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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 Text
American Indians, traditionally associated with tobacco, were the most popular life-sized figures that were once familiar sights on American city sidewalks. Mounted on wheels, they were rolled out in the morning to advertise tobacco shops and rolled in at night for safekeeping. Shop owners used a variety of figures to advertise their wares, like this figure depicting a character named Colonel Sellers. The Sellers trade figure and was made, appropriately, for an apothecary shop in Sellersville, Pennsylvania.
One wonders, however, if the Colonel, 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, brought “oceans of money” to anyone promoting 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
c. 1885-1887
