Important Gilt and Painted Molded Copper Goddess of Liberty with Flag Weathervane, Possibly by J.L. Mott Ironworks, New York, circa 1880

hollow bodied figure with one outstretched arm, the other hand holding a red, white and blue-painted American flag.

Edmund Fuller, Woodstock, New York;
Private Collection;
Steve Miller American Folk Art, New York.

"The 1995 Fall Antiques Show at the Armory" (advertisement), Folk Art Magazine, Fall 1995, vol. 20, no. 3, p. 17.

Original, weathered gilt surface. Red, white and blue paint on the flag and sash with craquelure and flaking. Minor seam separations. Very slight crack on one side of the neck. Mounted on a modern stand.
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Beginning about 1865, weathervane manufacturers marketed designs that appealed to the patriotic and expansionist spirit, and several versions of the Goddess of Liberty weathervane were produced through the turn of the twentieth century. Most exhibited common features, combining classical garb, a Phrygian cap, and an American flag.  In ancient Rome the Phrygian cap was worn as an emblem of freedom by ex-slaves, and in France revolutionaries adopted the wearing of Phrygian caps after the storming of the Bastille, which accounts for its symbolic importance in American.  In this Liberty weathervane, the goddess wears a Phrygian cap, and her pointing hand indicates wind direction, but it also symbolically directs the nation forward, advancing the course of empire.¹

Of impressive size and appearing to retain its original gilt surface, this weathervane is among the best of the Goddess of Liberty weathervanes to survive. A similar example is in the Jane and Gerald Katcher Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery.²

¹ Richard Miller, “Folk Sculpture: For Diversion and Utility,” in Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, edited by Jane Katcher, David A. Schorsch and Ruth Wolfe, (Seattle: Marquand Books in association with Yale University Press, 2006), p. 237.
² Ruth Wolfe, Jane Katcher, and David Schorsch, eds., Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana, I. (Seattle: Marquand Books, 2006), pp. 237-39, 382-83, no. 153.