Lost in Tangerine Tango

Here's an old digital collage that inspired two versions.

The plain "houndstooth" version above, and this "tilted diamond with dots" version. Booth in Sampler No. 2 at Spoonflower.

At the right distance, this one looks like beads on a net. I'm probably tired.

Blowing Things Up & Shooting Stuff

I discovered a great archive of the Du Pont Company periodicals via Things Magazine. There is much to read in the full text of 640 issues dating from the period 1913 to 2003. I'm going to enjoy exploring the Hagley Digital Archives in its entirety! I've added the link to my sidebar list of Reference Links.

Below is some of my favorite Du Pont cover art.

Reading Fingerprints

Here's another advertisement from the August 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics. What can you read in this finger print? There is a secret hidden in it, just as there is in every finger print.

Study the advertisement from the Institute of Applied Science above and you will see the answer: Your Fortune. The words appear twice.

Learn about the History of Fingerprinting and read two books of historical interest on the Internet Archive: Francis Galton's 1895 publication Fingerprint Directories and James Holt's Fingerprints Simplified published c.1920.

The first London printing of Galton's book Finger Prints published by Macmillan in 1892 is commanding the whopping price of $1,500 on Biblio.

Beautiful Book Bindings 1830-1910

I added two new reference links today. One is to a fabulous collection of book bindings--the University of Rochester's Rare Books and Special Collections online exhibit titled Beauty for Commerce: Publisher's Bindings 1830-1910. I added it to my list of reference links under Bindings 1830-1910. I love the way their photographs show both the front cover and the spine together.

So much so that I gave similar treatment to an interesting dump find from my collection. Below are two pages from Samantha in Europe by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley) and illustrated by C. DeGrimm (NY: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1896).

I've also added a second new reference link to a site called Gallery of Graphic Design. It's an amazing collection of magazine advertisements, dating 1930 -1969, conveniently sorted by advertiser (3121 of them!), illustrator, magazine, product and keyword. Check out this one by Salvador Dali illustrating for De Beers Diamonds.

Here the product is industrial chemicals but the artwork is anything but industrial. The tag line for this one is "No Sibling Rivalry" and the illustration reminds me of a Rorschach inkblot test! And here's a third one for the same company, Celanese, that's also got eye-catching artwork.

And finally, here's a very dramatic advertisment for Drano. Don't let this happen to you!

Space Race Square

I've been playing with some lovely vintage cover art from an old issue of Popular Mechanics. I love the pinwheel effect when the image is turned and repeated!

Nose Thing Dot

I started getting into my old magazines tonight. These advertisements are from an August, 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics which is missing its cover.

It's Not Just Aspirin Any More

Here's another interesting ad, this one for Anacin from the January 11, 1958 issue of Saturday Evening Post. Just what were the active ingredients back then I wonder?

"Bad Ideas" and Cigarette Advertising

I noticed that the first post in Ptak Science's latest category titled "Bad Ideas Department" features an Old Gold cigarette ad from a Life magazine with the tag line: We're tobacco men. . . not medicine men--smoke OLD GOLD for a TREAT instead of a TREATMENT!

I thought immediately of this Saturday Evening Post ad with the exact same line. I'm amazed that I could lay my hands on it. Photo is a camera shot, as the page was too big for my scanner.

I'm reminded of Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man and wonder what subliminal message the smoke is trying to send.

More Popular Mechanics

Here's another cute cover that reminds me of summer on the lake. The girl on top looks like she might jump ship. I love the subtitle "Written So You Can Understand It" which the editors saw fit to eliminate in the 1960's.

Feeling Nostalgic

I've been doing a little organizing today and came across some issues of Popular Mechanics from the late '50's and early '60's. This cover from December 1962 reminded me of the house at the top of my street. And then I remembered some really cool neighborhoods that my father used to drive us through at Christmas time, at night, and my sister and I would be in the back seat with our pajamas on under our coats because we had to go right to sleep as soon as we got home.

There was one house we used to pass on my mother's short-cut route home from Salem that was completely covered with little painted ornaments not only at Christmas but at Easter, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Thanksgiving, and Halloween, too. As time went by they toned it down to simply shutters that reflected the seasons.

