Monthly Archives: June 2017

June 29, 2017

Preservation by Pencil

By daseger

I often get asked if I’m ever going to write a book about Salem—and I always feel like the subtext of the question is or are you just going to keep dabbling on your blog? I always say no, as I’m not really interested in producing any sort of popular history about Salem and I’m not a trained American historian. I have a few academic projects I’m working on now and at the same time I like to indulge my curiosity about the environment in which I live, because, frankly, most of the books that do get published on Salem’s history tend to tell the same story time and time again. First Period architecture is the one topic that tempts me to go deeper: not architectural history per se (again, another field in which I am not trained), but more the social and cultural history of Salem’s seventeenth-century structures—especially those that survived into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. How do they change over time? Why do some get preserved and others demolished? What was their perceived value, at any given time? Why do some houses get turned into memorials/museums/”monuments” and others disappear, forever forgotten? And (here’s the blogging angle): why are some of these structures preserved for posterity in photographic and artistic form and others not? This is a rather long-winded contextual introduction to my focus today: the wonderful house renderings of the Anglo-American artist Edwin Whitefield (1816-1892). Whitefield was an extremely prolific painter of landscapes and streetscapes, flora and fauna, and I’m mentioned him here several times before, but I recently acquired my own copy of one of his Homes of our Forefathers volumes, and now I need to wax poetic. I just love his pencil-and-paint First Period houses: they are detailed yet impressionistic, simple yet structural, and completely charming. I can’t get enough of them.

HF4

HF3

There are five Homes of our Forefathers volumes, published between 1879 and 1889, covering all of New England and a bit of Old England as well: Boston and Massachusetts are intensively covered in several volumes. Whitefield clearly saw himself as a visual recorder of these buildings and was recognized as such at the time (a time when many of these structures were doubtless threatened): An 1889 Boston Journal review of his houses remarked that “We cannot easily exaggerate the service which Mr. Whitefield has rendered in preserving them”. Even though the title pages advertised “original drawings made on the spot”, implying immediate impressions, Whitefield put considerable research and detail in his drawings, intentionally removing modern alterations and additions so that they were indeed the homes of our forefathers. His process and intent are key to understanding why Whitefield includes some structures in his volumes and omits others. He includes only two little-known Salem structures in Homes: the Palmer House, which stood on High Street Court, and the Prince House, which was situated on the Common, near the intersection of Washington Square South, East and Forrester Street. There were so many other First Period houses in Salem that he could have included–Pickering, Shattuck, Ruck, Gedney, Narbonne, Corwin, Turner-Ingersoll–but instead he chose two houses which were much more obscure, thus rescuing them from perpetual obscurity.

Already-famous First Period houses in Salem, either because of their Hawthorne, witchcraft, or Revolutionary associations: the Turner-Ingersoll house before it was transformed into the House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne’s birthplace in its original situation, the Shattuck House on Essex Street, a sketch of the Corwin “Witch House” and the Pickering House. Whitefield’s single postcard of the Witch House in its original incarnation (it was then thought to be the residence of Roger Williams, an association that was later disproven by Sidney Perley).

The Palmer and Prince houses are mentioned in the Pickering Genealogy (Palmer) and Perley’s Essex Antiquarian articles, and apparently there’s a photograph of the former deep in the archives of the Phillips Library, but without Whitefield’s sketches they wouldn’t exist. He was drawn to them, I think, by both their age and their vulnerability: both would be torn down, with little notice, in the same decade that his sketches were published.

