Indian Head Plaque by Alois Sutter

Here yet again is a lovely piece that I watched cycle through relisting after relisting on the big online auction site. I finally found the admittedly modest amount of buy-it-now money to snatch it out from under the dozen or so others who had also been watching it. I'm very glad it found its long term home on my wall!

This piece is a fine cast bronze (I believe it's bronze anyway) plaque of a handsome young Indian man's face. No patina has ever been applied, what is there has been brought about by time. What makes this a bit more unique is that the plaque is oval and the face is raised in high relief, so that it stands out to about where his ears would be hidden behind his hair. In his long hair he wears two feathers and some sort of ribbon or roach holding them upright on the back of his head, the hair at his temples being caught up in ponytails that are wrapped toward the ends. A pair of large hoop earrings, a highly decorated shirt and a peace medal around his neck complete his outfit. Around the front edge is a border with raised edges and "Indian symbols" inside. Cast on the back is, "Casted by Al. Sutter, N28, 2851 Wallace St. Chicago ILL." There is a lug at the top with a ring through it for ease of hanging.

A search of the 1928/9 Chicago City Directory shows an Alois Sutter living at 2851 Wallace Street. Bingo! But that's about all of the info that I have been able to find on him. That address is a 2 unit home (it was back then as well) and looks to be a rental, so I have no idea how long he lived there or what he did for a living. If anyone out there has any info on either this lovely plaque or Alois Sutter, please let me know!

 Note: The blue spots on the left side of the forehead in the first picture are from a TV that was on in the background, and the small white spots are flecks of house paint that come off easily with a fingernail but are difficult to see with the naked eye. I'll take new pictures after I remove them!

Indian Head Plaque, bronze, Alois Sutter (cast), 1928, front

Indian Head Plaque, bronze, Alois Sutter (cast), 1928, left

Indian Head Plaque, bronze, Alois Sutter (cast), 1928, right

Indian Head Plaque, bronze, Alois Sutter (cast), 1928, top

Indian Head Plaque, bronze, Alois Sutter (cast), 1928, bottom

Indian Head Plaque, bronze, Alois Sutter (cast), 1928, back

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug Inkwell by Peter Tereszczuk (1875-1963)

While the main thrust of my bronze collecting blog has been Native American Indian in theme, I do also collect bronzes from other genres that I also find both interesting and pleasing. Especially if I get a good deal on them! This bronze I find to be aesthetically appealing, a beautiful Art Nouveau antique that I was extremely fortunate to find. I purchased it in an online auction which had a sparse description but decent pictures and a very low starting bid. The inkwell was a bit dirty but not excessively so. What is left of the original applied (hot) polychrome patina could be seen, superseded on the exposed surfaces by the naturally occurring patina that only age can bring. I could see that with a proper cleaning and waxing that it would really look amazing.

I placed my bid and watched the auction closely. Happily and rather surprisingly, no one bid against me! A handful of days later, I was carefully removing the lightly encrusted dust of many years and applying fresh wax. It really looks fantastic now! The deterioration of the coloration that the artist either applied or specified has been slowed if not halted, and the dirt that promotes corrosion has been removed and blocked from the surface of the bronze in the future. With routine care, this inkwell should easily last centuries if not millennia.

With a little research, I quickly found that I had purchased not just an old inkwell but a real treasure. Peter Paul Tereszczuk (his signature here is the earlier version that he used) was born in 1875 in Wybudow, a village now in the Ukraine but then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He moved to Vienna, Austria to study woodcarving at the school of Arts and Crafts in Vienna under Hermann Klotz. By 1895 he was an established and well known sculptor in Vienna. He mostly created small sculptures, often as decoration on tabletop objects ranging from lamps to desk sets (inkwells, blotters, card trays and the like) to vases and jardieneres, an incredible range of objects and sculptures over a roughly thirty year period. Tereszczuk created many of the fanciful and beautiful lamp bases that are topped with the incredibly beautiful glass shades of Loetz, Émile Gallé, Daum Nancy and many other top level French and Bohemian glass artisans of the day. He was one of the first (if not THE first) Art Nouveau sculptors to add carved ivory to his bronzes, replacing faces, torsos and other areas of bare skin in a revival of the style called "chryselephantine" that dates back to ancient times. Though these now-antique works can be tricky to import (if not own) due to laws designed to protect our endangered animal populations, they are highly collectible. His prolific works helped define Viennese Art Nouveau at the time and for the ages, but by 1925 Art Nouveau was being replaced by Art Deco. He briefly worked in this new style but rather quickly disappeared from the art scene. Peter Tereszczuk passed away in Vienna in 1963.

Depicted here is a couple sharing a drink from a jug. The young man is seated, he is shirtless but is wearing a pair of simple loose pants and the plain boots of a farmer. In his right hand is a large scythe, the blade resting on the ground below his dangling feet. On his head he is wearing a simple felt hat commonly known in antiquity as a pileus, which was the symbol in Roman times of a freed slave and is still a symbol of freedom today. His left hand is raised, holding up a jug which is also supported by a young woman who is laying across his lap. She is wearing a kerchief around her head, a simple blouse with the sleeves rolled up, a sash wrapped around her waist and a peasant style dress that fans out across her seat. She is also wearing low boots or shoes which peek out from under the hem of her dress. The pose of the pair is very naturalistic and highly detailed, the expressions on their faces exquisitely rendered. The young man's muscles are so well sculpted that even his veins can clearly be seen. To the right of the couple is the lid to the ink pot, also so well rendered that it takes a fairly close look to make out the edges of the opening. Inside is a soldered-in tapered insert which shows little sign of having held ink in the past, though  it may have had a glass insert that has gone missing. The base is designed as a tray, to lay pens on between uses. It too shows no ink stains that I could see. The bronze was originally carefully patinated, the skin, clothes and base carefully colored using a hot chemical process, not cold painted like the more mass produced Vienna bronzes most of us are familiar with. The colors have darkened over time. This piece, though utilitarian in nature, was created as fine art. Overall, this is an elegant piece of desk furniture, elevating the normal and everyday to high art.

