Category Archives: History

October 23, 2013

A Poe Parlor

By daseger

Last year around this time (of course), the private sales site Joss & Main featured a “Destination Salem” shopping event, comprised of items chosen to conjur up the spirit of my fair city. I was pleased that the selections were not all kitschy witchy, but included some maritime, colonial and Federal (quotations around all terms, please) items as well. This year I’ve been looking out for another Salem collection, but instead the site curators have showcased Design Icon Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is certainly having quite a moment, with his big show at the Morgan Library & Museum! It’s hard to think of him as a “design icon” but he certainly was proficient at setting the scene. The curators of the Joss & Main collection seem to have gone in an exclusively dark and literal direction: all black and gray (think ravens and cats) and no red (think hearts, masques, and blood). I think I can do better.

Man of the moment Edgar Allan Poe, © Fred R. Conrad, New York Times.

The Salem and Poe collections actually share quite a few items: black-painted tables, windsor chairs, grey upholstery, raven-embellished pillows. There are some nice looking desks, although they’re a bit undersized (why is it that modern desks are so small and coffee tables so big?) I think the items below represent the Joss & Main portfolio quite well.

In putting together my Poe-inspired room, I took into consideration two influences. One is Poe himself who, oddly enough, did write an article on interior decoration, “The Philosophy of Furniture”, published in Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine in 1840. The other is my more imaginative conception of the Poe ambiance, based on my reading of his works: what I want my Poe room to look like rather than what he would have wanted his room to look like. We obviously have a much clearer vision of the former, and an illustration, as the reading room at the Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia is decorated according to the preferences laid out in “The Philosophy of Furniture”: silver-grey walls with lots of crimson and gold accents, landscapes and female portraits, no flowers, minimal window hangings (Poe seems to have had a disdain for swags, like most men I have known), the Empire furniture of his time. Taking all these preferences together, you get a pretty conventional mid-nineteenth century Empire room–I think I need a little bit more texture, a bit more drama, a Gothic air.

The Reading Room (and spooky basement) at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia, recreated according to Poe’s “Philosophy of Furniture”.

Poe writes a lot about “arabesque” motifs in his “Philosophy” piece, and the importance of carpets, so I’ve picked the Jaipur “Narratives” carpet below for my Poe parlor, from Joss & Main’s inventory site: this rug has all of his favorite colors, it looks perfect to me. I would keep the Empire sofa that you see above (I already have one), but I am very inspired by the Gothic doors of Poe’s Reading Room, so I would look for some Gothic revival side chairs with a similar silhouette: the perfect one sold in a Doyle’s auction last year, but I need more! In front of the Empire sofa I would put a neo-Gothic table made of metal; there are no “period” coffee tables so you might as well go for something cool.

I love this gilded mirror from Christopher Jones Antiques, which is contemporary with Poe: it would go over the mantle of the dark marble fireplace, with two Argand lamps on either side: the pair below are perfect: they just went for $3500 at a Connecticut auction gallery last weekend.

Now all we need are some whimsical/literal accessories and finishing touches: footstools and/or drapes in this “Nevermore” fabric, a Poe pillow or two, Raven candles from Target on the mantle, interspersed with these amazing metal sculptures. A great, beating (ticking) clock. I’m not sure about paintings; Poe’s preferred landscapes are boring and (against his wishes) I would definitely have a textured wallpaper rather than plain painted walls. I’m torn between the Pugin wallpapers below, created in 1848 for a client named Lockhart, which might be too much with my rug, and something more silvery and spidery. My Poe parlor is a work in progress.

