore's response to rapid social change. She was transformed by industrialization, urbanization, and massive immigration, with its smorgasbord of new cultures. We also live in a time of rapid social change.

Perhaps some degree of common experience helps explain our affection for the old Album quilt. Some measure of today's regard for appliquéd Albums must be the eagerness with which they are collected—and the fact that quiltrnaking is in a worldwide period of Baltimore Album revival.

To celebrate its Baltimore Beauties series, C & T Publishing is sponsoring an exhibition of Revivalist Baltimores and antique Maryland Albums at the Quilters' Heritage Celebration, to be held at the Lancaster Host Hotel from April 7 to April 10, 1994. The Maryland Historical Society will also highlight Album quilts, with a ten-month-long exhibition starting in March in addition to a symposium held in Baltimore from June 17 to June 21, 1994. All this suggests an "evaluation," both of unanswered questions concerning the Baltimore-style Albums and of the larger question of what might have led to the nineteenth century becoming the Classic Age of American Quilts. What were the mechanisms of popularization?

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Editor's Note: This article is excerptedfrom the manuscriptfor Elly Sienkiewicz's upcoming book, Baltimore Beauties and Beyond: Studies in Classic Album Quilt Appliqué, Volume (Martinez, Cal(/: C & T Publishing, 1995). Books by Elly Sienkiewicz, including herfirst on the symbolism in album quilts, Spoken Without a Word,are available by mailfrom the Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Book Shops.

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 33

What was the conduit of transmission for a quilt style during this period? How could any given style spread so widely and develop so rapidly?

Mechanisms of Popularization Three movements coincided to make Album quilts popular: American Methodism, American Odd Fellowship, and the Mechanic Arts Movement and its influence on the Age of Exhibitions. While the focus here is on Baltimore's Albums, these movements must surely have affected other quilt genres as well, pushing an entire quiltmaking age to exceptional heights.

These movements came together in a context of multiple "revolutions" that were under way by the midnineteenth century and which shaped social change—and quiltmaking. First, the Industrial Revolution provided both the physical materials for quiltmaking and more leisure time; it also promoted new social organizations and institutions. Second, revolutions in transportation and in communications knit American society ever closer. Third, a revolution both in perception and in fact was under way, as women's societal responsibilities—and their rights— increased.

Even the collective term "Victorian" signifies multiple styles in transformation during Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901). Thus the simplicity of an antique Amish medallion quilt is as "Victorian" as the eclectic opulence of an antebellum Baltimore Album. In fact, eclecticism characterized this age, making appliquéd Albums (so called because the different blocks constituted a collection on a theme) a quilt style eminently suited to the time. The passion for collecting and displaying that also was characteristic of this era also fueled the Age of Exhibitions, a phenomenon which may hold the key to explaining both the interconnectedness of America's Victorian quiltmakers and the competitive heights they achieved in multiple, now-classic quilt styles.

appeal. The quilts and the churches cannot but have nourished each other's growth. Album quilts are redolent with fraternal order icons as well. American Odd Fellowship had its beginnings in Baltimore and grew rapidly from midcentury onward. The frequency of its symbols in Baltimore's Albums combined with its phenomenal increase in membership indicate Odd Fellowship's capacity as a vector for popularizing the Album quilt style.

The Victorian Do-gooder: "Lady Bountiful" as a Quiltmaker Common to both Methodism and Odd Fellowship is the ideal of community service. Community quiltmakers have always had the ability to raise funds for good causes. The Baltimore Albums provide visual evidence of causes that beckoned for the quiltmakers' charity as well as, to varying degrees, group input. There was obviously a desire—and thus a market—for "collectible" Album blocks; Album quilts were so popular that hundreds in the Baltimore-style seem to have been made in the 1840s and 1850s. Unlike the time-honored individual profession of "seamstress," commercial and/or charitable quiltmaking has long lent itself easily to cooperative group activity. The old efficiencies of assembly-line preparation, individual piecework, and group quilting are so natural to the Album quilt that to this day volunteer groups make Baltimore-fancy Album quilts for special occasions.

Mounting evidence points to some of old Baltimore's Album blocks as having been put up as kits.

Such squares produced for sale probably constituted a small minority of all Baltimore's Album blocks.

Nonetheless, why might the quiltmaking community have offered blocks for purchase? Upon viewing the Albums, good cause—candidates become apparent. Baltimore's volunteer Mexican War effort called for the textile stuff of battle: bandages, socks, blankets. Widows and orphans, an inevitable result of war, would need services and financial help. Volunteer fire departments (appliquéd into the Albums via pumper trucks) needed the women's help for Exhibitions Provided the Medium; Methodists and the funds they could raise. As a thriving seaport, Baltimore Odd Fellows Supplied the Message If Baltimore's grand exhibitions became an advertising had great numbers of transient seamen whose needs, both medium, abetting mass popularization of her Album quilts; physical and spiritual, were ministered to through missions if indeed they spread the Baltimore Albums' fame and per- like the Bethel Seamen's Mission. Abolition and temperhaps bolstered the development of other regional Album ance societies flourished through volunteers and contribustyles as well; if they fostered quiltmaking commerce, then tions. The opening of the Rebekah Lodge—the Odd what, locally, was the communal conduit of transmission? Fellows' Auxiliary for women—in 1851 could also have What was the institutional framework for Baltimore's quilt- inspired communal commercial production of Baltimore's making subculture? What nourished and inspired these Album quilt blocks.

Women stitched the Odd-Fellow symbols into women and provided the context for actually making these quilts? What instilled the passion, the devotion, the shared quilts, but their devotion to expressing Odd Fellowship's moral and spiritual values by which those quiltmakers ideals and assuming its obligations must have increased bound themselves into the kind of community to which upon their admission to the order in 1851. In that year, in Baltimore, the "degree for wives of Odd Fellows," called people give their loyalty?

Two movements—Methodism and Odd Fell- the "Obligated Daughters of Rebekah," was initiated. owship—are ideal candidates. Both are tied closely to Intriguingly, Baltimore's Albums first came to us called, Baltimore's Albums. Many of the names inscribed on the through communal memory, Baltimore Bride's quilts. quilts appear on Methodist membership roles. Methodist Might there be a connection between the coming of the churches and names of Methodist religious leaders occur Rebekahs (a degree open only to wives) and a genre significantly in the Albums. The demographics of remembered as Baltimore Bride's quilts? Genealogical Baltimore's Methodism (coincident with groups of church study of four quilts in Baltimore's Numsen family seems to women stitching Album quilts) testify to its extraordinary confirm the Baltimore Bride's quilt tradition: again and

94 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

GRAND UNITED ORDER OF ODD-FELLOWS CHART Lithograph Currier & Ives, New York c.1881 Courtesy of the Museum of Our National Heritage, Lexington, Massachusetts

This fraternal chart gives the symbols for the black Odd Fellows, the "Grand United Order." In Baltimore and to its north, the nineteenth-century black freedman community was substantial in numbers and long established. As in white society, its fraternal orders are reflected in its quilts. These fraternal charts offer a concrete source of evidence still virtually untapped in the study of nineteenth-century African-American quilt history.

II

OF THE NIAIZTIAND INSIEECTE, IIALTINIORE.

THE INSTITUTE HALL BALTIMORE (cornerstone laid March 14, 1851) Engraving Courtesy Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Maryland The Judges' Catalogues document that Baltimore's Album quilts were vetted at the Maryland Institute exhibitions. There, in one year alone, a hefty forty thousand visitors attended and viewed the quilts in October 1850. "The site of the (Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts] hall is a very eligible one, fronting as it does on Baltimore street, and within two hundred yards of the Merchants' Exchange, Post Office, and City Hotel." The grand saloon was 250 entered by a 12' wide door, had twenty windows(17,J2

55', with a 321/2'ceiling. It was

7'), ten per side, and a grand promenade

gallery (7' wide on the sides and 10' deep on the ends) that was 14' above the floor and was supported by eighty "strong and beautiful brackets set into the wall. This wall is entirely free and clear—the largest clear floor in America. This is the finest Ball or Exhibition Room in the country. Some 2,000 persons may promenade the handsome galleries, while 4,000 more may be seated, or 6,000 could easily stand upon the main floor, making its capacity, in any event very great."(1851 Charter, Constitution, and By-Laws of the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, pp. 37-38.) One can almost picture those galleries hung with the quilts!

ODD-FELLOWS CHART Lithograph Currier & Ives, New York C. 1877 Courtesy of the Museum of Our National Heritage, Lexington, Massachusetts This fraternal chart gives the symbols for the white Odd Fellows. By charts such as these, moral lessons were taught. The symbols represent the order's precepts of morality, equality, justness, and uprightness of life and actions, as well as industry. With practice, they help us to understand old quilts better. For example, the pot of incense whose smoke shows the sweet (upright) soul rising to heaven appears in quilts as an urn of flowers.

Certain Odd-Fellow emblems are shared with Free Masonry, many of whose symbols are explained in the Book of Revelations.

"CLUIE DIfYi)-.PIE I, r

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ALBUM QUILT Assembled and finished by Sarah Whittington Lankford Baltimore c. 1850 99

84"

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, 79.609.14 Assembled and finished by Sarah Whittington Lankford (1830-1898)from blocks that according to family history were purchased by her brother at the Masonic Lodge in Baltimore around 1850, this quilt is a magnificent collection of all the major block styles of antebellum Baltimore. Many Album quilts, including this one, display a Ringgold monument block,(top row, second block from left) memorializing Major Samuel Ringgold, a Mason and the first ranking Baltimore hero to fall in the Mexican-American War. In addition to being

again, young women in the family are found in these quilts first by their maiden name, then by their married name. The very same surnames also appear in the Maryland Institute Charters as members' names—as though that institution, as well as the Methodist church, to which many of these women belonged, played a significant communal role in their lives.

a memorial to Baltimore's beloved Mason, Major Samuel Ringgold, this quilt contains two favorite Odd-Fellow blocks:

Quilt Squares Purchased at a Masonic Meeting in Baltimore with the earth's bounty. The links (thinly disguised in the bow Remarkable support for and in the cornucopia) are key symbols of the "Three-Linked Fraternity," as the Odd-Fellow organization was known. charitable quiltmaking commerce comes from a stunning Baltimore Album quilt in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center collection. Its accession notes read "According to family history, quilt squares were purchased by Henry Smith Lankford (1823-1905) at a Masonic meeting in Baltimore about 1850. The quilt was assembled by Sarah Anne Whittington Lankford, his sister." Many Album quilts, including this one, display a Ringgold monument block, memorializing Major Samuel Ringgold, a Mason and the first ranking Baltimore hero to fall in the Mexican-American War. Dominant Odd-Fellow symbols (the cornucopia and the Rebekahs' Dove) also ornament this quilt, suggesting that Henry may have shopped at that order as well.

This family lore evidence is powerful because it fits the evolving picture of a communal role in the creation of Album quilts. The tradition, after all, was that these were collections of fancywork squares, which were then pieced together to form the quilt top or "bound into an album."

Whether block kits, appliquéd blocks, or both were being sold, the squares thus obtained would have been termed "purchased." With presumably greater frequency, quilt squares were made by the giver as tokens of remembrance for the friend or relative whose own blocks would complete the quilt. Henry seems to have done exceptionally well both by the fraternal fund-raisers and by Sarah herself, because a variety of Baltimore block styles are represented, including the Germanic "folk art" style and the heavily stuffed and wool-embroidered style. The Picture Block style and several of those fanciest blocks with fraternal symbols are in the ornate, realistic Victorian style. At least one block, the apple wreath, bears Sarah's initials, perhaps to indicate that she made it.

The needlework itself points to multiple hands producing the blocks. In the Lankford quilt (at left), for example, two squares made in the fabric and draftsmanship of Baltimore's fanciest block style (set side by side, bottom row, center) appear by their differing stitches and opposite embellishments(one inked, the other embroidered) to have been sewn and finished by two distinct "hands." More

the Rebekah block with a dove centered in a floral crown tied with a triple-bow knot, and a linked cornucopia overflowing

telling, though, than such demonstrable details, the social concerns—both of the Methodists and of the fraternal orders—support the thesis that members' female relations would quite naturally have turned their needles to the entrepreneurial work of charity. Charity, defined in this context as "love," led to the idealization of friendship, brotherhood, and patriotism, all well witnessed by the blocks such women made for the cherished Album quilts.

Baltimore's Methodists Mid-nineteenth-century Methodism and its Baltimore Conference of church groups thoroughly mixed Baltimore's churchgoing quiltmakers. On Sunday, the ladies might attend any church on the circuit, but their Bible class—to which a weekly "penny" was donated— held each Methodist's primary loyalty. Such charitable giving was inculcated in urban Victorians. "Is there a brother in need?" was the communal query that opened weekly Masonic meetings. The Odd Fellows, too, paid dues from which benefits were paid out—and many Baltimoreans belonged to both Orders.

Methodism created a heightened moral consciousness expressed by communal concern over social ills, including "sweated labor and squalor." Through their classes, Methodists organized fund-raising efforts for charitable causes, including the numerous new churches in that rapidly expanding denomination. The New York Christian Advocate of the period credits Ladies of Baltimore in 1844 with the raising of money for the first Methodist Church in Texas. The growth of Methodism and Album quilt production coincided with Baltimore's snowballing population.

From 1840 to 1860, Baltimore's population increased by over 107 percent. Of the eighty-one new church congregations formed from 1843 to 1861, nearly half were Methodist. One can see how potent a transmitter the Methodist-quiltmaking alliance would have been, given the well-documented Methodist—Baltimore Album quilt connection.

Odd Fellows,Indeed Fraternal symbols, most recognizably those of the Masons and the Odd Fellows, are prevalent in the Baltimore Album quilts. But it seems to be the Odd Fellows—"The ThreeLinked Fraternity," as they were called—and their Rebekahs that most clearly exemplify the connection between Baltimore's fraternal orders and her Albums. A strong correlation exists between the Rebekah degree's 1851 origins and the peak of Album quilt production.

A tremendous growth in American Odd Fellowship took place during the Album quilt years. After seceding in 1842, the American branch, headquartered in Baltimore, quickly surpassed the parent organization in numbers, wealth, and influence. All this indicates how receptive the times were to the tenets of American Odd Fellowship. Its sentiments captured hearts and imaginations all over the country, those of quiltmakers not least of all; its practical benefits lifted real burdens of welfare and worry as the old family-centered economy broke down. Its first tenet, "Friendship," resonated meaningfully with Baltimore's Victorian-era women, who were coming to see themselves as sisters. The Rebekah—Baltimore Album connection

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 37

ALBUM QUILT Hannah Foote Baltimore

seems indisputable. Certainly a quiltmalcer would celebrate such an historic occasion as the coming of the Rebekahs, the achievement of a Lodge of their own, by making a very special quilt—and what more appropriate quilt could there be than a Friendship Album?

The women's degree, this palpable source of optimistic pride, glides through the fanciest of the Albums on the wings of doves. A favorite Album block pattern depicts the dove centered in a crown of roses (emblematic of superior merit) tied, quite cleverly, with a triple-bow knot. This bow-disguise must have been well understood as a play on the Three-Linked Fraternity's symbolic chain, that metaphorical reference to Odd Fellowship's binding responsibilities of "Friendship, Love, and Truth." The omnipresent triple-bow knots bind the stems of floral representations of the blessings for which Odd Fellows expressed such open gratitude. And by these three links, Odd Fellows also stated their willingness and their accepted obligation to share their bounty with a brother—or a sister—in need.

