Weathervane History Highlights

Weathervane History Highlights

by David Ferro

The history of weathervanes began in ancient Mesopotamia. The oldest one of record appeared in the literature about 4000 years ago. A wind vane was mentioned in an Akkadian fable, written between 1800 and 1600 B.C. The passage reads, “They look at the windvane for the direction of the wind.” Nearby, ancient Egyptians were also watching  wind direction. Ancient images of the temple of Luxor (inset) show tall poles with long cloth streamers mounted on the facade. The temple’s construction began under Amenhotep III, in about 1400 B.C. The Egyptian Abydos Temple of Seti I has a base relief depicting soldiers with banners blowing in the wind to show archers the wind’s direction. Art depicting the lighthouse on the Island of Pharos in Alexandria c. 260 B.C. (inset) shows two long streamers for indicating wind direction to approaching mariners. At about the same time in Chinese history, pole-mounted streamers also appeared.

The most famous weathervane of ancient history is a Triton figure (inset) in ancient Greece. It stands out due to the ancient text that exists describing it in detail. The images we see today of this vane depict interpretations of it but no one knows exactly what the weathervane looked like. The ancient Triton figure has been lost for centuries, but the building it rotated above still stands and is known as the Tower of the Winds. The marble tower is a Horologium (hour recorder) built in about 48 B.C. by Andronicus of Cyrrhus near the Acropolis in Athens. It is octagonal with each wall aligned to the eight principal wind directions. On each of the sides, a figure was sculpted in relief representing one of eight wind gods. These served as directionals for the weathervane that rotated above the marble roof. [Triton is considered the first “weather” vane due to the presence of the compass.]

The Roman, Vitruvius, first recorded the vane in about 25 B.C. Vitruvius’ treatise De Architectura, the only book on architecture to survive from antiquity, contains a description of the weathervane. ”On the sides of the octagon he (Andronicus) executed reliefs representing the winds, each facing the point from which it blows; and on top of the tower he set a conical shaped piece of marble and on this a bronze Triton with a rod outstretched in his right hand. It was so contrived as to go around with the wind, always stopping to face the breeze and holding its rod as a pointer directly over the representation of the wind that was blowing.”

Weathervanes were used throughout Rome on the roofs of wealthy villas at the dawn of the first millennium. M. Terentius Varro, “most learned of the Romans,” had on his farm a vane that could be read indoors by means of a connected compass dial. Centuries later, Thomas Jefferson, a renowned classicist, used the same idea for his home in Monticello.

Weathervanes In The Middles Ages

In the seventh to the ninth century, two different kinds of vanes developed in Europe; the quadrant in Scandinavia and the weathercock in the rest of Europe. Seafaring Viking warriors used a metal banner as a wind vane. They decorated their tall masts with richly gilded, quadrant shaped vanes (inset), which, unlike those used on land, did not give the wind’s true direction; they simply indicated a combination of the vessel’s and the wind’s directions. It was this combination that aided the Viking navigators in deducing the true wind direction and gave them the courage to venture as far as they did. Probably the oldest documentation of this is to be found on the picture stone of Stenkyra on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. The representation from 725 A.D. shows a wind vane at the top of the mast of a longship. This type of vane made its way from ships to the steeples of Scandinavian churches in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Some can still be seen in Norway and Sweden.

Bird motifs are the oldest known design used as wind vane pointers. As previously mentioned, the Akkadian vane was described as a bird in 2000 B.C. and then we have a Chinese bird vane mentioned in about 101 B. C. It’s not known if the “bird’ in each case was a rooster, but it is quite possible due to the importance of roosters in each culture. It would bolster the fact that roosters have been the most popular vane motif throughout history. The first mention of a rooftop rooster figure is from the mausoleum of the Flavier in North African Cilium in about 200 A.D. but the oldest rooster vane still in existence is the ‘Rooster of Ramperto’ of Brescia, Italy circa 820 A. D. (inset). It is believed that around this time, the pope decreed that each catholic church would bear a cock as a reminder of Peter’s betrayal of Christ: “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” (Matthew 26:34). English writer Albert Needham was the first to write of this claim, but evidence of the Papal decree has never been found. Two artifacts exist from the 11th century also depicting roosters. There is an 11th century drawing in the library in Rouen, France and the Bayeux Tapestry (inset) in England contains a depiction of a weathercock’s raising. This tapestry was made after the battle of Hastings in 1066 and depicts many episodes in the life of William the Conqueror. The English were the first to coin the term Weathercock, which means wind-blown cock. Roosters are used as a vane for several reasons, least of which is the fact its tail acts as a perfect wind catcher. The rooster, who because of its elevated position, is the first to catch the sun’s rays. He is the proclaimer of the day, a symbol of watchfulness and warding off evil, a symbol of resurrection and the promise of the return of Christ on Judgment Day. It also represents the victory of light over darkness, and it calls us to Morning Prayer.

