Lifetime Americana & folk art collection a colorful centerpiece for Morphy's Oct. 8-10 Fall Auction 500 lots of folk art and Americana from the Joseph and Lilian Shapiro Collection headline Dan Morphy Auctions’ big Fall Sale slated for Oct. 8-10 at the Morphy gallery in Denver, Pa.
News-Antique.com - Sep 09,2009 - DENVER, Pa. – An honored lifetime collection of Americana and folk art, the Joseph and Lilian Shapiro Collection, headlines Dan Morphy Auctions’ Fall Sale slated for Oct. 8-10 at the Morphy gallery in Denver, Pa. More than 500 lots of select offerings from the Shapiro Collection – antique advertising signs, salesmen’s samples and patent models; product cabinets and packaging; and early hand-carved folk art – will be offered. The celebrated 30-collection has been featured in numerous national magazine and newspaper articles, and was showcased in a special 2005 exhibition at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Mass.
The Thursday, Oct. 8 session opens with 40 jewelry lots, followed by 150 general antique lots and the day’s main attraction: the Shapiro collection.
“This collection is going to make a lot of people happy because it crosses over into so many subcategories, like black Americana, Native Americana, early American inventions, and even Halloween and political themes,” said gallery owner Dan Morphy.
Within the Shapiro collection is a remarkable grouping of 100+ folk-art bride sticks. Skillfully hand-carved and painted, the rarely seen decorative objects date from the early 19th century to around the turn of the 20th century. Each was a custom design, to be given as a gift to a new bride. While not meant for practical use, they replicate the plainer forked sticks that women of the 19th century used for pushing down laundry into tubs of boiling water. “Some of these sticks have cross-hatching, mother-of-pearl inlay, and wonderful folk-art carving on them – hearts, half-moons, even a carved, caged ball that’s like a whimsey,” said Morphy. “Many of the pieces were formerly in the collection of folk art dealers Betty and Joel Schatzberg.”
The more than 200 advertising items in the Shapiro Collection include dye cabinets, display cases, and a huge array of tin, enameled-metal, porcelain and reverse-on-glass signs. A late-19th-century Soapine Dirt Killer reverse-on-glass sign, estimate $10,000-$15,000, with sharp, rich colors and desirable whale-logo graphic, was once displayed in the executive offices of Kendall Manufacturing Co. in Providence, R.I., producers of Soapine. A paper version of the same sign carries a presale estimate of $15,000-$20,000, a reflection of its rarity and extraordinarily fine condition.
The graphics on some of the signs, soapboxes and packaged soap bars in the collection display insensitive themes that were considered acceptable in previous centuries. A lithographed-paper sign depicting Uncle Sam kicking a Chinese man out of the country, a reflection of the anti-Asian sentiment during the mid-19th-century Gold Rush era, is estimated at $2,500.
Although the Shapiro collection is first and foremost an Americana and folk art collection, its underlying laundry and soap theme reflects Joe’s profession – he was a distributor of Whirlpool commercial laundry equipment. The collection includes a 30-piece panoramic timeline of washing machines, mostly of wood and dating back as early as the 1830s. Additionally, 25 to 30 early salesmen’s samples replicate drying racks, ironing boards, scale model washers and related equipment – some of which were featured on PBS