Unlike noblesse oblige or the older Masonic charity, Odd Fellowship offered a benefit system that was democratic, dignified, and unquestioning. Members paid dues, and took out benefits as they needed assistance. It was this safety-net aspect, like purchased insurance, that is credited for Odd Fellowship's remarkable rise. For a time, though, this mundane but critical practicality rode on the back of a wealth of wonderful metaphors. Powerful metaphors such as the "chains of Friendship, Love, and Truth" bound Baltimore's quiltmaking community. One would not want to be the "weak link," one would not want to break "the ties that bind"; one would want to "strengthen the union" for the good of all. It is that metaphoric face of public enthusiasm that is so beautifully reflected in Baltimore's Album quilts. That open, optimistic visage—itself a veritable Friendship's Offering—is that which we've become so fond of, once again, today.

Odd Fellowship still carries an obligation to help a brother in need, to "care for the widow, educate the orphan and bury the dead." More than a century after the organization's founding, the Odd Fellows, while continuing to function as a fraternal order, became a "friendly benefit society" of the sort which led to our modem insurance companies. (The Odd Fellows Insurance Company is headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.) These contemporary institutions and the reasons we ourselves purchase insurance offer insight into the unique spirit of this particular fraternal order. Like Methodism, it was an idea whose time had come—and one venue in which both bloomed brilliantly was in Baltimore's Album quilts.

The Conduit of Transmission: Printed Quilt Patterns versus Seeing Quilts on Exhibition A natural assumption has been that one mechanism or conduit of transmission for the Album quilts would be a modern one: printed patterns for the most distinctive, most repeated Baltimore Album quilt squares. Despite decades of careful combing through every conceivable published source, however, none has been found. Judging from the format of Godey's needlework instructions, appliqué patterns would instead have been shared through individually

38 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

made cutting templates. In 1850 Hawaii today, the Victorian 104 104" Private collection tradition of basting appliqué shapes into commercially Borders with from three to (as in this quilt) six steps occur available kits still continues. in many of Baltimore's Albums and raise the question of And evidence that Baltiwhether this motif represents steps earned in a fraternal more's Album block cloth degree. The picture blocks are particularly intriguing; conand patterns were also sider them lettered A to E from left to right and numbered 1 shared this way continues to to 5 from top to bottom. Block E3 depicts a woman with her accumulate. flock of geese and dog (for fidelity) in front of a yellow In his 1946 book, house. This motif occurs, in whole or in part, in many Album Old Quilts, Dr. William quilts; the house, when shown, is always yellow.

Rush Dunton, Jr., began a Sometimes,just certain elements are depicted, as in block C3. The mistress may symbolize a Rebekah, a member of hunt not only for printed the women's Odd-Fellow degree. The name derives from patterns, but for a quilt Rebekah in the Book of Genesis, who was fair and honor"artist" responsible for the able and showed kindness to strangers. She became a good fanciest Baltimore block and faithful wife who tended her husband's flocks and designs and quilts. This herds and increased his wealth. In one Numsen family search continues today, but Album block, the geese-dog-yellow house scene includes a now seems to us to be misswarming beehive, the Rebekah's favorite symbol of coopdirected. Evidence from erative industry. If this Album quilt were made by a contemporary quiltmakers Rebekah, she has thrice—but secretly—tied into the quilt, in blocks B3, C4, and E2, the symbol for the "Three-Linked cautions us not to assume that quilts and quilt blocks Fraternity's" chain of "Friendship, Love, and Truth" with the use of the triple-bow knot appliqué. were created by the same maker simply because they look similar. Traditionally, quiltmakers have shared designs and cloth, and skilled reproduction has always been integral to the craft. It is the subject matter common to great numbers of Album quilt blocks that seems most significant. The style was most probably evolved by many quiltmakers as they studied how significant motifs were being translated into cloth. Some of the Albums portray objects from Victorian life and times, but many Album block motifs are symbols from commonly held symbolic tongues. Many of these symbols are fraternal icons, "secrets everyone knew." The Victorian gravestones in Maryland and nearby locales are an excellent source for purposes of Album motif comparison. Wreaths, hands, baskets, urns, roses, lilies, doves, triple-linked chains (lacking only ribbon streamers to form the familiar triple-bow knot of Baltimore's Albums) appear in profusion on cemetery monuments—just as they do in the Album quilts.

Common to both is the Victorian proclivity for fine, realistic draftsmanship, ornamental art, and symbolism. Symbols are "visible sign[s] of invisible things," and Victorians used them extensively. Both the all-pervasiveness of these symbols and the wide variety in their depiction make Dr. Dunton's printed-pattern and quiltmaker-artist theories insufficient to explain the Baltimore Album style's appeal and rapid spread.

Dr. Dunton Pointed to the Age of Exhibitions, Then Ignored It In Old Quilts, Dr. Dunton momentarily touches on an "Art Needlework" display at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. But, having skirted the Age of Exhibitions, he explores it no further. Consider this scene: annual fairs and expositions were exceedingly popular in the nineteenth century; quilts were prominently displayed there; designs, techniques, fabrics, and styles were widely shared within

BALTIMORE-STYLE ALBUM QUILT TOP Quiltmaker unidentified

the local quilt community (and with out-of-town visitors as well) and evolved rapidly from year to year;judges set high standards, awards and prizes were given; competition led each year to greater performance; and specific quilt genres reached classic heights.

Newly unearthed sources lend this scene veracity.

The pertinent documents give us a clearer picture of what economic class of women made Baltimore's Album quilts and of how the style evolved so rapidly both in and beyond Baltimore. Published by Baltimore's Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts beginning in 1848, these sources include the annual exhibitions' Judges' Catalogues (listing items, including Album quilts, deposited for exhibition), the Charters and By-Laws (listing Institute members), and transcripts of the annual Addresses.

For a number of years, the Judges' Catalogue entry "1 Album Quilt" recurs. For example, within the 1851 Judges' Catalogue category #14, "Needlework and Infant's Clothing," come the quilts. There are close to 170 quilts that year, from as far away as York and Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Included are seven entries of "1 Album quilt" followed by both the maker's and the depositor's names. These must be the famed Baltimore Album quilts, for no out-of-town origin is noted. Could the entry "6 squares of fancy Patchwork [an old term for appliqué], made by Mrs. Grafflin" indicate individual Baltimore Album squares? Presumably each of her blocks was different and sufficiently fmished to be displayed as a separate needlework object.

The Baltimore Album quilt style's dominant mechanism of proliferation and prolongation seems clearly to be the period's frequent and widely attended exhibitions.

Their sponsor, the Maryland Institute, was part of a flourishing international Mechanic Arts Movement committed to education, commerce, and annual exhibitions. The Institute aimed to encourage American industry, to better the working classes, to encourage achievements both through the spread of ideas and by rewards of prizes and recognition. So, of course, the coming of the Maryland Institute exhibitions would have pushed the Baltimore Album style on to greater popularity. Philadelphia, New York, and Boston had already chartered Mechanic Arts institutes, suggesting even earlier quilt documents there.

Multiple copies of the Maryland Institute publications reside in the Library of Congress, the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, and the Maryland Historical Society (where the catalogs were initially unearthed by Gregory Weidman and Jennifer Goldsborough).

Perhaps documents for America's other Mechanic Arts institutes will illuminate the role of exhibitions throughout the Classic Age of American Quilts.

Exhibitions have always been a superb medium for publicity; fairs and expositions of all sorts have immediate, continuous, and far-reaching influence. During the month surrounding the Maryland Institute exhibit, Baltimore's newspapers were full of news about exhibitors, judges, and prizewinners, confirming the kind of sharing, interactive community of quilters familiar to us today. The quiltmakers of the nineteenth century had access to a powerful conduit for cultural dissemination that we ourselves experience widely: the exhibition. While art exhibitions date back as

40 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

far as the seventeenth century, the nineteenth century was typified by industrial fairs. By 1849, eleven such fairs had been held in France alone.

The first of the grand modern-style exhibitions was 1851's Great Crystal Palace Exhibition held in London.

Chicago's 1893 Grand Columbian Exposition drew the most attendees of any of the nineteenth-century American fairs, while Paris's 1889 Exposition, for which the Eiffel Tower was built, topped all known attendance records at 32,350,297.

Possibly Baltimore C. 1849- 1852 109 - 105" Museum of American Folk Art, New York, gift of Mr. & Mrs. James 0. Keene, 1984.41.1 This quilt, whose maker is listed by the Museum of American Folk Art as "possibly Mary Evans(1829-1916)," abounds in tropical allusions, among them exotic birds.

The Album era was, of course, the Audubon era as well and the heyday of natural history. Four Odd-Fellow cornucopia symbols occur, each cleverly rendered by links, mindful of the Three-Linked Fraternity's binding chains of "Friendship, Love, and Truth." Around this rich Album assemblage twines an ornate rose vine border. That this same labor-intensive border pattern appears on other Baltimore-style Album quilts indicates that a sharing of the appliques' cutout shapes, and possibly the stitching, was responsible for this work—cooperative industry's rewards can find no more beautiful witness than that of

Baltimore's Albums Document Her Glory Days of Commercial Prosperity The founding of Baltimore's Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts and its series of annual exhibitions fits neatly into her port's bustling hive of activity. When the Institute's first exhibition opened in October 1848, the Album era was already well under way.

Baltimore-style Albums seem to have originated in the early 1840s and peaked at the onset of the 1850s, declining by mid-decade.

This is fascinating because the dates 1843 to 1856 define Baltimore's watershed period of commercial prosperity, which rode the wave of expanded foreign trade. The Albums blossomed between two years of extreme economic anxiety distinct enough to be called "panics"—the Panic of 1842 and the Panic of 1857. As though to institutionalize the intervening years of burgeoning urban pride and optimism, the Maryland Historical Society was founded in Baltimore in 1844. That same year, Baltimore's Album quilts began vividly to record the city's glory days as an expanding center of interregional economy underpinned by industrialization. This correlation between the prospering of both the quilts and the economy makes it even more intriguing to find who, in general, made the Baltimore Albums. Were they landed gentry? Hereditary wealth (rich, leisured women)? Mercantile folk? Working-class women?

Since the Maryland Institute exhibits vetted Baltimore Albums, can we connect the middle-class officers, board, and lifetime members with a broader artizan (a nineteenthcentury term) and mechanic membership? Do Maryland Institute member surnames inscribed on Album squares document a link between that institution's members and the quiltmakers themselves?

The 1850 and 1851 Institute membership rosters list so many recognizable names from Baltimore Album Quilt research as to indicate kinship between the quiltmakers and the all-male institute membership. From the annals of Maryland's Album history, from the precisely inked and cross-stitched names, and from genealogies, names on Albums pair up over and over again with names on the Maryland Institute membership rosters. A broad range of

group-made quilts.

professions are represented by the members' family names.

The Sands family,for example, owned a printing company and the Numsens an oyster-packing plant; Ebenezer Stewart owned a brickyard; the Wilkinses were merchants; the Russells were a ship captain family; and the Lipscomb family included a Methodist cleric. Some, like the Ringgolds and Gorsuches, were old landed Maryland families, some of whose younger adult members had become urban professionals. Others, like the Numsens, whose patriarch, Peter Numsen, had arrived as a penniless immigrant, had already realized the American dream.

What Economic Class of Women Made the Antebellum Baltimores?

Can the Methodist or the Odd Fellow link provide us with the Album makers' class and economic status? In Odd Fellowship, its History and Manual(New York: M.W. Hazen, 1887), Past Grand Sire John H. White writes: "American Odd Fellowship is composed of the middle and industrial classes almost exclusively." The generalization might also be made concerning mid-nineteenth-century American Methodism. The Mechanics institutes, too, were firmly linked to the middle and industrial classes.

Revolutionized by advances in industry and education, America's middle and industrial classes were growing in numbers, power, and pride. It seems to be predominantly these classes of women who made the beautiful Baltimore Album quilts.

Each of the proposed conduits of Album quilt tansmission—Methodism, Odd Fellowship, and the Mechanic

Arts Movement—reflected the increasing institutionalization of relationships in Baltimore. These organizations were just some among many that helped ease the society from its simpler eighteenth-century economy to the complexities of an increasingly urban, industrialized order.

Both industrialization and massive immigration had contributed to the diversity that made Baltimore's growth possible. These organizations and institutions had served not only as integrators in diversity and change, but also as protectors. For Baltimore's quiltmaking women, they clearly served these purposes well—for a time. Then the balance was upset—the pace of change outstripped the society's ability to adjust and prosper. By the mid-1850s, Album quilt completion dropped off. The wave of optimism that had lifted the Albums so high had run its course.

Demographic and economic factors readily suggest reasons for this. But this is another story for another time. Suffice it to say that Baltimore's economy declined against a backdrop of burgeoning national prosperity led by New York.

Among the classic quilts, one might look then to a fresh blooming of New York's Beauties as the season of Baltimore's Beauties drew to a close.*

Elly Sienkiewicz is a Wellesley College alumna with a master's degreefrom the University ofPennsylvania. A history major and quiltmaker,she has written ten books on appliqué and quilt history, nine ofthemfocused, since 1983,on the Baltimore-style Albums.Her most recent books are Baltimore Album Revival! Historic Quilts in the Making,and Appliqué 12 Borders & Medallions! A Pattern Companion to Baltimore Beauties and Beyond, Volume M.

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 41

ew American artists of the nineteenth century have left as impressive a record of their work as Ammi Phillips (17881865), whose legacy exists today in the hundreds of canvases that have survived into this century. While a romantic image of the "primitive" itinerant portrait painter persists in the public imagination—a vestige of the early twentieth-century perspec-

work available for prospective clients to view contributed to the steady work that the artist received throughout his career. Phillips's success in supporting himself almost exclusively through portrait painting after the earliest years was unusual. Typically, artists like Phillips needed to augment their incomes through other, more reliable pursuits. Competing first with academically trained artists of renown, such as John Vanderlyn, and later with technological advances, namely the daguerreotype,

period that threatened the end of the agrarian way of life.'

The complex interrelationships among Phillips's sitters accounts, in part, for the great similarities of pose, costume, and accessories that are associated with his work. Although the recycling of ideas and formats was the stock-in-trade of such nineteenth-century itinerant portraitists, Phillips was nevertheless able to breathe fresh life into familiar conventions through infusions of color, abstraction of form, and insight into

FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN PORTRAITURE STACY C. HOLLANDER tive on American folk art—Phillips's work supersedes such limitations and demands serious critical attention.

The best of his work resonates with the spirit of the subjects portrayed and is expressed in structured compositions that have earned Phillips a solid place in the canons of American art history.

Ammi Phillips was born in Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1788.

Although little is known of his early life, Phillips was already painting in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, by 1809, when he advertised his ability to produce "correct likenesses" in the Berkshire Reporter.' At this early point in his career, he also offered fancy painting, silhouettes, sign, and ornamental painting. By 1811, Phillips was gaining important commissions of influential members of Berkshire County communities, and establishing formats and techniques that he was to continue developing throughout his career. In the period immediately following, Phillips was painting in upstate New York. It was in the border areas of these three states—New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts—that Phillips was to ply his trade for over fifty years.

