By Mary Anne Janco, Inquirer Suburban Staff [Philadelphia Inquirer's "Neighbors" - Montgomery County section.] As a sculptor, Rosalie Sherman has always been drawn to animals.
Size has been no object. She has created life-sized cows and sheep for a public park, a 12-foot-long crocodile and giant turtle for a children’s hospital, even a 12½-foot-tall doghouse – in the shape of a bull terrier.
She’s still sculpting animals in her studio, but these days, she can hold them in her fingertips.
Her tiny pewter creations – Jake, the hound, Dinah, the elephant, and Pablo Penguin – serve as knobs, hooks, or drawer pulls. Her work will be at the Philadelphia Furniture and Furnishings show from Friday through next Sunday.
“I don’t know why I’m drawn to animals,” she said. “ I like the way they look. I like the way they act. They seem honest, without guile.”
As she is crafting each whimsical creature, “ I try to think what I’d like in my house,” said Sherman, whose contemporary Gulph Mills house is built into the hillside like a giant tree house. It’s filled with bright, fun art that may be a play on words, such as her bright-green toadstool.
Her customers, she said, are “people who want to have fun and have things around the house that make them feel good.
Her work “has the most delightful sense of humor,” said Craig Breeggemann, manager of Bauerware in San Francisco, which carries more than 5,000 different cabinet knobs.
“Her animals and her people are very witty. They have so much character and humor without looking like cartoons,” he said.
Her sheep have “this slightly frightened look, as if to say, ‘What are you doing with those clippers?’” Breeggeman said.
Said David O’Neill, owner of Knobs ‘N Knocker in Peddler’s Village: “It’s the whimsy of the eyes that’s most important in her work.”
Sherman names each of her characters, some of which draws on family names- Jake was her father’s name.
She started making dogs, cats, lizards, frogs and birds and now has about 80 different pieces. Her giraffe hooks are one of her best sellers.
After more than 20 years creating public art, often using painted aluminum or wood, and at times, using a one-ton lift in her studio to move the huge objects that would take one, two, or three years to complete, “I needed a change,” Sherman said.
So she started working with clay at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia about 10 years ago, then took a couple of workshops in Easton on plastic casting.
Sherman makes her originals in clay, cast them in plastic, than sends the plastic models to Rhode Island, where a rubber model is made. Once she has the molds, she’s ready to cast her creations in pewter.
She had sent her first few works to New England to be cast in pewter but than decided she could do it herself. “I saw how they did it. I’ve been casting ever since.”
Years before, she had learned how to weld aluminum for her first pieces for the Eastwick Farm Park, a public art project, by working with a local metal shop. “I had never welded aluminum. I just picked it up.”
“I like the process of making things,” said Sherman, who would tinker with her father’s tools in the basement as a young girl.
For her pewter knobs and hooks, she puts the rubber mold into a spin caster, ladles in the hot pewter, and after a few minutes, opens the mold and her latest creations emerges. “I like to finish them myself,” she said, holding up Fifi the poodle to show the detail that emerges after she buffs it.
Horace, a bloodhound with an elongated body, is one of her pulls. There’s also the “wiener dog.” “They’re like characters that just come out as you make it,” said Sherman, who has created the pensive pup and laughing bird.
Sherman, who had a Dalmatian for 15 years, said animals are “like children. They’re so open. Their emotions are right out there. They’re just fun – a pleasure to be around. I don’t need to own one. I share the world with them.”
Contact suburban staff writer Mary Anne Janco at 610-313-8217 or mjanco@phillynew.com.