3 Comments | tags: books, Decorative Arts, Edgar Allan Poe, Etsy, Interior design, Interiors, Literature, Shopping | posted in Culture, Design, History

October 21, 2013

The Witchfinder on Film

By daseger

Between weekend errands, I organized a little Vincent Price mini-marathon for myself, culminating in a truly horrible (in more ways than one) movie called The Conqueror Worm (1968), which was produced and released in Britain under the more appropriate title Witchfinder General. The film is very loosely based on Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed “Witch-finder General” who was responsible for the condemnation and execution of more than 100 people for witchcraft in 1645-46, during one of the more chaotic phases of the English Civil War. Hopkins’ reign of terror in Essex represents the peak of the witchcraft hysteria in England, which was rather less hysterical than many hot spots on the European continent. I suppose that the American title, which alludes to a poem by Edgar Allen Poe, was chosen to take advantage of the popularity of Vincent Price’s Poe films like The Fall of the House of Usher, but the film has nothing at all to do with Poe.

witchfinder_general 1968

I have a distant childhood memory of seeing bits and pieces of this film on television, certainly without my parents’ knowledge, as it is intensely and gratuitously violent: Price’s Hopkins (about 30 years older than the actual Hopkins) is lecherous and his fellow “witch-pricker” John Stearne is absolutely sadistic. These men might have possessed these qualities and tendencies, and they did torture their victims, but it’s no matter: the film is all about sensation, not context, and certainly not history. And in that typical 1960s manner, everyone is running around with swinging sixties hair. There are too many historical inaccuracies to list here; perhaps the most egregious is Hopkins’ ability to just string up his victims, with no presentation of evidence or trial. Even in this chaotic era, lawlessness did not reign. When Hopkins engages in “due process”, it’s the notorious, and seldom-implemented, “swimming test” for witchcraft. The posters above represent the general anachronistic and sensationalistic nature of the film quite well, while also conveying the spirit of the “burning times” when in fact all English witches were condemned to death by hanging. Better to refrain from the film altogether and view Hopkins through Malcolm Gaskill’s substantive-yet-accessible Witchfinders: A Seventeenth-Century Tragedy.

Frontspiece to Matthew Hopkins’ “Discovery of Witches”, published by Richard Royston, 1647, British Museum; Illustration from C.R. Weld’s History of the Royal Society, 1848; Malcolm Gaskill’s Witchfinders. A Seventeenth-century Tragedy (2007).

7 Comments | tags: books, England, Film, Seventeenth Century, Witch Trials | posted in History

October 19, 2013

Black Cat Covers

By daseger

Many months ago I wrote about a small publishing company in turn-of-the-century Salem named the S.E. Cassino Company with a diverse list of publications that included Black Cat Magazine, a pulp fiction/short story magazine (which featured Jack London and Henry Miller among its authors) that was in publication from 1895-1923. The Cassino company acquired Black Cat after the unfortunate death of its founding editor in 1912, and moved its operations from Boston to Salem, at least briefly–and then there was a twenty-year run of really cute black cat Black Cat covers. I recently came across a treasure trove of these images, and because they are so so striking (and it’s October in Salem) I thought I would feature a series of them. The Cover Cat cuts a pretty conventional silhouette on the first 1895 cover, but as you can see on this series of October covers, he gets bolder with each passing year. My favorite is from 1907, with the squirrels. Unfortunately, I can’t find the artist (s) responsible for these covers; if anyone has any information, please pass it along.

October Black Cat Covers from the digital collection of an amazing magazine bibliographer, 1895-1913.

Much, much more unfortunately, I have very bad news about a real black cat: a kitten, to be more precise. This past Tuesday, someone stole a weeks-old black kitten named Sunshine (with an intestinal condition !!!) from our animal shelter here in Salem: this is just the sort of story that intensifies my dislike and disdain for October in the Witch City.

4 Comments | tags: Animals, ephemera, Flora and Fauna, Graphic Design, print culture, Witch City | posted in Culture, Design, History, Paper, Salem

October 17, 2013

Witches and Trees

By daseger

It strikes me that there are many historical, folkloric, and cultural connections between witches and trees: witches are often described and depicted as gathering under, hanging from, and riding on branches of trees, “witches’ broom” is a tree disease or deformity, the rowan tree was traditionally associated with the warding off of witches. I’m leaving aside the arboreal associations of modern witchcraft. There’s something about the forest primeval in general, and trees in particular, that creates an environment of secrecy and sorcery: this was a setting that was cultivated by Renaissance etchers and resurrected by Victorian illustrators. The trees are often spindly, haggard, misshapen, and barren, like the women underneath them.