Unlike many itinerant painters of his day, Phillips moved with his family into the communities whose members he portrayed, traveling a circumscribed radius from each area.

His integration into various communities and the ready examples of his

42 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Phillips was chosen by his neighbors to depict entire families, as well as their extended family members. This practice emphasizes the important role the portrait painter played as recorder of society.

As Vanderlyn wrote in a letter to his nephew,"Were I to begin life again, I should not hesitate to follow this plan....Indeed, moving about through the country as Philips [sic] did and probably still does, must be an agreeable way of passing one's time. I saw four of his works at Jacobus Hardenburgh's the other day painted a year or two ago, which seemed to satisfy them...." Clients such as the Hardenburghs would have felt comfortable turning to Phillips for their portraits. Educated in the same social environment, Phillips understood their values, and his straightforward portraits, free from European "pretensions," supported the patriotic feelings of the still-young republic. As the Jacksonian age emerged, with its popularbased politics, men looked toward a type of portraiture that expressed their own political sympathies in a clearcut, unambiguous fashion.

Phillips's portraits of seated men holding newspapers whose mastheads proclaimed their political affiliations handsomely fulfilled that criterion. Some have argued that this type of portraiture was intended in direct opposition to urban styles, presenting a unified front during a

BLOND BOY WITH PRIMER, PEACH, AND DOG Possibly Aaron D. Smith (1830-1889) Catskill, Greene County, New York c. 1838 Oil on canvas 48 V.

30"

The Alice M. Kaplan Collection

his sitters. Demonstrating an ability to capture the essence of each period in which he worked, this chameleonlike quality of the artist led to the attribution of his body of work to at least three different artists at various times. These dramatic shifts in style were reconciled in the 1960s through the painstaking research of Barbara and Larry Holdridge and Mary Black. Twenty-five years later, we have the luxury of a long acceptance of the artist's diversity. No longer distracted by speculations as to the artist's identity, today we can observe Phillips's progression from one style to the next and appreciate the timeless appeal of this prolific American master.

Phillips showed an early ability to fulfill the narrative elements mandated by portraiture before the age of photography, but interpreted the expected conventions through unusual choices of colors and atypical compositions. His exactitude in depicting details of costume recalls his promise to provide "correct likenesses" of sitters in the "prevailing fashion of the day." This did not always imply veracity in portraiture, however; people differentiated between a "likeness" and a "portrait" in that they sometimes specified how they wanted to be remembered, which on occasion resulted in lessthan-accurate renderings.

The portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Crane were painted during the years

known as the Border period.

Displaying the delicate colors of the Romantic age, these portraits communicate basic information about the sitters in a manner that reflects one of the basic tenets of gender differentiation in early nineteenth-century America. As noted by Jack Larkin, Chief Historian at Old Sturbridge Village, Massachusetts, "men were frequently shown in the act of writing or in the pursuit of information, while women were almost always portrayed in a receptive role: holding a book, or reading a letter rather than writing one."4 Dr. Crane's medical profession is apparent from the medical texts that line his bookcase and which he holds in his hand. In its romantic air, ethereal colors, and details of costume, the portrait of Mrs. Crane is emblematic of the Border period. Unlike many portrait painters of the period, though, Phillips made little attempt to place the sitters in realistic interior settings, relying instead on the strength of the characterizations, the interest provided by textural treatments of large areas of color, and the spatial relationships between the forms. The triangular arrangement of Mrs. Crane's arms derives from poses seen in the works of early Connecticut artists.

The arm crossing horizontally at the waist remains true to the earlier tradition, but the other arm, which might once have been raised to hold a rose to the sitter's breast, has been inverted to form a closed circle revolving around the book held in the sitter's hands. This small change provides a new and dynamic movement to a static and formalized pose.

The abstractions of the Border period underwent a dramatic change in the 1820s. Though vestiges of the Romantic age occasionally linger, a new realism is visible in the work of this period. Darker colors and harder edges begin to replace the slightly unfocused, shimmering quality of the Border portraits, leading ultimately to the crystal clarity of the Kent period. It was during this period, from 1829 to 1839, that Phillips achieved his technical mastery in manipulations of space, volume, and color.

Blond Boy with Peach, Primer, and Dog highlights Phillips's visual wiz-

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 43

ardry. The figure of the boy, who may be Aaron D. Smith, has become completely two-dimensional, yet the sheen and jewel tones of the velvety suit he wears lend a sensual and tactile quality to the image. Piercing the velvety darkness of the portrait are the peach on the table and the boy's brilliantly lit face nestled against the shadows of his suit and the background. The juxtaposition of large planes of color with stark contrasts, two-dimensionality, and volume creates a delicately balanced work

artisans were subject to popular tastes and demands. To sell their product, they needed to meet those demands in a manner pleasing to the customer. The same problems of light and shadow that had always faced artists working with a brush now faced those working with a camera. One artist experimenting with the daguerreotype in 1843 complained,"I have tried the light as you proposed, but they do not like the dark on one side of the face, and I can't sell a picture that where one

but is also evident in portraits such as Woman with Pink Ribbons.

Shifting in tone from pink to green, Phillips captured the changeable quality of the fabric of the woman's dress. The "babette" bonnet of the period was sheer, with two or three extravagant ruffles. Large pink satin bows were popular on the top, and trailing ribbons were curled at the ends, sometimes dipped in milk, then wound around a broomstick till dry.

Phillips took obvious delight in his ability to bring to life the transparent

MRS. CRANE Region unknown c. 1814-1819

whose ultimate success lies in the artist's confident juggling of these disparate elements.

Throughout the Kent period, Phillips continued to gratify his clients with decorative portraits that paid close attention to current fashion. By this time, fashions had changed and the new neckline was wider, dropping to the armhole line, giving a horizontal look to the new dresses. This horizontal emphasis is exemplified in the well-known portraits of children wearing red dresses,

44 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

material, extravagant folds, and curling ribbons of this fashionable headgear, and few portraits of women during this period were completed without such a bonnet.

In the later years of his career, Phillips shared many of the dilemmas confronting those working with the new technology of daguerreotypy. As professional artists dependent for their living upon the patronage of the "mass of people," as Vanderlyn had referred to his rural clients, Phillips and other itinerant

Oil on canvas 39

32"

The Alice M. Kaplan Collection DR. CRANE Region unknown C. 1814-1819 Oil on canvas 39

32"

The Alice M. Kaplan Collection

side of the face is darker than the other, although it seems to stand out better and look richer."'

Based on the small number of portraits painted by Phillips after 1850, as compared to earlier periods, the daguerreotype and improved photographic processes certainly had an impact on the demand for his services. Phillips fought back with the weapons of painted portraiture: scale, color, and personal attention to the needs of his clients. His works from about 1850 until the time of his

HENRY E. HOTCHKISS (1842-1917)

death underwent a noticeable shift in presentation. Ripe colors, stiff poses, and full faces showed a response not only to the aesthetic of photography, but to the full flower of the Victorian age. By 1860, Phillips had moved to Curtisville, near Stockbridge, not far from where he had started his lengthy career. In 1865, after a career of more than fifty years, during which he portrayed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in dozens of communities,' Ammi Phillips died quietly at his home. His passing was noted with only the simplest of obituaries: "Died at Curtisville, Stockbridge, July 14th, very suddenly, Mr. A. Phillips, aged 78." *

Torrington, Litchfield County, Connecticut c. 1850-1853 Oil on canvas 33

28"

(framed: 37

31 V")

The Torrington Historical Society, Torrington, Connecticut

WOMAN WITH PINK RIBBONS Region unknown c. 1830 Oil on canvas 32

27 ,-/"

Collection of Peter and Barbara Goodman

Stacy C. Hollander is the Curator ofthe Museum ofAmerican Folk Art. She is the curator ofthe exhibition "Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years ofAmerican Portraiture" and co-author with Howard P.Fertig ofthe accompanying catalog.

Hollander lectures widely onfolk art and has writtenfor Antiques and Country Living magazines,as well asfor this publication. She is also the author ofHarry Lieberman: A Journey of Remembrance (Dutton Studio Books, 1991).

NOTES 1 See Eleanor H. Gustafson,"Collector's Notes," Antiques(October 1990): 662, 698.

2 John Vanderlyn to John Vanderlyn, Jr., 9 Sept., 1825, collection of Senate House, Kingston, New York.

3 Neil G.Larson, The Politics ofStyle: Rural Portraiture in the Hudson Valley During the Second Quarter ofthe Nineteenth Century (unpublished M.A. thesis, Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, Delaware, May 1980).

4 Jack Larkin,"Iconography: Representation of Respectability" in Meet Your Neighbors: New England Portraits, Painters, & Society 1790-1850 (Sturbridge, Mass.: Old Sturbridge Village, 1992), p. 12.

5 Grant B. Romer,"The Mirror with a Memory: The Daguerreotype as a Portrait Medium," in Face to Face: M. W. Hopkins and Noah North(Museum of Our National Heritage, Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library, Inc., 1988), p. 33.

6 Howard P. Fertig has identified more than six hundred portraits by or attributed to Ammi Phillips. Based on dated paintings, it has been suggested that Phillips may have painted as many as two thousand portraits during his lifetime.

7 The artist's obituary in the Berkshire County Eagle, July 20 and 27, was discovered by Ann Wrenn in the course of research for the exhibition "Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture."

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 45

Threads of FN idence

Attributing an Anonymous Quilt

mong the roughly three hundred quilts in the collection of the Museum of American Folk Art is an outstanding work notable for both its structural complexity and its inventive interpretation of a standard design. A tour de force of skill and labor, this quilt is constructed of thousands of minute scraps of fabric pieced together to form a pattern that is at once a coherent whole and an endless series of visually arresting variations.

Little is definitively known about this quilt, which entered the Museum's collection in 1988 accompanied by an oral tradition placing its origin in Kentucky, between 1920 and 1930, where it is thought to have been made by a black woman employed in a stocking factory.' According to this account, the woman pieced the quilt together from selvages (the edges of woven fabric, finished to prevent unraveling) and other discarded strips of stocking material.

While the lack of a confirmed provenance makes this attribution tentative,' visual evidence—the design aesthetic informing the piece—convincingly supports its connection to an African-American maker. Indeed, seen in light of recent scholarship concerned with identifying and defining the particular properties of some African-American quilts, this Kentucky quilt not only characterizes the type but might even be seen as a "textbook example" of several important aspects of the African-American quilt aesthetic.'

Measuring seventy-five by sixty-five inches, the quilt is composed of forty-two blocks situated within a larger grid pattern and is made from a heavy woolen knit fabric in pieces ranging from a fraction of an inch to nearly a foot in length. Each block features a tilted-square-withina-square format similar to the familiar Dutch Tile pattern.

Formal concordance among the various blocks ends here, however, as each is itself a unique composition (though similar in varying degrees to other blocks in the overall structure). Five muted colors of relatively close value— cerulean blue, pale emerald green, rose madder red, ivory, and a neutral gray—enliven the quilt's surface. Though green predominates, each color is dispersed broadly throughout the quilt, except for the dull gray, which appears with markedly less frequency. Within the individual blocks, colors are deployed with extreme irregularity and variation; conversely, the sashing (fabric grids between blocks) is pieced throughout of green strips, regularly punctuated at the intersection of horizontal and vertical bars by a red square enclosing a smaller blue square.

Close examination of the quilt's structure and of the improvisational way it departs from standard patterns provide the vital clues to its attribution. Indeed, evidence of its origins is woven into its very fabric, so to speak, in the numerous design choices made by its maker. By enumerating the characteristics with which quilts of African-American origin have been associated and applying them to the example in question, the quilt's provenance can be more closely secured while at the same time providing a paradigm for the identification of many African-American pieced quilts.

A

46 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Scholarship distinguishing African-American from European-American quilts has revolved around the identification in the former of continuities with African design aesthetics (specifically those of African textiles), which are thought to have survived both transatlantic dislocation and the passage of time in creolized but still recognizable form.

Perhaps the first scholar to note such links was the art historian Robert Farris Thompson, who in a 1969 article discussed similarities between wall hangings by the Fon people (of what is now Benin) and appliqué techniques in African-American quilts.' Various other writers subsequently addressed the subject, initially confining their investigations to parallels involving African textiles and appliquéd American quilts. In 1977, however, Mary Twining broadened the discussion to include a comparison between African woven textiles and pieced, or sewn together, African-American quilt designs.' Her identification of similarities between African-American strip quilts and the narrow-loom, hand-woven strip textiles of various African cultures provided the stimulus for further investigations in this area, notably those of Maude Southwell Wahlman, who ultimately codified a set of characteristics common to African-American quilts that has provided the foundation for much later work in the field.'

Wahlman identified six broad design elements shared by most African-American pieced quilts.'

Collectively, these constitute the rudiments of the AfricanAmerican quilt aesthetic, and their presence in a given quilt provides a strong indication of its African-American origin.

Significantly, the Museum's quilt can be seen to satisfy each of Wahlman's criteria.

The first trait Wahlman recognized is a tendency toward organization into strips. This characteristic method of construction is thought to be derived from the African tradition of weaving textiles on narrow looms and sewing the resulting lengths of cloth together to form broader fabrics.' Similarly, African-American quiltmakers frequently fashion their quilts from numerous discrete blocks that are then sewn together into strips. These, in turn, are joined in the creation of the larger, complete quilt top. This is precisely the technique employed in the Museum's quilt, whose strip orientation extends even to within the individual blocks, the majority of which are composed of several strips sewn together (see Fig. 1). Furthermore, the very pieces of fabric of which the quilt is constructed conform overwhelmingly to the shape of diminutive strips (see Fig. 2). While this may result simply from the unavailability of larger, wider pieces, the consistency with which the shape is incorporated into the quilt's overall design suggests that it was strongly preferred and may even have been obtained, as Thompson suggests in another context, by cutting larger pieces down "to cultural size, to the frequency modulation, as it were, of the narrow-strip, multistrip style."9 The second feature typifying African-American quilts is their frequent use of large-scale design elements.

As has already been noted, in spite of the Kentucky quilt's seemingly infinite number of small pieces, its structure

PIECED QUILT Quiltmaker unkown Kentucky c. 1920-1930 75

65"

Museum of American Folk Art, gift of Jolie Kelter and Michael MaIce, 1988.26.1

Fig.1 Detail of quilt block 135

Fig. 2 Detail of quilt block D6

I WA :1 :111M:i:TM

41+0,,,IsV

adheres to a larger overall design order—the grid and tilted-square-within-a-square pattern—which unifies the quilt into a coherent whole while still permitting variations on the general scheme.

Contrasts of color also play a central role in the African-American quilt aesthetic. Vivid hues are preferred, often situated alongside one another to provide maximum visual opposition between neighboring tonalities.

(Referring to the color photograph of the quilt, consider the blocks lettered in columns A to F from left to right and numbered in rows 1 through 7 from top to bottom; see block Fl.) Contrasting colors serve to help define and clarify the design and, as in the Museum's quilt, to convey the sense of a master pattern coexisting with several other patterns.10 At the same time, different colors are frequently scattered randomly throughout the quilt as a counterpoint to the rigidity that would otherwise arise from the use of the block pattern (see block E5)."

