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Exhibition History"Sign Sculpture: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in 18th and 19th C. America," Heritage Plantation of Sandwich, Sandwich, MA, May 11, 1997 - October 26, 1997; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, February 19, 1998 - April 12, 1998; The Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY, November 8, 1997 - January 25, 1998.
“Folk Art from the Collection of the New York State Historical Association,” Museum of American Folk Art, NY, January 11, 2000 – February 18, 2000.
“American Folk Art: Collection from the Fenimore Art Museum,” Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris, France, January 25, 2001 – March 24, 2001.
“Folk Art and American Modernism,” American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY, July 8, 2015 – October 1, 2015; Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, September 18, 2014 – December 31, 2014.
Artist
Unidentified Artist
(American)
Colonel Sellers
Datec. 1875
MediumPainted wood
DimensionsOverall: 58 1/2 × 14 × 14 in. (148.6 × 35.6 × 35.6 cm)
Object numberN0224.1961
Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Gift of Stephen C. Clark
Photograph by Richard Walker
Label TextShop owners used a variety of figures to advertise their wares, like this figure depicting a character named Colonel Sellers. This elegant, streamlined trade figure and was reportedly made for an apothecary shop in Sellersville, Pennsylvania. One wonders, however, if Colonel Sellers, a fast-talking huckster from Mark Twain’s The Gilded Age (1873), was a good advertisement for a legitimate business. In Twain’s popular novel, Colonel Beriah Sellers extols the virtue of his “infallible Oriental Optic Liniment and Salvation for Sore Eyes–the Medical Wonder of the Age,” a concoction that, according to the lettering on the base of the Colonel Sellers figure, had “millions in it.”Exhibition History"Sign Sculpture: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in 18th and 19th C. America," Heritage Plantation of Sandwich, Sandwich, MA, May 11, 1997 - October 26, 1997; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, February 19, 1998 - April 12, 1998; The Museum of American Folk Art, New York, NY, November 8, 1997 - January 25, 1998.
“Folk Art from the Collection of the New York State Historical Association,” Museum of American Folk Art, NY, January 11, 2000 – February 18, 2000.
“American Folk Art: Collection from the Fenimore Art Museum,” Mona Bismarck Foundation, Paris, France, January 25, 2001 – March 24, 2001.
“Folk Art and American Modernism,” American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY, July 8, 2015 – October 1, 2015; Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, September 18, 2014 – December 31, 2014.
On View
On view
