Gatco San Francisco Solid Brass Pelican Sculpture

Five pounds of solid brass give this pelican an authority that its coastal subject might not suggest at first glance. Made by Gatco of San Francisco between the 1960s and 1980s, the sculpture carries the weight and finish associated with the company's better decorative brass—qualities that separate it from later hollow reproductions. The long beak and folded-wing geometry stretch across a generous seventeen inches, architectural in profile. Its California maker provenance is especially fitting: a familiar shoreline form translated into warm metal with enough restraint to avoid novelty. At 11.5 inches high and 6 inches deep, it commands a surface without asking to be centered like a formal statue.