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 What is left of the original applied (hot) polychrome patina could be seen, superseded on the exposed surfaces by the naturally occurring patina that only age can bring.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