Lot #: 32
Price Realized: $147.50
($125 hammer, plus 18% buyer's premium)
PLEASE NOTE: This result is 6 years old, and the American ceramics market frequently changes. Additionally, small nuances of color, condition, shape, etc. can mean huge differences in price. If you're interested in having us sell a similar item for you, please contact us here.
Very Rare African-American Figural Redware Pipe, Signed "A. PEYRAU", New York, NY, circa 1883, finely-modeled in the form of an African-American man's head with pierced eyes and incised hair. Neck of pipe hand-incised "A. PEYRAU". Literature: Peyrau's pipe-manufacturing operation is discussed, along with a few illustrations, in Barber, Edwin Atlee, The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States, G.P. Putnam Son's, New York and London, 1893, p. 341, and are present in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum and--at least at one time--the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Peyrau was seen in his day as a visionary, with one contemporary writing, "August Peyrau ... has ... reproduced in red clay or terra cotta caricature heads of [famous people, etc.]. For a time they were on sale in New York City, but more recently they have disappeared from show windows of the tobacconists, and with them their interesting maker. Peyrau was a Frenchman who gave up a prosperous business to return to his native village in the South of France, but on arriving there he found a new generation in existence and his old friends gone. After a few months he wearied of the place, and then came back to his adopted country. Times were hard and it was not easy to start in business again. So he supported himself for a time by modeling his caricature pipe heads, and now he has disappeared again. In the years to come when his pipes will sell for dollars instead of cents, who will remember their maker?". Provenance: Consigned from the Netherlands. Loss to one ear. Otherwise excellent condition. H 1 3/4" ; L 1 5/8".
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