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"Animals in Folk Art\nAD examines remarkable pieces of Americana inspired by pets, livestock and wildlife\nLehigh County, Pennsylvania, artist James Christian Seagreaves was known for his interpretations of Pennsylvania German symbols. Fryling&amp;#39;s Antiques often carries a selection of his work, including a bird whistle, $400, signed &amp;quot;JCS&amp;quot; and made between 1980 and 1985.\\n\\nFryling&amp;#39;s Antiques\\n\\n 1717 Becker Road\\n\\n Green Lane, PA 18054\\n\\n 215-234-0596\\n\\n www.frylingsantiques.com\\n\\n(June 2008)\nScreenwriter Paul Attanasio and producer Katie Jacobs&amp;#39;s Beverly Hills residence, with interiors by Karin Blake, combines East Coast tradition with an eclectic point of view. &amp;quot;There are walls I looked at for two or three years before I found something I liked,&amp;quot; Blake says of her design, which evolved over a decade. The dining room is accented by a 19th-century bull weathervane and tin stars. (December 2006)\nActor Oliver Clark owns four studio apartments in the Gramercy Park section of Manhattan, which he has rebuilt into the only known one-bedroom duplex with four baths and four fireplaces. That would be a design feat in itself, but it also serves a higher purpose, as the setting for a collection of American folk art that is nothing less than extraordinary. Carnival pieces, trade signs, caricatures from less enlightened times\u2014wherever you sit, wherever you walk, they&amp;#39;re above you and next to you and sometimes in your way. It&amp;#39;s all somewhat mind-bending. (June 2005)\nCandice Bergen and her husband, Marshall Rose, took on the delicate project of renovating an East Hampton summer cottage that he built with his late wife, Jill, preserving the house&amp;#39;s essential character while softening the overall mood. Designer Elissa Cullman and architect Jaquelin T. Robertson, who designed the cottage 20 years earlier, were called on to rethink the interiors. &amp;quot;I find it difficult to live in houses that have no sense of humor,&amp;quot; says Bergen, and in each room Cullman placed several pieces of folk art\u2014such as the livestock weathervanes in the dining room\u2014that provided Bergen with a touch of whimsy. (April 2007)\nA Malibu house built for an artist by Thornton Abell became the temporary home of designer Karin Blake and her husband, William Levine. Blake transformed the entrance to the studios\u2014which were originally used for painting and sculpting\u2014into a sitting area, while a closet that housed art supplies became the library. Pictured: She found the circa 1870 rocking horse in Maine, and a game board from about 1850 is on the wall. The designer&amp;#39;s collection of primitive furniture and folk art took on new life in rooms finished with simple raw materials such as poured concrete floors and walls sheathed in either plain white plaster or board-molded cement, which gives the impression of wood grain. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve learned a lot from this house,&amp;quot; Blake says. &amp;quot;I used to match my interiors to the architecture. Now I understand that contrast can be much more rewarding.&amp;quot; (October 1993)\nBefore Doppler radar and even before the barometer, the weathervane was the surest way to forecast a change in climate. Now the decorative finials are collected as folk art and serve a more ornamental purpose. The ones from Ken and LizAnne Jensen&amp;#39;s West Coast Weather Vanes are free-form and repouss\u00E9 copper, each handmade to order. Pictured: The Red-Shouldered Hawk&amp;#39;s beak, talons and wing banding are gold-leafed.\\n\\nWest Coast Weather Vanes\\n\\n 377 Westdale Drive\\n\\n Santa Cruz, CA 95060\\n\\n 831-425-5505\\n\\n www.westcoastweathervanes.com\\n\\n(June 2006)\nSusan and Jerry Lauren&amp;#39;s folk art-filled Manhattan apartment includes a John Hewson quilt, a ram weathervane attributed to Cushing &amp;amp; White and a Felipe B. Archuleta carved leopard. The Laurens collect American objects only, and only those possessing the greatest integrity of original finish\u2014&amp;quot;We don&amp;#39;t doctor or restore or improve,&amp;#39; &amp;quot; he declares. &amp;quot;Form aside, what we look for is scale, detail, rarity. And we don&amp;#39;t see ourselves as collecting all the world&amp;#39;s whirligigs and weathervanes\u2014it&amp;#39;s sculpture we collect.