J. W. Fiske & Company
J. W. Fiske & Company of New York City was the most prominent American manufacturer of decorative cast iron and cast zinc in the second half of the nineteenth century.[1] In addition to their wide range of garden fountains, statues, urns, and cast-iron garden furniture, they provided many of the cast-zinc Civil War memorials of small towns throughout the northern states following the American Civil War. These were commonly painted to imitate bronze.[2]
The entrepreneurial founder, Joseph Winn Fiske (May 22, 1832 — October 20, 1903
Fiske's designs ranged from the naturalistic foliate designs that were the stock-in-trade of
Fiske's great rival in the decorative cast iron field was Jordan L. Mott's J. L. Mott Iron Works of New York City.[6]
Since the later twentieth-century, unmarked pieces of decorative cast-iron of appropriate date are commonly attributed to J. W. Fiske, to improve their market value.[6]
See also
Notes
- ^ The main source for this article, is Barbara Israel, "The metalwork of J.W. Fiske and Company," The Magazine Antiques, March 2000.
- ^ Carol A. Grissom and Ronald S. Harvey, "The conservation of American war memorials made of zinc," Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 42.1 pp 21-38)
- ^ Dates in: William Richard Cutter, Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Middlesex County, Massachusetts, vol. iv (1908:1535.)
- ^ Fiske had a long-term arrangement, established in 1869, with the foundry of E. G. Smyser of York, Pennsylvania, who contracted not to provide Fiske designs under their own name (Israel 2000).
- ^ Fiske had in partnership his two nephews, John Minot Fiske (1853- ) and Joseph Winn Fiske (1857- ): Cutter p. 1535.
- ^ a b Israel 2000.