No one ruled the roost like Foghorn J. Leghorn, that Looney Tunes cartoon character whose booming blow-hardiness was a walking punchline. But well before Leghorn appeared on his first animation cel in 1946, artists have been infatuated by roosters. Naturally, one of the first places they appeared was around the farmhouse. Roosters were placed on the tops of weathervanes or as decorations on serving platters and water pitchers in country kitchens. They advertised goods, too, their images used on the sides of everything from feedsacks to coffee tins to boxes of breakfast cereal—Corn Flakes anyone?

In the world of decorative arts, Murano glassblowers made colorful glass roosters using ages-old millefiori and hot-working techniques, while artisans at Lalique in France molded and then polished their crystal roosters. In the 1970s, silhouettes of these barnyard alarm clocks made routine appearances in Gridel paperweights by Baccarat, while costume jewelers from Trifari to Boucher transformed roosters into brooches and pins.