A ZINC POLYCHROME PAINT-DECORATED CIGAR STORE FIGURE OF A 'RISING STAR'

Realizing the advantages of the material, William Demuth began creating a selection of his tobacconist figures in zinc. The "Rising Star" (no. 62) was advertised in Demuth’s brochure for $65. A copy of this brochure can be found in Fredrick Fried, Artists in Wood: American Carvers of Cigar-Store Indians, Show Figures and Circus Wagons (New York, 1970), p. 46. For a similiar example of a "Rising Star" figure see Ralph Sessions, The Shipcarvers’ Art: Figureheads and Cigar-Store Indians in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, 2005), p. 146.