A fourth characteristic of African-American quilts, and one of the most readily apparent visual features of the Kentucky piece, is their allowance—indeed, their embracing—of variations in design and, to borrow Thompson's phrase,"off-beat" patterns. This term refers to the AfricanAmerican quiltznaker's tendency, manifesting as an inheritance from African textiles, to stagger design motifs when joining together separate strips of fabric (see block C6).

This quality has been seen by Thompson to reflect the narrow-strip textile tradition of the Mande people (of presentday Mali), but ultimately has been traced by the same scholar to "an originating set of pygmy visual influences"2

411 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

and, indeed a comparison of various blocks within the Kentucky quilt to bark cloth paintings of the Bira people of Zaire reveals compelling similarities (see Figs. 3 and 4).

In a related, but more general way, AfricanAmerican quiltmakers seem to prize variation above regularity, a characteristic expressed in the Museum's quilt in several ways. Color variation can be observed in the several blocks in which a foreign color intrudes into an otherwise regularized tonal scheme. A similar effect can be achieved structurally, as in the blocks where the usual dior tripartite strip division of the central diamond is supplanted by other forms, such as a modified Log Cabin motif(see block B1)or a type of freeform, Crazy quilt pattern (see block F1). The tendency toward variation extends even to the disposition of the pieces comprising the sashing, which are of radically disparate sizes and shapes.

This same flexible approach allows for the existence of multiple patterns or rhythms within a single piece, the final of Wahlman's six traits. An obvious comparison might be made to the improvisational quality of jazz, in which permutations on a theme often are freely explored without abandoning the essential melody. Likewise, each of the blocks in the Kentucky quilt sets up its own rhythm that echoes and resonates with that of its neighbors, yet itself remains distinct. The ability to utilize several individ-. ually expressive patterns while maintaining a sense of overall unity is a quality largely at odds with the more rigid European-American quilting tradition and represents perhaps the chief distinguishing characteristic of the AfricanAmerican quilting aesthetic.

Figs. 3(far left) and Fig. 4(left) Bark Cloth Painting Bira People Zaire Courtesy Department of Library Services American Museum of Natural History, Tr. 44009 and 44011

Having broadly defined the physical characteristics common to many African-American quilts through the examination of a single representative example, it is illuminating to discuss why these quilts take the forms they do.

The propensity of their makers toward variation and improvisation, for example, appears to result from an aversion to the rote and dryly repetitive methods evidenced in European-American examples. Variation, it is thought, leads to innovation, to new patterns and forms possessing a vitality deemed lacking in traditional quilts. As one black quiltmaker reported, "It gives me another view." The large designs and bold colors favored by African-American quiltmakers seem to constitute a survival of the communicative role of African textiles, which often were used to declare wealth and position. Their strong color contrasts and easily perceived designs are thought to have been carried over to America, where they became valued traits.'

The use of multiple patterns in African-American quilts is more complex, relating both to the African predilection for design intricacy as connected with prestige and power and to a belief in parts of West Africa that this intricacy protects against evil spirits, who are believed to travel only in straight lines." This tradition seems to have informed the belief in American slave communities, as among other quilting groups, that it is bad luck to make a perfect quilt; an imperfect one, in contrast, was thought to distract the Devil." The "imperfect" quilt thus took on symbolic protective connotations in keeping with its physical properties of providing warmth and cover. The importance of the quilt within the African-American slave community is further reflected by the practice among quiltmakers of throwing newly completed quilts over the roof of a house as a gesture of blessing and protection.''

The various rituals and beliefs surrounding quilts in the African-American community underscore their importance to its members, as do their vast numbers (estimated by one scholar at 800,000 8). As embodiments of the innovative spirit, the vitality, and the complexity of that community, examples like this Kentucky quilt are best seen not as misunderstood interpretations of European-American aesthetic forms, but rather as cultural vestiges—reflections of the persistence of African traditions—and as expressions of the independence and creativity inherent to AfricanAmerican culture.* Karl Kusserow received his M.A. and M.Phil. in art historyfrom Yale University, where he is writing his dissertation on images of children in mid-Victorian American art as a LucelACIS Fellow.

This essay is adaptedfrom a paper writtenfor a 1990 seminar taught by Robert Farris Thompson.

NOTES 1 Information concerning the quilt's provenance comes from the Museum's curatorial files, which relate the object's known history and the attempts to firmly secure its attribution.

2 Various aspects of the quilt itself, including the thickness and bright coloration of the material, neither of which are usually associated with the production of stockings, also contribute to the tentativeness of the attribution. The oral tradition does, however, account for the quilt's construction from numerous fragments of a single type offabric—unusual in African-American quiltmaking.

3 It is interesting to note that as late as 1991, the Museum owned only four quilts, representing just over one percent of its total quilt

collection,known to be made by African-Americans. This figure, far out of line with the actual ratio of African-American to European-American quilts produced in this country,reflects the long-entrenched cultural bias against the often unconventional but undeniably accomplished output of black American quilters.

Recent scholarly attention to the field, however, is beginning to redress this situation. Through exhibitions such as "Stitched from the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Ante-Bellum South"(1989),the second show at the Museum's Eva and Morris Feld Gallery, and more recently "Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts" and "Signs and Symbols: African Images in Quilts from the Rural South," two Museum exhibitions presented at The Great American Quilt Festival 4(1993), the public is being made aware of this vast body of material, which according to scholar John Michael Vlach constitutes the most conunon domestic example of African-American material culture.

4 Robert Farris Thompson,"African Influence on the Art of the United States," in Afro-American Folk Art and Crafts, ed. William Ferris (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1983), pp. 27-63.

5 Maude Southwell Wahlman and John Scully, "Aesthetic Principles in Afro-American Quilts," in Afro-American Folk Art and Crafts, p.81.

6 Recently, a controversy has developed among quilt scholars around the potentially exclusionary nature of the Wahlman set of characteristics, which can seem to circumscribe too narrowly the diverse products of African-American quiltmakers. In this debate, Cuesta Benberry has consistently argued for a more inclusive definition of the African-American quilt aesthetic. However, as Wahlman makes clear in her recent book,Signs and Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts(New York: Studio Books in association with the Museum of American Folk Art, 1993), her criteria are intended more as a means for the identification of most African-American quilts than as an itnmutable set of standards to which all must conform. These different perspectives were recently played out in simultaneous Museum of American Folk Art exhibitions,"Signs and Symbols: African Images in Quilts from the Rural South," curated by Wahlman,and "Always There: The African-American Presence in American Quilts," organized by Benberry. For a discussion of the two points of view, see Stacy C. Hollander,"African-American Quilts: Two Perspectives," Folk Art(Spring 1993): 44-51.

7 See Maude Southwell Wahlman,"The Art of Afro-American Quilt Making: Origin, Development, and Significance"(Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1980), pp. 201 ff., and Wahlman and Scully, op. cit. pp. 86-92.

8 Robert Farris Thompson,Flash ofthe Spirit: African and AfroAmerican Art & Philosophy(New York: Vintage, 1984), pp.

207-223.

9 Ibid. p. 210.

10 Wahlman and Scully, op. cit., p. 84.

11 John Michael Vlach, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts(Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978), p.67.

12 Thompson,Flash ofthe Spirit, pp. 207-223,and Thompson, "From the First to the Final Thunder: African-American Quilts, Monuments of Cultural Assertion," in Who'd A Thought It: Improvisation in African-American Quiltmaking, ed. Eli Leon(San Francisco: San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, 1987), p.19.

13 As quoted in "From the First to the Final Thunder," p. 16.

14 Maude Southwell Wahlman,"African Symbolism in AfroAmerican Quilts," African Arts 20,No. 1(1986): 75.

15 Waldman,"African Symbolism in Afro-American Quilts," p. 69,and Thompson,Flash ofthe Spirit, p. 222.

16 Gladys-Marie Fry, Stitchedfrom the Soul: Slave Quiltsfrom the Ante-Bellum South(New York: Dutton, 1990), p. 67.

17 Ibid.

18 Thompson,"From the First to the Final Thunder," p. 12.

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 49

II q•

1 6.

I

t 4

A Conservation Crisis: The Work of Felix "Fox" Harris, A Case Study LYNN P. CASTLE ecently, nontraditional contemporary folk art has gained acceptance as a viable art form of aesthetic and critical merit. A growing list of museums and collectors are adding significant pieces of this type of work to their collections. As this trend continues, however, collectors are discovering that much of this art is fragile and requires special handling. Furthermore, there are special problems inherent to the conservation of three-

R

SPRING i994 FOLK ART

dimensional and environmental folk art because many of the works are executed in a nontraditional manner and without professional preparation techniques. It was this issue that challenged the staff of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas when part of its permanent collection was threatened by hurricane-force winds.

In 1984, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas acquired 120 totemic sculptures created by visionary folk artist Felix "Fox" Harris. This collection is one of the finest groups of its kind and represents the artist's work intact, a rare acquisition opportunity for the museum. The collection itself represents the artist's response to what he believed was a vision from God that compelled him to "take nothing and make something." The artist was self-taught and virtually isolated from the contemporary art world. Like many "outsider artists," Harris was driven to express a personal revelation that he saw as the key to his salvation.

The story behind the Harris collection is almost as intriguing as the works themselves. Born in Trinity, Texas, in 1905, Harris received little formal education and worked as both a logging foreman and a construction foreman until his retirement. It was in the later years of his life, in Beaumont, Texas, that Harris began creating art. Collecting discarded objects such as old tools, machinery, toys, and scraps of metal and plastic, the artist created remarkable totemic sculptures that range in height from ten to fifteen feet. Many of the sculptures were decorated with metal designs, each meticulously hand-cut using a butter knife and a ballpeen hammer. Many of the sculptures also have kinetic elements which consist of portions of recycled machinery that were attached to the totems according to the artist's vision.

Harris created his sculptures during a period of more than twenty years. These sculptures adorned his house and yard, the latter appearing much like a forest of stark white totem poles embellished with brightly decorative accents. His visionary folk art was created solely for his personal fulfillment and to serve as a distraction from daily troubles. During his lifetime, Harris never sold any of his

52 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

sculptures, nor did he have any desire to. For Felix Harris, the creation of his art was grace enough.

Luckily, Beaumont fine art photographer Keith Carter and his wife, Pat, recognized the importance of Harris's work and the need to preserve it. In 1984, shortly before Harris's death, Carter had the foresight to take a series of photographs documenting the artist at work and the collection in his home and yard. It was with the assistance of the Carters, after the artist's death, that the sculptures were deeded to the museum by Harris's only living relative, his nephew, Elray Wolfe.

The sculptures were accessioned into the collection and were carefully photographed and cataloged before being placed in storage. At the time of the acquisition, the Art Museum was in the process of moving from its original location in a residential section to its new home in the center of downtown Beaumont. A decision was made that the Harris collection would be installed on the grounds of this new facility.

In July 1987, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas opened its doors to the public. Six months later, the plans to install the Harris collection were well under way. The sixty-seven sculptures were installed on the

northwestern corner of the museum grounds, an open area that is visible from three streets that surround the museum. In conjunction with the opening of the Harris collection, an interpretive exhibition focusing on Harris's works, with documentary photographs by Keith Carter, was installed in one of the galleries.

It was during the installation of the Harris collection that the museum met its first obstacle in the conservation of this kind of art. Most of Harris's sculptures were created using steel conduit, angle iron, or old water pipes as their "trunks." When the artist had originally installed the sculptures at his home, they had been placed directly in the ground and grouped tightly together. While the placement of the sculptures was not a problem (the curatorial department had the Carter photographic records for reference), the actual installation of the pieces had to be carefully considered. Because Beaumont is only several feet above sea level, the area's soil (often described as "gumbo") is a thick clay that retains moisture most of the year. This moisture posed a threat to the Harris "trunks"— if the

Felix "Fox" Harris, 1983

Left and below: Harris Installation at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, in Beaumont.

pieces in the collection were sunk directly into the ground, as they had been at Harris's home, the untreated metal would eventually corrode. To prevent this, the underground sections were fitted with PVC sleeves (light, tough, high-impact pipe that is resistant to corrosion, specifically corrosive liquids) and stabilized with builder's sand before the sculptures were installed in the museum's grounds.

However, in preventing one possible hazard to the Harris collection, the curatorial staff did not realize that their careful efforts to prevent corrosion would also make it difficult to quickly deinstall the fragile sculptures and remove them in case of an emergency. On paper, the location of the exhibition and painstaking installation of the pieces had seemed ideal.

In practice, however, this led directly

to the problem of the fragility of the pieces themselves.

It was noted by the curatorial staff that despite the sculptures being installed following Harris's original design, the new location apparently had a subtle, but telling, effect on the collection. Even minor gusts of wind would cause a certain degree of damage to the sculptures. It was a move of only several miles from Harris's original site to the new museum's grounds, but the seemingly insignificant differences in the topography and level of exposure to the elements made a dramatic difference in the

condition of the sculptures. It soon became obvious that the Harris collection would have to be relocated to another site on the museum's grounds. Before the curatorial staff could implement the planned shift in the exhibition area, however, the Art Museum and its prized Harris collection was threatened by a category-five hurricane, which led the curatorial staff to once again reassess its installation plan.

The great care that had been taken in the installation of the Harris collection worked against the curatorial staff as the storm approached the Texas coast. It took eight people working up to ten hours a day for three days to remove the sculptures that had been so meticulously installed. The works were then stored inside the museum. Working with their eyes on the sky, the staff was successful in dismantling the exhibition before the hurricane reached land. However, the crisis taught the museum one more lesson about dealing with the conservation of nontraditional art: there are no hard-and-fast rules yet in place. For an art form just gaining its audience and collectors, it seems that a series of trial-and-error exercises are necessary to the formation of a set of standard installation and conservation procedures.

Happily for the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the Felix "Fox" Harris collection escaped potential disaster. After the crisis had passed, the curatorial staff reviewed the entire history of the acquisition and set about guaranteeing that it would not be jeopardized again. The condition of the collection was carefully recorded and there began a search for a conservator qualified to restore what damages the collection had inadvertently suffered. Juroslav Belik, a conservator who lists the restoration of kinetic sculpture among his experience, was selected. Included in Belik's proposal was both a suggested site and an installation procedure plan that would allow for the expedient removal of the collection if conditions warranted.

Belik's restoration plan included cleaning and painting. In order to preserve the unity of the collection, weaker pieces were carefully reinforced. For example, there were a

number of bases that, upon examination, appeared weak. To remedy this situation, steel rods were inserted •through the centers of these bases to stabilize them. The conservator was very careful in this reinforcement, for he did not wish to interfere with the visual integrity of each sculpture.

Belik also determined that the sculptures would be better preserved if they were installed in an area that offered greater protection from the wind. He selected a courtyard of the museum that is flanked by three walls and is easily seen from three public areas of the facility. The conservator also developed a unique and efficient method for installation and deinstallation of the sculptures. He designed and built ingenious concrete blocks that serve as underground mounts for each sculpture's base. Each block is pyramidal in shape and measures ten inches square at the base and ten inches high with an apex that measures seven inches square (imagine the top, pointed portion of the pyramid cut off). A steel pipe capped with a welded four-inch-square flange extends two inches out of the squared apex. A matching flange is welded to the bottom of each sculpture, allowing the work to be fitted and secured to the concrete block with four bolts. The concrete block is then covered with two inches of soil, thereby approximating the appearance of Harris's original design while providing additional stability for the pieces.

