Rare Cast Iron "Dumb" Stove of George Washington, possibly J. L. Mott Iron Works, New York

The draped standing figure holding a document. 

47 1/2 x 14 1/4 x 8 in.

Literature: Similar examples of "dumb stoves" (a stove with no opening in the room in which it is used), are in the collection oat Winterthur and Colonial Williamsburg. The Williamsburg example is illustrated and discussed in Deborah Harding, Stars and Stripes: Patriotic Motifs in American Fold Art, Rizzoli, NY 2002, p. 231. Another was in the Harold Corbin Collection of American Iron which was exhibited at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, in the summer of 1988. Note: Dumb stoves were usually not connected to the firebox, but connected to a stovepipe to a functioning stove on a floor below. This technique ensured that two rooms could be heated by one stove. The designer of this model, Alonzo Blanchard (1799-1864), chose Washington as our young country was preoccupied with the nation's first president as a symbol of unity. Blanchard probably based his design on the 1826 marble statue of Washington by Francis Chantrey, installed in the Massachusetts State House.An identical George Washington Dumb Stove was sold at Skinner's Boston, on August 10, 2014, lot 773 for $8,610.