Tag Archives: print culture

June 11, 2011

The Bodleys visit Salem

By daseger

I picked up a nineteenth-century children’s book at a flea market a couple of weeks ago entitled The Bodleys on Wheels by Horace E. Scudder. It had a neat cover, and as some of my previous posts have indicated, I like Victorian illustrations. Actually, the cover of this book looks much more modern, but it was in fact published in 1879. Between the covers the pictures were pretty standard, but the story was charming, and as there was a chapter on Salem I snatched it up.

Apparently there is a whole series of Bodley books, published in the 1870s and 188os, narrating the travels of the Bodley family of Boston: Mr. and Mrs. Bodley and their three children, Nathan, Philippa and Lucy. Sometimes college-age Cousin Ned comes along. The Bodleys on Wheels traces the family’s travels through the old towns of Essex County, north of Boston, including Salem.

The book opens with the family’s traditional New Year’s Eve custom, a collective recitation of Paul Revere’s Ride, and this sets the tone for the rest of the story. The Bodley children know the real and poetical stories of Paul Revere well. As spring approaches, Mr. and Mrs. Bodley inform the children that the destination for this year’s road trip will be the North Shore, and much excitement and preparation ensues: studying, drawing and coloring maps, preparing itineraries. Phillipa occasionally rides around the Boston brownstone on a broom in imitation of a Salem witch, but by the time they get to the old port the children are really only interested in seeing the birthplaces of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the famous historian William H. Prescott! No tacky witch museums for them ( fortunately there weren’t any tacky witch museums yet, but one get the impression that even if there were, the Bodley family would have abstained). Of course, being children, they are interested in obtaining some of Salem’s famous candy, Gibralters and black-jacks.

While in Salem, the Bodleys stay with the family of Mr. Bodley’s college classmate, Mr. Bruce, whose house is full of “antiquities”. He also provides many telling quotes about Salem and its perceived history and culture at the time. He observes that “here in Salem we’re all as old as we can be when we were born” (???), that Hawthorne “connects the old and new for us”, and that while the port is “sleepy” now, Salem’s trade to the East was so active back in the day that the eastern “heathen” thought SALEM was a country rather than a city. You can read the entire quotation above; it’s a sentiment that I’ve heard time and time again (minus the heathen characterization), even in the Salem of today.

2 Comments | tags: books, China trade, Paul Revere, print culture | posted in History, Salem

May 26, 2011

Very Odd Apples

By daseger

My title actually refers to tomatoes rather than apples, a great example of a New World crop that was introduced into Europe though the “Columbian Exchange” and then brought back to America in the eighteenth century. Like another consequential import from the western hemisphere, the potato, the tomato was slow to find acceptance among Europeans, primarily due to its first introduction in print by the Italian physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli (Matthiolus) in his 1544 Commentaries (the tomato page from a 1590 edition is below). Matthiolus refers to the tomato as a “poma aurea” or golden apple, which is generally taken as evidence that yellow tomatoes preceded their red counterparts across the Atlantic.

Matthiolus tells his readers how to eat the tomato (fried in oil with salt and pepper) but he also classifies and compares the new vegetable (fruit? He is confused as well) to the mysterious magical mandrake, which gives it a rather malevolent reputation in the early modern era. Northern naturalists included the tomato in their “new” herbals in the sixteenth century, with name variations but the same magical associations. Conrad Gesner stressed the aphrodisiac qualities of mandrake but maintained its connection to the new plant in his Historia Plantarum (1553), and thus “golden apples” became “love apples” (and sometimes “wolf’s peaches”) in northern Europe while in Spain the term “Moor’s apples” prevailed. The most beautiful herbal of the sixteenth century, Leonart Fuchs’ De historia stirpium, included an illustration of the tomato in its later editions, as did Rembert Dodoens’ Cruydeboeck:

