Artwork Details
- Title
- Untitled (Swan Decoy from Delaware)
- Artist
- Unidentified
- Date
- ca. 1920
- Location
- Dimensions
- 9 × 41 1⁄8 × 7 3⁄4 in. (22.9 × 104.5 × 19.7 cm)
- Credit Line
- The Margaret Z. Robson Collection, Gift of John E. and Douglas O. Robson
- Mediums Description
- carved wood
- Classifications
- Keywords
- Animal — bird — swan
- Object Number
- 2016.38.79
Artwork Description
The genre of “folk art,” objects and images made by working-class individuals, emerged in the early days of the American republic, with communally trained artisans or craftspeople and work that was often utilitarian or decorative in nature. In the early twentieth century, as folk art become more desirable among collectors, objects such as this swan decoy intersected with the clean, streamlined aesthetic of midcentury-modern art, shifting it from hunter’s lure to sculpture.
(We Are Made of Stories: Self-Taught Artists in the Robson Family Collection, 2022)