But Bomac had far and away the best Christmas light display of all! Of course they had an advantage over your basic homeowner. Bomac (purchased in 1959 by Stanford University research park-based Varian) was a Route 128-based maker of tubes and components in Beverly, Mass. (I learned this detail from a fascinating Route 128 Timeline.)

The Youth's Companion

It really pays to shuffle through stuff every few years. I totally forgot that I had some old issues of The Youth's Companion from 1868. I found 20 issues in all. The illustrations are absolutely wonderful. The two below remind me a lot of Edward Gorey. The "Child in Peril" was a popular theme in his work as it was also with the writers and illustrators of the Companion.



I'm amazed that these documents managed to survive for over 140 years!

The Old Man in Nature

Here's a fabulous painting of The Old Man of the Mountain by Garnet W. Jex from the cover of "The New England Number" of Nature Magazine dated May 1929. The back cover features an advertisement for Darwin tulips, "Heralds of Spring!"

Articles include: "Chocorua, The Abandoned Farm, New England Through the Ages, New England's Bird Guests, Over Lofty Trails, New England's Wild Flowers, New England's Land Mammals, Acadia National Park, Puritan Posies, Nature In New England, The Silvery Harvest, The Forests of New England, Meeting Place of the Insects, and New England Views the Skies.

I thought the advertisement above, totally unrelated to New England, was rather odd. (In the interest of health, a law was passed in Texas prohibiting the sale of live armadillos.)

Love and Marriage

I couldn't resist these three old magazines issues because (at least to my twisted mind) the covers have a theme in common. I was attracted to the April 29, 1939 issue of Liberty ("for Liberals with Common Sense") by the colors. It immediately reminded me of one of my favorite golden books that I had growing up: The Color Kittens. Only the kitten on this cover is pushing 40 and seems not to be falling for that man with his hand positioned so suggestively before her.

Those who know me well will know why I picked up on the November 4, 1933 Liberty. I almost fell off my chair laughing when I noticed it. The masks are cool but somewhat bizarre.

The March 1924 International Studio cover featuring "The Bridegroom" costume design by Paul Eschelitscheff has got to be one of the nicest covers I've ever seen. Plus it appears to be a rather rare one. Productive Arts shows it on their page of incredible Russian graphics.

Unfolding the Salem Register

I've just added something new to the Reference Links in the right hand column of this blog. The U.S. Dept. of Interior - National Parks Service has a series of publications on conservation titled Conserve O Gram. They provide full and printable text in PDF format to a large number of pamphlets detailing guidelines on the conservation of books and other printed documents, photographs, works of art, and other collectible items. They even have one on safe handling and display of radioactive minerals.

One which I hope to make immediate use of (I'm printing a copy of it right now) is titled: How to Flatten Folded Paper Documents. I've had these old newspaper issues of the Salem Register dating January 16, 1888 to October 21, 1889 in their original folded state for about 30 years. They came from a Sunday flea market that used to be held at the Revere Drive-In.

Published on Mondays & Thursdays at Essex Street, cor. of Central, Salem by C.W. Palfray and E. N. Walton.

Also worth visiting is Caring for Your Collections by the Library of Congress. Thanks to OldImprints.com for pointing the way.

And one more new addition to the Reference Links: LC Newspapers. Check out the historic newspapers available to read online in Chronicling America at the Library of Congress.

Backstory: "A Sad Infatuation"

Cleaning out I found a folder with the back story materials for my collage, pictured above, titled A Sad Infatuation (Divorce Diptych No. 2). The work is on two panels of 16x16 inches each. I even wrote a little essay about it, back before I started blogging. So here it is, edited a little, and with illustrations added. The three pages of the original magazine article are larger images than I normally post so click on them to read them for yourself.

The Amazing Story Behind "A Sad Infatuation"

At one of my favorite Maine antique shops, I found a few issues of The New England Home Magazine ( A Weekly Supplement to the Boston Sunday Journal) dated from the years 1899 through 1901. I was immediately drawn to one particular article by Arthur T. McWilliams titled "A Sad Infatuation: Lobengula, the African 'Prince' and How He Tortures His White Wife, A Former London Belle."

