There are original Roger Smith “The Peach Seed Man” carvings and figurines. His works has been on display at the White House and various art museums and colleges. Featured articles of his works include, Traditional: Tennessee Lives & Legacies by Robert Cogwell and Weird Tennessee by Roger Manley.
These items and scenes are all hands carved from peach seeds. All in mint condition and includes pieces that date back to 1968.
Individual items range from 1-4 centimeters and there are also complete scenes and themes such as a football game with teams, sidelines, coaches and referees. There is also a church with choir, pastor, church members, ushers and even cars in the parking lot and trees in the yard. Both feature dozens of individual characters .
Inherited
Yes
Hi Rod,
Thank you for contacting Mearto with your appraisal inquiry.
Roger Smiths' Peach Seed carvings are wonderful and a wonderful example of self-taught or Outsider art, which is defined as art created by individuals who operate largely outside the established art world—people with little or no formal artistic training and often no connection to galleries, museums, academic institutions, or prevailing artistic movements. The use of "found" materials is a key aspect of Outsider art and one that Smith has completely mastered.
Mearto appraisers primarily base our evaluations on the recent auction sales of similar works by the same artist; when those are not available, we look to the primary market and what galleries and dealers are offering similar works for and gauge accordingly.
I have not found other examples of Smith's Peach Seed carvings being sold through either galleries or at auction but I have a good handle on the Outsider and Self-Taught art market and think that such large sets of these would probably bring between $800 and $1,200 if offered by auction houses such as Slotin Folk Art (Buford, GA).
You mention you also have a football group - that is not included in this evaluation since I can't see any of them.
A gallery or dealer that might be interested in representing Mr. Smith would be Andrew Edlin in New York City; he is the organizer of the Outsider Art Fair and regularly advises contemporary artists.
Museums that collect Outsider Art are the American Folk Art Museum, Intuit and the American Visionary Art Museum. If you're looking to advertise this collection, you might consider the publication, Raw Vision.
Please let us know if you have additional items to appraise, or questions/concerns, and thank you again for using Mearto.
~ Delia