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Art, books, First Period Houses, Historic Preservation, House of the Seven Gables, New England, Pickering House, Witch City, writing | posted in History, Houses, Salem

June 27, 2017

The Lost Bungalows of Great Misery Island

By daseger

Out on Salem Sound the other day, sailing in a beautiful boat, I looked over at one of the several islands that mark the entrance to Salem Harbor and tried to imagine what once was. Off Great Misery Island there is a calm maritime meeting place referred to as “Cocktail Cove”: while one imbibes off-island now a century ago drinks were served on the island, first at the Misery Island Club, which became the Casino Hotel in 1904, and also in private cottages: 26 in all. Most of the structures on Great Misery were swept away by a fire in May of 1926 (just before the season), and both it and its adjacent island, Little Misery, reverted to nature under the stewardship of the Trustees of Reservations. But for a quarter of a century or so, Great Misery was quite a happening place, and its cottages attracted the attention of contemporary shelter magazines. House & Garden and The House Beautiful featured several Misery Island summer houses on their pages in their “aughts” heyday, all bungalows, and all the work of Salem architect Ernest M.A. Machado, an extremely enterprising young architect who died far too soon.

Sailing to the Misery Islands, passing the Fame along the way–off Great Misery.

Ernest Machado’s buildings on Great Misery: the Clubhouse/Casino (MIT Archives); the bungalow of Mrs. Charles Steadman Hanks (Mary Harrod Northend, “Some Seacoast Bungalows”, House and Garden, June 1905), “Ye Court of Hearts” (The House Beautiful, June 1905), the bungalow of Mr. George Lee, “The Anchorage” of Mr. George Towle (The House Beautiful, June 1909) , and “The Bunker” of Mr. Jacob C. Rogers (The House Beautiful, June 1906).

All of these Misery Island bungalow-owners lived on the mainland, either down in Boston or somewhere on the North Shore (Rogers was the last private owner of Samuel McIntire’s majestic Oak Hill, where the Northshore Mall now stands, or should I say sprawls), but they also owned summer houses along the Gold Coast: these cottages were for the weekend! The magazine articles accompanying these images emphasize the simplicity of the island bungalows, but it was a very deliberate, and very occasional, ethic. For about a quarter century, Misery was a Gilded Age playground, complete with shooting range and golf course, perfect for Harvard senior “Robinson Crusoe” picnics and reunions. Its moment might have been even shorter: social register references seem to appear with much less frequency in the teens and twenties, and then this very social chapter in the island’s history closes much more abruptly with the 1926 fire.

Newspaper reports of the 1902 Harvard reunions (Boston Post, June 22-25, 1902 ) and 1926 fire (Boston Daily Globe, May 8-10, 1926); Great Misery today, and home in Salem Harbor on a glorious early evening!

12 Comments | tags: Architects, Architecture, Boats, ephemera, Ernest Machado, Magazines, Mary Harrod Northend, Misery Islands, North Shore Massachusetts, periodicals, Sailing, Salem Harbor, Trustees of Reservations | posted in History, Salem

June 25, 2017

Scorched Earth/A Lost Salem Garden

By daseger

Since I went in deep for the centennial anniversary of Great Salem Fire of 1914 a few years ago I have this date imprinted in my mind: I woke up this morning and my first thought was oh no. So much was lost that day—houses, factories, civic buildings, churches–as the fire devoured several wards of Salem. The recovery effort, which seems remarkably swift and efficient to me, focused primarily and rightfully on rebuilding, but there was an implicit concern for the loss of landscape as well, and so parks were planned and trees replanted. There was one notable Lafayette Street landscape that was lost on forever on that day, however: the garden of George B. Chase. There was no effort to reconstitute this creation; instead the large lot became the site of the new Saltonstall School, which rose from the ashes of the fire pretty quickly. The Chase Garden was indeed fleeting, but fortunately we have two great sources to remember it by: the wonderful 1947 guide book Old Salem Gardens, published by the Salem Garden Club, and several photographs in the American Garden Club’s Archives of American Gardens at the Smithsonian.

Just one of my many copies of the invaluable Old Salem Gardens (1947) with the Chase garden entry; the location of the Chase garden on the 1874 and 1891 Salem Atlases.