The success of the project was proven in 1989, when the Art Museum was once again threatened by a hurricane. This time, thanks to the new installation method, the sculptures were dismantled and stored in only forty man-hours—a considerable savings of time, effort, money, and curatorial stress. Today, the Felix "Fox" Harris collection is on view, safe and secure, in the Boyt Education Courtyard of the Art Museum of Southeast Texas—a tribute both to the artist and to the people who see his vision.* Lynn Castle received her BA.from Colorado State University. She also pursued graduate studies at the University of Denver. As the Curator ofExhibitions and Collections at the Art Museum ofSoutheast Texasfor the past six years,she has curated more than sixty exhibitions.

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 53

MAIN STREET ANTIQUES and ART Colleen and Louis Picek Folk Art and Country Americana (319) 643-2065 110 West Main, Box 340 West Branch, Iowa 52358 On Interstate 80 Send a self-addressed stamped envelope for our monthly Folk Art and Americana price list

An old glass decorated cement chicken yard ornament

Gallery

Meaders, Crocker Elvis w'platinum decoration, Mary Greene,David James

Strong Southern Folk Art Featuring The Paragons Of The South Craig Richard Burnside Crocker Finster Henson Mary Greene Hewell Jennings Meaders R.A. Miller Lisk Mose T Rogers Annie T Leroy Almon Annie Wellborn And others

Barbara Brogdon Hwy. 129 S., P.O. Box 491, Cleveland, GA 30528

706-865-6345

54 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

FOLK ART SOCIETY OF

AMERICA

AN INVITATION TO JOIN THE FOLK ART SOCIETY OF AMERICA The Folk Art Society of America is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization formed to discover, study, promote,preserve, exhibit and document folk art,folk artists and folk art environments.

Membership includes a subscription to the quarterly publication,Folk Art Messenger, and all other privileges of membership.

CATEGORIES OF MEMBERSHIP O

Gold Star Membership

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Silver Star Membership

LI

Bronze Star Membership

$250

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Contributing Membership

$100

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Patron Membership

$50

D

General Membership

$25

Referred by

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Student Membership fulltimel I.D. copy required Foreign Membership

$15

Please make check payable to Folk Art Society and send to:.

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Gift Membership include message or card Back issues(when available)

$1,000 or more $500

$35 U.S. $25 $7 each

Name Address Zip Telephone

FOLK ART SOCIETY OF AMERICA P.0.BOX 17041 RICHMOND,VIRGINIA 23226-7041 Contributions are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

(Federal Tax I.D. No.54-141-5937)

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 55

MUSEUM

NEWS

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Fall Antiques Show at the Pier Celebrates its Fifteenth Anniversary N("%s°11 1..uvi • nOctober 20, 1993, 1,000 supporters joined Anniversa the Museum of American ry Smith With Chairman Folk Art and Sanford L. Smith & Sanford L. Advisory Cynthia Associates to celebrate fifteen Chairmen Danzig VA. Schaffner and Lucy years of the Fall Antiques Show C. at the Pier and the Museum's Opening Night Benefit Preview.

Country Living, also celebrating its fifteenth year, supported the event with a generous grant. The Museum of American Folk Art wishes to thank everyone who participated in the Benefit and helped to make it such a huge success. We hope to see you all again next year.

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Hevonan, Rachel MagaCloirrnan Living Country Honorary Wendy -Chief, Chairrnan Editor-in Benefit zine, andLash.

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Parties and Seagramgenerously & donated by drank Sons, Inc. Barbara Topiary Joseph E. Gallup. design by

Country Publisher, Rachel McGill, magazine; Chairman Iay rigtiv.Honorary Living Producer, left to Country from magazine; Smith, Wertlkin, -Gillet, Living Sanford V..

Editor-in Gerard C. Newman, Chairman Pier; Art. the Anniversary SIM* atAnterican Folk Antiques of Museurn Fall Director,

OPENING

56 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

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Current Exhibitions wo exhibitions are currently on display at the Museum through April 17."Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture" is a comprehensive retrospective featuring 50 works by this significant nineteenthcentury artist and highlighting the various distinct styles of his lengthy career. The exhibition will travel to the San Diego Museum of Art in San Diego, where it will be on display from July 9 to September 4, 1994, and to the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago, where it can be seen from October 8 to

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You Are Cordially Invited ay will be a special month for Museum members and friends.

The Museum is planning a series of dinners at the homes of trustees and folk art collectors across the country. Guests will have the opportunity to see private collections of not only traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century material, but also self-taught and contemporary folk art. Each dinner will have its own unique ambiance, and you can attend one or more of these delightful intimate evenings, knowing that your participation will benefit the Museum of American Folk Art. Invitations will be sent to you in the mail and we ask you to RSVP early, as space will be limited. For more information, please call Jennifer Waters at 212/ 977-7170.

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December 31, 1994. A full-color catalog is available at the Museum's book and gift shops and by mail."Northern Scenes: Hooked Art of the Grenfell Mission" presents 70 hooked mats depicting distinctive northern subjects, such as dog teams, polar bears, and fishing vessels, as well as geometric and floral patterns from the cottage industry established in 1907 at the Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland. The exhibition also includes contextual objects and traces the history of the materials used in the making of the mats.

A catalog produced by Sanford L. Smith is available at the Museum's book and gift shops.

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Day Without Art n Wednesday, December 1, 1993, the Museum of American Folk Art participated in Day Without Art, a day of international action, mourning, and awareness in response to the AIDS pandemic.

Three works of art were covered as a tribute to all the people who are currently living with AIDS and those who have died of the disease. The Museum selected two powerful paintings by Thornton Dial, Sr., from the "Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger" exhibition and the eighteenth-century Flag Gate, one of the icons in the Museum's collection, currently on display in the Daniel Cowin Permanent Collection Gallery. Placed in front of the shrouded works of art were three contemporary poems about AIDS:For Jed, by X.J. Kennedy; The Reassurance, by Thom Gunn; and Plague, by Robert Greeley.

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BINGHAM and VANCE GALLERIES Presently Featuring the Works of Carl Scharver Silvio P. Zoratti Okey John Canfield "Popeye" Reed Hugh "Gray Eagle" Issel Tim Karash David Sagula Howard Finster Sherrie Bingham Chicatelli Mark Vance 12801 Larchmere Boulevard Shaker Heights, Ohio 44120 216-721-1711 Folk Art iL

Outsider Art 4.

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SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 57

MUSEUM

AMERICAN • PRIMITIVE GALLERY • 596 New

Broadway #2 0 5 York, N.Y. 1 0 0 1 2

212.966.1530 Aarne Anton

New York Beauties he exhibition "New York Beauties: Quilts from the Empire State" will open at the Museum of American Folk Art April 23 and run through September 11. The Museum is known both nationally and internationally for its leading role in bringing quilts to a broad public audience. In this capacity, the Museum initiated the New York Quilt Project to locate and document the quilts of its home state.

Through a four-year process of active fieldwork and research, more than 6,000 quilts from the eighteenth century through 1940 have been identified.

This exhibition is the culmination of the project and features approximately 20 outstanding examples of the range and artistry of quilts from the Empire State. The quilts resonate with the cultural and social history of the region and reflect the issues and concerns of its citizens.

Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated book written by Jacqueline M. Atkins and Phyllis A. Tepper and published by Dutton Studio Books.

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Carved sandstone boulder. 17" x 15" x 15"

58 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

RISING STAR VARIATION Elsey A. Halstead Minisink (now Middletown), Orange County, New York 1848 Pieced and appliqued cotton 100

85"

Collection of Margaret Halstead Minch

A Folk Art Explorers' club day trip will be held on Friday, May 20, in conjunction with a special quilt symposium on Saturday, May 21. The tour will include visits to private quilt collections in New York City and Westchester County, and a private luncheon at the New York Botanical Gardens. For more information on the day trip, call the Membership office at 212/977-7170. Look for symposium information in the mail, or call the Folk Art Institute at 212/977-7170.

Folk Art at the World Financial Center elections from the Museum Hawkins painting, Neil House of American Folk Art's with Chimney.

Permanent Collection were Free lunchtime lectures on on view at the World Financial folk art and American life, Center's Courtyard Gallery from which were widely attended, January 18 through March 6. were led by instructors from the This satellite exhibition featured Museum's Folk Art Institute and several quilts, seven of which included "Expressions of a New were Amish; anniversary tin; Spirit,""Amish Quilts," and trade signs; decorated boxes; "Twentieth-Century Folk Expainted tinware from the pression." Craft classes, offered Historical Society of Early on Mondays and Saturdays, were American Decoration Collections also sponsored by the Museum at the Museum; southwestern ani- and included instruction in fauxmal carvings; two Eddie Aming finish graining techniques, scene drawings; and a William painting, basic quiltmaking, and canvas floorcloth painting. The

S THEODORE LUDWICZAK

NEWS

Gerard C. Wertkin

REV. JOHNNIE SWEARINGEN

Matt Hoebermann

and Thornton Dial, Sr.

Dial Exhibition Opens Uptown and Down both receptions, undaunted by the he first major museum distance between the two museexhibition of the work of ums and their different artistic Thornton Dial, Sr., a selftraditions. taught African-American artist, The openings were attended opened simultaneously at the by the artist and his wife, Clara Museum of American Folk Art Mae Dial; the exhibition's curaon Columbus Avenue and The tor, art critic Thomas McEvilley; New Museum of Contemporary and the Atlanta collector William Art on Broadway in SoHo to Arnett. Marcia Tucker, Director, enthusiastic crowds at both locaFrance Morin,Senior Curator, tions. Museum members,collecand other staff members of The tors, dealers, and friends attended New Museum of Contemporary From left to right: France Morin, Art joined with our staff to enjoy Ellen Holtzman, Marcia Tucker, and the presentations of this extraorHenry Luce Ill. dinary work. Paul Gottlieb, President and Publisher at Harry N. Abrams Inc., who published the exhibition's companion book, Thornton Dial:Image ofthe Tiger, and noted playwright and 2 poet Amiri Baraka, who con8 tributed an insightful essay to it, were also on hand to celebrate Dial and his art, along with Henry Luce ILI, President, and Ellen Holtzman,Program exhibition, lectures, and classes Director for the Arts, The Henry were part of the World Financial Luce Foundation, Inc., sponsors Center Arts & Events program of the exhibition. As part of the series, which focuses on the Museum's commitment to educadistinct traditions in arts, crafts, tion and public outreach, promusic, and dance and highlights gramming for this exhibition New York's artistic diversity included lectures by McEvilley, and cultural wealth. The proBaraka, and art historian Paul gram series was sponsored by Arnett, and Saturday afternoon American Express, Merrill storytelling of African-American Lynch, and Olympia & York, folk tales for adults and children, with the assistance of the Battery all of which were also well Park City Authority. attended.

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HOG BUTCHERING 18'' x 24"

ARTIST CHUCKIE WILLIAMS

LOUISIANA STATE FAIR 25 x 30"

Hector Alonzo Benavides Royal Robertson Cyril Billiot Xmeah ShaElaRe'EL Richard Burnside 011ie Smith Rhinestone Cowboy David Strickland Burgess Dulaney Jimmie Lee Sudduth Homer Green Rev. Johnnie Swearingen Rev. J.L. Hunter Rev. L.T. Thomas James Harold Jennings Son Thomas M.C. .5<t Jones Mose Tolliver R. A. Miller George White Carl Nash Artist Chuckie Williams B.F. Perkins George Williams Ernestene Polk Onis Woodard Susie Porter Southern Face Jugs

WEB3 FOLK ART GALLERY 107 North Rogers Waxahachie,Texas 75165 (2141938-8085

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 59

MUSEUM

NEWS

ART NAIF Haitian Folk Art

Ruley Book Signing n Wednesday evening, December 15, 1993, Crown Publishers Inc. and the Museum of American Folk Art hosted a reception and book signing for Glenn Robert Smith and his new book, Discovering Ellis Ruley. Ruley (1882-1959) was an enigmatic and talented self-taught AfricanAmerican artist from Norwich, Conn. The introduction to the book was written by the Museum's Director, Gerard C. Wertkin, and the essay was written by Stacy C. Hollander, the Museum's Curator, and Lee Kogan, Director of the Folk Art Institute.

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We invite you to come see our collection of original oil and acrylic paintings on canvas,fanciful steel structures and exquisite wooden carvings, as well as other forms of art developed by Haitian artists who have evolved a distinctive approach marked by careful brushwork, lush color and optimistic themes.

Jeanine Frye11

Thursday through Saturday Noon to 7:00 p.m.

29 Essex Street Millburn, N.J. 07041

60 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

(201) 379-2929 Fax (201) 761-4054

Nine of Ruley's paintings were on display at the Museum,including Adam and Eve, the painting that sparked Smith's interest in Ruley and sent him on a tumultuous journey culminating in the book. The event was attended by about 100 guests, including Museum friends, guests of Crown Publishing, and a camera crew from CBS that was preparing a segment on Ellis Ruley and Smith's findings, which aired in January on their Sunday Morning news program with Charles Kuralt.

Outsider Art Fair II he second annual Outsider Art Fair, held on January 28,29, and 30 at the Puck Building in New York, lived up to the promise of the premier event held last year. Collectors, scholars, dealers, and art lovers are already looking forward to Outsider Art Fair '95. The show's producers, Sanford L. Smith & Associates, will announce a fall date in 1994 for taking this year's show to Chicago. The 1995 fair in New York is scheduled for the weekend of January 27 to 29, with the possibility of holding the preview on Thursday, January 26, thereby extending the show one extra day.

The fair was attended by more than 4,800 persons who lined up to view works offered by 35 dealers from all over the United States and Europe.

Although prices were higher than last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the quality of the selection was also higherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the majority of pieces were offered at between $2,000 and $4,000.

At the high end, an Edmondson

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sold for $95,000, a Rizzoli for $50,000, and a Darger for $35,000. Traylors could be had for between $12,000 and $40,000. Knowledgeable and committed collectors had many wonderful works to choose from.

For new collectors, a variety of works were attractively offered for under $1,000. Ray Hamiltons were available for around $700 and two Jimmy Lee Sudduths were offered at one booth at $250 and $300, respectively. On Saturday afternoon, I watched as a young couple, accompanied by their small child, debated over the two and purchased the one for $300,looking immensely pleased with themselves; I'm sure they will be back next year.

Nothing encourages collectors, big or small, more than the excitement of a "real find."