The most comprehensive herbal issued in sixteenth-century England, John Gerard’s Herball, was primarily plagiarized from Dodoens’ earlier work (there was a lot of “sharing” in the early modern publishing industry), but Gerard was a gardener who experimented with tomato cultivation (and consumption) himself. He found the plant to be “of rank and stinking savour” and added this commentary: In Spain and those hot regions they use to eat the Apples [of love] prepared and boiled with pepper, salt, and oil: but they yield very little nourishment to the body, and the same naught and corrupt. Likewise they do eat the Apples with oil, vinegar, and pepper mixed together for sauce to their meat, even as we in these cold countries do mustard.” An early reference to tomato sauce, this observation also tells us a lot about the difference between Mediterranean and northern European cuisines, then and now!

Taking their cue from Gerard, the tomato was scorned in Anglo-American cuisines until the modern era, despite efforts by such varied advocates as Thomas Jefferson, who cultivated tomatoes at Monticello, and the Neapolitan artist Michel Felice Corne, who escaped the Napoleonic Wars by departing Naples in 1800 on one of Elias Hasket Derby’s Salem-bound ships, the Mount Vernon. Corne lived and worked in Salem for the next six years, ostensibly introducing both Italian painting techniques and Italian tomato sauce to the town, but Salemites would have none of the latter. It would take another half-century or so, and a huge wave of Italian immigration, for “love apples” to become American (again).

Michel Felice Corne, The Ship Mount Vernon of Salem Outrunning a French Fleet

An 1869 Advertisement, Library of Congress

Leave a comment | tags: Flora and Fauna, horticulture, plants, print culture, Renaissance | posted in History, Salem

May 24, 2011

Maps Come Alive

By daseger

In the course of putting together my summer graduate seminar on the expansion of Europe this past weekend I reacquainted myself with some digital map collections on the web. Maps provide an accessible entryway into this topic, in every era of European expansion. The shift from conceptual to more realistic cartography in the early modern era is a very evident and important trend, but early modern mapmakers retained a bit of whimsy when they produced maps in the form of plants, animals and humans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The maps contained in German theology professor Heinrich Bunting’s Travels according to the Scriptures (1581) are very popular with my students and with the blogosphere: the known world as a clover leaf, part of Asia as the flying horse Pegasus, Europe as the classical virgin Europa. This is still very conceptual geography; the clover leaf map is merely a new version of the medieval T-O map, in which the world is inhabited by the descendants of Noah dwelling in Asia, Africa and Europe. Jerusalem is at the center of the world as it has always been. Even though it is almost a century after Columbus, Heinrich’s “world” map only references the eastern hemisphere. His Europa map was stolen from one of the most popular books of the sixteenth century: Sebastian Munster’s Cosmographia, first published in 1544 and issued in many editions by the end of the century. This is what these new, colorful, fantastical maps are all about: competition in the new age of print.

Another Europa: Sebastian Munster’s version from a 1570 edition of Cosmographia:

Another lively early modern map is the “Dutch Lion” map (Leo Belgicus, Leo Hollandicus ) issued in a succession of variations from the late sixteenth century, contemporaneously with the Dutch Revolt against Spain. The rebellious Dutch provinces are shown in the form of a lion, roaring in the face of the powerful Spanish Empire.

"Leo Hollandicus", JC Visscher, 1648

Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic maps continue on into the modern era; they seem to be quite popular in the nineteenth century as a forms of political commentary and expressions of public opinion. These satirical maps are especially prevalent after 1870 and the unification of Germany: French and English versions definitely contain an alarmed awareness of the potential of the new empire to dominate the Continent, as these examples( L’Europe Animale, 1882 and Angling in Dangerous Waters, 1889) from the huge collection of such maps at the University of Amsterdam illustrate:

In L’Europe Animale, Germany is a sly wolf waiting to pounce, while the Angling map personifies the nation with its militaristic ruler, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who is looking over the horizon. The great big Russian bear and Tsar Nicholas are pretty intimidating as well. The end result of all this animosity was of course World War I, and BibliOdyssey has a great post on the jingoistic satirical maps of the Great War here, including the English map “Kill that (German) Eagle” from 1914.

