Dairy Deluxe

A large sculpture of the ideal Holstein-Friesian dairy cow by the Japanese-American artist Gozo Kawamura, 1923.

My Museum #2

Don't you hate it when the Louvre gets it before you do?

He's Very Bendy

Carved folk art pipe, about 4 inches high.

He's wearing a hunter's hat with a sporty feather and holds a flask and cup in his hands. The hat opens to reveal the bowl and control the burn. His feet are missing, and so is the stem.

Considering where the stem emerged, this probably both stimulated and stopped some conversations, depending on one's appreciation for the visuals.

Talking Head

Ventriloquist's Dummy Head

Early 20th Century

Charmed, I'm Sure

Some time ago I posted a picture of an antique brick with incised features, and promised to show another sculpture from the same place. So here's to make good on that pledge.

A friend who owned a second-hand store was called to the home of an older African American lady who was moving, to see if there was anything he wanted to purchase. The house was in a neighborhood directly across from the old brick-making plant in Milledgeville, GA. He found this crude effigy of an emphatically male figure on top of her refrigerator. When he asked her about it, she told him that it had been made by an uncle who worked at the brick plant, and given to her when she was 14 years old. She called it a "Get A Man," and said its purpose was to help her attract a suitable mate.

That's the way the story was told to me.

The figure is made of the dense white clay that's used to make fire bricks, which are used to line fireplaces and furnaces. The maker pressed in two small ceramic chips, like from a dinner plate, at the eyes. The sculpting is partly hand-molded and pinched, and the legs and feet are carved. When it was fired in the industrial kiln, the chips melted. I can't remember whether the brown color of the hair and lips was a glaze or paint.

My opinion is that this is a modern survival of the same human impulse evidenced by the Venus of Willendorf and other fertility figures, male and female, in cultures all over the world, stretching back to time immemorial. And one hell of a piece of folk art.

Brickolage

This brick is slightly tapered, a keystone shape. It is much heavier and thicker than a modern brick, and was manufactured in Milledgeville, Georgia in the late 19th or early 20th century. Just before it was sent to be fired in the kiln, a worker used his finger to poke two holes for eyes, a slight scoop for a nose, and then drew an arc into the wet clay for a smile. Four quick little gestures that made something lasting and engaging.

There were a number of creative laborers working at this factory, and coin banks, birdhouses, planters and other sculptural forms have been found. I'll try to share a few more over time.