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Nettie Covey Sharpe Collection
of Quebec folk art and Canadiana
The Nettie Covey Sharpe Collection
The Nettie Covey Sharpe Collection comprises 3,313 objects
covering three centuries of creative and domestic activity. It
is one of the richest collections of Canadiana and Quebec folk
art assembled by any collector in the twentieth century. The
collection includes more than 300 works of art, religious and
popular sculptures, paintings, drawings and prints. In addition,
it contains 175 pieces of furniture such as armoires, a
sideboard and a food locker, chests of drawers, a writing desk,
large and small tables, armchairs, chairs and benches, beds and
a cradle, as well as a number of large and small chests, both
plain and decorated. There are also many, often decorated,
household objects, including quilts, blankets and hooked rugs,
over 1,000 ceramic and glass pieces, and numerous metal tools
and utensils, not to mention toys and games.
"In every category of objects in the collection,"
remarks Jean-François Blanchette, Curator of Canadian
Material Culture at the Canadian Museum of Civilization,
"there are unique pieces of inestimable value for the study
of Canadian heritage. This is no ordinary collection, but the
crème de la crème."
Ethnologists have long recognized the value of the collection
assembled by Mrs. Covey Sharpe in her heritage home in
Saint-Lambert, Quebec. In Jean Palardy's masterful 1963 study
of French Canadian antiques, entitled Les meubles anciens
du Canada français, several rooms of the Covey
Sharpe house and a number of its furniture pieces are described
and shown in magnificent colour photographs. Art historian J.
Russell Harper, in an article published in the prestigious
journal Antiques in 1973, cites what are, in his
opinion, the most beautiful pieces of folk and religious art
ever assembled by a private collector in Canada: crucifixes,
animal sculptures, sculptured and decorated boxes, decoys,
paintings and more. Finally, R. W. Finlayson features Mrs.
Covey Sharpe's collection in his exceptional, long-awaited book
on the famous Portneuf bowls, Portneuf Pottery -
Potterie Portneuf (1976). He mentions the rarity and the
uniqueness of a number of her pieces. Among others, her
collection of late nineteenth-century ceramics decorated with
colour images of Canadian sports is described as one of the
largest and most complete in existence.
Adding to the 648 pieces acquired from Mrs. Covey Sharpe in
1977 by the National Museum of Man (later the Canadian Museum
of Civilization) and the 50 pieces acquired in 1991 by the
Canadian Museum of Civilization, this new acquisition of more
than 3,300 objects makes the Nettie Covey Sharpe Collection the
most substantial private collection of Canadiana and Quebec
folk art ever donated to a Canadian museum.
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