I'm guessing that not too many folks stumble across this slim volume from 1951 anymore. It's called Farm on Fifth Avenue and it's by Elisabeth Naramore. The subtitle is "A collection of figures from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicting Farm Folk, Barnyard Animals, and Wild Creatures of Field and Stream."
What obviously stopped me when I came across this book was the vibrant and detailed illustration on the dust jacket. Naramore describes it thusly: "The cover is the reproduction of a needlework picture in the Collection of Judge Irwin Untermyer and is used with his permission. It was made in England during the eighteenth century. We like to think it was the Lady of the Manor who stitched these rural scenes and loved them well."
There are all sorts of wonderful details within the bucolic scene. What's your favorite part?
Untermyer, by the way, lived from 1886 to 1973. According to this biography:
"He was a well-known collector of European decorative art. A number of books have been written about his collections of English furniture, porcelain, textiles and silver, including English Furniture With Some Furniture of Other Countries in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, by Yvonne Hackenbroch (1958). His silver collection was bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art."Naramore's book is filled with pictures and short descriptions of all sorts of figurines and assorted knickknacks, including a Japanese praying mantis incense burner, prancing goats from Mycenae, hedgehog oil jugs, and clay baby rattles in the form of a pig.
It's an interesting book to browse through. But if you seek out a copy, make sure it has the dust jacket!
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