| Object ID |
T0031 |
| Object Name |
Ladle |
| Description |
Seneca Effigy Ladle;
Medium/Materials: Ash burl; |
| Dimensions |
H-5 W-5 inches |
| Early Date |
1760 ca. |
| Place of Origin |
Onondaga Iroquois Reservation, NY, USA |
| People |
Seneca Iroquois/ |
| Provenance |
(1) Tonawanda Reservation, New York. Said to have been collected on Tonawanda Reservation.;
(2) Unidentified woman antique dealer. She gave the ladle to Woodrow Winiecki;
(3) Woodrow (Woody) Winiecki [sp]. Winiecki was an antique dealer whose widow, Barbara, sold the ladle to John Comstock.;
(4) John Comstock.;
(5) Michael Hall. Cherry Creek, New York. Michael Hall's brother-in-law, Paul Shear, was a brother-in-law to Woodrow Winiecki. Michael Hall, an antique dealer, sold the ladle in 1992.;
(6) Trotta-Bono. Shrub Oak, New York.;
(7) Eugene V. Thaw 29 June 1993.; |
| History |
Scholarly Attributions:
[1] Letter from Edmund Carpenter to Donald Cameron - 1 February 1994 - "The Woodland pieces will interest you most, particularly one small ladle. I really don't know what it is and will defer to Betty's judgement. In the meantime, I see it as a rare, rare example of an early art tradition once common in New England and the Hudson valley, and especially among the Iroquois, with an iconography of stylized human & animal parts. Whatever its date (17th, 18th century?) or origin (Thaw says 'Onondaga'), it comes out of deep time. with only a few examples surviving: clubs in Swedish castle, pipe in Copenhagen, bowl we have, club in Paris, etc., plus the wealth of archaeological scraps in Rochester. If Arthur Parker had ever seen this ladle, he would have made it Model 1 in his craft program. As it was, he had to fall back on 18th century models, at best. By then, humor had turned from whimsey to maudlin, animal effigies from mythic to realistic. Its stylized head-beak (similar to Seneca pipes?) and stylized legs
clearly belong to a highly sophisticated iconography and to a tradition of visual puns & jokes, executed with elegant restraint." [2] Ted Brasser ca.1997 - "This is a truly unique piece; 'comparable' [referring to the comparative pieces listed in the catalogue raisonne] here does not imply any similarity." |
| Used |
Seneca Iroquois |
|
