Boy with Dog 19th Century Folk Art "Sandpaper" Painting filagree hairpin held in the collection of

held in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass

I must say that since first seeing it

the White House

but also just as a lovely little object for display

cattails or tall grasses

Boy with Dog 19th Century Folk Art "Sandpaper" Painting filagree hairpin held in the collection ofThis marvelous thing is an antique "sandpaper painting" a technique popular in the mid 19th century, of creating charcoal drawings on paper coated with marble dust, which creates a surface with a fine grit like sandpaper. These are a pretty fascinating genre, typically monochromatic and most often depicting Hudson River landscapes, though one occasionally finds portraits and examples incorporating color, like this one. These most often were done by