Maine Antique Digest March 2015

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20-B Maine Antique Digest, March 2015
- AUCTION -
Slotin Folk Art Auction, Buford, Georgia
Hold an Auction and They’ll Come
by Marty Steiner
“Come Join Us” was emblazoned across the
front cover of the November 8 and 9, 2014, Slo-
tin Folk Art Auction catalog. And come they
did! Collectors from New York, Pennsylvania,
North Carolina, and a dozen more states made
the trek to Buford, Georgia, rather than utilizing
the convenient on-line bidding option. Also in
attendance were Lynne Browne and Susan Craw-
ley, cochairs of the Folk Art Society of America
(FASA) 2012 annual conference in Atlanta.
In addition to the Come Join Us banner head,
the 140-page full-color edition of the catalog
showed all 1135 lots and included an artist index.
The front cover illustration was S.L. Jones’s 20"
long carved and painted Soda Fountain with
considerable provenance; it sold for a strong
$15,600 (includes buyer’s premium). Past sales
have seen the front cover’s illustrated lot becom-
ing the high-dollar lot of the
sale, but this time it was a 16"
long eider hen decoy carved
by Gus Wilson (1864-1950)
of Maine that would take top
honors at $43,200 from an
on-line bidder. Three carved
birds by Gus Wilson drew
heavy attention. In addition
to the back preening eider
hen, a pair of silhouette white-wing scoters
brought $2640.
This sale had two unusual groupings on Sun-
day—32 lots of decoys and carved birds along
with seven lots of fish decoys and 27 lots of dec-
orated ollas. Birds ranged from $60 to $1560,
fish $210 to $960, and ollas and Native American
pots ranged from $120 to $660.
The sale began with 98 folk pottery lots.
Among these were 26 from the Meaders clan
including six face jugs by Lanier Meaders, which
continued their consistently strong sales. Two
disappointing Lanier examples included a squat
(8½") devil face jug with no apparent faults that
struggled to reach $1560 and an over-fired 10"
face jug with heavy crust-like glaze at $900. Four
utilitarian pots by Lanier Meaders, always lower
priced than the face jugs, ranged from $180 for a
9" tall pitcher with unusual half-matte and half-
high glaze to $390 for a nearly identical pitcher
with matte ash glaze.
Most pottery lots were weak, including all
eight pots by Burlon Craig, ranging from a fluted
swirlware 8½" tall vase at $120 to a signature
large (17" tall) double-handled face jug for only
$960. Usually strong pots and statuary by North
Carolina’s Billy Ray Hussey were noticeably
weak, as were Charles Lisk’s swirlware, the
Brown family face jugs, and even the large face
jugs by Kim Ellington.
In addition to the cover-illustrated S. L. Jones
piece, this sale included over 150 more carved
wood objects, natural and painted, from dozens
of artists including Edgar Tolson, Elijah Pierce,
Sulton Rogers, Minnie Adkins, Denzil Goodpas-
ter, Preston Geter, Fred Webster, Ronald Cooper,
Felipe Archuleta, and a few anonymous works.
These included three-dimensional objects as
well as bas-relief panels. Interest and prices were
strong for these lots.
Highlights among these carved pieces were
an S.L. Jones bust at $10,560, Edgar Tolson’s
Adam and Eve for $12,600, and Elijah Pierce’s
relief-carved wooden plaque at $10,800. Addi-
tional works by Linville Barker, Noah Kinney,
George Williams, Howard Ivester, Carl McKen-
zie, Homer Greene, Ron Archuleta Rodriguez,
Willie Massey, Ned Cartledge, Derrick Webster,
and Roy Minshew also drew active bidding.
A group of four intricately carved anonymous
wood fantasy pieces, all by the same hand and
from the Bishop/Johnson collection, ranged from
$1440 to $2280 each for the other three. All were
purchased by the same bidder.
Folk art canes appear to have fallen somewhat
from favor; fewer than a dozen were in this sale.
There were six individual canes, and others sold
in groups.
Both sale days included Jimmy Lee Sudduth’s
work. The ten first-day lots produced his highest
sale price for Large Milk Cow (paint, mud, and
chalk on board) at $2160. He was well repre-
sented on the second day of the sale with 23 lots.
One of three versions of Red Head in White Skirt
brought $180, and his highest lot at $1320 was
his white dog, Toto.
Other high-interest paintings included Ruth
Perkins’s Winter Fun on Third Street, 30" x 42",
$7200, and One Busy Place , a 31" x 25" farm-
house scene that sold for $960.
All three Sam Doyle paint-on-roofing-tin
works drew strong bidding. Goat Rider, a 28"
x 30" painting, drew $22,800; Figure with Staff
and Star , 26" x 43", $3600; and Wise Man on
Camel, 31" x 37", $2520. A paint on paper Uncle
Tom ’75 , an explicit slave and master image with
exhibit provenance, reached $5040.