As the Normans swept through England and Ireland, they planted the seeds of their own culture. From this, heraldry began to form during the 12th century. In a world of courageous knights and kingly grants, one’s coat of arms embellished upon a flag or pennant was the sign of honor and nobility. So important was flying such a flag that it required a royal license. Knights rode to war carrying their heraldic pennants, and upon a victory, their captain was granted the right to fly his crest high above the conquered castle’s towers. Throughout Medieval Europe, the privileged flew their coat of arms proudly. In France, there was a clear distinction between the pennant (pennon) and the bannerette (banniere). Pennants were for knights and noblemen with square-shaped bannerettes saved for the aristocrats and Lords. This system sustained until 1659 when the parliament in Grenoble rescinded the rule and allowed everyone to raise a weathervane. These cloth and leather flags and pennants did not last in the open elements and would eventually break down, so iron bannerettes were forged to replace them. The subjects and styles of weathervanes remained virtually unchanged through the middle ages. Emblematic bannerettes  are still a popular weathervane choice

During the centuries following the middle ages, weathervanes of all sorts of designs spread throughout Europe. While the history of American weathervanes starts in the 1600s, there are weathervanes in Europe dating as far back as the 1300s. Concentrations of these old weathervanes can still be found in use all over Great Britain. The book ‘English Weathervanes, Their Stories and Legends from Medieval Times to Modern Times’ by Albert Needham published in 1953, is an amazing record of several old weathervanes.

Weathervanes of Colonial America

With the settlement of the new world, immigrants brought weathervanes from their countries of origin. The oldest Weathervane in America still in existence was brought here by settlers from Holland in 1656 for their church in Albany, New York (inset). The weathervane sat atop the roof spires of the building’s many incarnations for centuries. Today, a replica sits in its place while the original has been retired to the church’s archives.

About a century later, the Americans started fashioning their own weathervanes. America’s first documented weathervane maker was the skilled Boston tinsmith, Shem Drowne. In 1716, he created a large Indian archer of copper and gave it glass eyes (inset). The weathervane sat on the Province House in Boston until 1876 when it became the property of the Massachusetts Historical Society; it remains in their collection today. In 1721, Drowne made a gilt copper rooster, also with glass eyes, for the New Brick Church in Boston (inset). In 1873, it migrated to the First Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts where it still resides. The original swallow tail banner weathervane made by Drowne in 1740 is still on the spire of Boston’s Old North Church (inset), where in 1775 two lanterns were hung to signal to Paul Revere that the British were coming. Two years later, in 1742, Drowne sculpted his most famous weathervane, a grasshopper (inset), for Boston’s Faneuil Hall; the grasshopper is his masterpiece. It is 52” long, weighs 38 pounds, is hammered copper with a gold leaf, has glass door knobs for eyes and a time capsule in its belly containing messages from people that worked on it throughout the centuries, starting with Drowne himself. Drowne’s Grasshopper weathervane has witnessed some of the most important events in American history, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Revolutionary War, and the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing.

Other notable colonial era weathervanes and their designers include a wooden fish with copper nails for scales by Paul Revere for his workshop, a scroll arrow by Rhode Island pewtersmith Samuel Hamlin for the first Baptist church in Providence, George Washington and the ‘Dove of Peace’ (inset) he commissioned for his Mount Vernon home as a commemoration for the end of the revolutionary war, and Thomas Jefferson who installed a horse weathervane on his roof at Monticello that is connected to a pointer and compass rose on the ceiling within so that he could see the wind direction be it day or night.

