Sewer Pipe Art French Bulldog

When ambling through the aisles of antique malls, I keep an eye out for any vin­tage Frenchie or near-Frenchie items. Peer­ing around cor­ners and into the backs of shelves, it feels like a dif­fer­ent type of Easter egg hunt try­ing not to over­look hid­den bull­dog trea­sures. While in an antique mall this sum­mer, I glanced in the direc­tion of a dusty glass cab­i­net and was star­tled to be in a stare-down with a rather large and impos­ing reddish-brown fig­ure, its glar­ing white eyes below an unmis­tak­able pair of bat ears. This dog was surely estab­lish­ing him­self as alpha to any­one walk­ing past!

Sewer Pipe Art French Bulldog tag

Intrigued by this fel­low, I checked his price tag to see if it held any infor­ma­tion about him. At first, I thought I was read­ing the tag wrong, “Sewer Pipe art?” “What the heck is sewer pipe art?” Now mind you, I’ve attended my fair share of art his­tory lec­tures. An enjoy­able topic, but those after-lunch classes are tough. Sit­ting in the dark, warm and sleepy, the dron­ing hum of the pro­jec­tor, the professor’s sooth­ing, monot­one voice as slides of Car­avag­gio, Goya, Picasso, and Man Ray click by. Could I have slept through the sec­tion with Sewer Pipe Folk art? Why have I not heard about this one? Not the name of an art move­ment you’d eas­ily forget.

Sewer Pipe Art head

Look­ing closely at the piece through dusty glass, noticed it’s rusty color had a clear var­nish or glaze over it. Was it metal or ceramic? No one was in the booth to ask, so snapped a few pho­tos for ref­er­ence and resolved to learn more about this odd fel­low. Once home, Google and I began dig­ging for more infor­ma­tion. The search “Sewer Pipe Art” pulled up ran­dom bits of infor­ma­tion. Seems this was an art form who’s hey­day was 1890 to 1950 peak­ing in the 1920s. The most pro­lific region was Ohio and sur­round­ing states, as they have the best clay to pro­duce sewer pipes; a mate­r­ial more durable and fit­ting to the task than metal. Some­times the artists signed their pieces and some­times not. The fierce Frenchie in the antique store was most likely a one-of-a-kind piece made after-hours with left­over clay.

There is a sem­i­nal book on the topic, Illus­trated Hand­book of Ohio Sewer Pipe Folk Art, by Jack E. Adam­son pub­lished in 1973. In doing research, was lucky enough to find it for sale on eBay with scans of the cover and a few inside pages. The book is obvi­ously a labor of love, full of black & white images and looks to be printed and assem­bled by a local quick print shop. Among the images of lions, head busts, Indi­ans, and other dog breeds, there was another French Bull­dog fig­ure! The 88-page book is now a collector’s item in its own right and prices range from $80–140. A few copies are cur­rently avail­able through Amazon.

The eBay list­ing with the page scans is now gone, but did find ACTUAL Sewer Pipe Folk Art pieces, includ­ing another French Bull­dog, at the site of an auc­tion house named Garth’s. (Image right.) Garth’s uses the term “Sew­er­tile” in the descrip­tion of these pieces. To view all pieces from past auc­tions, search their Auc­tion Archive with that term. You’ll be treated to quirky sculp­tures of pigs, eagles, tree stumps, and even a base­ball player and foot­balls. You can see the light­heart­ed­ness of the artists cre­at­ing these pieces. They weren’t try­ing to define an art style. They were hav­ing fun!

In a recent return to the local antique mall the star­ing, glar­ing Frenchie was still there. Maybe some­one will come by and claim him as their own. He’ll cer­tainly make a dis­tinc­tive watch dog. Or a great hyp­no­sis tool!

To learn more –

Books by Jack E. Adamson

Read the sec­tion about Sewer Pipe Folk Art in the fol­low­ing book for free at Google books. The link takes you to the cor­rect page.

See exam­ples of Sewer Pipe Folk Art from past auc­tions at Garth’s Auc­tions. Use the search term “Sew­er­tile” in the Auc­tion Archive pull-down menu option.

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