On the lighter side: plates from William Harvey’s Geographical Fun. Being Humourous Outlines of Various Countries, an atlas (presumably for children but quite sophisticated in its humor) first published in 1869. The entire text can be found at the Library of Congress, and it has also been republished. Here, from a very British perspective, are France and Prussia (it’s just before the unification of Germany):

Finally, I can’t resist adding an elephant to this group even though he’s not quite a map: a World Wildlife Fund advertisement by Ogilby and Mather from our own time:

75 Comments | tags: advertising, Nineteenth Century, print culture, Renaissance | posted in History

April 28, 2011

Wedding Flowers

By daseger

Yes, flower bells rang right merry that day,

When there was a marriage of flowers, they say

In honor of the royal wedding, I’m featuring a charming Art Nouveau picture book, Walter Crane’s A Flower Wedding. Described by Two Wallflowers. Originally published in 1905 by Cassell & Company in London, the book has recently been republished in a facsimile edition to mark the Victoria & Albert Museum‘s current exhibition The Cult of Beauty: the Aesthetic Movement, 1860-1880 (and perhaps another big occasion?) I snatched up a first edition years ago, long before I knew what I had.

Walter Crane (1845-1915) was a well-know children’s book illustrator as well as an Arts & Crafts designer of wallpaper, textiles and other decorative arts. I suppose that A Flower Wedding is a children’s book, but it is quite a sophisticated one. There’s a simple plot line narrating the wedding of “Lad’s Love” (another name for Sweet William) and “Miss Meadowsweet” in which all the participants and guests are flowers drawn in human form . Here are the bride’s attendants and mother, along with a very prominent guest, “Good King Henry” (one of my favorite herbs).

And before all of London, they were wed.

3 Comments | tags: design, England, Flora and Fauna, holidays, print culture | posted in History

March 22, 2011

Springing into the Seventeenth Century

By daseger

Despite the fact that it’s not exactly New England’s shining season, I love spring. It’s my favorite season by far; I even get a little glum when it turns into summer. It’s just such a hopeful time, and so dramatic; one year I watched the grass turn green in an afternoon. There are signs of spring in the garden (goldfish awakened from their states of hibernation, little green buds on shrubs and trees), but we sustained so much tree damage this past winter that I kind of dread going back there for long, yet. I did put a pot of hellebores—my harbingers of spring–on the front stoop, but that’s the extent of my spring “gardening” so far.

Instead of tending to my garden, I’m going to welcome spring in my closet by indulging in a biannual ritual: the changing of the clothes. I’m also putting together a series of lectures on the “consumer revolution” of the seventeenth century this week, and am consequently indulging in another passion: perusing the works of Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77).

Hollar escaped war-torn central Europe and ventured to England with Thomas Howard, the Earl of Arundel, to document the “Collector Earl’s” large and growing collection through his amazingly-detailed etchings. Hollar’s work did not end with Lord Arundel’s collection; he went on to document many aspects of his adopted country’s society and culture in over 2700 etchings, most of which were printed. Hollar’s focus and images are so varied that he really transcends the role of artist and becomes a “photographer” of sorts, capturing the street life, architecture, and events of his age. It’s not just Hollar’s range, though, it is the details, and the texture, that he infuses into every work that makes his images so captivating. My students love them, and so do I.

Hollar’s skill at capturing surface detail is particularly apparent in his depictions of clothing, which two of his print collections, The Severall Habits of English Women and The Seasons, do so vividly. So here is Spring, represented by a fashionable young noblewomen in mid-seventeenth century England and several seasonal pastoral scenes, all from the Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection at the University of Toronto:

