The Vanishing American

"It's fun to watch them," said an attendant at M.I.T.'s Charles Hayden Memorial Library last week. "They walk around with a half-smile as if they were really enjoying it." What the M.I.T. students were crowding in to see was not the usual collection of old masters or the latest in advance-guard painting. Instead, the Institute was exhibiting a sample of an ancient and vanishing American art: the carved wooden Indians and trade symbols that merchants used to advertise their wares 100 years ago.

In a corner of the ultramodern glass and stone library, a group of Indian warriors in full headdress proffered bunches of cigars. There was a dumpy "Punch," a tailor's gentleman in checked coat and torpedo beard, a handsome mermaid from the stern of an old sailing ship and a jaunty figure labeled "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" extolling "World's Fair Cut Plug --Five Cents." Said a student engineer: "This is the kind of art I can appreciate."

The display was the work of Collector Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, an old M.I.T. man ('95) and board chairman of Rhode Island's Narragansett Brewing Company. A longtime Americana fan, Brewer Haffenreffer started collecting wooden Indians in the '303 as a promotion stunt for his company. Then it became a passionate hobby.

Collector Haffenreffer's agents roamed through country villages and old storerooms picking up examples of every type. Some of the best go back to New England craftsmen who specialized in one-of-a-kind carvings: turbaned sultans and fez-topped Turks, girls in daring short skirts, ballplayers, cops, firemen, sailors and even replicas of store owners, as well as Indian sachems. After 1850, the demand was so great that some of the more popular models were in mass production.

In its heyday the industry turned out figures for every trade, from cobbler to pawnbroker; after 1900, it began to die out. A few Indians are still coming' out of New England wood shops, but they are reproductions without the oldtime dash and color. In 20 years Collector Haffenreffer has bought scores of the ancient figures for his private museum. He refuses to put a price on his collection, but the 22 figures he has lent M.I.T. are valued at $25,000, and the price will go up as more & more of the old chieftains disappear from the U.S. scene.

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