Daniel Hopfer, Gib Frid (Let me Go), early 16th century etching, British Museum; Edward Gurden Dalziel, illustration from Judy Magazine, 13 February 1878, British Museum; Arthur Rackham, ‘The Witches Sabbath’ illustration for ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, George Harrap & Co, 1928.

The association seems to be strongest in the folklore associated with Italian witchcraft. In Benevento, the “City of Witches” (occasionally referenced as the “Italian Salem”), witches from all over the world were said to gather annually under a storied walnut tree–a tree that was definitely fruitful. It’s an age-old, deeply-rooted story whose origins seem impossible to trace (at least for a short blog post), but the streghe under the walnut tree have certainly inspired a variety of cultural expressions and commodities, from works of art to musical compositions to the famous Strega digestif, manufactured right in Benevento since 1860.

Guglielmo della Porta, The Witches at the Walnut Tree of Benevento, pen and ink drawing, mid 16th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Lithographed songsheet for Paganini’s Dance of the Witches, 1830s, British Museum; Strega label and walnut tree outside the Alberti factory in Benevento.

To the north there is another representation of witches gathered under a fertile tree: the famous mural of Massa Maritimma, dating from the mid- to late 13th century and uncovered in 2000. Situated on a wall in the town center enclosing the communal “Fountain of Abundance”, this tree bears strange fruit: phalluses which the women below are picking and gathering. The discovery of the obscene (???) mural was shocking for some (and its subsequent cleaning remains controversial—you can read about it here), but not to anyone who has any familiarity with the Malleus Maleficarum (the “Witches’ Hammer) a practical guide to identifying, detecting and prosecuting witches published in 1487. Due to its sheer popularity, which is evidenced by many editions and translations, most historians believe that the Malleus contributed to the intensification of witch-hunting in the early modern era, though its exact role is open to debate. It seems pretty clear to me that the book’s popularity is based in its accessibility, and the sensationalistic anecdotes that its authors (Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger–probably more the former than the latter) include, among them oft-cited passages about witches stealing men’s “virile members” and hiding them in nests nestled in the branches of trees.

The Massa Marittima Mural and detail; you can see it in situ here, and read more about its symbolism here.

28 Comments | tags: Art, folklore, Malleus Maleficarum, Medieval, Renaissance, Witch Trials, Witchcraft | posted in Culture, History

October 13, 2013

New York Minutes

By daseger

Just back from a quick trip to New York City, which overwhelmed me, as usual. It’s not just the size of the city and the buildings, it’s the details that overwhelm, on the (pre-World War II) buildings, and everywhere: the textures of the city. I need a week or so just to absorb a neighborhood, so the pictures below are just instant impressions of Brooklyn Heights and lower Manhattan, where I attended a very special wedding and a very indulgent (seven-course? I lost count) lunch. On the way out of town I did stop at the Met’s Interwoven Globe exhibit, which also overwhelmed me with its details and textures. Part of my return trip was quite leisurely as I took the Taconic Parkway and Route 23 into Massachusetts, but then I flew back to a very busy Salem on the Mass Pike. It’s really Witch City here now, which is overwhelming as well.

Brooklyn Heights and Lower Manhattan: the view from my brother’s apartment window, streets and windows in Brooklyn Heights, “Historia testis temporum” (History is witness to the Times) at the Brooklyn Historical Society, lower Manhattan, apples in the foyer of Bouley, where we ate lunch, a palampore (bed cover) and table carpet from Interwoven Globe.