2 Comments | tags: Art, England, Flora and Fauna, print culture, Seventeenth Century | posted in History

March 9, 2011

Hand-drawn Houses

By daseger

If hand-drawn architectural sketches and renderings are on the verge of becoming a lost art in this age of Autocad, then I would imagine that they would increase in value exponentially in the coming decades. My husband-the-architect can draw beautifully, as can lots of other architects that we know (Salem seems to be a magnet for architects) but they are all in their 40s: are they the last generation of sketching architects? While searching for some information about a Boston architect named Arthur Little who studied, sketched, and worked in Salem, I came across a periodical entitled The American Architect and Building News which was packed with amazing illustrations over its relatively short (1876-1908) life. I think I’m next-to-last in a long list of bloggers who have discovered this resource (and I’m sure it must be a key primary source for architectural historians), but I’m still going to showcase some of my favorite illustrations.

The American Architect was published every Saturday by a series of Boston publishers. It was first and foremost a trade publication, containing industry news and notices, classified as “Building Intelligence”, as well as plans, sketches, and photographs of newly-commissioned and -built structures. Its scope was national, even international, but there are lots of Boston-area buildings given its place of publication. This was the gilded age, and elaborate summer cottages were given pride of placement. It was also an age of the emerging Colonial Revival style, and so architects like Little looked for inspiration for their new houses in the old colonial towns, like Salem. Below are some detail drawings of the very inspirational Peirce-Nichols house from several 1886 issues of The American Architect and a contemporary phot0graph of the house.

Some illustrations from issues of The American Architect published in 1884, including sketches of a “cottage” in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, the Ames Building in Boston (the city’s first “skyscraper”) by H.H. Richardson, a facade and details of a house in Scotland, and a Queen Anne-style house in Pittsburgh:

More details from an old Salem houses, drawn by Frank W. Wallis (who did the Peirce Nichols house sketches above), from an 1886 issue of The American Architect, and comparative cornices and door hardware from 1889 issues:

No detail was too small for The American Architect and Building News. Given the era, there are also lots of technical drawings, for plumbing and “sanitation”, electrical wiring, fire prevention (the goal was a “slow-burning house”), and studies of shade and shadows. The work of draftsmen like E. Eldon Deane (whose sketches are above) set an artistic standard for the magazine which even extended to advertisements like the one from Cabot below.

A sprawling summer cottage in Dublin, New Hampshire and exterior and interior sketches for an urban residence, from 1889:

The publishers of American Architect clearly realized the value of their drawings and published several portfolio volumes of single sheet prints like the 12-series “Georgian Period” below, currently on sale for $5000 here. Individual colored prints, like the dining room of the Emmerton House in Salem and the “morning room” of a house in Boston’s Back Bay, both drawn by Arthur Little, were also produced, an acknowledgement that the architect, was, in fact, an artist.

7 Comments | tags: Architecture, Art, design, print culture | posted in History, Salem

February 21, 2011

Washington through British Eyes

By daseger

This weekend I searched through various databases of eighteenth-century British periodicals for critical and comical images of George Washington and didn’t come up with many: he is clearly not the American nemesis. The British popular press blamed their own leaders for the humiliating failure of the “American War” (as well as the rest of Europe, allied with the Colonies against Britain) rather than focusing on American strengths. For cartoon and cariacature representations, the press clung to older images of America, chiefly a young (very scantily dressed) woman and/or a native (always with feathers) American, although as the war progressed the American rattlesnake was increasingly visible. Here are several very popular cartoons from the beginning, middle, and end of the Revolution from the British cartoon collection at the Library of Congress, with Washington nowhere in attendance:

The Able Doctor, or American Swallowing the Bitter Draught, 1774: British Prime Minister Lord North forces the Intolerable Acts down a bare-breasted America’s throat while the lecherous Lord Sandwich looks up her skirt.

News from America, or the Patriots in the Dumps, 1776: Lord North again, and a dejected (and again bare-breasted) America.

The British Lion engaging Four Powers, 1779: Britain facing the coalition force of a Spanish spaniel, and French cock hen, an American rattlesnake, and a Dutch pug dog.

The Horse America throwing its Master, 1779: King George III unseated.

The Reconciliation between Britannia and her daughter America, 1782.

