Courtesy Doyle
We have a good time our nation’s birthday with many traditions: parades, fireworks, sand artwork. OK, possibly that final one is not such a conventional manner of celebrating the Fourth of July, but one fortunate bidder goes to just do that with the current buy of a uncommon Andrew Clemens Centennial sand artwork bottle.
A ten 1/2 -inch-tall sand bottle by Clemens (1857-1894) made for america Centennial offered for $113,400 (with purchaser premium) at a current Doyle public sale. A self-taught folks artist, Clemens’ delicate craftsmanship of his sand artwork, contained in small apothecary bottles, is desired by collectors and a few examples promote at public sale for six figures — considered one of these bottles set a world report at Hindman Auctions in Cincinnati, after promoting for $956,000 in 2021.
Courtesy of Hindman
Born in 1857 in Iowa, Clemens contracted encephalitis as a younger baby and misplaced his listening to and far of his speech. He began making sand bottles as a youngster. He used sand in several naturally occurring colours and made his personal instruments to rigorously layer the sand in apothecary bottles, making patterns and footage. Patriotic symbols like eagles and flags typically seem, together with landscapes, animals, trains, boats and geometric patterns.
Public area picture
Names, dates and messages had been included on commissioned items. This bottle with an eagle and protect, flags, hearts and garlands is made out to “Mr. & Mrs. H.J. Boardman” as a “Centennial Current.” Clemens made tons of of sand bottles throughout his lifetime, however, due to the delicate glass bottles and the character of sand artwork, few survive.
It’s doable that the H.J. Boardman for which Clemens made this bottle is Halsey J. Boardman (1834-1900), of Boston, the public sale home surmises. An H.J. Boardman, described as a « Boston capitalist » in a January 1893 New York Instances article, and elsewhere as a lawyer, a politician, and a board member of the North Star Development Firm, seems to have had pursuits in a number of midwestern railroad strains.
There was an Iowa Central Railroad locomotive named the HJ Boardman in-built 1881. It’s fairly doable that Boardman’s travels would have taken him via or close to to McGregor, Iowa, within the mid-1870s, the public sale home mentioned. There, he could have been uncovered to the brand new and noteworthy work of Clemens, whose fame grew within the late 1870s and early Eighteen Eighties, and who was simply 19 years previous when he made and labelled this bottle.
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