Bloomsbury Fine Art & Antiques
Portland, OR
Details
- Dimensions
- 42ʺW × 42ʺD × 98ʺH
- Styles
- American
- Brand
- J.W. Fiske & Company
- Period
- Late 19th Century
- Country of Origin
- United States
- Item Type
- Vintage, Antique or Pre-owned
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- Materials
- Cast Iron
- Condition
- Original Condition Unaltered, Needs Restoration
- Color
- White
- Condition Notes
- Item in good antique condition. Item in good antique condition. less
- Description
-
A good monumental antique American 3 Tier Cast Iron Fountain attributed to J. W. Fiske, New York, Circa 1870.
The … more A good monumental antique American 3 Tier Cast Iron Fountain attributed to J. W. Fiske, New York, Circa 1870.
The base adorned with three standing storks their heads facing down and wings spread, their backs facing against the base of the pedestal. The lower bowl is 48 in diameter, with ribbed decoration and a gadrooned design to the edge of the bowl. There are two corresponding smaller graduated bowls above, each joined with ribbed columns and leaf decoration, water is expelled from the top of the column and then cascades down to the bowls.
The fountain is in two sections, with traces of paint and oxidation from being outside, the fountain can easily be re-painted, shot-blasted or powder-coated, or left exactly as it is. In good condition with no breaks or repairs, this wonderful antique fountain is ready to grace your space.
Provenance; From a fine New England estate
J. W. Fiske & Company of New York City was the most prominent American manufacturer of decorative cast iron and cast zinc in the second half of the nineteenth century. In addition to their wide range of garden fountains, statues, urns, and cast-iron garden furniture, they provided many of the cast-zinc Civil War memorials of small towns throughout the northern states following the American Civil War. These were commonly painted to imitate bronze.
The entrepreneurial founder, Joseph Winn Fiske (1832—1903) out-sourced the iron and zinc-alloy foundry-work itself, and concentrated on the firm's connections with modellers on the one hand and customer relations on the other. Fiske, of a colonial family in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, spent some years as a merchandiser in Melbourne, Australia, before returning to the United States in 1857. He founded his business, at first in partnership with hardwareman Thomas W. Brown, in Boston (by 1862) and New York, December 1863. The "& Co." was dropped in 1862 in the business. Fiske's lavishly illustrated catalogues, issued at brief intervals, kept the firm in the public eye and incidentally show art historians how casually design patents were infringed in the nineteenth century.
Fiske's designs ranged from the naturalistic foliate designs that were the stock-in-trade of mid-Victorian style to sculptures after the Antique or neoclassical works of Antonio Canova or Bertel Thorvaldsen, suitable for park-like landscapes of estates and landscape cemeteries of formal schemes. Fiske was also noted for his hammered copper weather vanes, produced in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn.
Fiske's great rival in the decorative cast iron field was Jordan L. Mott's J. L. Mott Iron Works of New York City. less
Bloomsbury Fine Art & Antiques
Portland, OR
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