![]() The bookends pictured above do not have a foundry identification.Art Deco, which originated in Paris, is one of the most memorable of all design movements thanks to its modern feel and use of mathematical and geometric shapes. She is known to have works cast by the Roman Bronze Works and the Brook Art Bronze Co. One of her best known works is “The Tiny Turtle”, a bronze figure of a child holding a tiny turtle, which was a popular sculpture for garden fountains (I have been unable to find a picture). ![]() Louise Hibbard Wilder received her art training in the free day classes at Cooper Union. And from this date the artist couple seem to disappear – We didn’t manage to find anymore information. Commissions were paid, bronzes were bought. Shortly thereafter the Associated Press distributed a story of the response of art collectors to their plight. The New York Times published an article entitiled, ARTIST COUPLE FACE EVICTION WITH BABY, attributing their destitution to portrait and commission fees that could not be collected. In late 1931, Louise and her husband, Bert Wilder, also an artist and sculptor, suffered the fate of many artists during the depression. “The Daily Times, A Clean Newsy Newspaper For the Home”, Beaver, PA. Being deaf I have learned to work without interruption.” My deafness has given me more chance more than most artists have for this concentration. One such article in The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin) in December 1928, quotes her, “Artists, in addition to imagination and technical skill, need extreme concentration on their work. Following an article about her, as a deaf artist, in Time Magazine in September 1928, a number of articles about Louise were published in newspapers across the United States. She lost her hearing when she was a young girl. The artist who rendered this Pan version was a well-known sculptor of children from the sidewalks of New York during the 1920s, Louise Hibbard Wilder. ![]() Barrie’s Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame’s Wind In The Willows. This was during a time when “there was an astonishing resurgence of interest in the Pan motif.” Patricia Merivale, author of Pan the Goat-God: His Myth in Modern Times, Harvard University Press, 1969, lists works, from the 1890s to 1926, of poetry, novels, children’s books where Pan is part of the narrative, not the least of those being J.M. These particular bookends are probably from the 1920s. Pan was a proper Greek God of nature, shepherds, fertility, sexuality and music, satyrs were similar in looks and activities, but less than Gods, and fauns were later Roman versions, eventually combining them into a single entity. These are ugly, libidinous creatures when grown. It is a juvenile Pan, satyr or faun – part human, part goat. ![]() This bookend figure is a child, but It has the hairy hoofed legs of a goat, tall pointed ears, a small tail, the beginnings of horns on its forehead and it is playing two flutes. Inscribed with the name of the listed artist Louise Wilder (1898-?), twentieth century, foundry unknown. With a little searching one can find bookends of knights that bear the signature or mark of a known artist or sculptor such as Gregory Seymour Allen or John J. Bookends of knights were fashioned in many types of metal, as well as other materials such as clay. The long-lived popularity of knights in the media: literature, movies and Sunday comics (remember Prince Valiant) is reflected in the large number of decorative bookends of knights to be found in antique and vintage markets. People knew that knights had fought in the Holy Land during the crusades. There was King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the search for the Holy Grail. Everyone must have known about knights then, as they do today. Later on, the movies of the 1920s and 30s made knights a popular theme. Even Mark Twain employed a knight as the central character in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT. Like today’s digitally-based adventure stories where knights and medieval times are often featured, the adventure literature of the late 1800s and early 1900s were rampant with tales of gallant knights. They were prized as reflections of the Arts and Crafts ethos popularized by William Morris and Elbert Hubbard and for their romantic adventures. Knights in armor were a popular subject for bookends in the early twentieth century.
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