How Weather Vanes Became Staples of American Folk Art

Investment banking executive Claire Gruppo serves as the senior managing director at Terra Nova Capital Partners. Passionate about reading and the arts, Claire Gruppo owns a collection of American folk art.

One folk art piece with practical application is the weather vane, pioneered by Leonard W. Cushing, a 19th-century manufacturer of wooden models that farmers affixed to roofs to help them predict the weather. Looking for something beyond the utilitarian, Cushing, perhaps inspired by a Currier & Ives lithograph of a legendary race featuring the steed Ethan Allen, commissioned ornamental carver Harry Leach to “carve some horses.”

While there had been earlier makers of fanciful weather vanes, the result of this appropriation of a popular motif ensured the popularity of ornamental weather vanes and whirligigs. A.L. Jewell capitalized on this idea, transforming his successful metal casting business in Waltham, Massachusetts, almost entirely to weather vanes in the 1860s. Today, weather vanes from this era are in demand and likely to be showcased indoors instead of outside.

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