Word: wielgus
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...Raymond Wielgus, the son of a Chicago furniture manufacturer, has been fascinated by carving ever since childhood. After he graduated in art from the University of Illinois, he went to work making master models for machine-made furniture. Six years ago, he bought his first piece of primitive art, because he "wanted to own something old.'' The piece was a Mexican urn and cost him $100. It set him to reading about primitive art-and one of his first conclusions was that his urn was a fake...
Since then, Wielgus has gathered more than 100 authentic pieces from Africa, Central and South America, the Arctic and the South Seas. Their estimated ages range from 1000 B.C. to the 19th century. There are glaring ritual masks, delicate canoe figureheads, ornate fly whisks and chieftains' necklaces. A fetish from the Congo bristles with nails that were driven into it to transmit pain to a human foe. A tiny ivory Eskimo looks as if it might have been carved by Henry Moore; a clay Mexican bowl from the days before Christ bears the withered countenance of a fierce...