Offered for sale in limited edition is a fabulous re-creation of an original Coney Island "Tillie" funny face medallion that originally hung at Steeplechase Park in the 1950s and 60s.
A popular character, seen all around Coney Island, Tillie — or a version of him — first appeared in the city around the turn of the 20th century, when George C. Tilyou, a showman who owned Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, expanded to Asbury Park and Atlantic City, said Don Stine, president of the Asbury Park Historical Society.
Tilyou used a portrait of a "funny face" as the park's logo. It was painted on the Asbury Park location on the corner of Ocean and Second Avenues, just north of where the Stone Pony stands today.
These heads were originally made of plaster and were used to decorate the amusement building of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island New York.
Sometime in the 1960's, the building where these originally hung was torn down. Fred Fried, a well-known and now deceased collector from New York City was able to save some of the originals, but from what Michael was able to gather, a few of them were destroyed in a barn fire so we don’t know how many originals remain today. Those that do are heavily restored.
Using pictures of the original, Michael digitally sculpted a re-creation of this piece as close as he could to the original. The digital sculpture took about 35 hours to complete. When the digital sculpture was finished, he produced a limited run of 360 funny faces, offered in Blue, Red, or Green.
The funny face is 10 inches tall, 7 inches wide, and 2 inches deep. Each face is hand-painted, wrapped, and boxed and each has a mounting hole on the back for display. A thumb tack is a very easy way to pop these on most walls. Each face comes boxed in a custom-labeled box.
Please note that these are hand painted so some variance in paint and weathering may occur—ships from New York.