George Washington appears in only two cartoons that I could find, and only one represents him as a figure of mockery, wearing a dress and referred to as MRS George Washington while lashing Britain (now herself a submissive woman!). The more common depiction of Washington during the American War is as the dignified Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. Prints published from 1776 on, and especially from 1780, indicate that Washington had earned the respect of both the British public as well as that of their American “cousins”.

The Curious Zebra. alive from America! Walk in Gem’men and ladies, walk in, 1778: Washington holding the tail of the curious zebra, whose stripes represent the 13 colonies.

Mrs. George Washington. Bestowing thirteen stripes on Brittania, 1783.

1776

1780

The images below are not strictly British; the first is a profile portrait that was painted by James Sharples in 1796 and copied by his wife Ellen in the following year and the second is the 1908 stamp based on this profile. The Sharples were English painters who emigrated to America in 1794 and began a family business in which James would paint the initial portrait and Ellen would take and fulfill orders for copies. This image, copies of which are in the collections of the National Portrait Galleries of both London and Washington, seems to have been quite popular a century ago, but we seldom see it now. Profiles are no longer popular.

Leave a comment | tags: Art, George Washington, Presidents' Day, print culture | posted in History

February 13, 2011

Vinegar Valentines

By daseger

Valentines are great examples of the creation of demand, and their first appearance coincides with the emergence and development of the greeting cards industry in the mid-nineteenth century. Pre-modern romantic expressions were personal and handmade, but from about 1840 on, an increasingly dizzying array of stock sentiments appeared on the market. Like all ephemera, they reflect lots of things about the time in which they were produced: print technology, fashions, aesthetics, language. Valentines of the past expressed social values, but also occasionally social criticism, as in the case of so-called “vinegar valentines” which were sent (I presume anonymously or with a strange sense of humor) to those for whom you did not have warm feelings.

The second half of the nineteenth century was a golden era for commercially-produced Valentine’s Day cards on both sides of the Atlantic, after Mt. Holyoke student Esther Howland received a British valentine and was inspired to start her own card business around 1847, eventually transforming her native Worcester, Massachusetts into “Valentine City”. My Valentine album starts off with some Howland-inspired creations, but then turns decidedly mean: targeting spurned lovers, vain women, greedy old maids, cold hearts, and suffragettes.

Valentine Images from Indiana University’s online exhibition “A Flowering of Affection: Victorian Valentine Cards at the Lilly Library” and the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

2 Comments | tags: ephemera, holidays, print culture | posted in History

January 19, 2011

Transatlantic Trade Cards

By daseger

I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the printing industry in England during the Tudor era and continue to be interested in the history of printing and print culture, not just book and informational publishing but also practical or “job” printing, preserved as what we call “ephemera” today: newsbooks, handbills, broadsides, catalogues, tickets, labels, and a host of other forms of printed matter. John Johnson, Printer to Oxford University in the mid-twentieth century and a major collector of ephemera, defined it as “everything which would ordinarily go into the waste paper basket after use, everything printed which is not actually a book.”

Despite real and digital survivals in collections around the world, these pieces of paper were and are ephemeral—-who knows how many were produced? Survivals are like captured fleeting images from the past, and great examples of both print and popular culture. What did you throw in the trash today that might be valued by historians tomorrow? My focus today is on trade cards, an early form of advertising, whose production definitely peaked in the later nineteenth century, after the diffusion of color lithography and before the onset of electronic media. Trade cards seem to be inextricably linked to the Victorian era when they were colorfully pictorial and prolific, but they actually go way back to the first centuries of print. Below are some examples from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and both sides of the Atlantic.

The two early English cards (c. 1680-1700) are from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University; the Salem and Lowell examples are from the Baker Library at Harvard and the Library of Congress. I particularly like both the image and the tag line of T.W. McKean, Tailor: Ladies’ Tight Fitting Garments a Specialty (but the lady dreaming of her well-dressed husband and son on the last card is hard to beat).