The symposium that accompanied the fair,"Uncommon Artists II," sponsored by the Museum and graciously hosted by the Phyllis Kind Gallery was, like last year's, completely sold out. The speakers included

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS 1;16 .110 Mark your calendars for the following Museum of American Folk Art exhibitions when they travel to your area during the coming months: January 21—March 20, 1994

April 2—May 14, 1994

Visiones del Pueblo: The Folk Art of Latin America

Quilts from America's Flower Garden

The Art Museum at Florida International University Miami, Florida 305/348-2890

Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden Cincinnati, Ohio 413/281-4701

January 23—March 13, 1994

April 23—June 19, 1994

Signs and Symbols: African Images in African-American Quilts from the Rural South

Visiones del Pueblo: The Folk Art of Latin America

Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts Montgomery, Alabama 205/244-5700

Field Museum of Natural History Chicago, Illinois 313/922-9410 July 2—August 28, 1994

February 13—April 10, 1994

Santos de Palo: The Household Saints of Puerto Rico Fowler Museum of Cultural History University of California Los Angeles, California 310/825-4361

Quilts from America's Flower Garden Wichita Falls Museum and Art Center Wichita Falls, Texas 817/692-0923

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WILTON OUTDOOR ANTIQUES MARKETPLACE To Benefit The Wilton Family "Y" and The Wilton Kiwanis Club June 25 & 26, Sat. & Sun. 10 - 5

For further information, contact Judith Gluck Steinberg, Coordinator of Traveling Exhibitions, Museum of American Folk Art, Eva and Morris Feld Gallery, 2 Lincoln Square, New York, NY 10023, 212/595-9533.

Admission $6 - with card/ad $5 Early Buying Sat. 8-10 A.M. Adm.$20 "The Meadows" North of Wilton High School

Gerard C. Wertkin, the Museum's Director; poet and playwright Amiri Baraka; Bruce Lineker, curator of the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art; Gary J. Schwindler, art historian, Ohio University; collector Mickey Cartin; Don Christensen, cocurator of the Emery Blagdon Collection; artist and conservator Lisa Stone; photographer Marcus Schubert; author and lecturer Tom Patterson; and author Roger Cardinal. Art historian Paul Arnett led a gallery tour of "Thornton Dial: Image of the Tiger" at the Museum. Lee Kogan,the symposium's coordinator said,"The energy generated by the speakers and the audience, both representing participants from here and abroad, was palpable and tremendously exhilarating." The Museum's book

shop booth carried a full range of titles on self-taught art and artists and members took full advantage of their discount. A few titles were sold out by the last day of the fair, but are still available at the Museum's book and gift shops. The Museum's Folk Art Explorers' Club held a full-day tour of private collections in New York specifically designed to include members who were in from out of town for the fair. The 46 participants made six stops, including visits to the homes of Didi and David Barrett, Anne Hill and E.V. Blanchard, and June and Ron Shelp. We had three delightful days of art-filled events, including a welcome break in the nasty weather. The Outsider Art Fair was once again a great success.

—Rosemary Gabriel

Route 7- Wilton, Ct. Still The Place To Be A unique assemblage of200 exhibitors from across the country, offering AUTHENTIC ANTIQUES, under tents, in a meadow in Wilton-the place for quality shows.

Eclectic...country and period formal furniture, folk art, line art, ceramics, American Arts and Crafts and 20th century design, silver,jewelry, textiles, toys...and much more.

Special events, a festival ofgood food, a spirit of"community".

There's never been an outdoor show like this -quality, variety, a broad range ofprices and attention to presentation..andsome of America's finest dealers.

The Most Exciting Show Of The Summer • Merritt Parkway: Exit 398 from the west Exit 41 from the east • 1-95: Exit 15, north 8 miles • 1-84: Rt. 7, south 12 miles • Metro North railroad to Cannondale Station

Managed By Marilyn Gould MCG Antiques Promotions, Inc. 10 Chicken St., Wilton, Ct. 06897 (203) 762-3525

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 61

CONTEMPORARY Minnie Adkins Jesse Aaron Linvel Barker The Beaver Pricilla Cassidy Ronald Cooper Mr. Eddy Denzil Goodpasture Homer Green Alvin Jarrett Carl McKenzie Hog Mattingly

ART

Frank Pickel Braxton Ponder Dow Pugh Royal Robertson Sultan Rogers Jimmy Lee Sudduth "Son" Thomas Mose Tolliver Fred Webster Wesley Willis Troy Webb And Others

House Paint on Board

PRISCILIA CASSIDY

BRUCE

FOLK

SHELTON

By APPOINTMENT(615-352-1970)

NASHVILLE, TN

Also Serving the Following Areas:

Chicago/Milwaukee • Brimfield, MA/New England New Orleans/Houston • Atlanta/Palm Beach • DC/Virginia/North Carolina

IN ATLANTA

ianoke qi atterIS a Atlanta ESTABLISHED 1973

SpEciAliziNg IN °Wiry 1 9di ANd

20Th CENTURY AMERICAN ART

FEATURi Ng iMpORTANT

woRks by SoutliERN CONTEMPORARY

Folk ARTISTS ANd TRAdirioNAl SourbERN Folk POTTERS

EARly LANIER MEADERS Rock Tooth

62 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

FACE

Jugs

5325 ROSWELL ROAD,N.E. ATLANTA,GEORGIA 30342 (404) 252-0485 • FAX (404)252-0359

NORTHWEST & BEYOND

oto: Rod Slemmon-

Contemporary Outsider and Self-Taught Artists

1119

GEED Terry Turrell "Girl with VVheelbarrel" 1993 wood and mixed media 151/2 x 5 x 141/2"

536 First Avenue S. Seattle, WA 98104 Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 - 5:30• Sunday 1:00 - 5:00 (206)467•8283

WE BUY FOLK & OUTSIDER ART CALL 800-523-0450 ACTIVELY SEEKING OUTSTANDING WORKS BY Jesse Aaron Eddie Arning Steve Ashby Calvin Black Emile Blanchard David Butler Henry Church James Crane Uncle Jack Dey Sam Doyle William Edmondson

Josephus Farmer J.O.J. Frost Morris Hirschfield S.L. Jones John Kane Karol Kozlowski Olof Krans Lawrence Lebduska George Lothrop Anna Miller Peter Minchell

Sister Gertrude Morgan John Perates Joseph Pickett Elijah Pierce Martin Ramirez Nellie Mae Rowe Ellis Ruley Drossos SkyIlas Bill Traylor Joseph Yoakum ...and others

JOSH FELDSTEIN • AMERICAN FOLK ART 4001 NEVVBERRY ROAD, SUITE E-3• GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA • 32607 • TEL 904-375-6161

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 63

Contemporary Folk Art, Crafts &Jewelry

KELLYOGILLIS 29 America's Cup (next to the Marriott) Neuport, RI 02840 (401)849-7380

MARY NASH Independent Visionary

March 14 - April 15, 1994 Chicago Gallery The University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago Circle Center, 750 South Halsted Chicago, Illinois 60607 Tel:(312)413-5070

UIC Killer Woman Skull, ink on paper, 41" x 29", 1992.

64 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Sponsored by the Campus Union Board Exhibits Committee

WORKS BY "THE BEAVER"CAN BE SEEN AT THE "POSH PINEAPPLE", BELLEAIR, FLORIDA. ALSO, EVERY SECOND WEEKEND OF EVERY MONTH AT THE DON SCOTT'S ANTIQUE SHOW,ATLANTA.

(813)855-1521

P.O. BOX 1764 • OLDSMAR,FLORIDA 34677

WANDA BEVERLAND'S FINE ARTS & ANTIQUES

HOUSE PAINT ON PLYWOOD 2' x 4'

"The Beaver's Family"

'The Beaver'

James Allen Bloomfield Exhibited in New York by the Frank J. Miele Gallery at 1262 Madison Avenue

CONTEMPORARYART BY THE SELF -TAUGHT HAND John Sheldon Howard Finster Mose Tolliver MC.5(t Jones Wesley Willis S.L. Jones Malcah Zeldis B.F. Perkins and many others...

c7,1 1V(S 90fk aciTt Howard Sebold by appointment 212.535.5265 Represents emerging and established artists.

To receive information on our collection of American & International Folk Art call or write: 317 East 85th Street, Suite 2D, NY NY 10028 formerly Leslie Howard Alternative Art Source

"Indian Joe" Williams Born Georgia 1943, Truck Driver Inspired by Awakening Spirit Paints Dimensional Wood Carvings of His Personal Visions

Jubal's Daughterâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;The First Musician Linwood Carving, 62" tall, painted in oils, 1993

loch lea antiques

66 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Kentucky Folk Art Lyn Layton 410 Main Street Paris, KY 40361 (606)987-7070

Shown Exclusively at TIMPSON CREEK GALLERY Route 2, Box 2117 Clayton, Georgia 30525 706-782-5164

•••••••••••••••••••••• JACK SAVITT • • •GrIkLLERY 2015 Route 100 • Macungie, PA 18062 (between Macungie and Trexlertown)

NANcY

THOMAS

"Breaker Boys" - Oil, Size 18"x 24" Jack Savitt Represents His Father,

JACK SAVITSKY 20th Century American Folk Artist • Oils • Acrylics • Drawings For Appointment Call

• • (610)398-0075 + ••••••••••••••••••••••

FOLK ART BY MAIL

4691.* Ted 21 x 14 Acrylic on wood, metal frame

We offer a wide range of folk and decorative art for purchase by mail. Specializing in older American pieces. We usually have some contemporary and outsider works.

INCLUDING: Paintings, Carvings, Whirligigs, Quilts, Tramp & Obsessive art, and interesting items made from found objects.

RT. 1, BOX 20-C, MENTONE, AL 35984 (205)634-4037 Free lists will be sent to you on request. Photos lent.

Please specify your areas of interest

Teddy at Sixteen 14 x12 Acrylic on wood Ballard Sheet* Yorktown,VA 23690 * (804)898*3665 fax(804)890*0967

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART Cl

MUSEUM

REPRODUCTIONS

PROGRAM

Family of Licensees

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION' Home Furnishings and Decorative Accessories

Rose Art

Tradition and innovation, design and beauty, comfort and graceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; hallmarks ofthe Museum ofAmerican Folk Art Collection ofhome furnishings and decorative accessories.

New Directions The Museum welcomes Dakotah, Inc., its newest licensee. Based in Webster, South Dakota, Dakotah is a leading manufacturer of decorative pillows, table linens, throws, and chair pads. Look for new products inspired by the Museum's collection this fall.

Wedding Ring quilt. The bedcovers, complete with coordinating bedskirts and pillow shams, are based on examples found in the Museum's extensive quilt collection. Made in America and adapted for today's easy living, all bedding products are machine washable.

News from Museum Licensees

Special Event

The Museum "pieces" together a new quilt exhibit: cork-backed jigsaw puzzles. In December 1993,Rose Art Industries, a leading manufacturer of specialty puzzles, toys, and art supplies, introduced its newest puzzle series,"Quilts," based upon the Museum's permanent quilt collection. With more than sixty million jigsaw puzzles sold annually and fourteen million quiltmakers nationwide, these puzzles are destined to become collectibles. The initial introduction included two puzzles, Hanne Wellendorph's My Dolls, the third-place grand prize winner in the Museum's international quilt contest"Great American Quilt Festival 2: Memories of Childhood," and Double Wedding Ring Quilt, created by an unknown artist. The 1,000-piece puzzles, made of 100 percent recycled material and measuring 23 x 29" when complete, are perfect for framing.

The Museum's answer to warmth and comfort: bedcovers.

Perfect Fit, a leading manufacturer of machine-made bedcovers, introduced two new licensed products this fall, a BaltimoreStyle Album quilt and a Double

Welcome to our house. On November 16, 17, and 18, 1993, the Museum of American Folk Art CollectionTM of furniture by the Lane Furniture Company, Inc. arrived on Long Island. The Museum and Lane and Levitz furniture stores of Garden City, Farmingdale, and Smithtown joined in a special event celebrating the style, craft, and history of American furniture design.

Alice Hoffman and Maryann Warakomski were on hand to answer questions about the Collection. Lectures on folk art and quilt demonstrations were scheduled for each location. The Long Island Quilters Society created and donated the "House Quilt" on view at Levitz to be raffled off with all proceeds benefiting the Museum.

We wish to thank the Long Island Quilters Society and Margo Cohen for donating the quilt and organizing the demonstrations; we would also like to thank the quilters who participated in this three-day event. We invite you to visit the Long Island Levitz stores where you can purchase the Museum of American Folk Art CollectionTM of furniture. The telephone num-

NI SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Long Island Qullter's Society

Abbeville Press(212/888-1969) gift wrap, book/gift tags, quilt note cube.* Dakotah,Inc. (800/325-6824)decorative pillows, table linens, woven throws, chair pads. Galison Books (212/354-8840)note cards, address book, puzzle, holiday cards.* Hedgerow House Inc. (407/998-0756)posters.* The Lane Company, Inc.,including Lane/Venture and Clyde Pearson (800/447-4700)furniture (case goods, wicker, upholstered furniture). Milton Bradley Company(413/525-6411)jigsaw puzzles.* Mirage Editions,Inc.(800/423-6345) art posters.* Perfect Fit Industries(704/289-1531) machine made in America printed bedcovers and coordinated bedroom products. Rose Art Industries(800/CRAYONS)toys (dolls),jigsaw puzzles, hobby kits.* Rowe Pottery Works (608/764-5435)Pennsylvania redware (microwave, oven,and dishwasher safe).* Takashimaya Company, Ltd.(212/350-0550) home furnishings accessories and furniture (available only in Japan). Tyndale,Inc. (312/384-0800)lighting and lampshades. *Available in Museum of American Folk An Book and Gift Shops.

For mail-order information, contact Beverly McCarthy at 212/977-7170.

Levitz Showroom

bers for the Levitz stores are as follows: Garden City, 516/228-9100; Farmingdale,516/420-8900; Smithtown, 516/724-0600.

Perfect FR industries

For Information For information regarding the Museum of American Folk Art CollectionTM licensing program, contact Alice J. Hoffman, Director of Licensing, or Maryann Warakomski, Assistant Director of Licensing, at 212/977-7170.

If you have purchased any of the Museum's licensed products in the past, we would appreciate hearing your comments. Your purchase of these products directly benefits the Museum and helps it realize its goals. Thank you for your support.

JOHN C. HILL

STEPHEN HUNECK

ANTIQUE INDIAN ART Old pawn jewelry, historic Pueblo pottery, Navajo textiles, Southwest baskets, early Kachinas and beadwork.

Mon-Sat 11-4 6990 E. MAIN ST. SECOND FLOOR SCOTTSDALE,AZ 85251

(602) 946-2910 Konin Kachina, by Otto Pente\va, 1032, 1.2 inches.

0 O0 00

r1/4; 1 . eTh 71 1: 'Th(

00

•4040,-** The Texas Connection featuring

Sarah Rakes Spring '94 by appointment priscilla magers fine folk art 3111 university boulevard houston, texas 77005 (713) 661-3896

"STORAGE CABINET" • 84"x31"x15" • 1993

STEPHEN HUNECK GALLERY 49 Central Street, Woodstock, VT 05091 FOR MORE INFORMATION OR FOR A COMPLIMENTARY JEWELRY CATALOG

CALL 1-800-449-2580

TRUSTEES/DONORS

BOARD OF TRUSTEES Executive Committee Ralph Esmerian President Frances Sirota Martinson, Esq. Executive Vice President and Chairman,Executive Committee Lucy C.Danziger Executive Vice President Bonnie Strauss Vice President Joan M.Johnson Vice President Peter M.Ciccone Treasurer Cynthia V. A. Schaffner Secretary Judith A. Jedlicka Theodore L. Kesselman Susan Klein George F. Shaskan, Jr.

