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Discover Mid-America — June 2007
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Tramp art untruths
by Bruce Rodgers, Editor/Publisher
Got a book from Australia last month, the Concise Dictionary of Antique Collecting. A short review of it is on page 30 of this issue.
It’s a handy-dandy little book, one that offers new information at the turn of a page.
When I first started thumbing through it, it quickly became apparent there were a lot of words I never heard of, at least in how they related to the antiques trade.
I would guess that I had never heard of…say, 94.3% of the words listed. My goal, as I keep the book around my office, is to lower that percentage of ignorance.
In kicking around story ideas with writer Terri Baumgardner a few weeks back, and then settling on tramp art as the topic for this month’s cover feature, I went to this little book with some 6,500 entries. Surprise — or maybe not — the term “tramp art” wasn’t listed.
Out of curiosity, I then looked in Kovel’s Antique & Collectibles Price List 2007. Tramp Art got a 1/4-page entry of about 20 items under the definition: “Tramp Art is a form of folk art made since the Civil War. It is usually made from chip-carved cigar boxes. Examples range from small boxes and picture frames to full-sized pieces of furniture.”
As Baumgardner’s cover feature this month’s issue indicates, that definition is fairly accurate and tramp art devotees would probably agree with it, except maybe the “furniture” part.
Personally, I probably first heard the term about a year ago. Like most people, including many antiquers, “tramp art” conjured up an image of a Depression-era bum — belongings tied in a red handkerchief dangling from a stick slung over the shoulder, just like in the cartoons — then sitting down and picking at a piece of wood to carve something to give to a kindly woman, watching him out her kitchen window, in the hopes of getting a meal.
Carried further…the bum sticks around to do “some chores,” sleeps in the shack “out back,” begins the find the woman attractive, the woman decides the bum is really a good guy, they fall in love, miraculously he finds a job, they get married and live happily ever after.
(Who says publishers of antique magazines aren’t romantic?)
Okay, as Discover Mid-America is the harbinger of truth, readers of this month’s cover feature will find out that just isn’t so.
Tramp art is folk art, made by talented yet not formerly trained artists, a field still being researched, rare to the point that passing off reproductions as the real thing is profitable and likely was never made by real bums, hobos or tramps — unless they dropped out of art school and took to the road because they knew they couldn’t pay back their college loans.
Yeah, that could be like a lot of people I know, and antiquers for that matter.
Bruce Rodgers can be contacted at publisher@discoverypub.com.
> Editor’s Notebook Archive — past columns
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