Rare lamps depict a larger memorial that dots the nation's landscape

The story of artist Ernest Moore Viquesney and his single famous sculpture is a story that, until recently, has played out mostly on the back roads of the American art world and along the byways that bind together the hamlets and smaller cities of this nation. Included among those byways would be the ones that linked Viquesney's Spencer, Ind., birthplace with his adopted home of Americus, Ga.

And that, perhaps, is as it should be, given that Viquesney's rather narrow fame now rests on his one and only sculptural triumph, "Spirit of the American Doughboy," a depiction of an American World War I soldier advancing against the enemy, rifle with bayonet gripped firmly in his left hand, his right arm raised to hurl a grenade.

Copies of Viquesney's seven-foot World War I soldier stand in parks and courthouse squares across America, reminders in ageless bronze or stone of each community's sacrifice in the great war to end all wars. Some of the Doughboys are made of sheet bronze or copper laid over a copper frame, the same construction method used in the Statue of Liberty. Not an entirely surprising choice of construction, given that Viquesney was the son of two French sculptors.

Approximately 130 full-size Viquesney Doughboys are known to survive today, many in places like Axtell, a town of about 500 people in northeastern Kansas. In 1925, residents of Axtell shelled out about $1,200 for one of Viquesney's statues. With base and plaque, the total cost was a little over $1,800, most of it raised at town dances and box lunch socials. It took the citizens of Axtell three years to amass the money for their memorial, but the Axtell Doughboy still stands today and is proudly featured on the town's spare, no-nonsense website.

Unfortunately for collectors of World War I memorabilia, that same durability was not built into a line of American Doughboy statuettes and table lamps first manufactured by Viquesney in Americus, and later in Spencer and several other locations. But these small versions of Viquesney's best-known statue may be poised to become a very hot item on the collectibles market.

A "Spirit of the American Doughboy" statuette in good condition recently sold on the Internet for a little over $800 and lamps in very poor condition and missing major parts are being offered for between $300 and $400.

The diminutive Doughboys were made of relatively fragile "white metal," an alloy containing a large proportion of tin or lead, not unlike the composition of a child's tin soldier. The lamp and statuette were delivered to customers with the left, rifle-bearing arm detached and instructions on how to attach it without glue, solder or screws. A tenon on the end of the arm had to be wedge-fitted into a socket on the body of the statuette.

On the lamp version, touted in advertisements in "American Legion Weekly" as the " Spirit of the American Doughboy Art Lamp," the shade and bulb socket are supported by the soldier's upraised grenade-throwing arm. Although thousands of these replicas of the full-size statue were made and sold in the 1920s and 1930s, very few show up in the collectibles market today and the ones that do are often badly damaged. Both arms on the statuettes are easily broken and the lamps tend to be top-heavy and unstable, which may account for their scarcity.

It was that apparent scarcity that first intrigued Les Kopel of Oxnard, Calif., current owner of his maternal grandmother's Doughboy lamp, bought by her in a Muskegon, Mich., furniture store in 1923. The lamp's original clip-on shade, red Flanders poppies on a blue parchment paper, has been replaced, but otherwise, Kopel's lamp is in original condition.

Kopel's interest in the lamps and statuettes recently spurred him to create an website exclusively devoted to locating more of Viquesney's American Doughboy figures, including the full-size public statues and the home versions. Both Americus and Spencer have the full-size Doughboy statues. Kopel says his main interest in starting his Internet quest is to preserve Viquesney's legacy.

"No, I'm not an antiques dealer; in fact, it was partly my poor luck in obtaining any information from antiques dealers about my Doughboy lamp that was the reason I started digging around on my own," Kopel says. "When I started my website, I figured it had to be the most narrow-interest category on the Internet; the fact that it has generated this much interest surprises me more than anybody. So yes, I am trying to stimulate interest in these items as a means of preserving them," he says.

There has been long-standing interest in Viquesney's various works in his home state of Indiana, according to Kopel.

