When the carpenters and joiners of Waltham, Mass, whittled out wooden models for L. W. Gushing & Sons' custom-made weather vanes, they had no pretensions of being artists. If they added an occasional creative or imaginative touch to these practical instruments, they were merely trying, as one craftsman put it, to "blend the useful and the agreeable."
From the wood carvings other craftsmen made cast-iron molds, and in these the copper weather vanes were hammered out. Gushing & Sons shipped them to all parts of New England to become the crowning touches on new barns, village churches and town halls. For barns,...
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