Vintage Sewing Box, 1920s

Details

Description

Beautiful example of a tramp art box
Reclaimed decorative element
Very good condition, key missing
24/16/15 cm
Tramp art (literally … Read more Beautiful example of a tramp art box
Reclaimed decorative element
Very good condition, key missing
24/16/15 cm
Tramp art (literally "Art of the tramps" or "Art of the vagrants") is an example of folk art combining wood carving and the use of reclaimed wood: cigar boxes, crates, and other decorative objects. It appeared in the United States during the second half of the 19th century, and more specifically from the 1870s onward. It continued until the 1940s before declining. Traces of this art can also be found in Eastern Europe during the same period.

Many men, women, and children, including prisoners, mostly from the working or middle class and almost all anonymous, devoted themselves to this type of folk art, the definition of which remained vague for a long time, before Frances Lichten, an employee at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, coined the term "tramp work" in 1959, and then Helaine Fendelman, with her book *Tramp Art: An Itinerant Folk Art* published in 1975, gave it a name.

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