13 Comments | tags: Antiques and Collectibles, Architecture, Exhibitions, Interior design, New York City, Shopping | posted in Culture, History, Travel

October 7, 2013

Hue Histories

By daseger

I had a million things to do yesterday: write a new course proposal, rework an old book proposal, write memos and evaluations (the endless activities of a department chair), work on my digital exhibition of the Great Salem Fire of 1914, finish my seasonal closet turnover (alway a huge project, unfortunately), laundry, cleaning, etc…but for some reason I lay on the couch and read a book about purple—a color I don’t even like—for a good part of the day. To be more precise, the book was about mauve, the first artificial dye, invented quite by accident in 1856 by a teenaged chemical student named William Perkin. I’ve had Simon Garfield‘s Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World in my library for quite a while, but I never really opened it up until yesterday.

And once I did, much of the day slipped away, as Garfield drew me into the story of Perkin’s accidental discovery and its colorful consequences. While working on a malaria treatment derived from the synthesis of quinine from coal tar, Perkin wound up with an appealing purplish sediment in the bottom of his beaker: this became mauveine, the first chemically-produced dye. Mauveine, and the process by which it was produced, led to a world of industrial applications: more standardized and intense colors for the textile industry, and advances in the diverse fields of medicine, perfumery, explosive, food and photography. Even before the color made its formal debut at the London International Exhibition in 1862 it caught the eyes of two extremely influential ladies, Queen Victoria and Empress Eugénie, the fashionable wife of Napoleon III. The Queen wore a gown of “rich mauve velvet” (according to the London Illustrated News) to her daughter Victoria’s wedding to Prince Fredrick William in 1858 and later judged it appropriate for “half-mourning”, while the Empress (apparently the Elizabeth Taylor of her day) wore “Perkin’s purple” often, as it was said to match her eyes. The decade of the 1860s was deemed the “mauve decade” by the popular press, characterized and colored by an outbreak of what Punch called “mauve measles”.

Mauve gowns and upholstery fringe, 1860s-1870s, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Garfield’s book got me thinking about other hue histories: I read Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red. Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire a few years ago while prepping for my Expansion of Europe seminar: its focus on the American cochineal is a perfect illustration of early modern colonial competition. There are several books on indigo, also a sought-after commodity (the one below looks good), and apparently you can read about the histories of all the colors in Victoria Finlay’s Color: A Natural History of the Pallette, including ochre, black and brown, white, orange, yellow and green.

I might use one of these books in a class one day (when I am relieved of my administrative obligations): commodities are a good way to focus in history surveys: students like things that are tangible, material, and accessible–and they also like narratives. Commodity history has been dominated by food and drink in the past few decades (COD and the making of the modern world, the POTATO and the making of the modern world, RUM and the making of the modern world, SALT and the making of the modern world, PEPPER and the making of the modern world, BANANAS and the making of the modern world, etc…..) but now I think we can add some color.

7 Comments | tags: 19th century, books, England, Fashion, Teaching | posted in Culture, History

October 4, 2013

Italianate Influences in Salem

By daseger

Here’s another entry in my intermittent, impressionistic, and amateurish survey of architectural styles in Salem: Italianate, yet another Victorian revival style. As Salem is a city that is more Federal (classical) than Victorian, I think the Italianate influences are limited and a bit restrained, but they are still there. There is a beautiful early Italianate house right next door to us on Chestnut Street, and it happens that one of my favorite houses in Salem (actually it’s everybody’s favorite house) is both Italianate and for sale: the Samuel P. Andrews house on Flint Street.

A beautiful house in a beautiful setting, as you can see. This house shares one distinct Italianate feature with the Maria Ropes house, right around the corner on Chestnut Street: third-floor “Siamese-twin” windows with semi-circular headings. Both houses were built in the 1850s, which seems to be the decade for Italianate construction in America. Bryant Tolles refers to the Ropes house as “Italian Revival” in his definitive guide to Salem architecture (Architecture in Salem. An Illustrated Guide): I’m not precisely sure what the distinction is between this and “Italianate”, and then there is also Renaissance Revival to consider! Tolles’ Guide is widely-available; unfortunately another essential, more practical, guide to Salem architecture is not: The Salem Handbook: a Renovation Guide for Homeowners, which was published by Historic Salem, Inc. in 1977–though you can find detail drawings of the major architectural styles in Salem here.

