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Caroline Brooks Butter Carving Stereoviews

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Western Americana Start Price:10.00 USD Estimated At:75.00 - 125.00 USD
Caroline Brooks Butter Carving Stereoviews
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All 4 images are of The Dreaming Iolanthe, by Caroline S. Brooks. American sculptor Caroline Shawk Brooks always had an interest in art and, after marrying a farmer, she made her first butter sculpture in 1867 as a way to promote the product. Not using molds, she was admired for utilizing traditional tools including a butter paddle, broom straw, and a "camel's-hair pencil". In 1873, she made a sculpture of the blind princess Iolanthe from Danish poet and playwright Henrik Hertz's verse drama King René's Daughter. Dreaming Iolanthe, as it was known, was exhibited at a Cincinnati gallery in 1874 for two weeks and attracted more than two thousand people keen to catch a glimpse of the sleeping princess rendered in dairy product. Continuing on the same subject, Brooks made a bas-relief bust of Iolanthe for the Centennial Exhibition held in Philadelphia in 1876 and a full-sized sculpture which was shipped to France and exhibited at the third Paris World's Fair in 1878. She went on to study art in Paris and Florence, and although she later tended to forgo dairy for the more traditional medium of marble, she always continued to use butter as a material. An interesting side note- she was the daughter of Abel Shawk, who invented the fire steam engine.