-Songbird on Stump (or Bird Toy Bank)- still bank c. 1912 - 1929

The A.C. Williams Company created this cast iron ‘Songbird on Stump’, or ‘Bird Toy Bank’. As a mass-produced item, this work exists within the cultural context of early 20th-century industrial America, at a time when manufacturing was rapidly changing the landscape of work and leisure. The company specialized in novelty items, which often reflected the social and political attitudes of the time, though ostensibly innocuous objects like this one served as a form of cultural record, encoding the values of this time. Consider the sentimentality attached to nature and the rural ideal. Was it a form of escapism or a commentary on the increasing distance between urban life and the natural world? This work serves as a reminder of the narratives we construct around objects and their ability to carry meaning across generations. How does this object prompt us to reflect on our own relationship with nature, commerce, and the stories we tell ourselves?