Courtesy the North Carolina Museum of Art
VAULT
The osteotheke on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
uncovering OSTEOTHEKE
A “place for bones” finds its final home at the NCMA by HAMPTON WILLIAMS HOFER
I
In 1950, Karl E. Prickett bought a marble garden planter on a trip to New York City and brought it home to adorn his garden in Greensboro. He and his wife, Lynn, lived on a block named “Croup Hill” — the family’s patriarch had invented Vicks VapoRub, and his success provided grand homes for his descendants — and there, the planter held geraniums and other flora for four decades before anyone learned its original purpose. In 1988, when the Pricketts had both passed away, their
nephew Carl Carlson and his wife, Anne, who worked in the antiques business, were called in to help divvy up the furniture. Anne headed over to the Pricketts’ house with a yellow legal pad. “As I looked around, a stone piece caught my eye,” she remembers. “It was very old and had figures carved on the bottom and it was filled with tulips. I thought, Well, this is the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen.” Anne mentioned the planter to a friend who worked at the Greensboro Historical Museum; they suggested that the marble The Art & Soul of Raleigh | 33
