VERY RARE CARVED PINE AND SHEET COPPER WHALE AND SEA CAPTAIN WEATHERVANE, WESTPORT, MASSACHUSETTS, CIRCA 1850

Made for Captain Peleg Cornell of Westport, Massachusetts;

Sotheby's, New York, The Barbara Johnson Whaling Collection, Part I, December 11-12, 1981, lot 311;

Giampietro American Folk Art, New Haven, Connecticut.

Frank Maresca and Roger Ricco, American Vernacular (Boston: Bulfinch Press, Little, Brown and Company, 2002), pp. 276 (frontispiece) and pp. 290.

Sperm whales, immortalized in the character of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, are the largest toothed predator of modern oceans and have the largest brain of any creature that has ever lived. They were highly sought by New England whalers, both for their oily blubber and spermaceti, a pearly white liquid wax found in their heads, which is prized for its ability to make superior candles and lubricants. This unique vane, which accurately portrays a sperm whale and the tools of a captain who sought these leviathans, was clearly made by someone with intimate knowledge of both these remarkable mammals and the whaling trade.