RECENT

MAJOR

$50,000499,999 Asahi Shimbun* The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc. 820,000449,999 Marilyn & Milton Brechner* Chinon,Ltd.* Country Living Mr.& Mrs. Frederick M. Danziger Mrs. Eva Feld* Estate of Morris Feld* Foundation Krikor William Randolph Hearst Foundation* Kodansha, Ltd.* Howard & Jean Lipman Foundation* National Endowment for the Arts Restaurant Associates Industries, Inc. 810,000419,999 Amicus Foundation* Bear, Steams & Co.,Inc. Mrs. Sylvia J. Berger Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Mr.& Mrs. Martin Brody* Lily Cates* Joyce Cowin

70 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

OF

Members Florence Brody Joyce Cowin David L. Davies Raymond C. Egan T. Marshall Hahn,Jr. Barbara Johnson, Esq. George H. Meyer, Esq. Cyril I. Nelson Maureen Taylor David C. Walentas Robert N. Wilson

AMERICAN

FOLK

ART

Honorary Trustee Eva Feld Trustees Emeriti Cordelia Hamilton Herbert W. Hemphill,Jr. Margery G. Kahn Alice M. Kaplan Jean Lipman

DONORS

The Museum of American Folk Art greatly appreciates the generous support of the following friends: $100,000 and above Anonymous Ben & Jerry's Homemade,Inc.* Estate of Thomas M.Conway* Estate of Daniel Cowin Ford Motor Company The J.M. Kaplan Fund,Inc. Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Joseph Martinson Memorial Fund* Philip Morris Companies,Inc. Two Lincoln Square Associates*

MUSEUM

David L. Davies* and Jack Weeden Mr.& Mrs. Alvin Deutsch Fairfield Processing Corporation/Poly-fir Daniel & Jessie Lie Farber* Walter and Josephine Ford Fund* Taiji Harada* Estate of Aniel T. Hubbell Joan & Victor L. Johnson* Johnson & Johnson Shirley & Theodore L. Kesselman* Masco Corporation* Olsten Corporation Kathleen S. Nester* NYNEX Corporation* Dorothy & Leo Rabkin* Schlumberger Foundation Samuel Schwartz* The William P. and Gertrude Schweitzer Foundation, Inc.* Mr.& Mrs. George F. Shaskan, Jr.* Mrs. Louise A. Simone* Patricia Lynch Smith & Sanford L. Smith* Barbara and Thomas W.Strauss Fund David & Jane Walentas Robert N.& Anne Wright Wilson* S4,00049,999 American Patchwork & Quilting Joan Bull The David and Dorothy Carpenter Foundation* Tracy & Barbara Cate* Cone Communications, Inc. Mr.& Mrs. Edgar M.Cullman Department of Cultural Affairs, City of New York Zipporah S. Fleisher Jacqueline Fowler* Evelyn Frank in honor of Myra and George F. Shaskan, Jr. T. Marshall Hahn, Jr. IBM Corporation Kathy Jakobsen

Mr.& Mrs. Robert Klein* George H. Meyer New York State Council on the Arts Quilter's Newsletter Magazine The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. Herbert and Nell Singer Philanthropic Fund Shiseido Co., Ltd. Sotheby's Takashimaya Co.,Ltd. 'Mr.& Mrs. Stanley Tananbaum* Mr.& Mrs. Richard T. Taylor Time Warner Inc. V.I.P. Fabrics Mrs. Dixon Wecter* $2,00043,999 American Folk Art Society* Estate of Abraham P. Bersohn* The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Edwin M.Braman* Mr.& Mrs. Edward J. Brown* Capital Cities/ABC Concordia: A Chamber Symphony,Inc. Conde Nast Publications Inc. Consolidated Edison Company of New York Mr.& Mrs. Joseph F. Cullman III Gary Davenport Mr.& Mrs. Donald DeWitt* Mr.& Mrs. Alvin Einbender* Margot & John Ernst Richard C. and Susan B. Ernst Foundation M.Finkel & Daughter First Nationwide Bank Colonel Alexander W.Gentleman Cordelia Hamilton* Justus Heijmans Foundation IBM Corporation Wendy & Mel Lavitt* Marsh & McLennan Companies,Inc. MasterCard International Inc. Christopher & Linda Mayer* Morgan Stanley & Co.,Incorporated (continued on page 74)

•••••••••••••••••••••

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Mb.

Rare and fine carved wooden bellows signed W.II. Pries, circa 19th century, with a wrought iron nozzle in the form of a snake. Length 37".

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5 • •

• . WINDSOR • GALLERIES • • .

4' ..... .

•

K.S. Art

. " iR .1.

• ANTIQUES • COLLECTIBLES • • • 1013 N. CHARLES ST. • • MARYLAND BALTIMORE, • • • FRED WINTZER • 410-685-2222 • •••••••••••••••••••••

self-taught, outsider 8,t folk by appointment 91 Franklin Street #3 New York,NY 10013 212-219-1489

Aaron Birnbaum Freddie Brice Ray Hamilton Gayleen Aiken Lillian Smith Rev. St. Patrick Clay Philip Travers

IMPORTANT CATALOGUE OF OUTSIDER ARTISTS 146 PAGES PLUS COVER, 32 COLOR PLATES, 90 HALFTONES.

"a beautiful as well as scholarly publication... will be used as the standardfor years to come...

Itruly admire what the University Art Museum has accomplished in Baking in the Sun." Ann Oppenheimer,President Folk Art Society of America "informative, beautifully illustrated... makes a major contribution to our understanding ofsouthernfolk art and the artists who create these rich worlds."

William Ferris, Director Center for the Study ofSouthern Culture The University of Mississippi

BAKING IN THE SUN Visionary Images from the South

SEND $30 PLUS $3 HANDLING AND POSTAGE TO: UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM USL DRAWER 42571, LAFAYETTE, LA. 70504 (318) 231-5326

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 71

ALAN ROUSH & ASSOCIATES PRESENTS

FOLK ART AT

OLLA PODRIDA 12215 COIT ROAD UPSTAIRS #263 DALLAS,TEXAS 75251 (214)553-1586 (800)458-9542 ARTIST:

ROBERT SCHROTENBOER "AMERICAN PRIMITIVE" 30" x 23" ACRYLIC ON PAPER

JIM

ESQUELETO contemporary folk art 22 Carpenter Ct Oberlin, OH 44074 216-775-2238 Hours 1-5, Mon -Sat.

72 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

LEWIS

OAXACA TO APPALACHIA In conjunction with FOLK ARTE GALLERY we will be presenting a large comparative exhibition of contemporary wood carvings from these two regions April 22 - May 28 2026 Murray Hill Road, Cleveland 44106 216-791-8833

The first definitive book of Alabama's visionary folk art Featuring: REVE LATIONS

Thornton Dial Lonnie Holley

E Tolson

S. kmstrong

E Patton

Bill Traylor Mose Tolliver

Automata by Steven Armstrong Kentucky Folk Art Edgar Tolson • Margaret Ross • Earnest Patton Carl McKenzie • Junior Lewis • Denzil Goodpaster Jessie and Ronald Cooper • Donnie Brown Minnie and Garland Adkins and others.

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COGNOSCENTI Johnson Geneva Beavers Rev. Hunter SonFord Thomas Mary T.Smith Vennoy Streeter Rhinestone Cowboy Ernest Patton Sultan Rogers R. P. Schroeder Milton Fletcher Rev. Herman Hays Rev. Doc Spellman Michael Creese Tamer Lavern Kelly Vollis Simtson Glassman Rev. B. F. Perkins Ron Cooper Linvel R.A. R.A. Miller & Lillian Berk, erger Anderson Moset Ruth Tu r.Smith Vennoy Johnson Gene 1. P. Schroeder Streeter Rhine tl Creese Tamer Milton Fletcher Cooper Linvel Lavem Kelly V, R.A. R.A. Miller & Lillian Berk, erger Anderson Moset Ruth Tu E. Smith Vennoy Johnson Gene, 1. P. Schroeder Streeter Rhine! tl Creese Tamer Milton Fletcher iCooper Linvel Lavem Kelly V 3.A. R.A. Miller & Lillian Berle erger Anderson Moset Ruth Tu 1.Smith Vennoy Johnson Gene, 3. P. Schroeder Streeter Rhine!

Creese Tamer Milton Fletcher b 111"-P" 1 Cooper Linvel Lavem Kelly V • L. krb-rt .A. R.A. Miller & Lillian Berk I 't `r3'• rger Anderson Moset Ruth T Johnson Geneva Beavers Rev. Hunter SonFord Thomas Mary T.Smith Vennoy Streeter Rhinestone Cowboy Ernest Patton Sultan Rogers R. P. Schroeder Milton Fletcher Rev. Herman Hays Rev. Doc Spellman Michael Creese Tamer Lavern Kelly Vollis Simpson Glassman Rev. B. F. Perkins Ron Cooper Linvel

Fred Webster Myrtice West Alabama's Visionary Folk Artists

Jimmy Lee Sudduth

Kathy Kemp & Keith Boyer tetrealtan ay ham Decent

Woodie Long.. and more

labama is increasingly viewed as an active center of visionary folk art (also known as outsider or self-taught A art), producing a high volume of exceptional artists and works.

Revelations, the first definitive volume covering Alabama's key visionary folk artists, presents these exciting works and their creators in a beautiful full-color hardbound edition worthy of the finest collection.

Through this limited advance-order offering, you may order Revelations, regularly priced at $60, at a 34% discount direct from the publisher for only $39.95. To order,simply fill out the order form below and mail with your payment or credit card number.

•1 0" x 1 0" / 192 pages / hardcover /full color gloss varnish jacket Over 100 full-color reproductions of Alabama's most important works of visionary folk art Profiles of each artist with quality black-andwhite portrait photographs •Introduction by Gail Trechsel of the Birmingham Museum of Art Available in bookstores, galleries, and museum stores after June 1, 1994. Order now to reserve your advance copy and save 34%.

• Clip and mail with payment

ORDER FORM copies of Revelations at the 34% advance-order discount price of Please send me $39.95 plus $4.50 shipping and handling per book. Alabama residents add $2.80 sales tax.

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limo street address is available for UPS delivery, please add $1s. your shipping and handling charge to ensure parcel post delivery.)

0Check or money order enclosed, payable to Crane Hill Publishers MasterCard 0VISA account* expiration date

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Howard Finster

authorized signature

Mail to: Crane Hill Publishers 2923 Crescent Ave. Birmingham AL 35209

(800)841.2682

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

73

RECENT

MAJOR

DONORS

PaineWebber Group Inc. Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation Rockefeller Group,Inc. Betsey Schaeffer* Robert T. & Cynthia V. A. Schaffner Mr.& Mrs. Derek V. Schuster Randy Siegel Joel & Susan Simon* L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation Robert C.& Patricia A. Stempel Alan Sullivan, Consul General for Canada Mr.& Mrs. Austin Super* William S. Taubman Tiffany & Co. Gerard C. Wertkin* Women's Action Alliance, Inc. Alice Yelen & Kurt A. Gitter $1,000—S1,999 Herbert A. Allen American Savings Bank William Arnett* The Bachmann Foundation Didi & David Barrett* Michael Belknap Bemina of America Adele Bishop Dr. Robert Bishop* Edward Vermont Blanchard & M. Anne Hill* Mr.& Mrs. James A. Block Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Block Bloomingdale's Dr.& Mrs. Robert Booth Tina & Jeffrey Bolton David S. Boyd Mabel H. Brandon Sandra Breakstone British Airways Ian G. M.& Marian M. Brownlie Morris B. and Edith S. Cartin Family Foundation* Edward Lee Cave* Chase Manhattan Bank, N. A. Christie's Liz Claiborne Foundation The Coach Dairy Goat Farm Joseph Cohen Consulate General of Mexico Judy Angelo Cowen The Cowles Charitable Trust Crane Co. Cullman & Kravis Mr.& Mrs. Richard Danziger Carolyn & Robert Denham Mr. & Mrs. Richard DeScherer Gerald & Marie DiMarmo* The Marion and Ben Duffy Foundation* Mr.& Mrs. Arnold Dunn Echo Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Lewis M.Eisenberg Bruce Engel Ellin F. Ente* Virginia S. Esmerian Mr.& Mrs. Anthony Evnin Helaine & Burton M Fendelman Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Ferguson Janey Fire & John Kalymnios* Louis R. and Nettie Fisher Foundation M. Anthony Fisher

Susan & Eugene Flamm* Evelyn W.Frank Mr.& Mrs. Richard Fuld, Jr. Ronald J. Gard Emanuel Gerard The Howard Gilman Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Eric Jay Gleacher Selma & Sam Goldwitz* Mr.& Mrs. Baron Gordon* Renee Graubart Doris Stack Greene* Carol Griffis Richard H. Haas Terry & Simca Heled* Todd Hensley Mr.& Mrs. Rodger Hess M. Anne Hill Stephen Hill Alice & Ronald Hoffman* Mr.& Mrs. David S. Howe* Frederick W.Hughes Mr.& Mrs. Robert J. Hurst Robert G. James Mr.& Mrs. Yee Roy Jear* Judith A. Jedlicka Dr. & Mrs. J. E. Jelinek Barbara Johnson,Esq.* Mr.& Mrs. Alistair Johnston Isobel & Harvey Kahn* Kallir, Philips, Ross, Inc. Lore Kann Foundation Mr.& Mrs. Leslie Kaplan Mr.& Mrs. Howard Katz Kaye Insurance Associates, L.P. Steven & Helen Kellogg Mary Kettaneh Lee & Ed Kogan* The Lane Company,Inc. Mr.& Mrs. Stephen Lash Mr.& Mrs. Ronald Lauder Susan & Jerry Lauren Estate of Mary B. Ledwith William & Susan Leffler Barbara & Morris L. Levinson Dorothy & John Levy Nadine & Peter Levy James & Frances Lieu* Mr.& Mrs. Henry S. Lodge Dan W.Lufkin Robert & Betty Marcus Foundation, Inc.* Marstrand Foundation C.F. Martin IV* Sylvia & Leonard Marx Leni & Peter May Helen R. Mayer and Harold C. Mayer Foundation Mrs. Myron L. Mayer MBNA America Bank, N.A. Marjorie W.McConnell* Meryl & Robert Meltzer Brian & Pam McIver Michael & Marilyn Mennello* Benson Motechin* Mr.& Mrs. Jeremy N. Murphy Cyril I. Nelson Johleen Nester, John Nester II, and Jeffrey Nester* Mattie Lou O'Kelley Onmigrid,Inc. Paul Oppenheimer*

