Rago Auctions

In the summer of 1923, a young actor named Jasper Deeter arrived in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania en route to visit his sister, Dr. Ruth Deeter, who lived nearby. Jasper recently left a theater community in Greenwich Village in search of a smaller theater where he could develop a new, permanent company. Previously a deserted textile mill town, by then Rose Valley was a close-knit community of artists and craftsmen which had blossomed during the Arts & Crafts era thanks to architect William Price and the financial support of the Rose Valley Association funded by several prominent Philadelphians. Though the venture in Rose Valley was successful from a cultural and artistic standpoint, it suffered financially and Deeter was able to acquire the largest ex-mill, known as the Guild Hall but renamed the Hedgerow Theatre (Deeter had proclaimed: “We’ll have a theatre if we have to play in the hedgerows.”), for his budding theater company.

Deeter’s sister, Ruth, had been friends with Letty Esherick, Wharton Esherick’s wife, for years, and it did not take long for news of the new theater group to reach the Eshericks. Jasper and Wharton met and became fast friends; soon enough, Deeter persuaded Esherick to design the set, costumes, and lighting for one of their 1924 productions. Over the coming years the entire Esherick family became involved at Hedgerow: Letty’s brother joined the company and the three Esherick children, Mary, Ruth, and Peter, appeared in a production of Thunder on the Left in 1933 (both Mary and Ruth would join the company as adults). In addition to designing sets and stage props, Esherick produced a number of other works including chairs for the audience, two sets of spiraling stairs for the building, woodcut posters, and more than 4,000 pencil and pen drawings of the actors on stage. But perhaps the most prominent, and most memorable, of Esherick’s works for Hedgerow were Cheeter and Jeeter.

These two monumental horse sculptures stood outside Hedgerow from 1934 until 1956, welcoming countless guests and inviting interaction and curiosity from youngsters. Esherick periodically sent his daughter, Ruth, paint for the horses to protect them from the weather, sometimes blue, other times, yellow or green, but never a natural color. Their names were playful takes on Deeter’s own and they embody Wharton’s wholly unique artistic language with their combination of whimsy and modernity, which adds a dynamic sense of movement to forms that may otherwise resemble simple toys or rocking horses. They were unofficial mascots and now, decades later, serve as reminders of Esherick's longstanding and significant artistic involvement at Hedgerow.