HIGHLY IMPORTANT AND EXCEPTIONAL 'CROWN POINT-OLD GABRIEL' WROUGHT SHEET IRON ANGEL GABRIEL WEATHERVANE, ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM HENRY FORSTER, CROWN POINT, NEW YORK, MADE IN 1822

White Church, Crown Point, New York;

Giampietro American Folk Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

Randall Beach, "Stolen off a church, Gabriel weather vane surfaces after 15 years," New Haven Register, July 3, 2005;

"Silhouettes in the Sky," Antiques and the Arts Weekly, June 13, 2006;

Bethany Kosmider, "Historic weather vane sold," Press-Republican, December 19, 2007;

Lita Solis-Cohen, "Angel Gabriel Weathervane, Made by Blacksmith in 1822, Sold," Maine Antique Digest, March 18, 2008

David Smith, "Gabriel Weathervane Sells Privately In Seven-Figure Deal," The Newtown Bee, March 20, 2008, p. 66;

Bethany Kosmider, "Weathervane returns to Crown Point church," The Sun, June 10, 2009.

This iconic, nearly 200 year old, American weathervane, made of hand-hammered sheet iron into the figure of the Angel Gabriel blowing his trumpet, originally flew over the White Church in Crown Point, New York, built in 1822. It is composed of several wrought sheets of sheet iron manufactured in a mine and foundry in Crown Point, New York that produced iron used in the creation of the U.S.S. Monitor and the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge several decades later.

Gabriel, one of the seven archangels, is the herald proclaiming the coming of the Messiah – here with flowing and extended lines. During the 1820’s, America was gripped by a spiritual revival known as the Second Great Awakening which stressed personal vision and salvation through Divine Grace – it was period of great religiosity in America.

The weathervane flew atop the first White Church until the church was dismantled and a new church built in its spot in 1883. The vane flew again for sixty years before the second White church was struck by lightening and burned to the ground. The Gabriel vane was pulled from the ashes unscathed and placed in a barn for safe keeping until the third white church was completed on Memorial Day 1946. Shockingly this highly historical vane was stolen from White Church III on November 11, 2003. Remarkably it was subsequently found and brought back to the church in 2005.

This sale marks the next step of this highly important historical American artifact.