The Magazine Antiques

In assembling what Roddy describes as their “collection of collections,” the Moores have studied a variety of regional artifact types and have amassed collections of many of them. At one point, they owned over a dozen carved and inlaid long rifles from southwest Virginia, and in the 1970s they were among the first to assemble a collection of early southern face jugs—eventually acquiring some forty examples. Yet, they have long since sold both the rifles and the face jugs and focused their interests in other arenas. They continue to build their collection of colorful Shenandoah Valley Germanic fraktur, one of the finest anywhere (see Fig. 7). It consists principally of birth and baptismal certificates, but also contains far rarer house blessings, valentines, and patriotic pieces. A baptismal certificate painted by the elusive artist Peter Bernhart and decorated with twelve colorful parrots, ranks among the scarcest and most pleasing (Fig. 7, top).

It is refreshing to discover that the Moores are no less intrigued and excited by largely unstudied areas of material goods that most collectors would never even notice. Among them is a collection of nineteenth-century flyswatters, each with a carefully carved bentwood handle connected to a flexible screen head that is neatly bordered with colorful fabric tape. In the same vein they proudly display a group of colorfully painted slingshots, many carved with snakes, made by two North Carolina Cherokee artisans in the 1930s, and sold to tourists who visited the reservation (see Figs. 1, 6). Among other unexpected treasures: the six-foot-long “calling horns” made by German settlers in Greene County, Tennessee; wooden crossbows made by locals to hunt game; cast-iron trivets made at the local Washington Iron Furnace; postcards of southern people and places now long gone; carved and painted picture frames; whirligigs. There is also a collection of the iron and pottery lamps that provided light to pioneer homes as well as cast-iron bowls and plates made in Virginia foundries.  

One of the couple’s current interests grew out of visits to daughter Allison in New Mexico, where Sally was drawn to the jewelry of the Santo Domingo Pueblo. Soon they were placing the turquoise and plastic jewelry all around the house. Of course they also have been studying the material closely and will serve as guest curators for an exhibition at Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in May 2011, for which they will coauthor a catalogue.1

In a corner of the den, the Moores have placed a Grayson County cupboard that highlights two of their collections: the first consists of Wythe County split-handle baskets, lined up across the top of the cupboard, and the second, which fills the shelves, consists of colorful Shenandoah Valley and southwest Virginia wool and linen blankets arranged to maximize the impact of color and pattern (see Fig. 9).

In the breakfast room two cupboards are filled to capacity with regional earthenware. One displays a number of animal figures from the northern Shenandoah Valley, and the other boasts distinctly bulbous “Great Road Pottery,” most of it made by artisans working between Wytheville, Virginia, and Knoxville, Tennessee (see Fig. 12). Although utilitarian, these ceramics constitute some of the South’s most creative work. When the Moores acquired their first example, nearly a quarter century ago, it set them on a trail leading to material that was previously unexplored.  Roddy wrote an early article on the subject,2 and the Moores now own dozens of key pieces, including three by Tennessee potter Christopher Alexander Haun, whose brilliant glazes and lively designs are as fine as any in the region. 

Over the years the Moores have owned a dozen important painted chests, including two by the talented Johannes Spitler of Shenandoah (now Page) County, and six by the Huddle family of Wythe County, as well as a dozen early nineteenth-century boxes painted by the Stirewalt family of New Market in Shenandoah County (see Fig. 8). Roddy has published articles on both the Huddle and the Stirewalt pieces, the latter coauthored with Richmond antiquarian and collector Marshall Goodman.3 Moore and Goodman are collaborating on an article about yet another group of previously unrecognized Shenandoah County chests, and Roddy and Sally recently acquired a fine example that is now in their bedroom (see Fig. 16).

Roddy’s research into the Rich family of Virginia and Tennessee has revealed a shop that flourished in the western reaches of the Shenandoah Valley during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.4 Fleming K. Rich made a variety of furniture, but is best remembered for distinctive safes, usually ornamented with punched tins with sunflowers in two-handled vases. Rich’s brother-in-law, George W. Moyers (b. 1814) from Grainger County, Tennessee, continued to produce examples that closely resemble those made in Virginia. The Moores own one of the finest Tennessee examples, with punched tins that retain their boldly painted green leaves and stems, a bright white vase, brilliant yellow sunflowers with dramatically blackened centers, and an intense Prussian blue background (Fig. 10). Though now muted by two centuries of exposure, the colors still steal your breath away.

I spent Saturday night with the Moores, and the next morning they coaxed me into the car for their Sunday routine—a winding ride of some twenty miles for a breakfast of biscuits and gravy at the Blue Ridge Restaurant, across the green from the Floyd County Courthouse. The sun was high in the sky when we got back to their house, and it was time for me to leave if I had any hope of returning home by evening. But suddenly Roddy was opening drawers and doors to show me all the things I had missed, and I realized that we had scarcely scratched the surface.

“So when are you coming back?” he asked, smiling, and pointing discreetly toward the ceiling.  I must have looked puzzled. “The attic,” he explained. “And so what have I missed?” I asked. “For starters, the collection of children’s chairs,” he said, “and of course, the blacksmith-made horse bits, and…”

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