A 95-year-old former master seamstress was reunited Wednesday with a long-lost statue of herself that stood for nearly four decades in the lobby of the Garment District suit company where she once worked. The life-sized plaster likeness of Maria Pulsone - which will soon go on display at the Italian American Museum - was found by her granddaughter, who waged an online odyssey to find the artwork in a dusty warehouse in Scranton, Pa.
“Growing up I always knew there was this statue of my grandmother when she was a New York City seamstress. I was always curious about it,” told her granddaughter, Jennifer Pulsone Heppner. The now-retired nonagenarian got to see the statue - which captures her in the act of sewing with a look of firm concentration on her face - at a ceremony at the Mulberry Street museum Wednesday.
