Help IDing Gehrig Bust

[whiteymet]

Hi Mark:

Thanks for the info and posting the photo of your bronze bust.
I am not sure mine has been repainted over the bronze if that is what you meant.

Please see the photo of the bottom of my bust. I would assume that if it had been painted over the bronze the bottom would not have been painted,
and the bottom looks original to me.

Does the bottom of your bust look like mine?

Hope to see you in Cleveland this summer.

Best,

Fred

Originally Posted by perezfan

Fred-

It is from the 1940s. There was a dated trophy awarded to Joe Sewell with this same huge Gehrig Bust. I have the bust portion without the trophy. The bust is rare, and is a stand-alone piece. So someone simply mounted it to a base with a dated Placard, to create the trophy that was originally presented to Sewell.

Yours is the fourth I’ve seen in the past 30 years. There is mine, yours, the Sewell Trophy version, and another that sold via Hunt Auctions a few years back.

It should be noted that yours is painted, and this is not original to the piece. In my opinion, it is far more attractive with the original simple bronze finish. I would post a pic of mine, but am sure that the image would appear sideways. I’ve pretty much stopped posting pics for that reason.

You can email me if you want to see what the bust looks like in its original state. If you prefer the original, I bet it’s possible to strip off the new/existing paint. Mike Hoevet posted a nice thread about this process prior to his passing. His example involved one of those 1800s Lamp Bases. Perhaps you can use the search function to see what product and procedure he utilized. I believe many people found it to be helpful.

[perezfan]

That definitely sheds a new light on it, Fred. It looks like that is original ceramic indeed. So I would speculate the answer is one of two things....

Perhaps the same mold was used for both a ceramic and a bronze version of this Bust. Maybe they were sold both ways, and the customer could simply choose his preference.

It's also possible that a later cast was made from the original Bronze, and that a ceramic version was subsequently created from that cast. A pretty common practice, recreating figural pieces.

I think the first scenario is the far more likely of the two. But either way, I no longer feel that your version is a repainted bronze. Perhaps someone else here has more info.