Cast iron, sheet-iron, original paint, 27 ½ x 37 ½ x 5 ½ inches
This is the finest known example among a group of weathervanes by an unknown maker known for only horses and roosters. These weathervanes have a distinctive three-dimensional quality and are composed of cast-iron bodies with sheet metal tails inserted between the body halves. The horses occur in two the present size and a smaller model. Weathervanes belonging to this group were previously attributed to “Rochester Iron Works” of Rochester, New Hampshire, however, extensive research has not produced any evidence that a company by this name existed nor is there any traces of a nineteenth-century firm operating or advertising in New Hampshire.
Provenance:
Found in Vermont;
Collection of Gary and Melissa Lipton, Bloomfield Hills, MI;
Collection of Marna Anderson, New York, “American Folk Art, Decorative Arts & Furniture: The Collection of Marna Anderson,” Skinner, Bolton, MA., March 21, 1998, lot 101;
Stephen Score, Boston, MA;
Collection of Joyce Linde, Boston, MA., “Important American Folk Art, Proceeds of the Sale to Benefit a New Folk Art Initiative at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” Sotheby’s, New York, January, 25, 2020, lot 1429
Published:
Robert Shaw, American Weathervanes: The Art of the Winds (New York, 2021) p. 213.
David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles, Parallel Visions: Shaker Design and American Folk Art (Woodbury, CT., 2022), no. 40.
