Chicken Collection?

I certainly never set out to collect chickens but it seems I have a chicken collection. My older daughter was probably the first to give us chickens. This rooster she gave me sat on top of our refrigerator in Northampton but now sits on her bench that became a part of our gallery wall.

The other end of the gallery wall is where most of the chickens reside.

This chicken, an original painting gifted by our oldest daughter to her father, is in the rear of the middle box:

That box also contains a chicken I bought thinking of it more as part of a collection of our art made of discarded materials (the body is made of recycled plastic bags) than of the fact that it was a chicken but since it was a chicken it ended up in front of the painting. For a long time, I couldn’t remember where I bought him, but then I saw a basket of them at a Sidewalk Sale at the Smith College Art Museum and realized he must have come from an earlier Sidewalk Sale.

I love that his cockscomb is made from a plastic fork. Some other chickens have migrated to this shelf as well. The glass one on the right had been in an Easter basket one year, and I think the little Loteria card matchbox on the right is one from one of my husband’s Christmas stockings.

I have also contributed to the chicken collection in other ways. The little painted one on the left is a Dala chicken I recently bought from the Swedish American Museum here in Chicago. Many years ago, I also bought the handpainted plate in the bottom box in an antique store that was in Florence for a while.

The back of it says, “Today would have been my parent’s 51st wedding anniversary Denise J. Myers 8-16-2003. Since August 16 is also the day my parents were married (in 1947), this plate had to come home with me.

That little chick in the corner is another Easter basket gift and is also from a Smith College Art Museum Sidewalk Sale. Items bought for Easter that then stick around is certainly a source for the chicken collection. Our kitchen hosts a chicken I bought from the Dollar Tree that looked so good here it never went into the Easter box.

And now I’ve even made a chicken. I saw some potholder loop chickens at the felting store in South Deerfield last summer and just had to make one.

I think I wrote before about this card my Birmingham niece gave me, which made me realize that perhaps a chicken collection wasn’t so weird for someone who also collects suns and mermaids.

And I recently learned about the benefit of a chicken collection at an exhibit at the Swedish American Museum “Swedish Folk Painting: Tradition and Change.” Artist Alison Aune said of the traditional pieces that inspired her rooster paintings: “Because the rooster is always on alert these paintings were placed in the house for good luck and protection.” With all our chickens, we should be well protected!