I purchased this at my local charity driven thrift store and would love to know more about it. I found out that it is a cigarette dispenser and a music box. It's made out of a metal. The music box works very well and the metal has a nice patina. The cigarette dispenser pulls out easily and slips back in to fit nicely together. The bottom of the music box is wood and is painted gold. It has a logo or symbol on the bottom in the wood. I believe the cigarette holders themselves may be brass or copper but I am not sure. I don't know anything else about this item.
Approx. 24 x 18 (plus the frame size). The painting was reframed in 1969 by the El Paso Art Center in Texas. The woman who signed the back and framed it was the owner of the company and her and her husband started this company in 1949. It is still in existance today - visit their website for more info! Below is the info. on the Artist.
Ammi Phillips (1788–1865), a self-taughtNew Englandportrait painter, is regarded as one of the most important folk artists of his era.
Phillips was born in Colebrook, Connecticut, and began painting portraits as early as 1810. He worked as an itinerant painter in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York for five decades.
In 1924, a group of portraits of women, shown leaning forward in three-quarter view and wearing dark dresses, were displayed in an antique show in Kent, Connecticut. The anonymous painter of these strongly colored works, which dated from the 1830s, became known as the "Kent Limner," after the locality where they had come to light.
Stylistically distinct from those of the "Kent Limner," a second group of early-19th-century paintings emerged after 1940 in the area near the Connecticut–New York border. Attributed at the time to an unknown "Border Limner," these works, dating from the period 1812–1818, were characterized by soft pastel hues, as seen in the portrait of Harriet Leavens, now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University.
It was not until 1968 that Ammi Phillips's identity as the painter of both groups of portraits was established. Additional works were identified, showing the artist's transition from the delicate coloration of the Border period to the bold and somber works that followed. By 1976, there were approximately 400 paintings securely attributed to Phillips, who is now recognized as one of the most prolific American folk painters of his time.
His work was featured on a United States postage stamp in 1998.
So I was looking around online trying to see about what this marionette would be worth but I can't find a single Hazelle marionette wearing a press hat like the one we have found. Does anyone know if this is rare or common? Or about how much it is worth? Any help would be appreciated!