Victorian Era Weathervanes

The end of the revolutionary war inspired Americans, and among other patriotic themes, the Eagle & Arrow design became and remain one of the most popular weathervane subjects. Prior to 1860, weathervanes were individually made by anyone skilled enough to craft one. People created their own figures of forms they were familiar with from wood and painted the details on them. Farmers made animals, while people living on the New England coast fashioned ships, fishes, and mermaids. During the 1880s, James Lombard of Maine made roosters (inset) with fanciful carved and painted tail feathers so beautiful that some of his surviving pieces are exhibited at both the Shelburne Museum and the Smithsonian. Local blacksmiths forged more permanent designs out of iron for public buildings such as arrows and banners for meeting houses, horses for stables, and angels for churches.

Industrialization and the prosperous Victorian era saw Jonathan Howard of West Bridgewater Massachusetts creating a small selection of elegantly executed weathervanes during the 1850s through 1860s from copper. The fronts of his vanes were cast zinc and the backs were shaped copper sheet from wooden molds (inset). Copper became the material of choice for American weathervanes due to its durability and malleability. This inspired Waltham Massachusetts craftsman Alvin L. Jewell, and in 1860, he pioneered production style weathervanes. He worked with woodcarvers to create forms of a wide variety of popular subjects, and then cast permanent iron molds from them. A crew of laborers beat copper sheets into the molds and then soldered the pieces together to faithfully reproduce the original forms. Jewell’s simple stylized figures made especially effective vanes (inset). Each was cleverly modeled to appear full-bodied and lifelike from a distance. Weathervane makers still create in this ‘swelled-body’ style today. He published his line in a catalog showing accurate artistic line drawings of each figure with the prices listed. Jewell placed ads in newspapers and magazines in addition to wholesaling the weathervanes to men who would carry and sell them by wagon and trains to all corners of the expanding country. His unique business model was copied by several others during the next 60 years and birth was given to such notable weathervane manufacturers as J. Harris & Co. and the celebrated L.W. Cushing & Sons (inset), both of Massachusetts, and J.W. Fiske, A.B. & W.T. Westervelt, and J.L. Mott Ironworks all of New York. Horses, being one of the most important animals at the time, were a very popular weathervane subject, so several equestrian designs filled weathervane catalogs of the period (inset). Farm animals and roosters were also a staple in all catalogs. Other figures that captured the minds of the time were Indian figures and a variety of exotic animals.

During the years between the American civil war and World War I, molded copper weathervanes were in high demand and it was the golden age of the weathervane maker. Roofs all over America were displaying their fashionable copper figures. Together, the weathervane makers of the era produced thousands of weathervanes from their collective molds. Shapes of birds, fishes, and animals of every kind were still popular but the fascination with recent mechanization generated interest in intricate models of carriages, trains, fire-fighting equipment (inset), farming machines, and steam ships. Highly decorative scrolled arrows and banners enjoyed a revival during this time as complementary ornaments for Gothic revival style homes. The fascination with weathervanes led Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the famous sculptor, to design the 18 foot tall and 800-pound gilded weathervane of the nude huntress ‘Diana” for Madison Square Garden in 1891.

20th Century Weathervanes

World War I was fatal to many of the big weathervane companies and they slowly faded away. Most of them went out of business by the time of the great depression and many of the molds were tragically sold for scrap. Those that survived found their way to private collections or museums. A few are still yielding weathervanes.
The early to mid-twentieth century saw changing architectural styles and a growing middle class. This led to the popularity of elaborate but inexpensive flat silhouette weathervane designs. Companies such as ‘Todhunter’ of New York (inset), ‘Kenneth Lynch & Sons, Inc.’ of Connecticut, and ‘The Household Patent Company’ in Pennsylvania, produced high-quality silhouettes. These intricately cut designs tell more of a story than the old statuesque figures. Most were just black but some had multi-colored painted detail. Many of the designs are whimsical and appealed to people tired of war and the depression. ‘Whitehall Products’ in Michigan along with other small companies were producing small affordable aluminum weathervanes with a wrought iron look for those who still desired a colonial accent on their roof.

