SP owns a primitive ceramic sculpture of a recumbent lion at 5” x 10”. Is it a bookend? No, it’s a sewer tile, although not a tile at all. This homely lion lounges on a serrated base with the clay pressed into a mold, glazed and fired. No markings are seen, typical of the ‘art form.’ A sewer tile factory worker with extra clay he didn’t want to waste handmade this piece. A tradition in the late 19th to early 20th century, a simple working man made sculptures of people, planters, dog bowls, gifts for his wife and kids, and even tombstones.
Most of these little whimsies come from the Midwest because of the type of geography known for deposits of great clay. Collectors say the best of them come from Ohio, where US sewer tile factories flourished by the dozen.
Imaginative Sewer Tile Sculptures
SP’s lion is made from a mold but other hand sculpted creations are perhaps more collectible. Although some came out ‘pipe-like’ and circular. But workers sculptured the clay (like your kids sculpted in art class in the 4th grade) into some great objects. The best of these appear irreverent. For example if a worker disliked his boss he might make an unseemly caricature of his head. These excessively naughty ones the sewer tiles collector’s market calls ‘grotesques.’ Imagine making the boss look like a monster then showing the bust around the shop floor.
Likewise, if a worker hated the town mayor or the US President, he might lampoon those folks. Worse, he might make the bust into a piggy bank.
Because the sewer pipe factory worker lacked artistic training, these figures turned out delightfully naïve. For instance a figure of Sasquatch became massively molded and glazed an ugly yellow.
Some pieces adopt the form of the clay pipe itself
They lend themselves to various forms: planters, birdhouses, and tree stumps decorated with leaves and squirrels and birds. Workers often used pieces of pipe as a springboard for a sculpture of a standing human. One such piece features the coworker playing his harmonica, at a very large 3 ft. The circular nature of the daily craft opened the mind to other ideas, like the creation of a chicken water-er, a circular water vessel with a basin attached underneath, or, even better, a sculpture of a long, low animal, like a Basset Hound or, my favorite, a Dachshund.
A sewer pipe factory worker with kids might make them a heavy but size-accurate baseball or football? How about making Junior a dinosaur, or a train? Why not make the wife an umbrella stand out of that pipe, or a pin box for her vanity table?
The tradition of whimsical figures made by simple working men inexperienced, yet budding, artists became a ‘thing’ in the late 19th and early 20th century. The upper classes decorated their mansions with fine porcelain: Meissen from Germany and Sevres for France. So why not the sewer worker? Not just a ‘waste not want not’ American moral imperative. English potters used clay in Staffordshire to make funny dogs which became a big collectible even in the day. The American and English working classes couldn’t afford to decorate with fine porcelain, so they copied high-class objects in the boss’s extra clay? If a worker had time after work, he saved some money on kitchen mixing bowls and pitchers for the table.
The most prized of these pieces is perhaps the chimney cap, which proclaimed something artistic from the top of a house. One example dates from after WWI, where a sewer pipe factory worker celebrated his illustrious recent past. He fashioned a likeness of himself as the aviator he was: complete with aviator cap, leather jacket with collar, medals and wings pinned, and his head a shoulders forming the cover to the chimney as well as letting the smoke exit through the top of his head. Another serviceman factory worker of the period made for his house an American Eagle, which he proudly mounted on a roof vent cap. Many of these personalized pieces are signed.
You’ll recognize these pieces because they look like what we made in grade school but with more humor. SP’s lion is worth $100.
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