Rufus Porter Museum and Cultural Heritage Center , Bridgton Maine

The Rufus Porter Museum, is exhibiting two Lombard weathervanes. In the late 19th Century, James Lombard, of Bridgton, designed and carved wooden weathervanes. These weathervanes are highly desirable examples of native Maine folk art. The most distinguishing features of the Lombard weathervanes are the stylized versions of hens and roosters, particularly the separation of the tail feathers. Lombard weathervanes were usually sawed from pine planks.  Made of soft wood, they often suffered from the adverse effects of the weather and needed to be reinforced with an iron support that also acted as counter-balance. Weathervanes have a simple design, but in order to function, they need to be perfectly balanced on their rotating axis. They also need an unequal area on each side that the wind can blow against.  Additionally, weathervanes must be located on the highest point of a structure, and away from other tall buildings or structures that may affect wind direction. As the weathervane spins to reduce the force of the wind on its surface, the end with the least surface area turns into the wind, and indicates the wind direction.


About a thousand years ago a Papal edict declared that the symbol of a rooster be installed at the top of every church in Christendom. The rooster was to serve to recall Peter's betrayal of Christ in which Jesus said, "I tell thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me." (Luke 22:34) The cock on the steeple was an admonition to the faithful to come to services so as not to deny Christ as Peter had done. The roosters became weathervanes very quickly because of their location on top of the tallest structure in every town. This made it possible to observe the vane without difficulty from a great distance on a clear day. Curiously, the Roman Catholic churches are no longer capped by weathercocks, and those ecclesiastical roosters that are found today adorn various Protestant houses of worship.

Weather, of course, is one of the most important of all natural phenomena. It influences the planting, growing, and harvesting of our crops; hence the availability and abundance of our food supply. It controls our comfort and directly affects our safety on land, sea, or in the air. Any means of predicting weather was just as useful in our civilization's early history as it is today.  Weathervanes became popular among rural populations of the country. This is probably due to the fact that many farmers were isolated from the local towns and couldn’t rely on the community weathervanes located on the church steeples.  The farmer or anyone working out of doors had to know which way the wind was blowing. In this area, an east wind means rain and there were weathervanes all over the place.  Roosters and hens were favorite motifs for weathervanes from the late eighteenth century onward, and are the only forms Lombard is known to have produced.  It is believed that James Lombard might have been an itinerant wood carver in his earlier years because of the distribution of his weathervanes in various areas of Maine.
Born in 1865, James Lombard lived and worked as a farmer and cabinet maker at the family farmhouse on South High Street. Examples of his weathervanes are in the Rufus Porter Museum and the Bridgton Historical Society, both in Bridgton, Maine, and in the Shelburne Museum in Vermont. The Rufus Porter Museum and gift shop, located on North High Street in Bridgton is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11AM until 5PM. Special rooster pins and earrings, hand crafted in pewter are also available in the gift shop. This season's exhibit includes murals, miniature portraits, and inventions of Rufus Porter, weathervanes by James Lombard, eagles by John Bellamy, and several portraits by Joseph Davis, John Brewster, and members of the Prior-Hamblen School.  A complete set of Porter wall murals is on display at the Wales and Hamblen Building on lower Main Street.  Call 647-2828 for more information or view the website, www.rufusportermuseum.org.

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