Other lost traditions include figurehead carving. A large number survive because unlike more quotidian crafts they have long been thought worth preserving. Many were removed when the ships themselves were decommissioned or salvaged from shipwrecks. On dry land they were sometimes reused as shop signs or displayed as curiosities. Hogarth's painting Canvassing for Votes, for example, includes a figurehead of a red lion that sits outside a pub door while the election shenanigans take place around it. Britain's maritime ascendancy meant that figurehead carving was big business, with some 150 firms active in the 18th and 19th centuries. Between 1830 and 1860 the Hellyer family firm alone, which worked largely for the Royal Navy, made figureheads for some 234 vessels.
The tradition of shop signs is just as rich: while some such as giant boots or locks clearly signified shoemakers and locksmiths others had more historical roots. The pawnbroker's symbol of three golden balls, for example, comes from the crest of the Medici banking family, while barbers frequently used the seemingly incongruous sign of a bear, a reference to the bear grease that was used as a hair pomade. The profusion of signs — suns and moons, fish and lions, Turks and wheatsheafs — became so dense that in the late 18th century prohibitions were issued banning much street furniture.
One unifying feature of folk art is its use of humble materials. This was predominantly working-class art so that rather than using marble or paint it utilised inexpensive and often cast-off materials such as bone, wood or straw. Indeed one of the most inventive items in the exhibition is a horse vertebra painted to resemble a preacher with his arms raised mid-sermon. This strange early-19th-century object is sometimes thought to be a caricature of John Wesley. The genre was once common enough to have its own name: Bishop Bones.
This exhibition does not make great claims for many of these objects' standing as what would generally be termed works of art, that is of being intentional expressions of emotion. Rather, it presents them as evidence of the endurance of tradition, of a universal horror of empty space, of the human need for creation and the myriad forms that invention can take. It pays the makers the compliment of taking them seriously rather than patronising them. It recognises too that our communal past is as much or even more that of these unknown men and women as it is of the salon artists whose names we revere.
The tradition of shop signs is just as rich: while some such as giant boots or locks clearly signified shoemakers and locksmiths others had more historical roots. The pawnbroker's symbol of three golden balls, for example, comes from the crest of the Medici banking family, while barbers frequently used the seemingly incongruous sign of a bear, a reference to the bear grease that was used as a hair pomade. The profusion of signs — suns and moons, fish and lions, Turks and wheatsheafs — became so dense that in the late 18th century prohibitions were issued banning much street furniture.
One unifying feature of folk art is its use of humble materials. This was predominantly working-class art so that rather than using marble or paint it utilised inexpensive and often cast-off materials such as bone, wood or straw. Indeed one of the most inventive items in the exhibition is a horse vertebra painted to resemble a preacher with his arms raised mid-sermon. This strange early-19th-century object is sometimes thought to be a caricature of John Wesley. The genre was once common enough to have its own name: Bishop Bones.
This exhibition does not make great claims for many of these objects' standing as what would generally be termed works of art, that is of being intentional expressions of emotion. Rather, it presents them as evidence of the endurance of tradition, of a universal horror of empty space, of the human need for creation and the myriad forms that invention can take. It pays the makers the compliment of taking them seriously rather than patronising them. It recognises too that our communal past is as much or even more that of these unknown men and women as it is of the salon artists whose names we revere.
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