Nashville Arts Magazine

Antiques | Appraise It

Steelcraft Pressed-steel Toy Milk Truck, circa 1930

The Murray Ohio Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio, was founded in 1919 to supply fenders, gas tanks, running boards and other parts for America’s fast-growing automobile industry. In 1923, Murray expanded its product line to include Steelcraft Wheel Goods, a line of pressed-steel toy cars for children. The company was able to survive the Depression years on the success of their foot-propelled toy automobiles, airplanes, steel coaster wagons, and its first line of bicycles, the Mercury.

This polychromed, pressed-steel toy truck is representative of their 1933 Steelcraft Private Label Milk Truck series. In restorable condition and with the highly desirable Tru-li-Pure Pasteurized Dairy Products, Nashville Pure Milk Co. decaling on each side, this 18-inch-long toy truck could achieve $1500 to $2000 at a specialty toy auction.

Alaskan Eskimo Coiled & Beaded Basketry Bowl, Hooper Bay Yup’ik, circa 1900

Hooper Bay is located 500 miles west of Anchorage and is home to a large traditional Yup’ik Eskimo community. The Yup’ik Eskimos of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta area in Western Alaska lived in an environment that was very different from our stereotypical images of a barren, icy, harsh existence. They lived on a mostly flat, marshy plain crisscrossed by waterways. In October the Yup’ik harvested grass from these marshes, and in December, when cold weather forced the people to remain inside, the basket weaving began. Their coiled baskets were typically decorated with seal intestine, wool, dyed grass or fur.

This basket is of traditional material and form but is atypical in its pictorial beaded decoration. I would venture to assume that it is a cross-cultural piece. The beadwork may well have been executed by a member of the Athabaskan peoples known for their beading skills, who also resided in areas of Arctic and sub-Arctic Alaska.

This wonderful basket would appeal to collectors of Native American art, Americana and folk art, and I would estimate that, with that diverse audience, a basket of this quality and rarity would sell for $1200 to $1500 on the auction market.

The Lone Pine in Winter, Lakewood, New Jersey,

1945 Israel Litwak, 1868-1960, Oil on Canvas

Israel Litwak immigrated from Russia in 1903 and settled in Brooklyn where he had a long career as a cabinetmaker. Forced into retirement at the age of 68, Litwak decided to try his hand at painting. He painted almost exclusively landscapes, mainly views of New York and New England copied from postcards and photographs. His bright, almost Fauvist palette, as well as his imaginative stylization, made those subjects his own. Litwak became one of the most successful self-taught artists on the New York scene during the 1940s and 1950s.

His earliest works were in pencil and crayon on wood panel. He then switched to oil paint on canvas at the suggestion of his dealer. The switch led to difficulties with his landlady, who found the smell of turpentine disagreeable. In an effort to appease her, Litwak sketched his compositions on canvas during the winter and then spent the summers painting them in, when the windows of his apartment could be left open.

Litwak lived to enjoy a career with steady gallery representation, museum shows, and press coverage that lasted into the 1960s. Nevertheless, he faded from view. It was not until the 1990s, many years after his death at the age of 92, that his work began to regain recognition.

The owner of this wonderful painting that is titled, dated and signed along the lower edge will be pleased to know that the current market value of this work, based on auction records of similarly sized works and of similar subject matter, would be in the $5000 to $7000 range.

New Mexican Folk Art Wood Carving

This naïve but charming woodcarving was priced at $2 and was purchased on the final day of a two-day, professionally administered estate sale in Middle Tennessee. Discovered standing alone on a coffee table, the carving had all the information needed to identify it written in pencil on its belly: “Jose Mondragon Cordova NM.”

The piece is representative of a regional woodcarving industry that began in the 1820s in the small Northern New Mexico village of Cordova, which is situated in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. Cordova lies approximately 30 miles north-northeast of Santa Fe.

This thriving small-scale industry, involved in the production of images of saints and other figures from native woods, was founded by nineteenth-century saint carvers of Hispano or Hispano-American descent. Their mission was to provide their rural community with the objects of veneration. It then evolved into a community of contemporary artists that satisfied the tourist trade and patrons of this traditional New Mexican art form.

Early Anglo patrons of this art form are themselves a veritable Who’s Who of Santa Fe and Taos artists and writers. Images of Cordova woodcarvings can be found in still life paintings by Georgia O’Keefe.

This goat carving, possibly intended as part of a nativity scene, is the work of Jose Mondragon (start of working dates 1959). He began his career as a woodcarver after an accident prevented him from continuing with farming. With his wife, he maintained a shop on State Road 4 in Chimayo.

This piece of New Mexican folk art, if offered properly identified in a specialty setting or Internet market, would sell for $200 to $300. Such a seemingly insignificant object yet so intertwined with the arts community of New Mexico and imbued with rich cultural tradition.

American Paperweight, circa 1940-1950

Edward Rithner

This is a fairly contemporary work of art that represents a tradition of intricately detailed glass paperweights. In the 1840s, paperweights were the decorative arts market response to a Victorian leisure-time interest in letter writing. As a fashionable upper- and middle-class pastime, it assured a profitable market for these decorative desk accessories, exquisite objects of color and design. Paperweights were a functional glass form that drew upon the ancient glassmaking techniques of millefiori and lamp work, as well as the late-eighteenth-century technique of cameo encrustation. The many nuances of paperweight designs made them miniature masterpieces of art created by artisans in the great glasshouses of Europe, primarily between 1840 and 1860. This period of competitive manufacture captured paperweight making at its best, and the period came to be termed the Classic Period of French paperweights. The French factories of Baccarat, Clichy, and Saint-Louis rivaled each other in this art form, with factories in Bohemia and England following suit. After this brief time period, the paperweight became literally a lost art until its renaissance in the 1940s.

This whimsical paperweight is the work of Ed Rithner, who worked in Wellsburg, West Virginia, from 1908 through the 1970s. One of the distinguishing features of this artist’s work is his style of bottom finish at the weight’s base. The remnant of the pontil mark is ground out to a frosted finish. This is an important feature to know, because all of Rithner’s weights are unsigned.

He was known for creating colorful, striped-glass bars resembling pieces of candy cane. This relatively rare style of paperweight contains a random, tumbled arrangement of whole and partial complex canes. These are cross-sectional slices of a glass rod which had been formed in a mold and stretched, much like the making of hard candy. The cane technique was known to glassmakers in ancient Egypt and Rome.

The extraordinary workmanship and the many nuances of paperweight designs make these objects great collectibles. In excellent condition, which means no chips, scuffs or cracks, this candy-cane paperweight would have a retail value in the $300 to $400 range.

Term of the Month:

Fauvism was the first major avant-garde movement in European twentieth-century art. The movement was characterized by intensely vivid, unnatural paintings which utilize discordant colors and bold shapes to convey a mood. Artists such as Gauguin and van Gogh played a large part in influencing the movement. The Fauvist movement, first recognized around 1905, had its first exhibition in Paris, led by the artist Henri Matisse. The movement was named by a critic who proclaimed that the painters were “wild beasts” or “less fauves” in French.

Linda Dyer serves as an appraiser, broker, and consultant in the field of antiques and fine art. She has appeared on the PBS production Antiques Roadshow since season one, which aired in 1997, as an appraiser of Tribal Arts.

If you would like Linda to appraise one of your antiques, please send a clear, detailed image to antiques@nashvilleartsmagazine.com. Or send photographs to Antiques, Nashville Arts Magazine, 644 West Iris Dr., Nashville, TN 37204.