The Salem Garden Club ladies who produced Old Salem Gardens, chief among them Club President Mable Pollock, took great care to include historical information and personal reminiscences whenever possible, greatly enhancing the research value of their compilation: this is no little pamphlet! We hear all about the Chase Garden from the “discussive and chatty” Miss Chase, who grew up on the property, as her memories are transcribed onto the page. She tells us about the beds of ostrich ferns and rhododendrons in the immediate proximity of her family house, above which swayed purple beech and weeping birch trees, and a “large bed containing 72 plants of Azalea mollis bought from Lewis Van Houtte of Belgium”. In the spring there was white narcissus poeticus, followed by red salvia. Laburnum and althaea screened the large vegetable garden, which included salsify, rhubarb, asparagus, peas, beans, carrots, summer squash, tomatoes, onions and corn: the seed of the latter [came from] a cousin, Benjamin Fabens, and was called “Darling’s Early”. It was most satisfactory in every way, for the ears were not too long, and they had deep kernels and a small cob; the husk was quite red, as were the blades….it was the sweetest corn ever eaten at that time. Continuing along towards Salem Harbor along a box-bordered path, we “see” fruit trees and more exotic trees and shrubs, including a very notable varieties of magnolia and viburnum which particularly impressed repeat visitors from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Near the back of the garden were beds of roses, and a cutting garden of annuals and perennials, encircled by yet another row of shrubs and trees, including the oldest growth on the property, a locust grove, which nature had planted. All swept away on one day: June 25, 1914.

Views of the front and back of the Chase Garden (including Mr. Chase himself on the bench), 1904, Archives of American Gardens, Smithsonian Institution; Ten years later on Lafayette Street: postcard views of the Fire’s immediate aftermath from the (commemorative???) Views of Salem after the Great Fire of June 25, 1914 brochure issued by the New England Stationery Company.

3 Comments | tags: Anniversaries, ephemera, Gardens, Great Salem Fire of 1914, Photography, Salem Garden Club, Salem Gardens, Smithsonian Institution | posted in History, Nature, Salem

June 23, 2017

In-Vested

By daseger

Yesterday I was treated to a very special tour of the China Trade gallery and basement of the Peabody Essex Museum by a distinguished and generous curator, and while I was able to snap lots of photographs (exhibition items, packing and conservation materials, amazing things in storage, including a whole subterranean gallery of ship models, some in their original Peabody Museum cases) I came away thinking about just one item, a portrait of Captain William Story by the Chinese artist known in the west as “Spoilum” (Guan Zuolin). The Story portrait stuck with me for two reasons. I had just been reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Custom-House” prelude to The Scarlet Letter, which disses Story as one of the venerable figures, sitting in old–fashioned chairs, which were tipped on their hind legs back against the wall. Oftentimes they were asleep, but occasionally might be heard talking together, ill voices between a speech and a snore, and with that lack of energy that distinguishes the occupants of alms–houses, and all other human beings who depend for subsistence on charity, on monopolized labour, or anything else but their own independent exertions. These old gentlemen—seated, like Matthew at the receipt of custom, but not very liable to be summoned thence, like him, for apostolic errands—were Custom–House officers. By all accounts this is an unfair characterization of Story, who was ending his storied maritime career with a post at the Custom House as Weigher and Gauger, but you can read about his long career here. The other reason I was so taken by Story’s portrait is far less weighty: once again I wondered, why is his hand in his vest? This is a portrait by a Chinese artist who probably knew nothing of that western convention—or perhaps Spoilum was such a popular artist precisely because he did.

Importing Splendor gallery wall at the Peabody Essex Museum with portrait of Spoilum’s Portrait of William Story, c. 1804; close-up from MIT’s “Envisioning Cultures” website.

