Tramp Art

Tramp Art
By Jan Lee
As Seen In July/August 09 Issue of Conneticut Cottages and Gardens

Owning a business that is as varied as mine, part antiques dealer, part gallery owner, part wood worker leads me to meet some of the most interesting people and often times even more interesting objects. Over a decade ago I hired a local woodworker to refinish an antique Chinese demilune table. A few weeks after I dropped it off I came back to the man’s shop located on an upper floor of a Jay Street Brooklyn industrial building. The table was stunning, perfectly refinished with a satin glow while retaining its worn and battered surfaces. I knew this man was a master of his trade from just this simple project. I learned from subsequent repair and refinishing projects we collaborated on that my new found friend and later woodworking mentor was originally from St. Petersburg, Russia. He had a classical woodworking apprenticeship starting at age 14.

I eventually hired him and for nearly a decade we traded skills, he taught me about wood working and I taught him the ins and outs of the complex and often trying antiques market and custom furniture design business which I grew to eventually be represented in two New York Showrooms.
One day I started to see numerous notched boxes piling up in the workshop, which I now owned completely, and I learned that someone named Cliff was dropping them off for repair. Each had a little nick here and a scratch there, an entire chunk was missing on some. They were about the size of a tissue box covered in small triangular notches with a stepped design like that of a ziggurat topped with a finial. Most of the boxes had cloudy layers of oxidized varnish making the color a uniform dull brown.
As the weeks went by I saw the boxes, one by one, receive entirely new strips of notched mahogany carefully inlaid where there was previously a gap. With the precision of a surgeon the “teeth” were fitted to look as though they were always there, next a matching stain was applied. I used to hang out with my Russian friend amidst the sawdust and wood chips in the workshop and chat about what we thought was the history of these curious and “primitive” folk art pieces that were no longer limited to just boxes; there were picture frames, and even clocks and sculpture.
We surmised these were Polish, Russian, Pennsylvania Dutch, perhaps South American. We wondered what they were worth.
All of our questions were answered by Cliff Wallach, the owner of what turned out to be one of the world’s largest and best collections of “tramp” art. Cliff, at the time, lived in D.U.M.B.O. ( down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass), Brooklyn which is where my workshop and showroom is located, only a few blocks away. Cliff was humble and through a distinct New York native accent he explained to me that “I have a ton of this stuff in my showroom”. Little did I know at the time, he had already published a book on the subject, appeared on T.V., in print, and lectured on what is often overlooked in the antiques market, this subject of “tramp art”. We traded stories about what antiques shows we liked , which ones we didn’t like, and which ones we’re scheduled for in the coming year. I learned about tramp art through osmosis and casual conversation with Cliff and our master repair man as each piece was lovingly restored with as much care as its original maker put into it.


Cliff explained the intriguing history the “tramp” artist. “Like the art form it is steeped in intrigue & romance” he said. Contrary to the often repeated fable of the itinerant tramp whittling a cigar box into a charming keepsake in exchange for a few nights rest in the farmer’s barn during harvest season, Cliff paints an entirely different and more plausible if less dramatic account of the origins of this art form.
He derived his account from over two decades of scholarship and literally thousands of examples that have come through his hands. He points to numerous examples that include such motifs as hearts, a symbol of love. Starting from this iconic symbol he builds upon the notion of love being a central theme in much tramp art. Although the craftsmen had no formal training and probably no formal education they were making objects that reflected what their heart felt, for their fiancé, their family, their friends, or even their own parents who may have been far away. The tramp art craftsman was a man who worked primarily in one place, not at all the traveling hobo antiques dealers make him out to be. He was a family man who could have worked in any number of industries, but at home he sat quietly and with a simple pocket knife and relaxed by making art using materials that were cheap (discarded cigar boxes available all over the world) and glue. As Cliff points out “over 40 ethnic groups practiced the art form in this country from the Lebanese man who made a frame for his daughters wedding in 1908 to the tramp art box with the Ten Commandments on its top in Hebrew”.
In the decade that my workshop made repairs for Cliff I saw countless picture frames, boxes, figures, and at one time a museum quality five foot tall frame with its own easel entirely covered in chip carving complete with eagles and the stars and stripes. It was head and shoulders above us and truly magnificent. It was a “once in a lifetime” piece as Cliff puts it.
What struck me about many tramp art pieces is the modernity of them. Even though many of the examples I see are over 75 to 100 years old, they possess an almost pop art quality that transcends their humble origins. Being a collector of African and Chinese folk art, I see the common language of the folk artist in tramp art. What is initially dismissed as “primitive” and created by the “tramp”, upon further examination is often a milestone in modern design once isolated. As mid century artists like Roy Lichtenstein and Chuck Close held a microscope to their oversized images sharing with us the individual “pixels” that made up the image, the tramp art craftsmen used the notches and stepped configuration to build up the three dimensional form while celebrating the process, the texture and the technique in a naïve and subconscious way.
My Russian friend eventually moved on to greener pastures, seeking lower overhead in the Midwest. My relationship with Cliff Wallach remained even though he moved his home and showroom from DUMBO, Brooklyn to Greenwich Connecticut. We see each other at antiques shows and we marvel at his latest pieces. Cliff has transformed, through editing and scholarship, a once humble and overlooked folk art genre into a “must have” for some of the most sophisticated collections from the Hamptons to Geneve.