By 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars and a series of revolutionary wars across Europe, thousands of French seamen (and some Dutch and Americans) were imprisoned in England, a number for more than a dozen years. Those prisoners of war with crafting skills carved objects from animal bones for the purpose of bartering. They carved with broken glass when knives were forbidden and assembled them with dye and glue made from boiled fish bones. These meticulous and elaborate sculptures found a ready market and were sold to passersby and visitors. There was a high demand for ship models made to scale and for ornamental designs like boxes and automatons with theater or guillotine scenes.

Noah’s Ark (1790–1814) has a different appeal: the square tower at the dock, the architectural details in the upper portion of the ark, and the windows recall the architecture of the Norman Cross prison camp near Peterborough, which closed in 1814. It has a crank that animates pairs of animals going into the vessel. Without a strict emphasis on the technical challenges such assemblages usually represent, this piece has dreamlike and spiritual qualities: by taking over the prison building, the religious ark is prepared for a symbolic escape. The bone used—likely from the animals that were given to the maker for meals, or recycled from the prison kitchen—reflects on the very experience of these war prisoners who saw death so close, transcending their miserable life conditions in detention, both economically and artistically.

Valérie Rousseau, “Noah’s Ark,” in Valérie Rousseau (ed.) Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett / Once Something Has Lived It Can Never Really Die, exhibition brochure (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2016).

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