This inkwell is signed P. Tereszczuk on the back and has a foundry mark, a K inside a horseshoe, for K. Korff (a sculptor whom I believe had his own foundry in Vienna). It's in perfect, undamaged and lightly used condition and has a lovely patina commensurate with age. It's most likely an earlier work as it is made of solid bronze. Once the artist began working with ivory, most of what he created had at least one ivory element in it.

I have only found a couple pictures of another inkwell like mine, though that one was rather unfortunately damaged, having a hole in the base behind a dangling foot. I have yet to find another. It's rare indeed!

I'm very happy that I have this lovely sculptural inkwell in my collection. It's a beautiful example of the work of an incredibly talented artist.

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug, Vienna bronze inkwell, Peter Tereszczuk, front, closed

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug, Vienna bronze inkwell, Peter Tereszczuk, front, open

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug, Vienna bronze inkwell, Peter Tereszczuk, left

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug, Vienna bronze inkwell, Peter Tereszczuk, right

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug, Vienna bronze inkwell, Peter Tereszczuk, back

Young Farmer and Girl With Jug, Vienna bronze inkwell, Peter Tereszczuk, signature

Centaur Brought Down By Broken Heart by James Croak (contemporary)

As I have mentioned in an earlier post ("An Interrupted Wooing" by J. Edgar Stouffer), I have a lifelong fondness for high fantasy art. This has extended to my bronze collection. Sculptures in bronze within the fantasy milieu are, however, quite rare, a veritable snipe hunt for a collector. The mere amount of work and expense involved in creating a bronze sculpture typically precludes this genre as fantasy art is not deemed "worthy" of said expense and work by the mainstream art community. That is, in large part, why sculptures such as my "An Interrupted Wooing" by J. Edgar Stouffer and this one by James Croak are highly coveted by myself and my fellow collectors who enjoy such works.

A few years back, I had seen this piece come up for auction. The description was very spartan (as usual with most of the pieces I buy), the price a bit on the high side of my normal range and not within the mainstream theme of my collection. I placed it in my "watch list" and kept an eye on it. Eventually, the seller changed the auction to a buy-it-now format. Still it had only one watcher (myself) while it spent a while being periodically renewed. The seller added the "make an offer" option, but sadly it was while I was in the early throes of my current spate of ill health and while I was at my most impoverished. A few weeks later, however, I found myself with a few extra bucks in hand and facing several months flat on my back in bed, awaiting yet another surgery. I made an offer that was pretty low, figuring I'd be turned down, but the seller accepted within minutes! When it arrived at my home, I was quite pleasantly surprised at just how large and rather heavy it is as well as how detailed the work is. I promptly dusted it and set it on one of my display tables along with several of my other bronzes that are definitely NOT of an Indian ( I have several Grand Tour bronzes as well - more on those later).

Until recently, I had been content to own this plaque in ignorance of the maker, believing that searching for someone named "Croak" was a fool's errand, especially as it related to a sculpture involving death. The other day I woke up to the fact that I hadn't even tried to look. Once I searched "Croak" and "sculptor," however, I began to feel foolish indeed! Immediately the name James Croak popped up, links to his works making up most of the first page. Now, I'm not that familiar with contemporary sculpture by and large, knowing only a few names and works, mainly ones that came up in my research on sculpting classes (yes, I have my own ambitions beyond merely collecting). I now feel like the world has been moving past me while I was looking the other way. James Croak has been a "wunderkind" of the contemporary art world for a few decades now. In 1985, unable to afford to cast one of his works in bronze, he began casting using a mixture of dirt and glue as his medium, and in that act creating a new and bold statement. His "Dirt People" took the art world by storm. His accolades and honors are many and easily found with the most basic of searches, or by simply clicking the link to the right.

Upon finding his website, I snapped these pictures and sent them to him to inquire if he was the artist who created it, the whole time more than half certain that he wasn't. The next morning he sent a brief response simply stating, "Yes, I made that." I was floored. I am still.

In a subsequent email, Mr. Croak elaborated a bit, writing that this was one of two that he had made of this piece and was also quite rare as he has not made many bronzes at all. He also mentioned that, for insurance purposes, a small piece of his had recently sold at auction in NY for a sum in the five figures. Again, I was floored. I am still.

Depicted here on a roughly oval shaped base is a fully realized (a fully modeled figure, not a relief) nude male centaur who has been brought down by a lioness (likewise fully rendered), which has him by the throat. Hoof prints lead up to his fallen body and behind him is a discarded pennant upon which is written, "TRUTH JUSTICE MERCY." On the back it is signed "CROAK" with the date "1985." Also on the back are two threaded blind holes in lugs that sit flush with the rim, one at each side, but no way to hang it short of first mounting it on a base of some sort. When propped up on its rim, the plaque is too top heavy to stand and tips either forward or backward. It is a very solid piece!

I do not believe it was displayed for long after its creation, until my purchasing it. The piece is completely damage free, it only had a light coating of old dust that came off easily and left no bad spots. The patina is a little thin on the centaur's rear haunch, the highest spot on the whole piece, but that's not unusual given the age of this piece. I feel that I'm fortunate to have been able to purchase this plaque. It's certainly (almost) unique!

"Centaur Brought Down By Broken Heart," by James Croak, bronze, 1985, one of two made, front

"Centaur Brought Down By Broken Heart," by James Croak, bronze, 1985, one of two made, signature on back