Collection: Everything Else

First half of the 19th century. Woven of ash splints, with a wrapped edge opening and still in excellent condition. 32 1/2 inches tall, 23 3/4 inches across the top and tapers to the bottom which is made to have a 13" square base.

American circa 1780.  Mounted and in a period frame.  Found in Enfield, CT.  Vibrantly colored flower and vine decoration in very good condition.  Minor thread loss. 16 " x 10 3/4 " plus frame.

8.5" x 9.25" image area.

Felted cloth, silk-stiched decoration and pink/rose cloth border decoration. In period frame, excellent condition.

Made circa 1830. Found in Maine. Now mounted on a dark natural streched linen to dimensions of 25 1/4 x 26 1/4 inches.

The piece is dated 1826 and inscribed as from Providence, Rhode Island.
Portrayed is a school girl in classical garb, standing beneath a domed temple, and holding a liberty pole and a cornucopia, from which she spills the fruits of knowledge. A flag-draped eagle with outstretched wings surmounts the dome. Similar symbols appear in schoolgirl samplers and embroideries of the period in RI, particularly the pillars and arches of the temple drawn here.
Gladdiing was Boston trained, and from 1824-1858 he was listed in the Providence city directories as a landscape, sign, or ornamental painter, as well as a grocer and a jeweler.

In 1840 thirteen year old Zilpha Shepard from Canton, Massachusetts created a copy book containing twelve painted illustrations and dozens of highly romanticized poems that are fairly typical of the work of her generation's female students, but also prophetic of the talent that would later allow her to become a professional artist. Its frontispiece, a complex floral still life, is followed by a brief poem that refers to the joy she finds in the natural world and in portraying it in her art.

Four years later she made another book. This not only has her name and the year but specifically states, "Painted by Zilpha Shepard 1844". It contains twelve remarkable watercolors and numerous unfinished pencil and pen and ink drawings.

In the early nineteenth century artists in Canton, China made books of paintings on pith paper for export. Sets of these, each in brilliant color and minutely detailed, and each with a particular subject category- flowers, court ladies, fish and vegetables, landscapes- could be ordered. Zilpha's watercolors in her 1844 book are clearly based on those found in a set of these books.

Zilpha never married and lived with her parents and then her widowed mother. Zilpha, the prodigiously talented girl who made these beautiful watercolors almost four decades earlier, chose art as her life's work. She is listed in the 1880 United States Federal Census, still living in Canton, Massachusetts, as an "Oil, Water (Color) and Crayon Painter".

Finely painted details show brickwork and shingles. Roof lifts up as lid to house and box. Mid nineteenth century. PA.

The images are decorated in the style of the illuminated manuscript: capital letters are exaggerated in size and their form transformed into figural designs executed in polychrome. These letters are drawn as human figures, including what is most probably a self portrait of the artist on the title image, as well as others decorated with flowers, strange animals, birds and butterflies, and a snake. Page subjects are those of a student: coins, money, addition, subtractions, time, apothecaric, and others. Additional calligraphic flourishes decorate the pages.

Twelve of these drawings are framed, and they are accompanied by their original leather copy book which has the artist's name on its cover and on a later receipt bearing the address of its maker, Weare, New Hampshire, included within it. The leather covers are lined with an Exeter, New Hampshire newspaper dated 1794.

Dolle Green was born in Weare, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire on October 8, 1770. She was the youngest of ten children of Isaiah Green of Kensington, New Hampshire and Mary Purington of Amesbury, Massachusett s. Dolle never married and lived at the end of her life in Weare with Thomas and Mary Breed and their children. She died on May 25, 1853 at age 83.

A special theorem, distinguished by its history, unusual composition, flawless condition and rare for its time coloration.

This work, executed in free-hand watercolor and stencils, was made circa 1830 and found in New Hampshire. It survived unfaded and brightly colored and in a frame similar to its present period frame when it was exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in 1966 as part of the exhibiton, "101American Primitive Water Colors and Pastels from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch". It is number 53 in the catalogue of the show.

The fruit and, thus, the color of the work, exists in a band across the piece above a simply painted fluted glass compote that occupies most of the bottom half of the picture. Distortion of scale makes the watermelon and pears be of similar size, and the tiny purple plums, a color seldom seen in this time period, form a decorative lower border to the fruit.

15 7/8 x 19 7/8 inches sight and 23 3/4 x 25 1 /4 inches framed.