"Nationally, however, you were lucky to see a Viquesney Doughboy show up on (Internet auction site) eBay once in five years; now they've been appearing at the rate of about one a month since last August and in widely varying states of repair," Kopel says.

He has seen old newspaper articles indicating as many as 25,000 of the smaller versions of the Doughboy may have found their way into American homes over the roughly two decades they were manufactured.

"Presently I know of less than 50 surviving lamps and statuettes, and those are about equally split as to each type. All of the lamps I've seen for sale on eBay have been remnants, missing their electrical hardware, and were simply sold as statuettes. There are probably less than a half-dozen lamps in existence that are in working order," Kopel says.

According to Alan Anderson, archivist for the Sumter County (Georgia) Historic Trust, Viquesney arrived in Americus in October, 1905. He worked for an Americus marble company on designs for marble monuments then being erected at Andersonville National Cemetery and at the nearby site of the former Civil War prison camp.

"I've never been able to figure out why he landed in Americus, but he certainly enjoyed being here," Anderson says.

Viquesney began manufacturing all versions of his Doughboy in Americus sometime during 1920 or 1921. "He had been in Americus since 1905 and in that time he must have made many friends and developed financial sources," says Anderson, "he was quite the entrepreneur." There is some indication that Viquesney gave away statuette versions of the Doughboy as a sales promotion for his full-size statues. But apparently he was not the most astute business manager and his manufacturing business ran into financial difficulty fairly quickly.

In January, 1922, the artist sold his interest in the statue business and all rights to the Doughboy image to prominent Americus resident Walter Rylander.

Rylander was the builder, in Americus, of the Rylander Theater as a smaller version of the famous Fox Theater in Atlanta. The Rylander recently underwent a lavish restoration similar in scope to that at the Lucas Theater in Savannah.

Anderson said he cannot find any record of the financial transactions between Viquesney and Rylander or any reason why Rylander bought the statue business and continued to manufacture all three versions of the Doughboy. There is some speculation, however, that Rylander, himself a veteran, may have been a model for the figure of the Doughboy.

After nearly 17 years in Americus, Viquesney moved back to Spencer in 1922 and Rylander continued to manufacture the statues and lamps in Americus until 1925, when Viquesney was able to buy back the rights to the Doughboy and move the manufacturing operation to Spencer. The money to do this may have come from soaring national sales of Viquesney's "Imp-O-luck," a leprechaun charm he designed and manufactured in Spencer.

The full-size Doughboy statues, statuettes and lamps were thereafter made in Spencer and at other plants around the country, including New York City, Chicago and Louisville, Ky., until at least the late 1930s. But their popularity was never as great as it was when Viquesney first started making them in Americus.

According to Les Kopel, most of the lamps he has heard of are about 15 inches tall and have "Copyrighted by E.M. Viquesney, Sculptor, Americus, Georgia" stamped on the back. The lamps and statuettes made in Spencer and bearing the Spencer copyright imprint on the back are much rarer.

"The more expensive model of the lamp, originally priced at $10.85, came with a real bronze-plated finish, but the cheaper $9.85 model was shipped with what the artist called a "bronze spray" finish. The earlier lamps from Americus were described as having a "statuary bronze" finish, a coating of a dark chocolate-colored paint to simulate the finish of an old bronze statue," Kopel says.

"I'm not so certain that it's a question of perceived rarity that determines the current (antiques market) prices; the statuettes and especially any working lamps are extremely rare, and I suppose that in itself would be partly responsible for driving the prices," Kopel says. But people aren't going to pay those prices if they don't know what they're buying, he says.

Kopel says that although collectors might recognize a Viquesney Doughboy as an interesting WWI commemorative piece, most aren't aware of the "fascinating history" behind the items, or how they are connected to the large "Spirit of the American Doughboy" monuments scattered across the country.

As for the original paper shades that came with the Doughboy lamps, Kopel believes that finding one of those is unlikely at best.

"I would love to find an original Flanders poppy shade, or even a good picture of one, so I could have the pattern copied and made into a duplicate," he said.