Everyone seems to associate the hand-in-vest/waistcoat pose with Napoleon but many such portraits predate those of the little emperor. Why put the hand in this position in an expression of apparent disablement? Or is it cloaked power? Then there are the rather spurious theories of Masonic hidden hands or attempts by the artists to lessen the challenge of rendering hands by painting just one. Apparently it was simply a dictate of genteel behavior, handed down from the ages of Greece and Rome (which explains the pose’s eighteenth-century origins, in that most neo-classical of centuries). If it was a question of gentility, you can see how the pose would appeal to merchants and sea captains, self-made men who perhaps wanted to appeal a bit more polished for posterity.

Piggot

Pre-Napoleon in-vested sea captains (+ General Washington): Joseph Blackburn, Portrait of Captain John Pigott, c. 1752, LACMA; John Durand, Portrait of Young Mariner, ca. 1768–1772, collection of John and Judith Herdeg; Charles Willson Peale, General George Washington, 1776, Brooklyn Museum of Art; Chinese-export Reverse Painted Mirror of Captain John Cranstoun, c. 1785, Bonhams; Spoilum, Portrait of Western Merchant, c. 1785, “Envisioning Cultures at MIT; Portrait of an American Ship Captain (Purported to be Captain John Thompson of Philadelphia who engaged in the China trade), c. 1785, Sotheby’s + in the basement of the Peabody Essex: what a treat!

12 Comments | tags: Antiques and Collectibles, Art, Auctions, China trade, maritime history, Peabody Essex Museum, Ships | posted in Art, Culture, History

June 21, 2017

Stalking Nathaniel

By daseger

I read an amusing, though very flowery, little pamphlet yesterday entitled A Pilgrimage to Salem in 1838 in which the anonymous author, described merely as a “southern admirer” of Nathaniel Hawthorne, happens upon a copy of the recently-published Twice-Told Tales while visiting Boston and, immediately transfixed, decides to travel up to Salem so that he might see–and perhaps even talk to– the object of his affection before returning to his “plantation”. He immediately boards the steamship that will take him to East Boston, where he jumps on the brand new Eastern Railroad train to Salem, and once there, I discovered the way to the lodgings of my favorite author. He was not within, but would probably be at home some time in the course of the day. I inquired respecting his haunts. They were the Athenaeum—the bookstores–the streets occasionally, or North Fields, or South Fields, or the heights above the turnpike, or the beach near the fort; and sometimes, I was told, he would extend his excursions by foot as far as Manchester, along the wave-washed, secluded, and rocky shore in Beverly. And so Mr. Southern Gentleman pursues Nathaniel here, there, and everywhere, and somehow always misses him (he just left) but takes in the sights of Salem along the way.

1840 Map of the North Shore showing the new Eastern Railroad, David Rumsey Collection; the East Boston Depot, from an Edwin Whitefield drawing, and George Elmer Browne’s drawing of the first Salem station, built in 1838, both from Francis Boardman Crowninshield Bradlee’s Eastern Railroad: a Historical Account of Early Railroading in Eastern New England (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1917). The object of this pilgrimage: Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his earliest portrait by Charles Osgood, supposedly commissioned by the author’s uncle, Robert Manning, Peabody Essex Museum. (One can understand the stalking!)

There is something about this article: something a little off. I couldn’t find the original, supposedly published in a Charleston, S.C. periodical titled The Southern Rose in March of 1839; instead I read a reprint in a 1916 Essex Institute publication, A pilgrimage to Salem in 1838, by a Southern admirer of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Reprinted from “The Southern rose” (Charleston, S.C.) of March 2 and 16, 1839, with a Foreword by Victor Hugo Paltsits, Another view by John Robinson, and A rejoinder by Mr. Paltsits. Mr. Paltsits, of the New York Public Library, believed that the author was William Gilmore Simms, the southern novelist and historian (and slavery apologist), while Mr. Robinson, the great horticulturist and curator at the Peabody Museum, thought it might have been Nathaniel himself! Just think of that: what a public relations feat early in Hawthorne’s career! He comes off as sought after, mysterious, elusive, brooding in a Heathcliffian way, and very clever: a perfect characterization for a young novelist. Robinson thinks the “southern admirer” knows Salem too well, and he certainly does throw in a lot of place names. I’m quite fixated on the train trip myself, about which the article’s author is a bit too blasé while everyone in Salem was much more obviously excited, including Hawthorne. An article in the Salem Register dated September 3, 1838 notes that the railroad has been the great centre of attraction to the people of Salem and vicinity. The novelty of this mode of travelling has drawn immense crowds to witness its operation, and on every occasion of the arrival and departure of the cars, the grounds in the neighborhood of the depot and on the eastern bank of the Mill Pond are covered with delighted spectators of the bustling scene, while the new faces in our streets, and the hurrying to and fro of carriages for the accommodation of passengers, have given to our city a busy appearance to which it has long been a stranger. The southern visitor does not describe a Salem that is in any way busy, but then he is singularly focused on Hawthorne, and also, really, on himself.