With my untrained eye, I cannot find a house with all of the decorative elements featured in the Salem Handbook’s “Italianate” illustration: no cupolas and very few arches appear on Salem houses of this era. Tolles identifies the William Ives House on Essex Street (built in 1850-51) as “one of the best examples of the Italian Revival style surviving locally” and this immense house (difficult to photograph as it has two huge trees in front of it–just the entrance is below) certainly casts an Italianesque image for me. But so too do several other houses which are more difficult to stereotype: For Tolles, the gabled and balconied (if that is a word) Richardson House on Broad Street “defies normal stylistic classification”, but I see Italian influences.

And then there is this last house in North Salem, of which I have become quite enamored. The James Dugan house on Dearborn Street was built a little later (1872) than the rest of Salem’s Italianate houses, but its dramatic facade and slim, hooded windows really conjure of the Renaissance for me. It was built by a prosperous leather manufacturer (who unfortunately killed himself in 1893 after experiencing some “reverses” and purchasing multiple life insurance policies valued at $410,000) in the midst of a once-vast estate; its lot is much smaller today but still beautifully-designed, like the house.

4 Comments | tags: Architecture, books, Chestnut Street, great houses, Italianate, Renaissance, Revivalism (architecture) | posted in Culture, Design, History, Houses, Salem

September 30, 2013

Creatures of Cartography

By daseger

With a little break for the sand silhouettes of Normandy, I’m back to maps, which I am always “collecting” in my digital files. The collection below is made up of the remnants of one of my most popular posts: Maps come Alive. Most of these maps are also anthropomorphic, but a little more detailed, and consequently a little less accessible. For some time I’ve been trying to explore, conceptually and visually, the origins and development of the concept of the “Animal Kingdom”: it hasn’t quite come together, but in the process I’ve acquired quite a few more examples of literal and metaphorical animal maps. And that’s what we have here: the world as populated by animals and the United States depicted as various animals–“scientific” and satirical representations of animal kingdoms, of sorts.

Two Nineteenth-century Animal Maps: anonymous author/creator, c. 1835, Collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York; A.J. Johnson, Map of the World Showing the Geographical Distribution and Range of the Principal Members of the Animal Kingdom, 1860. David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, ©Cartography Associates.

The other animal maps of the nineteenth century are not quite so serious, but far more political. I’ve seen varieties from several different countries, but my favorite are American–bears and tigers are an easy metaphor, but only in America do you see such diverse cartographical creatures as pigs, worms, and dogs (well, maybe dogs are a bit more universal).

“This Porcineograph”, a map of the U.S. in the shape of a pig, Forbes Lithograph Manufacturing Co., 1879, Library of Congress; Map of the United States as encircled by the “Tapeworm Party”, Chicago Bank Note, 1888: James G. Blaine is depicted as the head of a tapeworm made of up various government scandals, Library of Congress; Two versions of “The Silver Dog With the Golden Tail – Will the Tail Wag the Dog, or the Dog Wag The Tail?” Boston Globe, September 13, 1896, representing divisions over the adoption of the gold standard in the election of 1896.

And onto another evolution: one of the beautiful cartographical creatures of British paper artist Claire Brewster:

5 Comments | tags: Art, ephamera, maps | posted in Culture, Design, History, Paper

September 26, 2013

Schoolgirl Maps

By daseger

For some time I’ve been developing an interest in schoolgirl art–typically examples of painting and embroidery–and I’ve always been interested in cartography, so when I read a recent post on one schoolgirl’s hand-drawn maps at the Vault, Slate’s history blog, I was immediately enchanted. I began searching for more, and this post is the result of my intermittent efforts. The maps featured in the Vault’s post were drawn by Vermont schoolgirl Frances Henshaw in 1823: the entire collection of her 19 (out of then 24) state maps can be accessed at the David Rumsey Map Collection’s website, along with their beautiful calligraphic descriptions.

Maps and description drawn by Frances Henshaw of Middlebury Female Academy, 1823. Courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection, © Cartography Associates.

