the pathos of a library card

An encore post, with updates:
I have a small unintentional collection of library cards.
Each card, long after its obsolescence, remained tucked like a little secret note in a book I borrowed or bought. But they're far from billets doux— rather they give off a blustery officiousness with their "do not remove"-s and their all-caps penalties.
 
They document a nice range of data-recording technology--from hand-written to type-written, rubber stamp to various arcane punch card configurations. That seems kind of interesting as a tiny piece of Historical Record. But mostly I just like them formally, graphically. The red-edged card at top right is positively bristling with overly involved methodology and procedure. The "Alluring Problem" with its red accent and bold star has an obvious beauty but I think my favorite is the small printed and punched ticket at lower left. The holes give a delicate visual syncopation to the printed statements which, although they are emphatically not, remind me of a haiku.

Library cards are extremely mundane but have a subtle intricacy that's poignant. There's something quietly affecting about the card on the bottom, right. Each month and year stamped and noted, each entry a remnant of a long-ago reader whose path crossed at that exact point with that very book. Had that card lain dormant in the back of Fashions in American Typography, in the basement of the Brooklyn Library, since June 29 or so, 1950—the last date recorded? Had it not seen the light of day until I requested it be retrieved after 60 years?

Am I waxing too precious to think of each of these little pieces of paper as superannuated governesses, each as an attempt to safeguard their charge when released out in the world?

Calling all Invalid Ladies

Burdock Blood Bitters
"There are thousands of females in America who suffer untold miseries from
chronic diseases common to their sex. This is due largely to the peculiar
habits of life and fashion, and the improper training of girlhood...
All Invalid Ladies should send for our Special Circular addressed to
Ladies Only, which treats on a subject of vital importance."

"This 'safe' remedy contains over 19 percent of alcohol, with only 4.85 percent of solids (nearly half of which is sugar), and alkaloids possibly derived from hydrastis. The amount of vegetable extractives is small, certainly not enough to give the results claimed. "From the composition reported, and also from the name of the stuff, it appears to be one of the nostrums of the old 'blood purifier' type. Such products, as you know, are useless, as they do not purify the blood.'"–  the CANADIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION Journal, 1937

It will positively cure deafness in 2 days.
Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil was first produced by Dr. S.N. Thomas of Phelps, New York in the late 1840s and reportedly contained “Spirits of Turpentine, Camphor, Oil of Tar, Red Thyme and Fish Oil specially processed.” It was marketed until the 1950s.

"GRODER'S DYSPEPSIA SYRUP Cures the System. A BROKEN DOWN ENGINE is like the human system, stricken with disease. Nine tenths of all our diseases arise from the stomach, because the stomach is Nature's Boiler Room where the steam (the blood) that moves the human machinery is really made. Keep the stomach in good order by the use of GRODER'S DYSPEPSIA SYRUP, and the machinery will run smoothly.”

The letters of Voices

The title page, even with its centered typography, betrays more than a little Artistic Printing influence

this credit line and address is from another publication.
The 150 Nassau Street building is now a landmarked condominium!

 

 

Voices is a small booklet of inspirational religious excerpts “arranged by Helen P. Strong” and published by the American Tract Society in 1886. I picked it up in Maine on a recent trip because, even though the subject matter doesn’t speak to me, I thought the hand lettering was exquisite. (By the way, the term for this sort of embellished, decorative hand lettering is called “engrossing” and it was. I was fascinated enough to plunk down $20 for it!) I love the text's quirky inventiveness— an almost hectic play of size, embellishment and composition. Tails sprout and tendrils meander over its Gothic/Medieval/calligraphic letterforms.

Although it’s hand lettered and chromolithographed (in brownish black, taupe gray, red, blue and metallic gold) it has an Artistic feel to it. “Artistic Printing” you may or may not know is an elaborate style of commercial letterpress printing extremely popular in the later 19th century. Doug and I wrote a book about it; read more about it here. Whether hand done, lithographed or letterpress printed, this sort of spikey, spidery decorative layering was all the rage.

