Boat Models by the Score – and Much More
Where to start? The exhibition “Boat Models: Then and Now” at the Great Harbor Maritime Museum in Northeast Harbor is full of treasures, from the sleek half models that look like Sam Cady shaped canvases on the wall to an old steamship with pigs on board.
You might begin with a three-masted schooner made by a prisoner in the Bastille during the French Revolution. We read in an interpretive text that the incarcerated often turned to ship model making to pass the time, using bones and scrap wood for the hull, and human hair for the rigging. These models are “some of the most sought after on today’s market.”
The exhibition, organized by Sara Murray and members of the museum board, including Carl Kelley and Sydney Rockefeller, draws from private collections, several boatbuilding companies and Acadia National Park. The latter loaned a handsome shadowbox showing a sailboat race; a cutter rigged with paper sails; a gnarly pinnace and a bark in a bottle.
Was gluing together the million parts of an aircraft carrier a part of your childhood? Boat model making goes back a lot farther and served more purposes than arts and crafts entertainment, although that has remained an admirable pastime. Half models, for example, originally were utilitarian, whereas today they tend to be more decorative — a souvenir, of sorts, for over the mantel of the sailor away from his or her vessel.
Favorites in the show include the modest and humorous “Dream Lobster Boat” built by Albert Bohlin. Manned with several miniature figures, the boat’s outboard motor is an, ahem, “Evenride 400.” Even humbler is a birchbark canoe by John Snow, a Native American who lived in Northeast Harbor in the 1930s and sold his simple creations to tourists.
A couple of boat model makers appear worthy of solo shows. The likes of Lindsay Smallidge and Pandy Zolas offer a range of works, from the former’s handsome half models with sails to the latter’s Greek TREHANDIRI with its 2,500 drilled holes and wooden dowels.
There are three different versions of one picnic lobster boat, THE JERICHO, which still plies the waters around Mount Desert Island. The TITANIC, fittingly made of paper, stretches across a shelf. Not all is vessel: there’s a sofa from the U.S.S CONSTITUTION, a wonderful British shipping supplies shop sign and a Friendship sloop weathervane. Some of the most solid pieces are the work of Cranberry Isles artisans like Arthur Ham, Arthur “Chummy” Spurling and Herman Savage.
A large black submarine is actually motorized and capable of plumbing the depths, but for fear of entanglement in water weeds it was not part of the museum-hosted model boat regatta on Little Long Pond in Seal Harbor held on Aug. 7. The show itself offers a hands-on challenge to visitors: try and build a boat out of clay that will float in the basin of water provided.
When the museum changed its name from the Great Harbor Collection in 1998, it gained curatorial focus, mounting special shows each summer (a pared-down version of last year’s tribute to Ralph Stanley remains on view). “Boat Models: Then and Now,” on display through September, is one of the best exhibitions yet. Check it out.
Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Tues-Sat. To check dates and times, call (207) 276-5262.
Carl Little’s article on Matinicus painter Bo Bartlett appears in the 2005 Island Journal. He is a regular contributor to Maine Boats & Harbors magazine.