&amp;quot; (October 2003)\nAlthough Myron Goldfinger is perhaps best known for his large sculptural buildings in the United States and on the island of Anguilla, he considers his &amp;quot;modest vacation houses&amp;quot; in New Mexico and Westchester County, New York, to be among his best works. In New Mexico, his living room\u2014&amp;quot;the largest space in the house&amp;quot;\u2014looks out to the mountains and valley. Goldfinger&amp;#39;s wife, June, an interior designer, filled the rooms with folk art. &amp;quot;Our collection has an inherent roughness to it,&amp;quot; she notes. Before the couple met, each collected folk art; together they have assembled animal pieces by Southwest artists. (October 2007)\nKarin Blake didn&amp;#39;t intend to collect American folk art. It was simply part of the landscape in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she grew up. &amp;quot;I&amp;#39;ve been exposed to folk art all my life, and it has stayed with me,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;It appeals to me because it&amp;#39;s not only colorful, it has a sense of humor as well. I love the feel, the warmth and the primitive aspects of it.&amp;quot; Though the California-based interior designer also collects weathervanes and game boards at her residence in Malibu, for the past 12 years she&amp;#39;s been particularly drawn to metal shooting-gallery targets from the 1920s and 30s, like the one pictured above. (September 2007)\n&amp;quot;Some people like castles. I&amp;#39;ve always liked barns,&amp;quot; says David Davies, whose converted barn on New Jersey&amp;#39;s north shore houses a splendid collection of American folk art. He became interested in Americana in the early 1960s, when he saw an exhibition at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York. &amp;quot;At the time,&amp;quot; Davies says, &amp;quot;I was trying to understand contemporary art, things like the minimalism of a 30-foot wire stretched across a room, so it was a relief to see folk art, this simple, loving form. I was drawn to weathervanes for their strong physical presence, their form; they often have a whimsical quality too.&amp;quot; Pictured: In the master bedroom\u2014once the hayloft\u2014the original beams define a composition of turn-of-the-century horse vanes. (June 1988)\nThe Dorset, Vermont, house of Alvin and Annie Schlesinger is filled with folk art, including the paintings and freestanding sculptural forms that he and his late first wife, Dorothy, had collected. The animating idea behind decorating the house was to provide a setting for pieces that in themselves were so arresting they defied one not to stop, look at and all but converse with them. Pictured: In the parlor, there&amp;#39;s a big self-important-looking rooster, which happens in fact to be important. It was made by the most sought-after of carousel carvers, Gustav Dentzel of Philadelphia, and according to Alvin Schlesinger, has either a brother or a sister in the folk art collection of the Smithsonian Institution. (June 2001)\nWhen fashion designer Lauren Sara purchased a Colonial Revival house near Philadelphia, she had the vines that covered the exterior cleared and gutted the interior. &amp;quot;My goal was a loftlike space,&amp;quot; she says. Besides needing room for herself and her two sons, Sara required space for her collection of American folk art. But not just any space; she wanted rooms that would have the feel of a gallery. &amp;quot;I wanted the backdrop to go away so that you wouldn&amp;#39;t notice anything but the objects. My walls are as white as they can be, and there&amp;#39;s no variation.&amp;quot; Spearfishing decoys from 1900 to 1940 are arrayed at the door to one of the bedrooms. (June 2006)\nFor designer Elissa Cullman, New York&amp;#39;s Americana Week, which includes the American Antiques Show and the Stella Americana Pier Show, is a rich source for furniture, folk art and eclectic pieces. Unlike most designers, Cullman is a folk art expert. She was a curator at the American Folk Art Museum in New York for five years before becoming a designer and has collected folk art for decades. Pictured: RJG Antiques offered a 1940s sea horse weathervane, top; circa 1850 barber poles; a 1922 hooked rug, center; and five golden plover decoys, a rare find, says dealer Russ Goldberger, since many were left to disintegrate after shorebird hunting was banned 80 years ago. (June 2007)\n&amp;quot;Each object becomes a piece of art,&amp;quot; designer Karin Blake says of her treatment of folk art in clients Alberto and Stacy Valner&amp;#39;s Los Angeles house. She placed an antique rocking horse on an 1890 sideboard in the entrance hall. (November 2009)\nThe 4,500-square-foot house that actor Malcolm McDowell and his wife, Kelley, built north of Los Angeles showcases their extensive folk art collection. The barnlike living area is designed &amp;quot;along the lines of the studio in London in which I lived for many years,&amp;quot; Malcolm McDowell says. The couple filled it with comfortable furniture and folk art pieces. &amp;quot;This house anchors me. It is comfortable and a fun place. It is where we come to get away from our careers. The art is an expression of the happiness we feel here,&amp;quot; he says. (December 2009)"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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