The photograph on the second page of a handsome young black man with a demure well-dressed white woman certainly caught my eye.

And then I read the story. . . unbelievable! Interracial Courtship and Cannibalism: shocking stuff even by today's standards in my neck of the country, and I was looking at the Sunday Supplement of a city newspaper published over 100 years ago. I wondered how my grandmother Blanche's mother, my great-grandmother Clothilde, might have reacted to such a sad tale. It is altogether possible that she could have read this very same article in her Salem, Massachusetts parlor some Sunday afternoon a century ago.

I decided to do a collage on the story since I was, at that time, involved in the whole "dysfunctional marriage" theme. (See: this example.) If I could tell my story, then why not illustrate someone else's? The clincher was finding a book called Physical Attraction and Your Hormones at the dump. It explained the reason for the sad infatuation - hers, mine, and a million others. Our Hormones Are At Fault! Simple as that.

Elements for advancing the story made themselves known. The little magazine advertisements reflected the times: "Homemaking as a Profession," and one for a dart game: "Zulu! It's New! It's Fun!" Another proclaiming: "Be a Taxidermist! Learn to Mount Specimens Like These!" provided perfect innuendo.

An Esperanto Dictionary, and a chapter on cannibals from an old Philosophical Dictionary (both from the dump) heightened the story even further. The primitive figures on pink and orange backgrounds provided just the right touch of color, while the skull and tusk really drove the theme home! The church represents matrimony and has, coincidentally, been designed by a man named Savage.

The chart from an old encyclopedia illustrates, in black and white, the evolution of "Feeblemindedness" and serves as a reminder of the scientific misconceptions regarding interracial mating. The classic movie still of King Kong carrying off Fay Wray was a given. Just to make sure those sex-drive hormones rage at optimum level, I threw in some full moons to weaken self-control even further.

Of course I considered the thought that the story might be made up and the photograph staged similar to today's National Enquirer. So I went online and Googled names. In Time Magazine dated 10 January 1944 I found an article titled The Skull of Lobengula. King Lobengula of the Matabele is described as 'a bull elephant of a man, 6 ft. 2, and burdened with 200 wives.' Wikipedia has a listing for Lobengula Kumalo (1845-1894) however he was deceased some six years before "A Sad Infatuation" was written.

I hit pay dirt when I discovered Ben Shephard's book Kitty & the Prince published in 2003. A bookseller's description reads:

In 1899, a South African showman called Frank Fillis chartered a liner and filled it with two hundred Africans, assorted whites, countless animals and a man who claimed to be the son of the Matabele King, Lobengula. Then he brought all these ingredients together at Earl's Court in London, in a show called Savage South Africa, which combined re-enactments of the Matabele Wars of the 1890s and a "Kaffir Kraal," where the British public could wander among Africans in their natural settings. At first all went well. But then the star of the show, Prince Lobengula, caused a scandal by trying to marry a pretty, respectable, white girl, Kitty Jewell - the daughter of a Cornish mine engineer, whom he had met in South Africa. The Daily Mail raised an outcry against the behavior of women visitors to the show who were "weakening the Empire" by being over familiar with the semi-naked Africans. This is the story of the doomed love affair between Kitty Jewell and Peter Lobengula. It is at once a heart-breaking love story, a historical mystery, and a window into popular racism, popular journalism, and feminism in the 1890s.

#####

So Ben Shephard is the man with the answers and I can't wait to get my hands on his book. I should confess, in closing, that the last page of my copy of the original article is missing! Even with my flawless new studio organization I still can't locate it. Worse than that, I forget how the story ends. So I invite you to "Choose Your Own Adventure" just like in the children's book series, and post your own version of the ending in the comments section.

Just one more thing. There is mention in "A Sad Infatuation" of a language called Volapuk. Intended to be a universal language, it was invented and first published in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a German priest. Volapuk was in vogue at the end of the 19th century but its popularity was later eclipsed by Esperanto.

Note: An update on "A Sad Infatuation" can be found here.