Anonymous objects included two weather-
vanes (a sperm whale at $2520 and a trotting
horse at $1080), a World War I (?) sailor’s memo-
rial display ($600), and a highly unusual and
detailed working diorama of a tailoring factory
($1200).
Whirligigs included two
anonymous (clown for $510
and brant bird for $156), a
flying duck by Ohio maker
Prentice Lawson ($180),
and R.A. Miller’s chicken
and man ($180). John Bam-
bic’s whirligigs are actually
wind-driven carved wood
dioramas. Smokey the Bear
reached only $180, and a group of woodpeck-
ers, $390. Vollis Simpson’s versions feature both
horizontal and vertical fans (a pair, $720; a duck,
$360). Odd Fellows paraphernalia included a
painted cast-iron marker, possibly for a gravesite,
that brought $720, and four matched banners at
$480.
The true sense of folk art may be represented
by artists who utilize unusual or found materi-
als. Most Slotin sales have listed a few lots by
Clarence Woolsey. His bottle-cap figures are
instantly recognizable. This sale included Fig-
ure with Alien Headdress , which drew a strong
on-line winning bid of $5640, and a somewhat
unusual Teepee Windmill, which was also painted
with applied glitter. Its price was soft, as many
atypical subjects are, at $960.
Four identified stone carvers’ works were
offered. Tim Lewis led the pack with an 18"
limestone Angel at $1320; Raymond Coins’s
mica riverstone Ghostly Figure brought $360;
Earnest “Popeye” Reed’s limestone Medicine
Man brought $780; and David Marshall’s lime-
stone Indian Smoking Pipe sold for only $150.
Among the mixed lots of other folk art crafts
were two basket lots that included a group of 11
split oak buttocks baskets at $660 and a Gullah
(South Carolina) sweet grass lidded example for
$150. Six unusual forms of tramp art offerings
included a Crown of Thorns small house ($480),
a Crown of Thorns plant stand ($180), and a hobo
shaving kit with tin cup and mirror ($150). A pair
of 19th-century mourning shadowboxes of the
deceased’s woven hair brought $840.
A buyer won three lots of carnival equipment
including a group of 13 puppets for $5400, a
knockdown doll for $330, and a wheel of fortune
for $3000. An original 6' x 10' “Zola the Wizard”
sideshow banner drew $2160 from someone in
house.
Howard Finster’s works stand alone, if for no
other reason than the number of lots listed and the
general popularity of his work. The “Reverend”
utilized scripture and various ethereal images, fre-
quently on cutout forms, to deliver God’s message
through his art. Topping the first day’s list was
a 1980 37" x 18" The Big Hopper Has Jumped
the Fence at $13,200. An unusually small (5½"
square) ink on paper, Lyndon You Left Us Many
Things to Think On , sold for $840. An additional
27 lots on the second day resulted in sales from
$300 to a 1989 paint on cutout Angel at $1800.
Mose Tolliver of Montgomery, Alabama,
paints watermelon slices, sexually explicit
images of women, and various animal and bird
scenes. Eleven lots of his work ranged from $180
for a Mother and Baby Eagle to $660 for Jesus
on Cross with exhibit provenance.
Alabama’s Mr. Imagination utilizes bottle caps
with paint and other materials to create stick
figures. His Moses-like Self-Portrait with Staff,
ex-Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago, reached
$1080, and a tall, spindly Staff with Paintbrush
Head fetched $960 from someone in the house.
Among the artists whose work seemed to have
The true sense of
folk art may be
represented by
artists who utilize
unusual or found
materials.
While calmly preening herself, this early 1900s eider hen
carved by Gus Wilson became the top-priced lot of the sale at
$43,200. Slotin photo.
attracted recent attention was Lon-
nie Holley, who works in almost
every medium and surface. This
sale’s nine lots by Holley included
two wire and other found electrical
object assemblages, Scrap Woman
and Profile the Great Protector ,
which reached $120 and $510,
with an early (1994) paint and glit-
ter Jacob’s Ladder ascending to
$420 and Devil Devours Humans
bringing $960.
For more information, call
(770) 532-1115 or (404) 403-4244
Four Joseph Yoakum lots drew aggressive bidding from phone and on-line
bidders and far exceeded estimates. He worked primarily in colored pen-
cil with occasional pastel or other media added. Yoakum signed and dated
(1963) Trinity Valley near Amerilla Texas (shown). The 12" x 18" artwork
drew $32,400. Other works by Yoakum sold for $21,600 (Mt. Parnasses in
Pindus Mountain Range), $6600, and $5400. Slotin photo.
Adolf Wölfli’s Monmooria Indien, 1919, 16" x 20", colored pencil on paper,
nearly took top honors at $40,800. It sold to a Georgia collector. It was the
illustration on the catalog’s back cover. Slotin photo.
Everything a red-blooded American boy could want—airplanes and cow-
boys! O. Hegland’s 37" x 69" paint on paperboard Prop Plane with Cowboy
flew off into the sunset for $960.