Earl Stetson Crawford

Saorge Village (Alpes-Maritimes area in southeastern France)

1933

The image depicts a restaurant on New York's Mott Street with ornamental iron work on the balconies. There are six figures in the scene in various stages of contrast. Mott Street is considered the unofficial Main Street of New York's Chinatown. Ella Fitzgerald sang it best: “And tell me what street compares with Mott Street in July? Sweet pushcarts gently gliding by.” CFW Mielatz was an early influence on the drypoints and etchings of Martin Lewis. This piece was created in 1906 and it is signed in pencil. It is part of the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art C.F.W. Mielatz American, 1860-1919 Born in Bredding, Germany in 1864, Mielatz emigrated to the United States as a young boy and studied at the Chicago School of Design. Mostly self-taught, his first prints were large New England landscapes reminiscent of the painter-etcher school of American Art. Around 1890 he started to produce prints of New York City and by the time of his death, the number totaled over ninety images. He was a master technician in the field of etching, reworking many of his plates to get the exact feeling he was seeking. Mielatz was a member of the New York Etching...

This impression is #22 Carol Wax originally trained to be a classical musician at the Manhattan School of Music but fell in love with printmaking. Soon after she began engraving mezzotints she was asked by the renowned print dealer Sylvan Cole to exhibit at Associated American Artists Gallery, launching her career as a professional artist/printmaker. With the publication of her book, The Mezzotint: History and Technique, published by Abrams, 1990 and 1996, Carol added author and teacher to her credits. In the ensuing years she has expanded her repertoire of mediums beyond printmaking into other works on paper and painting. In compositions reflecting an appreciation for antiquated machinery and vintage textiles, Wax creates imagery that, in her own words, “… speaks to an inner life perceived in inanimate objects.” She uses stylization and imagination to reinvent subjects, transforming an ordinary typewriter into a monumental icon...