The Erie Canal and New York State folk art

Magazine Antiques, April, 1999 by Paul S. D'Ambrosio

14 The business records of the Clark manufactory are in the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, Research Library, Special Collections. See also Paul G. Chace, "'Many Worthy Young Men,' Nathan Clark's Potters in New York State," Spinning Wheel vol. 27, no. 9 (November 1971), pp. 16-18; vol. 27, no. 10 (December 1971), pp. 58-59; and vol. 28, no. 1 (January-February 1972), pp. 44-45.

15 Ketchum, Potters, p. 134.

16 Subsequent information about the White pottery is from Franco, "Stoneware," pp. 134-138; and Ketchum, Potters, pp. 290-296 and 502-504. I am grateful to William C. Ketchum Jr. for his insights into the stoneware industry in New York State.

17 The topic is the subject of research by Susan R. Goody, who provided me with this information. She is an independent scholar and the owner of Thistle Hill Weavers in Cherry Valley, New York.

18 Henry Walton was based in Ithaca and painted people and places in central New York and the southern tier that prospered due to the canals that stretched southward from the Erie Canal, notably the Chemung and the now abandoned Chenango. See Leigh Rehner, Henry Walton, 19th Century American Artist (Ithaca College Museum of Art, Ithaca, New York, 1968), p. 10.

19 Beverly Gordon, The Niagara Falls Whimsey: The Object as a Symbol of Cultural Interface (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1984), p. 199.

20 The evolution of Indian beadwork is treated in detail in Ruth B. Phillips, Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native Noah American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900 (University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1998). For her insights into the impact of the Erie Canal on Indian arts, I am grates to Sherry Brydon, the associate curator for the Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection of American Indian Art at the New York State Historical Association.

PAUL S. D'AMBROSIO is the chief curator at the New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown, New York.