Park East Sewing Center Dr. Burton W.Pearl Dr. & Mrs. R. L. Polak Helen Popkin David Pottinger Kelli & Allen Questrom Quilt House YAMA Random House, Inc. Cathy Rasmussen* Ann-Marie Reilly* Paige Rense Marguerite Riordan Dorothy H. Roberts Daniel & Joanna S. Rose Mr.& Mrs. Martin Rosen Willa & Joseph Rosenberg* Mr.& Mrs. Jon Rotenstreich Louise Sagalyn Mr.& Mrs. Oscar S. Schafer Mr.& Mrs. William Schneck Mr.& Mrs. Richard Sears* Sew New York Rev.& Mrs. Alfred R. Shands III Mrs. Vera W.Simmons Philip & Mildred Simon Mr.& Mrs. Richard L. Solar* Soloman Co., Ltd. Sony USA Inc. Mr.& Mrs. Elie Soussa Jerry I. Speyer Ellen & David Stein Kathryn Steinberg Mr.& Mrs. Michael Steinhardt Sterling Winthrop Inc. Swiss National Tourist Office SwissAir Mr.& Mrs. Stanley Tananbaum Phyllis & Irving Tepper* Mr.& Mrs. Raymond S. Troubh Mrs. Anne Utescher* H. van Ameringen Foundation Tony & Anne Vanderwarker Jessie Walker & Arthur Griggs Walters-Benisek Warm Products, Inc. Elizabeth & Irwin Warren* Ambassador & Mrs. Leon J. Weil Weil, Gotshal & Manges Foundation Frank & Barbara Wendt Wertheim Schroder & Co. G. Marc Whitehead Mr.& Mrs. S.M. Wrenn Mr.& Mrs. John H. Winkler* Mr.& Mrs. William Zabel $500—$999 Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Abraham A&P Alconda-Owsley Foundation Michael G. Allen Arthur Altschul Helen & Paul Anbinder Nathan S. Ancell Mama Anderson Anthony Annese Antiques and the Arts Weekly Lois S. Avigad Louis Bachman (continued on page 78)

74 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

*

*

WARREN KIMBLE

AMERICAN FOLK ARTIST

*

Frank Miele Gallery, New York, New York • Gallery on the Green, Woodstock, Vermont Warren Kimble Gallery and Studio, Brandon, Vermont,802-247-3026

*

BARBARA OLSEN In 1994 I will be exhibiting at VIRGINIA CRAFT & FOLK ART FESTIVAL - MARCH 5m & 6m, ANNANDALE, VA FESTIVAL OF AMERICAN CRAFTS & DESIGN - MARCH 19m & 20m, SHARONVILLE, OH COUNTRY FOLK ART FESTIVAL MARCH 25m, 26m & 27m, ST. CHARLES, IL WILLIAMSBURG FOLK ART SHOW - APRIL 8m, 9TH & 10TH, WILLIAMSBURG, VA MASTERS OF AMERICAN CRAFTSMANSHIP MAY 21ST & 22ND, - BENEFIT FOR THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF DELAWARE

BARBARA OLSEN STUDIO 18781 Chillicothe Chagrin Falls, Ohio 44023 (216) 543-2452 FAX (216) 543-2453 Constitution • oil on linen •26"x 30" Callfor gallery referral or studio appointment

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 75

MICKEY MANTLE: HEIGHT 6'4" MICHAEL JORDAN: HEIGHT 8' 1"

THE LIBERTY TREE Contemporary Wood Carvings 104 Spring Street Newport, Rhode Island 02840 Lynn de la Valette 401-847-5925

76 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

PATRICIA QUIGLEY en, 6ib

SELF

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A l' TIS

207 Woodlawn St. Wheaton, IL 60187 (708) 690-5675 Daytime (708) 653-3710 Evening

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• • • • • Rare Butcher Shop Weathervane/Shop Sign, 22" high, • 30" wide—painted sheet metal with metal bar • reinforcing—painted dark gray—early 20th century.

• • n,....

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

• OR WINDS • • , se. GALLERIES • -',. s'.,• .

• ... .

•

• ANTIQUES • COLLECTIBLES • • • 1013 N. CHARLES ST. • • MARYLAND BALTIMORE, • • 6 2 410-685-222 • WINTZER FRED • •••••••••••••••••••• •

"BEGGING DACHSHUND TABLE LAMP" • 24"x 10"x 10" • 1993

STEPHEN HUNECK GALLERY 49 Central Street, Woodstock, VT 05091 Visit our spacious gallery, filled with Stephen's enchanting folk art furniture, sculpture, wall reliefs, and jewelry, in the center of charming Woodstock Village.

WE SHIP ANYWHERE CALL 1-800-449-2580

SPRING 1994 FOLK ART 77

RECENT

MAJOR

Dr. and Mrs. George K. Baer Billie Baillcin Arthur & Mary Barrett* Mr.& Mrs. Frank Barsalona David C. Batten Robert Baum Helen & John Bender Roger S. Berlind John Bembach Mrs. Anthony Berns Mr.& Mrs. Peter Bienstock Peter & Helen Bing Mr.& Mrs. Leonard Block Mr.& Mrs. J. H. Brandi Michael 0. Braun Mr. & Mrs. Robert Brill Brown Sally & Tim Brown Mr.& Mrs. Thatcher M.Brown III Mr. 8z. Mrs. Lawrence Buttenwieser Michael J. Bzdak Iris Carmel* John Mack Carter Tetsuya Chikushi Maureen Cogan Stephen H. Cooper Edward & Nancy CopIon Mrs. Arthur Cowen Craftsmen Litho Mr.& Mrs. Lewis Cullman D'Agostino's Allan L. Daniel The Dammann Fund,Inc. Andre & Sarah de Coizart Mr.& Mrs. James DeSilva, Jr. Charlotte Dinger Nancy Drucicman Mr.& Mrs. James A. Edmonds,Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Ray Egan Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Eisenstat Eng & Yee Designs, Inc. Ross N.& Glady A. Faires* Howard & Florence Fertig Mr.& Mrs. R. Fischbein Mr.& Mrs. Alexander Fisher Richard L. Fisher John Fletcher Timothy C. Forbes Honorable & Mrs. Arnold G. Fraiman Mr.& Mrs. Norman Freedman Dr. Alvin E. Friedman-Kien Estelle E. Friedman Mr.& Mrs. Ken Fritz Frieda & Roy Furman The Galerie St. Etienne, Inc. Daniel M.Gantt Mr.& Mrs. Bruce Geismar Barbara & Edmond Genest Mr.& Mrs. William L. Gladstone Irene & Bob Goodkind* Margo Grant Elizabeth & Robert Gray III Dr.& Mrs. Stanley Greenberg Grey Advertising, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Guettel Connie Guglielmo Anton Haardt Deborah Harding The Charles U. Harris Living Trust

78 SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

DONORS

Denison H. Hatch George B.& Carol Henry Mr.& Mrs. Richard Herbst Historical Society of Early American Decoration, Inc. Arlene Hochman Mr. and Mrs. John C. Hood Roberta Mashuta Horton Mr.& Mrs. Albert L. Hunecke, Jr.* Maridean Hutton Mr. and Mrs. Theodore J. Israel, Jr. Mr. 8z Mrs. Thomas C. Israel A. Everette James, Jr. Mrs. Walter Jeffords Guy Johnson Ed Jorgensen Cathy M. Kaplan Louise & George Kaminow* Jaclyn & Gerald P. Kaminsky Edward Keating Mr.& Mrs. Michael Kellen Mr.& Mrs. Jeff Kenner Barbara Klinger Mr.& Mrs. Arie L. Kopelman Barbara & David Krashes Janet Langlois Estee Lauder Naomi Leff Mr.& Mrs. Richard LeFralc Peter M.Lehrer Mr.& Mrs. John A. Levin Mr.& Mrs. John K. Libby Mr.& Mrs. Arthur Liman Mr.& Mrs. Richard M.Livingston Adrian B.& Marcie Lopez Lynn M.Lorwin Mr. & Mrs. Robert Luchars, Jr. R. H. Macy & Co., Inc. Mrs. Erwin Maddrey Kathleen Mahoney Vincent Mai Franklin Maisano Alastair B. Martin Michael T. Martin Robin & William Mayer Mr.& Mrs. Robert McCabe Mr.& Mrs. D. Eric McKechnie Dr. Dillon McLaughlin Grete Meilman Gertrude Meister Gael Mendelsohn Ronay & Richard Menschel A. Forsythe Merrick Mrs. Ralph Merrill Pierson K. Miller Jean Mitchell Mr.& Mrs. Lester S. Morse, Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Keith Scott Morton Arlene & Bruce Nadel Helen Neufeld The New York Hilton Mr.& Mrs. Arthur O'Day Kenneth R.Page Mr.& Mrs. Samuel M.Palley Geraldine M.Parker Dr. Burton W.Pearl Mr.& Mrs. Laurence B.Pike J. Randall Plummer

Richard Ravitch Ricco/Maresca Gallery Mr.& Mrs. Stanley M. Riker Betty Ring Mr.& Mrs. David Ritter Trevor C. Roberts Richard & Carmen Rogers Toni Ross & Jeffrey Salaway Mr.& Mrs. Derald H. Ruttenberg Richard Sabin째 Mary Frances Saunders Schlaifer Nance Foundation Harrie & Tom Schloss Mary & Aaron Schwartz Mr.& Mrs. Richard Schwartz H. Marshall Schwarz Larry A. Shar Jean S.& Frederic A. Sharf Suzanne Shawe Shearson Lehman Brothers Francisco F. Sierra Skidmore Owings & Merrill Kay Sloman Smith Gallery Mr. and Mrs. Scudder Smith Smithwick Dillon Karen Sobotka Mr.& Mrs. Richard Solomon Amy Sommer William W.Stahl, Jr. Mr.& Mrs. Jeff Tarr Nancy F. Karlins Thoman Edward I. Tishelman Peter Tishman Mr.& Mrs. Thomas Tuft Susan Unterberg Mr.& Mrs. Michael A. Varet Mr.& Mrs. Royall Victor Jessie Walker Marco P. Walker Clune J. Walsh, Jr. Joan Walsh Maryann & Ray Warakomski Washburn Gallery Yuko Watanabe Mr.& Mrs. John L. Weinberg Mr.& Mrs. Roger J. Weiss Herbert Wells Anne G. Wesson L. John Wilkerson Mr.& Mrs. John R. Young Shelly Zegart Marcia & John Zweig

* Contributor to Lincoln Square Endowment Fund The Museum is grateful to the Cochairmen of its Special Events Committee for the significant support received through the Museum's major fund raising events.

Lucy C. Danziger Cynthia V. A.Schaffner

Am:spiny &on/..(19WAr

FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN PORTRAITURE

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EXHIBITION CATALOG cREcTiliting c2grarril fPfilL'421

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FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN PORTRAITURE

By Stacy C. Hollander and Howard P. Fertig Foreword by Gerard C. Wertldn Published by the Museum of American Folk Art 9 x 11",80 pages,50 full-color plates, $24.95 Members are entitled to a 10% discount INCLUDES: Introduction and detailed captions and descriptions of each of the fifty full-color illustrations by curator Stacy C. Hollander.

Reprint of Mary Black's renowned essay "Ammi Phillips: Portrait Painter," written in association with Barbara and Larry Holdridge,from the long out-of-print 1968 exhibition catalog Ammi Phillips: Portrait Painter 1788-1865.

A

mmi Phillips(1788-1865) was one of the foremost American folk artists of the nineteenth century. Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture, the first major publication of Phillips's work in more than twenty-five years, refocuses attention on the artistic achievements of this remarkable American master. Fifty major paintings from important museum and private collections are presented in full color and highlight the various periods of Phillips's career. This selection includes acknowledged masterpieces of the artist's oeuvre, as well as works that were unknown or had not yet been located when the Museum of American Folk Art presented its first comprehensive examination of this artist's work in the 1968 exhibition "Ammi Phillips: Portrait Painter 1788-1865."

Chronology and expanded checklist of more than 600 identified paintings, compiled by research curator Howard P. Fertig. The checklist includes twice the number of paintings published in the 1968 catalog.

LIMITED SPONSOR'S EDITION A beautiful limited edition of two hundred hand-numbered cloth-bound copies of this work has been printed and will be awarded to those who make a special $125 contribution ($75 of which is tax deductible) to be used toward funding the exhibition and catalog.

TO ORDER YOUR COPY,COMPLETE AND MAIL COUPON TO: MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FOLK ART,61 WEST 62ND STREET,NEW YORK,NY 10023 Please send

copies of the paperback edition @$24.95 per copy($22.45 per copy for Museum members).

Add $4.00 for shipping and handling on all orders. New York residents add appropriate sales tax to total. copies of the numbered cloth-bound Sponsor's Edition for my contribution of $125 each ($75 of which is tax deductible).

Enclosed is my check(U.S. bank only)for $ Charge my: J Visa J Master Card ID American Express Name No.

Please send

Institution

Expiration

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GALLERY • 163 TOWNSEND • BIRMINGHAM, MICHIGAN 48009 •(810) 540,9288

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29 All of Us Americans Folk Art 6,7 America Hurrah 58 American Primitive Gallery 14 The Ames Gallery 55 Mama Anderson 60 Art Naif 67 Artisans Wanda Beverland's Fine Arts & Antiques 65 57 Bingham & Vance Galleries Blitz Antique Native American Art Ltd. 27 31 C & T Publishing 25 Gallery Art Folk Cargo Robert 23 Christie's 77 Clary Sage Gallery 73 Cognoscenti Country Living Magazine Inside Back Cover 73 Crane Hill Publishers 10 Double K Gallery 20 Epstein/Powell 72 Esqueleto 63 Josh Feldstein 69 Fine Folk Art 21 Laura Fisher 2 Janet Fleisher Gallery 55 Folk Art Society of America

$O SPRING 1994 FOLK ART

Card Insert Folk Fest'94 30 Galerie Bonheur 27 Sidney Gecker American Folk Art Back Cover Giampietro 16 Gilley's Gallery 66 HMS Folk Art 29 Anton Haardt Gallery 19 Marion Harris 69 John C. Hill Antique Indian Art 80 Hill Gallery 69,77 Stephen Huneck Gallery 17 Lynne Ingram Southern Folk Art 71 K.S. Art 64 Kelly & Gillis 14 Kelter-Malce Antiques 75 Warren Kimble 62 Knoke Galleries 10 June Lambert 76 The Liberty Tree 24 Leon Loard Gallery 66 Loch Lea Antiques 61 MCG Antiques Promotions, Inc. 54 Main Street Antiques and Art 24 Thomas McCormick Works of Art 63 Mia Gallery

Inside Front Cover Frank J. Miele Gallery 1 Steve Miller 30 Modern Primitive Gallery 64 Mary Nash 11 Nichols Antiques 3 Olde Hope Antiques, Inc. 75 Barbara Olsen 73 Heike Pickett Gallery 76 Patricia Quigley 9 Roger Ricco/Frank Maresca 54 Rosehips Gallery 72 Alan Roush & Associates 67 Jack Savitt Gallery 62 Bruce Shelton 17 C.S. Singer 12 Sotheby's 67 Nancy Thomas 66 Timpson Creek Gallery 71 University Art Museum 59 Webb Folk Art Gallery 16 Marcia Weber/Art Objects, Inc. 15 David Wheatcroft 71,77 Windsor Galleries 4 Thos. K. Woodard 22 Ginger Young

ttntr

ANIERICS LARGEST AND FAVORITE SHOWCASE FOR ANTIQUES AND FOLK ART A publication of Hearst Magazines, a division of The Hearst Corporation. ©1992 The Hearst Corporation.

fl G AV

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Painted Indian Buffalo Hide, c.1895.

Fred & Kathryn Giampietro • 203-787-3851 • 1531/2 Bradley Street, New Haven, CT 06511