Posted on 10/12/2022 1:59:39 PM PDT by big bad easter bunny
Bought this because it's so odd, it was buried for 50 years plus, up in New Jersey in a carriage house under some floor boards. I have looked at it under a loop, looks like just ink on stone no dot matrix. I think the stone is soap stone, weighs 42 pounds, 12 by 16, the original etching which is easy to find was done in 1948 by Gerome Kaplin titled "the Arabs" on what I think is a 42 pound piece of soap stone.
Never seen anything like it, Sotheby's is checking it out. Figured a Freeper might know.
His paintings sell for between $50-$100.
I don’t know how much a sculpture would be worth, but that’s the value of the lithograph “Arabs”.
Could be worth quite a bit.
I use google lens for items and most times pretty accurate.
Looks like a lithographic stone to me (although I am not an expert on prints). Looks like an American realist style (along the lines of Grant Wood. Thomas Hart Benton, and others). I would have dated it closer to the 1930s than 1948 but close enough.
I really like the abstraction; it grows on me the more I look at it.
I don’t think it’s super valuable. I think it could be used to make more prints if inked correctly.
It looks like a lithograph stone for this piece:
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/181363/arabs
carved on soap stone.... hidden under the floor boards... New England... this is basically the beginning of an HP Lovecraft story.
That’s a slab of lithographic limestone, with the image still on it. Normally, once the edition was complete, the image would be effaced from the stone, and used for other images. The same slab can (or rather could) be used over and over.
The limestone used in stone lithography comes from a quarry that is played out now. There is no more, no similar deposits have never been found, and the slabs in existence have become very thin indeed. Most lithographs today are printed from treated zinc plates.
This is not to be confused with offset lithography, which is a high-speed printing process involving the dots you referenced.
The object could be worth something. It might be worth something just for the limestone itself, which an artist could print from for decades after the effacing the image.
Don’t know HTML, sorry
https://www.invaluable.com/artist/kaplan-jerome-mjxhapdsrt/sold-at-auction-prices/
LOL
Back in my youth, I worked in a couple of art galleries that specialized in original prints (which are etchings, engraving, silkscreens, lithographs, and monotypes). We used pieces like this, though much smaller, to explain the printmaking process to customers. If you can find a gallery that features mid-20th-century American printmakers, they would probably love to have this.
Since you are not laundering large amounts of money (the only reason art is valuable other than aesthetics)
it is probably not worth much except to maybe a certain collector.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-laundering-sanctions-senate/index.html
Is that a lithograph of a couple of Democrats standing around trying to figure out their pronouns?
awesome, thats amazing you knew all of this. Thank you.
I went to art school in the 70s and took etching and silkscreen classes as electives. Printmaking had its own building, so I saw litho stones every day.
I even remember how they felt. They ARE kind of like soapstone to the touch.
A loupe (proper spelling) is a small magnifying lens unit that jewelers use in examining jewels or fine jewelry work. I’m sure you’ve seen them, no?
I really am looking for information, the market will tell me what its worth.
“A loupe (proper spelling) is a small magnifying lens unit that jewelers use in examining jewels or fine jewelry work. I’m sure you’ve seen them, no?”
I carry one with me at all times. Invaluable.
An etching in soap stone might be the source of the prints. Make an image of the stone, reverse the color and flip it…and see if it matches prints you can find. If they do…you found the stone on which the prints were created.
Just a thought.
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