A label on the back indicates it was included in a traveling exhibition organized by the American Federation for the Arts from 1967-1970. There is also a partial label from the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Superb coloration makes this bowl by Edwin and Mary Scheier a fine example of the type. The blue, with areas of yellow within, varies from a color of medium intensity to one of high intensity beyond the level usually acheived. Dark blue forms a band at the rim and on the foot ring. These features make a small tea bowl with incurvate sides and inscribed decoration figuring the imagery of Jonah and the Whale, which is often seen drawn by Edwin, into a dramatic and unusual work.
New Hampshire. Circa 1950. 4 3/4 inches high x 5 1/2 inches wide at center. Excellent condition.

Monumental in scale, probably unique in form, and dramatic in presense, this scallop-topped work explores the abstraction of the human figure in a way that no other artist did.
Scheier, often influenced by Picasso, drew figures with shared limbs and faces and demonstrated often changes in perspective and viewpoint. However, here the artist draws human figures with two dimentional abstract features and also projects facial profiles into the spaces between the four pictorial repeats in the design, employing a three-dimensional or sculptural technique. The scrafitto-drawn figures can be viewed as fitted within the eye sockets of the sculptural profiles.
It is possible that the narrative being told here is a personal version of King Solomon's Tale. A single child seems to hold the hand of two possible mothers. The profile faces and crown-like top edge may represent Solomon. This story is told on other of Scheier's chalice forms also from the 1960's.
The glaze is volcanic and done in brown and bronze colors. Drawn figures are of blue and turquoise. 22 1/4 inches high and 13 1/2 inches wide at center. Signed Scheier 66 (1966).

An unusual chalice from the Scheiers, probably an early interpretation of the Jonah and the Whale theme used by Edwin to decorate so many of his works. The pottery has all the grace of Mary's work: thin walls, perfect symmetry and almost indistinguishable turning marks, and a raised foot with an unarticulated lip edge.

Alternating female figures and fish form a ring around the center of the chalice. The women extend their arms so that each fish is held by two women. Both the female figures and the fish are inverted with each repeat.

The glaze varies from light blue inside to medium through a very dark blue on the exterior. The incised figues are of brown and yellow colors.

New Hampshire circa 1950. 7 inches high and 7 inches wide at the rim.

"Written by William Harrison Green in, Litchfield jail, State of Connecticut"

The Reverend Wm. Green, originally from Centerville, New York, abandoned his wife there and went to Cornwall, CT. He was an itinerant Methodist minister, and there he met and married a young widow with property. He also worked for P.T. Barnum when he ran for Congress and in a general store for his second wife's brother. His second wife died under suspicious circumstances, and after three trials Green was convicted of her murder and sentenced to the state prison for life and died there.

While there, Mr. Green went into an ornamental painting and illuminating business, and his work is beautifully decorative- highly colorful and quite charming. In addition to this piece, there is a similar example in the collection of the Litchfield Historical Society.
This work is drawn in red, blue and black ink (now brown) and shows two women placed between over-sized flowered branches. Their costumes are made up of banks of lines, dots and zig-zags, a totally abstract view of fabric pattern and cloth folds.
Sight size is 12 1/2 high and 7 3/4 inches wide. Conservation framed in a period frame measuring 16 by 11 inches.

A rare early dated example of Scheier pottery that uses abstracted faces to form surface decoration. This piece from 1949 employs four vertically stacked rows of faces. A center line bisects each stack, and faces alternate their placement in relation to the line. Where a face is not used in a position against the line, hair extends out horizontally from the head, a detail that is used in Edwin's decoration through his final working years in the early 1990's.
Glazed in browns and black and with an unusually tall vertical lip to the vessel.
10 inches high and 7 1/2 inches wide at the rim.

Alternating inverted figures holding the undulating form of a snake form a band around this 18 1/4 inches tall chalice made by Edwin Scheier in 1962. At one point in this band the snake's tail is about to be bitten by the snake, whose jaws are open around it. The decoration is inscribed and impressed (in areas of the background), and facial features, hands and feet, and breasts, protrude from the body of the figures.
Other examples of decorated pieces by Edwin portray aspects of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, and this appears to be another variation of that theme.
The glaze is a glossy deep blue above and below this band and brown within it.
The chalice form and their figural decoration is to me the major innovation within Scheier work during the 1960's. This period also showed the production of new surface treatment variations and glazes.

A rare early Scheier flat plate form with raised lip, glazed in deep brown, the design in a grayish tan. The simplified design, abstracted in its flatness but with clearly representational imagery, shows a mother supporting a child who tries to walk. Both are surrounded by a grassy road, a house, and birds and trees, all resembling a child's drawing.
This work, dating from the mid 1940's, is a rare example of the transition Edwin's drawing style made through different stages of abstraction. His most personal mature style became more sculptural and less literal by the mid 1960's.
12 inches wide and 1 3/4 inches high.