OBJECTS / SCULPTURE:

This large scale kinetic sculpture or limberjack escapes the form and is powerfully rendered more as a fetish figure than an object of entertainment. It was likely created by an African-American street musician made for personal performance, not novelty. Its potent visage and presence can be compared to African nkisi or spirit figures with the arrangement of re-purposed and disparate materials from the applied animal hair, macramé, iron springs, mother-of-pearl eyes and the “offering up” posture.

On the left, an African-American family is shown with their farm animals. It’s possible that the woman depicted is the very woman who created this textile.

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This deceptively simple work is subtle but remarkably indelible. It is attributed to "The Checkerboard Artist" of Somerset County, PA and relates to a small group of wall boxes and chests that share a common aesthetic and craftsmanship of incised, geometric design and a harmonious color palette of red, green, yellow, and black. This panel is the only non-utilitarian work associated with this maker.

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You never knew you hadn't seen the greatest pillow until you saw this! Sixteen different eyes created on a brown leather pillow—each with hand sewn, dyed leather eyeballs, lids and backgrounds...with horse hair eyelashes.

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Nek Chand was a national treasure in India. Over decades (18 of them in secret), he created hundreds of concrete figures over acres of land. This is a particularly good example with the details to the nose, ears, and bindi on the forehead. This is also the only example I have seen where the cobalt blue decoration of the porcelain shards are used as a border for the figure's jacket.

From wikipedia: [Starting in the 1950's] Nek Chand began collecting materials from demolition sites around the city. He recycled these materials into his own vision of the divine kingdom of Sukrani, New Delhi choosing a gorge in a forest near Sukhna Lake for his work. The gorge had been designated as a land conservancy, a forest buffer established in 1902 that nothing could be built on. Chand's work was illegal, but he was able to hide it for eighteen years before it was discovered by the authorities in 1975. By this time, it had grown into a 13-acre (5.3 ha) complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. Made from recycled materials, Chand built up the mass with a cement and sand mix before adding a final coating of smoothly burnished pure cement combined with waste materials such as broken glass, bangles, crockery, mosaic and iron-foundry slag.

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Beautifully carved set of arms reaching through the clouds...towards the heavens. One arm is sleeved and the other is not. Have never seen another set but possibly for a fraternal society. Though the appear to have a lot of volume, the whole is just an inch and a half deep. Original paint and surface.

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Both walnut carvings consist of three twisted snakes, one with an outsized head which is consuming the head of a man. The back of each carving contains a small block cut from the solid and placed back. Each block is whole save for one corner which has been clipped. These clipped corners when placed back would create a small hidden void, likely for ritualistic materials to be placed within the objects. They were likely used as a “plugging” device wherein an illness would be ritualistically transferred by way of a plug into a larger body.

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An unusual pair of Indian exercise clubs - possibly for a Christian retreat?? Your body is your temple.

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A rare antebellum, African-American (likely slave) made server or bucket bench. The scalloped shaped top is decorated with a simple, but strong, bright cinnabar green polkadot pattern against a dark brown. The top edge of the scallops is also painted with the cinnabar green. The strecher based bottom tray is a pegged mortise and tenon construction while the top is joined with forged nails.

Provenance: James Kilvington; client of Kilvington's who purchased it in the early 1960s from an old African-American women who said her father, a former slave, had made it.

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A remarkable document comprised of a photograph and caged fragments of a brick and melted glass soldered on a brass plaque (made from a pipe) with letter-punched text recounting the burning of a church by "The Freidenkers" or Free-thinkers in Wisner Township, Nebraska.

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This remarkable African-American Folk Art textile is rich with representational and abstract appliquéd figures, animals, and shapes. The large work comprises numerous blocks of homespun remnants and scraps of domestic and imported cotton, wool and silk fabrics. According to textile expert Jan Whitlock, no remnant is older than 1850, and a couple similar imported silk fabrics have been found on folk art textiles from Baltimore.

On the left, an African-American family is shown with their farm animals. It’s possible that the woman depicted is the very woman who created this textile.

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An important and remarkable case in the form of an African-European man's head. The portrait features stylized eyes, a well-groomed mustache, a head wrap (turban), or a cap with radiating lines on the top, possibly representing strung pearls or gemstones.

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The interior contains a compartment divided into six sections with a cover identifying various spices, including schlag (a composite of ambergris, musk, and civet), citron, muschat (nutmeg), canel (cinnamon), and rosewater. The open bottom mandible and large zygomatic bones are unusual and robust features of this exceptional example.

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Elaborately carved gothic-style Folk Art bellows with several strange mythological creatures from wild griffins, the north wind, a bizaare harpy and a figure in a chariot. Probably Italian.

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This complex folk art carving depicts the historic event captured by the Rosenthal photograph (though the men do not exactly follow the composition of the photograph). Six men are individually carved (well four, the last two are conjoined at the pelvis) with great detail to the uniforms and a sense of the action. The carver had a fine understanding of proportion and working in the round - it works from every angle - the whole has tremendous energy. A most remarkable folk art sculpture of an important event in American history.

