Margaret Postgate / Cowan Pottery Studio American Art Deco Cubist Elephant bookends c. 1929
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Margaret Postgate / Cowan Pottery Studio American Art Deco Cubist Elephant bookends c. 1929
MARGARET POSTGATE (1879-1953) USA
WAYLANDE GREGORY (1905-1971) USA
ARTHUR BAGGS (1886-1947) (glaze development) USA
COWAN POTTERY STUDIO USA
Cubist Elephant bookends 1929
Ceramic bookends with a black gunmetal glaze
Signed: Cowan studio mark (under glaze) Cowan bookend numbers 840 and 841
For more information and illustration see: Cowan Pottery and the Cleveland School, by Mark Bassett and Victoria Naumann (Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1997).
H: 4 1/2″ x W: 5 1/2” x D: 3 3/4”
Margaret J. Postgate was born in Chicago, IL on September 29, 1879 and died at a hospital in the Bronx, NY in 1953. Her family moved to Manhattan around 1910 and then Brooklyn around 1925 and she remained a Brooklyn resident right up until her death. Her parents were both born in England: John W. Postgate and Margaret Postgate nee Derry. She had siblings, a brother George and one or two sisters, Mary and/or Mae. Margaret studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 1925, 1925, and 1926 she participated in soap sculpture carving competitions, some sponsored by Procter & Gamble Corporation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pamphlets exist as well as exhibition brochures and others on “how-to” carving penned by Postgate. Margaret Postgate designed for Cowan from 1929-1930 where she adapted a few of the designs she had rendered in soap for ceramic sculptures for the Cowan Pottery. She also executed a few pieces of sculpture that were cast in bronze for the bronze division of the Gorham Manufacturing Company.
Tim Liddy, Lie Cheat and Steal (1971) The Game of Political Power Oil and enamel on copper, plywood back 2006
TIM LIDDY (b. 1963) Missouri
“Lie Cheat and Steal” (1971) The Game of Political Power 2006
Oil and enamel on copper, plywood back
Signed in script: Tim Liddy “circa 1971” 2006, red circular ring
Provenance: William Shearburn Gallery (St. Louis, MO)
H: 12” x W: 9” x D: 2”
With his recent paintings, Liddy has both reasserted the construct of hyperrealist painting and developed a thoroughly unique advancement of that mode by extending the cultural reality of the indexed original. Based on the illustrated box lids of vintage board games, Liddy has recontextualized a subject, which evokes the underlying rules of life. Painted on copper or steel in the precise dimensions of the original, the metal is then manipulated to demonstrate the exact rips and tears from years of usage and includes trompe-l’oeil renditions of the scotch tape that might be holding the cardboard box together, the assorted stains, or the various graffiti of time. Liddy leaves no possibility of ambivalence, these works speak to a concurrent understanding of their original object identity and to themselves as works of art engaged in historical and psychological dialogue.
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