Articles» IN FOCUS: Whirligigs
Whirligigs have become a staple feature of Folk Art this century alongside decoys, and weathervanes, and shop signs, but it is not always easy to give a precise definition of a whirligig nor is it clear always to say what they did. Decoys clearly had a specific job so too a weathervane and a shop sign and these are clear cut.
Whirligigs meaning a carved figure with spinning arms or legs is a most general definition and items like this seem to have been made even in antiquity. It may be that these were actually toys for children and some whirligig figures do seem to have been toys such as the dark wood carved and unpainted figure illustrated here.
If one were being fussy one might separate out figures with spinning limbs (toys) from true whirligigs whose spinning arms form propellors or blades. You can see this in almost all of the whirligigs illustrated here. The purpose of the whirligig's distorted arms is to catch the breeze. One might say the true whirligig was a carved figure designed to live outdoors but even then one would have to discriminate between the functional practical whirligig on a field fence and the garden ornament.
Our rare English Somerset whirligig we know as we are lucky enough to have a full provenance on it sat on a farm fence in a field back in the days when Thomas Hardy was chronicalling through his novels the gradual disappearance of the old country way of life - the suggestion is that it was a form of scarecrow so it had a practical function, when the wind set the arms spinning it (obviously) moved and so help to deter the crows and so on.
When a whirligig is set in motion by the elements it is quite entertaining, in the way of an Aeolian Harp, the soulless elements bringing to life the equally soulless and inanimate puppet figure - so even when a whirligig is supporting a practical goal - it is also a form of entertaiment. So for this reason we also see whirligigs sometimes sited not on field fences but just as decorative features in gardens or on buildings, forming part of a weathervane for example, or simply in a garden much a set of wind chimes.
In the 19th century in certain parts of the U.S.The Carolinas and Vermont, it seems, but elsewhere whirligigs were popular in gardens and here too they may have also served to scare off birds. The interest in whirligigs gave rise to all sorts of unusual forms and the quantity and variety of them in the U.S. gave rise to interest in them in the early 20th century as a form of indigenous and unique American art or folk art form. Much of the staple folk art that is collected now was inherited by us from America and so this is where the interest in whirligigs came from.
At some point people started to collect old ones and put them in their houses and in museums.
Of course manufacture of whirligigs continues and contemporary folk artists continue to make them, ordinary ones for the garden or specialist craft pieces for indoors and for the collector and our sailor whirligig by contemporary decoy and folk artist Martin Scorey is such a one (see illustration).
Currently we show 3 whirligigs on our antiques website.