The appreciation of American weathervanes as a significant art form began in the 1920s. Pablo Picasso claimed that “[weather]cocks have always been seen [in art], but never as well as in American Weathervanes”. Edith Gregor Halpert, director of the American Folk Art Gallery, believed in the importance of the weathervane as Folk Art and worked to promote them as such. She obtained all the fine old weathervane examples she could find, acquired what remained of Cushing’s original molds, and in the 1950s, even reproduced a few of Cushing’s pieces to sell at a premium to collectors. The efforts of Halpert and others such as Electra Havemeyer Webb, founder of the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, who worked to garner attention to the beauty of weathervanes led to a resurgence in their popularity in the 1960s. Weathervane figures set record prices at dealers and auctions in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. The old factory made figures were the most desirable for their sculptural presence and the fact that they were simple to authenticate as antique because they were not easily faked. Weathervanes became fashionable. Weathervane designs adorned kitchenware, fabrics, greeting cards, magazines, postage stamps, and many other items of everyday life. A Philco television magazine advertisement featuring Bing Cosby had an antique horse weathervane displayed on top of the T.V. in the ad. Many Hollywood movies used weathervanes as props such as the golden fish weathervane inside Audrey Hepburn’s apartment in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ and the telescope weathervane that indicated Mary Poppins arrival and departure in the movie. Some businesses used their logos on weathervanes to promote their company. The early supermarket chain A&P used the letters on stylish arrow weathervanes. Howard and Johnsons had one design for their restaurants and another for their hotels (inset). Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants featured an image of Colonel Sanders on their cupola shaped roofs (inset).

As antique weathervane prices grew in the 1960s through 1980s, so did the theft of many of these wonderful old pieces of folk art. There are countless stories of weathervanes being stolen from homes, barns, and public buildings everywhere. Some unscrupulous dealers dispatched steeple jockeys to retrieve an overlooked old vane that had been spotted still in use. One of the favorite old wives’ tales of weathervane theft lore is that they are stolen by helicopter while the occupants are away, although this has been documented only once.

While a few individuals and small companies continued to make weathervanes of all kinds through the 1970s and 80s, southeast Asia geared up to mass produce copper weathervanes and sell them to the American market. The first pieces exported to the U.S. were of very low quality and very few have survived. Although their quality has improved only slightly, the low price of these weathervanes is attractive to the average homeowner, and the “Imported” weathervanes have been the prevalent weathervanes sold in America since. These weak replacements for the proudly handcrafted weathervanes of the past are manufactured in large quantities by machine pressing copper sheets into preformed molds. The general workmanship of these vanes is mediocre. Many of them are intentionally designed to resemble American antique vanes, and unfortunately, unsuspecting buyers often pay high prices thinking that they are. Some of the figures are sheet steel made to look like old copper and they rust out in the first year or two of use. Buyers Beware!

Weathervanes Today

Antique weathervanes have achieved record sales figures over the last few decades. In 1990, the collector’s world was shocked when a Boston Folk Art Dealer and collector by the name of Stephen Score paid $770,000 at the Sotheby’s Auction of New York, for a rare and exceptionally beautiful molded copper Horse & Rider weathervane made by J. Howard & Co. In 2006, there were three record-setting sales. In January, a rare figure of Lady Liberty was sold in New York at Christie’s for $1.08 million. In August, an exquisitely detailed train weathervane went for $1.2 million at the Northeast Auctions in New Hampshire. But it was on October 6, 2006, at Sotheby’s in New York that a rare and elegant figure of an Indian by J.L. Mott Ironworks sold for a whopping $5.84 million. The buyer was Jerry Lauren, Executive Vice President of men’s designs at Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation. This weathervane still holds the record for the highest price ever paid for a weathervane.

Today, a handful of artists worldwide have taken up to elevate creating weathervanes to a new level. These self-taught masters have studied the history and art of weathervanes and are dedicated to designing and building the most imaginative and well-made weathervanes in history. While there are companies that still produce weathervanes from molds, their designs are limited to the molds they have. However, individual artists hand shape their weathervanes one at a time. They are sculptors rather than manufacturers, so any design imaginable can be created. Custom designs are their passion. They take pride in making a replica of a customer’s Yacht rather than a generic sailboat, the family pet rather than a simple dog, a prize Holstein instead of just a cow or a prized automobile that its owner treasures. Individual efforts were once less sophisticated than those of production companies. But no more. Today, solo artist works (inset) are much more complex, beautiful and unique – sculptures of fine art.  It sets them apart from anything that’s produced from molds.