The southern admirer, whoever he is, seems particularly excited to encounter Salem’s Old Town Pump (here in 1856 and 1884 illustrations), memorialized by Hawthorne in “A Rill from the Town Pump” in Twice-Told Tales.

6 Comments | tags: books, Illustrations, Literature, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Public Relations, Trains | posted in History, Salem

June 19, 2017

Sail Boston 2017

By daseger

It was probably not the best day for it—the city was hot, humid, and teeming with people—but yesterday we took the Salem Ferry into Boston to look at the tall ships in town for Sail Boston 2017. Apparently there were more than 100 in the harbor, the largest number in many years due to Boston’s status as an official port of the trans-Atlantic Rendez-Vous 2017 Tall Ships Regatta. We didn’t see them all, but we saw many, before I dived into a breezy hotel bar in pursuit of water, which I quickly followed with a gin and tonic (or two). The stars of the show were undoubtedly the Chilean barquentine Esmerelda and the German barque Alexander von Humboldt II–I wish I had seen them in Saturday’s Parade of Sail. For striking photographs, I think they docked the most dramatic, pirate-ship-looking vessels at Rowes Wharf : the bright red Atyla from Spain and the beautiful Dutch barque Europa. I certainly took my share of shots of the latter (including the first photographs below), but the crowds were so thick around the former it was hard to get a good angle (plus a Sail Boston staffer kept yelling at us to KEEP MOVING). I’m really glad we took the ferry in, not just because driving and parking would have been a nightmare, but also because we got to see the smaller schooners under sail, darting around each other and the islands in Boston Harbor. The ships are here until Thursday: if you have some precious weekday time off they are well worth seeing, especially as the crowds will be a bit sparser.

SB OOST

Around and in Boston Harbor for Sail Boston 2017 on Sunday—and look at this beautiful NEW Catholic Church in the Seaport District: Our Lady of Good Voyage Shrine.

Leave a comment | tags: Architecture, Boston, Local Events, maritime history, Sail Boston, Salem Ferry, Ships, Summer | posted in Current Events

June 16, 2017

Salem Roses

By daseger

You can have your showy, ant-filled peonies: at this time of year it is all about roses for me. This is rose week in Salem–everywhere you go (except perhaps for the Ropes Mansion Garden, which peaks in late summer), there are beautiful roses in bloom. I’ve got some relatively new bushes in my garden as last year there was a roofer-induced massacre. When I first put in roses, I chose only hard-to-find old garden varieties of the rosa gallica type: I was a purist who prioritized history over flowering (similar to the pink and white varieties below in the Derby House garden, which look much better than mine ever did—I also had an herb garden full of straggly herbs used as medieval plague cures). These heirloom roses were a bit too shrubby for me, and so I replaced them one by one with more modern varieties, mostly from David Austin. And after the decimation last year, I went all David Austin: pale pinks and yellow, almost-orange, no red. They all popped yesterday (see collage), and I went for a walk to see some more: so here you have it, my rose-tour of downtown Salem.

