ATTRIBUTED TO SAMUEL ROBB, NEW YORK, THIRD QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

The Indian figure became an important fixture outside an American tobacconists' storefront in the nineteenth century. As an advertising tool, these fine carved figures often reflected the taste and success of the proprietor, and while production flourished between 1850 and 1880, the New York workshops of Samuel Robb, Thomas White, William Demuth and Thomas V. Brooks, were at the forefront. The painted cigar store Indian princess featured here is adorned in a feathered headdress with her right arm positioned high to display a pack of cigars, a characteristic pose often seen in the work of Samuel Robb, as is the abstracted rendering of the composition an attributed mark of Robb's work. In an advertisement from 1881, Robb offered "Show Figures and Carved Lettered Signs A Specialty, Tobacconist Signs in great variety, on hand and made to any design, Ship and Steamboat Carving, Eagles, Scroll Heads, block letters, Shoe, Dentist and Druggist Signs, etc." (An American Sampler: Folk Art from the Shelburne Museum, p. 98). By the early 1890's, however, this phenomenon would pass as city ordinances required these figures be placed inside shops to avoid the obstruction of street traffic. This relocation to inside the shop, along with the marketing of chain stores, would be the onset to the demise of both the cigar store Indian and the independent tobacconist. For similar examples see Robert Bishop, American Folk Sculpture, fig. 478.