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A remarkable American Folk Art discovery. Carved from the solid, this compelling work displays a large alligator approaching a sleeping Jack Tar catching an afternoon snooze. Laying with knees up and his hat resting on one, the man lays with his arms under his head ... little does he realize an alligator is inches away from him.

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A first-rate large 18thC New England Spoon Rack / tombstone shaped wall box with a superb alligatored red painted surface constructed with with wrought nails and a linenfold molding.

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Rare surgeon’s trade sign for a prosthetic leg 🪵🦵 … and the doctor’s name was Wood 🪵! Dr. James C. Wood was a homeopathic surgeon from Cleveland, Ohio. He was President of the American Institute of Homeopathy, a member of the American College of Surgeons, and Fellow of the British Gynecological Society.

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🐍 🚗 📯 - not something I would have guessed, but this beautifully patinated snake head is from a British made car horn, called the boa-constrictor.

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Not many folk art carvings display this much drama and dynamic tension. A masterpiece carving attributed to "The Mansfield Carver," Mansfield, PA. The subject is from Aesop's Fables and has been a subject in sculpture for centuries.

Carved from the solid, a spotted snake is coiled around a lion and is shown at the point before striking. A true tour-de-force of carving and a masterpiece of 19thC vernacular carving.

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A great compliment to the other Mansfield Carver Lion and Snake. This one of a lion cub's encounter with a snake. The carving here is just as dynamic and full of action.

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A dynamic carving of a nude male and female embraced in a kiss with the man’s hand on her upper thigh. She is not resisting, but her slight push may be a signal to slow it down a bit.

Carvings as such in limestone are quite rare in that this small sculpture packs a lot of life into the stone. The work is carved in-the-round, and the figures have remarkable tension between them.

Though the work has elements not found on the carvings of William Edmondson, it certainly has some stylistic similarities.

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An unusual piece of American Folk Art - have not seen a similar precedent. A carved and painted naked man wearing a top hat sits upon a coiled green snake on top of a pedestal which when hooked up to a water source would stream water through the snakes mouth and the man’s hat! Must have been something to see. Scattered paint losses to original surface.

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Wilson was an American artist and figure in the 1960s to 1990s New York City avant-garde art world. A pioneer of the feminist and mail art movement, she is best known for her Surrealist junk assemblages and her "Ridiculous Portrait" photocollages.

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A rare and great example of a cast aluminum and enamel salesman sample for the Moorman feed company. This example is all original (not repainted as some are) and is in excellent condition.

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A great salesman sample miniature bath tub made from cast iron and enamel with original brass fittings. All original and complete. English.

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A rare Japanese stone pounder for an Inoko festival, which is an autumn festival celebrating the young boar. Children would tie strings to the iron rings and in unison lift the heavy stone and pound it to the ground. They would go home to home and pound the floor near the entrance while singing the Inoko song.

The stone is a beautifully carved pellet-like form with the iron band set into a recessed channel carved in the stone so it is flush with the body of the stone. Though fairly small, the sculpture weighs 34 pounds.

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"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." — Nick Carraway, The Great Gatsby.

An atypical vernacular cane carving, in that the carving of the cane and the figures are not characteristic of the language of other folk art cane carvers—this carving is very much it's own. The monkeys are more anthropomorphic than monkeys usually are and have tension within their interaction. Great piece.

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A beautiful gogotte with a nice linear flow. Both sides present nicely - I see a figure lying in a bed with arms under their head - but like clouds you may see something different - my base maker saw an abstracted raven as depicted in Northwest Coast art.

A gogotte is a millions years old naturally shaped mineral concretion formed of tiny quartz fragments held together by calcium carbonate. Principally found in Fontainebleau, France, these mother-nature made sculptures have inspired artists from Jean Arp, Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois. Louis XIV favored them and the have been exhibited at Versailles since the late 17thC.

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This is an intriguing piece of ceramic sculpture! A drunkard armed with a bottle and a big mug sits astride a large brandy keg of spirits (àla Slim Pickens riding the bomb in Dr. Strangelove). His exaggerated and distorted face is detailed with slip decoration to his teeth and eyes (as well as his hands, and square rig cap).

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Though Woodchucks do not hatch from eggs, Washington successfully reminds us that all animal life begins with an egg. Regarding a similar work, a patron who upon seeing a recent work of Washington's in which a rabbit was hatching from an egg, exclaimed, "A rabbit does not come from an egg!" Washington replied, "Doctor, all life comes from an egg."

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A group of thirteen erotic “Barbie” figures each hand-modeled and painted and some with applied hair to the genitals. The standing figure in the center in the primitive red bikini is likely modeled after Raquel Welch and her fur bikini from One Million Years BC.

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Modernist sculpture with great textures from the intertwined bronze nest, the faux tree stump and the square eggs.

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