Richly Patinated Anthropomorphic Heddle Pulley

This richly patinated Baule heddle pulley comes from the estate collection of Thomas McNemar of Lexington, Virginia. I started making bases for McNemar in the early 1990s when he became one of my first regular customers. We would not meet in person for another twenty years when Tom, now eighty years old, was starting to think about how to liquidate his massive collection of Ivoirian pulleys and invited down for a weekend visit. McNemar lived in a compact two-story Victorian house with a generous attic on a quiet residential street. On the second floor, in a well-lit study, he kept an antique, oakwood map cabinet whose numerous flat drawers were flush with old pulleys, all with four-digit numbers discretely painted onto one leg. Many of the pulleys, including this example, were on bases made in the 1960s by one of McNemar’s brothers. On the occasion of my visit to Lexington, I took several dozen pulleys on consignment. Those I left, or which Tom declined to sell, would emerge some years late at a series of posthumous auctions. AHDRC number 0183491-001. $600

5″

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