Romeo Y Julieta, Betty Heredia Snyder Rees Sculpted Clay Lovers On Cigar Box handmade ashtray I have looked at lots

I have looked at lots and lots of antique woven splint baskets

one finds a fair number of old industrial wooden molds

Perhaps this carving once came at the end of a carved whimsy chain

where I'd feel genially greeted and guarded

and some empty holes in the wood too where some have been lost

Romeo Y Julieta, Betty Heredia Snyder Rees Sculpted Clay Lovers On Cigar Box handmade ashtray I have looked at lotsI purchased this one from a dealer in Maine, who had a number of works that had come from the estate of Elizabeth Heredia Snyder Rees (1919 2011) not an artist I was familiar with, and much of her work not really my cup of tea, but I found and find this pretty wonderful, and clever, too: a pair of lovers rendered in modeling clay atop an old Cuban Romeo Y Julieta cigar box, with the box doing quadruple duty as a base, and a stand, and as inspiration