It turns out that Frances was at a very progressive school, receiving instruction in a “reformed” curriculum advocated by its former principle, Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870) whose 1819 Plan for Improving Female Education established her reputation as the dean of girls’ education and led to her placement at what became her namesake school. Mrs. Willard believed that young women should be instructed in topics that were previously beyond, or outside, their reach: mathematics, philosophy, history, geography. And so we see the creation of these charming annotated maps, I think I have a new collection obsession, but if all of the sold lots below are any indication, I fear that I might be a bit late to the party.

Detail of pen-and-ink map of Massachusetts drawn by Maria C. Butler of Utica, NY in 1815 (before Mrs. Willard’s plan–maybe she gets too much credit?), sold by Andrew Spindler Antiques, a great shop up in Essex; Quaker map of the United States by Anna A. Wilbur of the Friends School, Providence, 1835, Skinner Auctions; Watercolor map of the western and eastern hemispheres by Ann E. Colson and Laura Northrop, Athens, NY, 1809 (also before Emma), Northeast Auctions; Map of South America by Massachusetts schoolgirl Tirzah Bearse, 1831, Joan R. Brownstein Art and Antiques.

6 Comments | tags: Antiques and Collectibles, Art, maps, Massachusetts, New England | posted in Culture, History, Paper

September 24, 2013

Boccaccio’s Birthday

By daseger

Now that I’ve made this big transition to chair of the History Department, I’m doing very little teaching: only one class (on the Renaissance and the Reformation) as opposed to the normal four-course-per-semester load. That’s just how administrative the job is. I’d much rather be teaching three more courses, frankly, but at the same time I have a renewed appreciation of the time I do get to spend in the classroom. The Ren/Ref course is an old standard, easy and fun to teach with its contrasting and continuous movements and its visual and theological drama, and my students are open and engaged and undemanding. It takes me a while to get into the period as the course has no prerequisites and most of them need some medieval footing in order to proceed; consequently we’ve just finished an examination of the late medieval crisis (intense famine, plague, war, schism, all at the same time) and the “worlds” of the “three crowns” of early Italian Renaissance literature: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. I usually focus almost exclusively on Petrarch as the key transitional figure in the emergence of the Renaissance humanist mentality, and this course was no exception, but all of the celebratory initiatives associated with the 700th anniversary of Giovanni Boccaccio‘s birth are making me reconsider my practice. Perhaps the Decameron, Boccaccio’s allegorical collection of 100 stories told by ten young Florentines seeking to distract themselves and pass the time while they wait out the Black Death in a deserted rural villa, should be read for more than its plague prologue.

Boccaccio, in the company of Petrarch, Dante, and three other Renaissance writers, in Giorgio Vasari’s Six Tuscan Poets, 1544, Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

“Boccaccio 2013” is a multi-disciplinary, multi-event happening in Italy, and Boccaccio is also being celebrated in Britain, where he has always been recognized as an inspiration for another essential late medieval work, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (as well as John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes). There was a major conference at the University of Manchester this summer, as well as a coincidental, and ongoing exhibition, focused on Boccaccio’s currency. He endured because (like any true Renaissance man) he sought fame in his own time and among his contemporaries, but also because his accessible prose and format inspired a succession of authors, from Shakespeare to Voltaire, to Tennyson, Longfellow and Poe. Readers past and present also wanted to see those beautiful noblemen and -women telling their tales–as well as the characters in their tales–while the world was dying all around them, and so centuries of artists have been inspired by Boccaccio as well. Renaissance escapism: modern and universal at the same time.

Boccaccio the author, in a French manuscirpt of his De Claris Mulieribus, 1440, British Library MS Royal 16 G V; Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die: illustrations of the Decameron from Taddeo Crivelli’s 1467 manuscript edition, Bodleian Library MS Holkam mis. 49, and by Sandro Botticelli, the Story of Nastagio degli Onesti: The Banquet in the Pine Forest, 1483, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Thomas Stothard, c. 1820, British Museum; and John Williams Waterhouse, A Tale from the Decameron, 1916, Lady Lever Gallery, Liverpool.