It sits on a wall for years. A pretty work, but artist unknown.
Curiosity finally kicks in, and the chase is on.
That’s how it happened for Naomi R, who emailed me April 3rd with a photo and a fun story:
“I recently came across your website after identifying a Richard Blow pietra dura work in Charles’ parents’ apartment. It was quite the challenge with the ‘M’ being the only marking, but we were so thrilled to learn more about the artist who created this piece we’ve both admired. We loved that it’s been on the wall of Charles’ childhood apartment in Chicago for years. We assume his father bought in the ‘60s or so. We’ve always admired it and neither one of us had ever seen anything quite like it (but his mother didn’t know anything about it). So I went down the internet rabbit hole. ..”
A big mahalo to Naomi (aka “Alice”) for dropping down that rabbit hole and returning from Wonderland with this fascinating addition to our Society database. The work features what seems to be two eyes staring out of an inverted black pyramid — a little touch of the surreal worthy of Naomi’s adventure.
She concludes her email: “Here’s one more for your amazing online library, in case you haven’t already got it. ”
In fact, we do have two other variants in our database. The first, MSID “Crescent Eye Pyramids #1” appeared in October 2019 as Lot #107 of the historic Wright/Edelsberg auction. It sold for $4060. (unsigned, 7.5 x 10.5 inches). Like Naomi’s mosaic, it also features a two-eyed pyramid. The Wright-Edelsberg auction catalogue itself includes a photo of a black and white sketch of what could be the original “cartoon” used as the model for the mosaics in this series. The second variant in our database, “Crescent Eye Pyramids #2,” showed up on Chairish in June 2020 with an asking price of $4800 (unsigned, 8 x 13 inches, final sales price unknown). But this Chairish mosaic only features a single “eye.”
In Naomi’s honor, we are giving her newly discovered mosaic the Montici Society ID (MSID) “Naomi’s Crescent Eye Pyramids #3”
Michael Schmicker