My roses, a cascade on Cambridge Street, in front of the John Ward house, off Orange Street, the Brookhouse Home side garden, and Derby House garden.

6 Comments | tags: gardening, Gardens, horticulture, Roses, Seasons, Summer | posted in Nature, Salem

June 14, 2017

Cultivating American History

By daseger

The Smithsonian Libraries have produced a summer-long digital and actual exhibition on the history of American gardening titled Cultivating America’s Gardens and it features a Salem garden! I’m not surprised; I’ve consulted the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens on more than one occasion and it has several wonderful slides of Salem gardens, most unidentified. The “old-fashioned” garden of the Misses Laight on Chestnut Street in the 1920s opens up one section of the exhibition, “Gardening as a Link to the Past”, which doesn’t surprise me either: Salem’s Colonial Revival ethic and aesthetic certainly extended to horticulture. Besides “the Past”, Cultivating America’s Gardens has six additional sections/themes: “Gardening for Science” (“botanizing” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries), “Rolling out the Lawn” (the emergence of the Great American Lawn from the Victorian era through World War II), “Gardening to Impress” (Gilded Age gardens and World Fairs), “Gardening for the Common Good” (Victory gardens and school gardens), “Gardening as Enterprise” (selling seeds), “Gardening for the Environment” (sustainable gardening), as well as a concluding section on the Smithsonian’s role in preserving America’s garden heritage. My discoveries from the online exhibition? The word “botanizing”, which I never knew was a verb, the “tastemaker” Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer (1851-1934), author of more than 300 articles for Garden and Forest as well as the influential Art Out–of–Doors: Hints on Good Taste Gardening, and the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture, Gardening, and Horticulture for Women, founded in Massachusetts in 1901, the first of its kind open to women. I definitely want to learn more about that!

The Laight Garden in Salem, 1920s; Catalog for Ross Bro’s. Co., Farm & Garden Supplies (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1909); The Blue Garden at Beacon Hill, Newport, Rhode Island, 1920s; Editorial cartoon: “War Garden to Do Its Duty”, drawing after J.N. Darling in the New York Tribune, about 1917 (LOVE THIS); the gardens of Alexander Hamilton and Dolly Madison as envisioned in 1920 by Peter Henderson & Co.’s Everything for the Garden catalogs; Burpee’s Seeds Contest entry, 1925; The Concrete Jungle, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2002, Lawrie Harris, photographer, all Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

4 Comments | tags: Digital History, ephemera, Exhibitions, gardening, Gardens, horticulture, landscape, Smithsonian Institution | posted in Current Events, History

June 12, 2017

Forward and Back, Present and Past

By daseger

It was an interesting weekend in Salem, full of events, exuberance and achievements, as well as a bit of contradiction, from my perspective. Salem’s Trials, the symposium that my department organized in collaboration with the Essex National Heritage Area and Salem Award Foundation for the 325th anniversary of the Trials, was on Saturday and then the Foundation’s 25th Anniversary was on Sunday: I came away happy and optimistic from the first event, convinced we had remembered and honored the victims of 1692 in the best possible way, and a bit confused by the second. It was certainly festive and forward-looking, focused on an array of six-word memoirs on the theme of inclusion as well as the recognition of two (extraordinary!) “rising leaders” newly-graduated from Salem High School and Salem Academy, but also on the contributions of the owner of the Salem Witch Museum–who happens to be a major beneficiary of the cumulative tragedy that is the Salem Witch Trials. One day I was sitting on a panel titled “The Making of Witch City” (filmed by C-Span) in which we discussed the unfortunate exploitation of the “witches” of Salem, the next I was observing a very public expression of gratitude offered up to the driver of Haunted Happenings! It was a bit surreal for me but I think I was the only one: one savvy Salem insider observed that he pays for shit in response to my bewilderment. Ah well, the memoirs did look lovely, shimmering in the sun on a beautiful, breezy day.

