Small Folk Art Carved Painted Wood Indian by John Smith Cold Spring KY 1934

  

This delightful naive piece of folk art is a hand carved and painted Indian chief in the tobacco store style. It is signed "John Smith 1934 Cold Spring, Ky".

I found nothing on the carver, but Cold Spring is a small town in Campbell County in northern Kentucky. The figure is 5 inches high at the front and 2 1/2 inches across at the shoulders. There's a round opening at the top that's 2 inches deep at the front of the headdress and 1 3/4 inches deep at the back.

A the bottom of the opening, there is a hole in the center and 2 small holes at the edge. The center hole may have been for turning the piece of wood. I'm not sure what if anything this cavity would have been used for - matches perhaps? Or maybe the carved just wanted the feathers in the front to stand out.

The carving and painting are imaginatively done - I especially like the headdress and the carved circles in the back to suggest hair, and the features of the face. The patina is nice, but there's some wear on the paint, and shallow chips on each shoulder. The nose, as on so many carvings of faces, has been chipped too, though the color is not much lighter than on the rest of the face.

There are also some light scuffs on the face and the area where the feathers of the headdress join at the bottom on the back.