Cigar Store Trade Figure, ca. 1890
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GUEST:
She belonged to my maternal grandparents, and they purchased her in about 1960. And I think that she was originally part of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller collection, and they sold her at a sale at B. Altman department store in New York. And my grandparents, who lived up around the St. Lawrence River, I don't know how they heard about this particular sale, but they went to New York and brought her back.
APPRAISER:
And the year they bought it would have been...
GUEST:
Around 1960, maybe 1962.
APPRAISER:
When I first looked at her, I thought that she might be by one of the big carvers in New York City, like Samuel Robb or Thomas Brooks.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
But after talking to a couple of colleagues, we all decided that she was made in a different shop, probably in the 1880s or the 1890s.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
The heyday for trade figures like this would have been in the 1890s. It would take a lot of more research to figure out who exactly carved her, but that's kind of secondary at this point because it's such a great figure.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
She's very attractive, she has a great face. She's had kind of a rough life. She fell over somewhere along the way.
GUEST:
Oh, dear.
APPRAISER:
I noticed that she had L-brackets on her legs.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
and she also has a stick over there on your side.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
One of the things most people don't know about with these is that they started out as a single log. And if you look right here in the top of her head, you can't see it, but you can put your hand up there and you can feel... You feel that plug?
GUEST:
Oh, yes, uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
When she was first made, she was a big log, and that was where she was attached to the lathe where they rough-turned her down to get her to a certain size. But here's where the story gets really interesting. You see that number over there on the bottom?
GUEST:
Yes, number eight.
APPRAISER:
Well, in 1956, Sotheby's did an historic sale of cigar store Indian figures.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And other American folk art. It was the Haffenreffer Collection.
GUEST:
Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
And this was one of them. So what must have happened was, Colonial Williamsburg-er Abby Aldrich might have bought this or more of them, and then decided which one they wanted to keep later.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
And that makes the story from your grandparents completely believable.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
As far as her paint goes, she's probably second-generation, you know.
GUEST:
Okay, I was wondering about that, whether she'd been repainted.
APPRAISER:
Anybody ever talk about what she's worth?
GUEST:
No. I remember my mother saying something about maybe my grandparents paying about $3,000 for her, but I think that that would have been more than they would have been willing to part with.
APPRAISER:
I read a "New York Times" article from 1974 about the Sotheby's sale in 1956.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
And the highest price for one of those in 1956 was $2,050.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
So if Colonial Williamsburg had played at the upper level in 1956, in order for anybody to make money, it probably would have had to have been $4,000.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
We feel like a good retail figure for this would be $25,000 to $35,000.
GUEST:
Uh-huh.
APPRAISER:
They were not trying to be historically accurate about the figures. They were trying to create a figure that would advertise tobacco and the tobacco products.
GUEST:
Yeah.
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