Like everything, it’s about perspective: ultimately the Salem Award Foundation, whose full name is the Salem Award Foundation for Human Rights and Social Justice, is more focused on the present than the past and needs the resources, network, and flexibility to achieve its goals and mission: I have the luxury of being able to remain laser-focused on the past and the victims. That’s just what we did on Saturday morning, but in the afternoon we shifted to a more layered discussion of how these victims have been remembered, driven as much by the symposium attendees (including several descendants of victims of 1682 who recorded their “testimonies”) as presenters. The keynote address by geographer Ken Foote, “Salem Witchcraft in Landscape and Memory”, was particularly resonant for me. Dr. Foote laid out the full spectrum of “marking” sites of tragedy, from sanctification to obliteration, and viewed Salem in this context. He noted that when he first came to Salem in 1984, no one could really tell him where the victims of 1692 were executed, and now there is not only the 1992 tricentennial Witch Trials Memorial but a new memorial on the site of the recently-confirmed execution site at Proctor’s Ledge (now scheduled to be dedicated on July 19). As I was listening to him, the question that kept running through my mind was: what if the sacredness of a site is challenged–or not even recognized? as that seems to be what happens to the downtown Witch Trials Memorial every October when Haunted Happenings is in full swing and it is transformed into a convenient place to eat fried dough. It seems like contradictory commemoration will remain in force in Salem until the sanctification of that site can be realized, and I don’t know if that will (can) ever happen.

Just one weekend in Salem: The Salem Award Foundation’s 25th Anniversary Celebration and Salem’s Trials Symposium. Below, the Witch Trials Memorial off Charter Street, yesterday: for much less contemplative times, click here.

4 Comments | tags: Commemoration, Essex Heritage, Heritage Tourism, landscape, Local Events, Memory, Salem Award Foundation, Salem witch trials, Witch City | posted in Current Events, History, Salem

June 7, 2017

Black Ships

By daseger

My title is literal, or descriptive. While the phrase “Black Ships” has a larger historical and cultural meaning, as a term used by the Japanese to refer to western vessels approaching their shores in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (with a long stretch of relative isolation in between), in my typical materialistic fashion I’m referring to my latest collection obsession: reverse glass painted silhouette ships. It’s a potential collection, because I haven’t actually collected anything yet, but a particular Salem example has captured my fancy, so who knows what else I might find?

19th Century Reverse-Painted Ship Silhouette on Glass Maple Frame, circa 1840, Trinity Antiques & Interiors, 1stdibs.

Love this. I’ve seen lots of reverse glass paintings before, mostly on clocks and mirrors, but this silhouette version is more striking and timeless—I’m going to need to see more. There were two Federal-era Salem ships named Perseverance: one was shipwrecked off Tarpaulin Cove, Naushon Island in Vineyard Sound in 1805; the other had a later (and longer) life sailing to Sumatra. The former ship was memorialized by Italian-born Salem painter Michele Felice Corné in his 1805 painting Perseverance Wrecked near Tarpaulin Cove, and the dashing Salem sea captain Richard Wheatland has a connection to both vessels: he was master of the first Perseverance, and part-owner of the second. I’m not sure which ship is portrayed in “my” painting: obviously the lighthouse is a prominent feature, leading one to assume that this is the first Perseverance, but the lighthouse on Naushon Island was not built until 1817 (but this is an 1840 perspective, perhaps creative license is being taken?)

Michele Felice Corné’s Perseverance Wrecked (1805), and a portrait of Captain Richard Wheatland by the Chinese artist Spoilum (Guan Zuolin), from MIT’s “Visualizing Cultures” site.

I found some super-tacky ship silhouettes from the twentieth century, and some elegant Victorian examples: there seems to be no in-between. I’ll spare you the former, and here are some of my favorites of the latter category, nearly all of them from auction archives, and well-beyond my price range. I think my “collection” might end up being more virtual than tangible!