Buckles Blog: From Paul Gutheil #3

Friday, October 17, 2014

From Paul Gutheil #3

6 comments:

4pawfan said...: These two photos of the circus parade are from Harold Dunn's collection. A lot of the figures were carved by Charlie Dech in these photos.

Charlie also worked for Mr. Tibbals for two years doing a lot of his animals and figures in his display. The model display at Circus World also had figures carved by Dech as he had carved both sets of animals and figures for the Bob Clarke model displays.

If any of you have seen the circus model display at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, the circus parade ( given to the museum by Roy Arnold ) was also carved by Dech.

Many of the figures in the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington, Ky. contain his work as well.

His figures are also in private collections when both the Gorden Potter models and the Roy Clarke displays were sold.

Harold also carved many of the figures in his displays and I believe his son kept most of these and they were not sold to Mr. Tibbals.

p.j.; 17 October, 2014 13:47
Paul Gutheil said...: Shelburne display is superb, not to be missed. Opposite the Circus Parade are magnificent antique carousel animals.
Shelburne Museum overall is a great place to visit. As Buckles knows BAC played there for a number of years. Those were some of those days!; 18 October, 2014 17:27
Dick Flint said...: Having known Roy Arnold, he always credited several others with doing portions of his parade but the wagon work was essentially his. The research he did on his wagons also helped to first clarify what we know about the history of many of the Barnum & Bailey parade wagons. Charlie Deck did most, if not all, of Roy's horses and elephants. (The elephants in the Life magazine spread of his parade in the early 50s were carved by Frank Updegrove but when replaced went to Elmer Litch of Southwick, MA. Some of Litch's models subsequently went to Bill Donahue before going into the Chappie Fox Guernsey's auction). By the way, if anyone has an extra copy of the Gordon Potter auction catalog, I'd like to get a copy!
Dick Flint
Baltimore; 19 October, 2014 15:27
4pawfan said...: The information that I got from the Shelburne Museum years ago was that Mr. Arnold had credited Charlie Dech ( which I could tell his work on the horses, elephants, etc), Harry T. Prior, Milo Smith, and Charles Lockier.

The Potter collection also had unsigned wagons that had to have been built by either Mr. Prior or Milo Smith. ( I have not found any Charles Lockier wagons in the Potter collection. There might be some, I just didn't see them. Peter Gorman has a large part of Potter's collection that was not in the sales catalog.) As there are "twin" wagons that are in both collections. I don't think the Backstein's were the only ones who built 5 or 6 copies of the same wagon (twins) and then sell them to different collectors over the years. A few of the wagons in the Potter collection were built by Jean Leroy also. The bulk of the early Potter collection of the Ringling Baggage wagons had been built by Robert Good of Allentown in the 1930's. The later part of the Potter collection was built by Bert and Bill Beckstein which they would sign or have metal tags on. You can tell the early Bert Backstein wagons from his son's by the use of carved wooden springs on Bert's wagons and the real steel springs used by Bill.

I always had the feeling that Charlie had also done a lot of work for Bill Donahue.

Peter Gorman or maybe Maynard's may have a copy of the catalog available.

p.j.; 21 October, 2014 11:42
Dick Flint said...: For a good number of years sometime in the 1940s-1960s era, Frank Updegrove would visit and stay at Gordon Potter's just to build models for him and carve horses.
I do recall Roy Arnold stating very specifically that five people were involved in creating his Circus Parade and that matches your list, all of which are familiar names to me and of people who lived in the same geographic region.
Deck, who had a drinking problem, bounced around from model builders home to model builders home, living there to carve horses. He would disappear for months at a time but suddenly surface on someone's doorstep for a few weeks lodging and some cash. He stayed in Roy's basement but one time Mr. Arnold (as I always knew him) caught Deck with a lady of the evening. The always proper Mr. Arnold, I was told by people who knew about this episode, shouted "Get that ... that ... that ... out of this house!" A proper New Englander, he never could say the word!
Dick Flint
Baltimore; 21 October, 2014 14:14
4pawfan said...: Frank Updegrove was a six horse driver on the Ringling show. He also took photos of the show back then and his photos are very rare as he had a fire at his home. I believe the only ones that I remember seeing are in the Harry Hertzberg collection or maybe the Scaperlanda collections, and all those collections should be in the Witte Museum in San Antonio after the Hertzberg Museum closed in 2001. But I am not 100% as I have not been over there since it was packed up and moved.
I may be wrong, but I was thinking that Updegrove was also the one that built Hertzberg the model circus that was displayed at the Museum. There was a plaque giving him credit on the display I believe. I remember hearing that Updegrove built it in the winter when he was off the road. This would have been done before Hertzberg's death in 1940.
p.j.; 22 October, 2014 11:55

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