The Firemen that saved the artwork!
Mary lives in the old part of Louisville, Ky. where the houses were built in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. It’s an immaculate old three story house with wood staircases, 11 working fireplaces and art covering every wall. She woke up one evening to the smell of smoke and found the light fixture in the master bathroom was shorting out and on fire. She called the fire dept. and they came over quickly to put out the fire. It just so happened that a piece of artwork that she had purchased from us was hanging over her tub. She says she likes to lay in the tub and gaze into our art, it relaxes her. As the firemen were spraying down the fire and gouging out the wall to get at the fire behind the wall, one of them noticed the original Albin hanging next to the tub. He quickly took the piece off the wall, put it under his big fireman coat and took it to another room in the house. Once Mary was allowed to come back into her house the fireman told her about the piece of artwork he had saved for her. Saying “it looked like something special that she would not want to get damaged.” In a house full of art, our piece of artwork was the only piece that was taken off the wall and saved by the firemen!
All of our work has a brown paper backing on the back to keep dust out. Mary showed me the piece the fireman saved and you could see the black, sooty hand/finger prints on the back of the paper backing. I offered to change the paper backing for her but she said no, this was her souvenir from the fire in her home and how the firemen were thoughtful enough to save the piece from getting damaged.
The piece the firemen saved is called Morning Trail and it’s truly irreplaceable and priceless. We have lost the negative that produced the photograph for the center of this piece. Morning Trail was by far our most popular selling piece of all time. There are no more photographs available in any size.
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