Gargoyle Pottery Wall Bracket, ca. 1880
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GUEST:
This gargoyle has been in my family for really about as long as I can remember. My parents always had it hanging in the corner in the living room. And as a kid I used to think it was really frightening, and I used to decorate it with balloons and things. The family history is that it came from my great-uncle in Pennsylvania. He was an attorney. And apparently he got this in lieu of payment from a client, and that's really all I know about it.
APPRAISER:
This is most likely Italian. They were many, many different Italian pottery manufacturers. And a lot of them used curious marks, which are hard to trace or to identify. But this has a letter N as part of the mark, and that might refer to Naples. But really we looked at the modeling of the clay, which is very free and very loose. We looked at the colors and the glaze and also the application of gold on it. And that's very typical of a lot of Italian pottery. Now, you said you haven't used it in a long time.
GUEST:
No, I haven't.
APPRAISER:
And this is actually quite filthy. It's really dirty. So if you carefully clean it with a cotton swab and some water it would really clean up. And the colors would be a lot brighter.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Now, this would be a part of the Renaissance revival movement, which was very popular in the last half of the 19th century in Europe.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
In the Renaissance, they used a lot of gargoyles and monsters and other creepy critters as part of decoration. There was a revival of interest in that, so a lot of furniture, painting, ceramics were made kind of in imitation of Renaissance style. And this is an example of that.
GUEST:
Would this have been made for somebody's home?
APPRAISER:
Yes, I think so.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And there probably was once, at one time a pair. Another interesting feature of this, this was made to be hung high. And we have it hung much lower than what it's supposed to. If we had this hung up way high, we would be looking up at this monster peering down at us.
GUEST:
Right-- that's where my parents had it.
APPRAISER:
Sure, and it might even be a copy of some gargoyles in a cathedral in Italy or something like that, possibly.
GUEST:
That's what I wondered.
APPRAISER:
We don't know. But it is really a terrific piece. It's hard to put a price on it because I've never seen one, never seen anything like it. But my guess is a retail price would probably be at least $2,000 or $3,000.
GUEST:
Oh, okay. That's wonderful.
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