The American Tract Society, an evangelical organization that dates back to 1825, was one of the first entities to mass produce and distribute printed illustrated materials (I dont remember where I read this but it seems plausible and significant). ATS appears to have used many talented illustrators, letterers, printers and engravers, including the great Alexander Anderson (See my post about Anderson, one of America’s finest engravers). Although this booklet doesnt explicitly state it, from my bit of research it seems Helen P. Strong did both the illustrations and the lettering, as well as edit the excerpts. I came across another illustrated publication of hers for sale on etsy, Memory's Sketchbook, from 1891, and noted her credit on a few other titles. I want to know more about Helen!

Blood and Sawdust

spectacular bois durci tray, France, 1900. Julien K Cole

ox blood + sawdust = 19th century wonder material

 

frames and decorative plaque from the Mernick website collection

 

"pyrogenes"— match holders

All items, except as noted, from the collection of Gaston Vermosen

In contrast with today's vogueish marketing gestures of reuse, recycling and boutique "upcycling", 19th century society appears to have understood reclamation as a stage of production. According to Susan Strasser, Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware and author of Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, “The 19th century world regarded reusing materials as a matter of common sense, of stewardship of material goods.” Used goods— metal, cloth, glass — if they were discarded at all, were retrieved by peddlers or scavengers and turned into new goods. Much more so than simply rendering horses at the glue factory, 19th century society was almost perversely adept at recycling. Tallow was reclaimed for candles and soap, bones were ground for matches, gelatine, and soap as well. I read recently that as we are a petroleum-based civilization, the 19th century was a grease- and bone-based one. Add to that blood.

In 1855 Francois Charles Lepage got a French patent for a method of combining blood albumen from slaughterhouses with wood powder to form a plastic, moldable material he called bois durci. The wood dust, either ebony or rose wood, was mixed with blood, dried and then ground to a fine powder. The powder was placed in a steel mold and steam heated to 400-500° in a powerful hydraulic press. After a half hour, the mold was plunged into cold water. The resulting wood product was an extremely dense, highly polished object ready-fashioned into whatever fantastical ornamented fancy was desired, or could be further worked with saw, lathe or burin. The French Scientific and Industrial Year for 1863 explained it's appeal,

We find now... at low prices: statuettes, medallions, and objets d'art, made of this wood, resistant and unalterable in air, which are well superior to [those] moulded in earthenware or plaster. The caskets, inkstands, purses, frames, etc. and the other delicate objects made by the same means, are not challenged for elegance, or the finish of details, by the most well finished of sculptures.

That jet brooch or gutta percha trinket box you purchased at the flea market? Might just be blood. Anything jet could do, bois durci could do cheaper and in brown. In addition to blotters, hand mirrors, and other tabletop niceties, bois durci lent itself to mourning jewelry, photography cases and even early telephone receivers.

Dr. W. H. Dibble of Trenton, NJ, developed the American answer to bois durci, patenting cattle blood and sawdust compressed at 40,000 pounds per square inch as "hemacite" in 1877. Manufacturer and Builder of 1892 rapturously pronounced hemacite "impervious to heat, moisture, atmospherical changes, and, in fact, [it] is practically indestructible... there is... no limit to the artistic and effective combinations..." Hemacite appears to have taken on a more workman-like role than its artistic and aspirational French cousin. Substituted for both wood and metal, it was put to use as doorknobs, escutcheons, all manner of pulls and household trimmings, and, later, roller skate wheels.

Despite their successful run, and a legacy of baroquely bombéd heirloom desk accessories and commemorative plaques, by the early 20th century Bakelite and other modern plastics had left the quaint and earthy bois durci and its ilk in the proverbial dust. //

Read more about hemacite and bois durci at Cabinet, mernick.org and Un Plastique Naturel by Gaston Vermosen

Garbage pickings

One Half meets the Other Half— West Broadway. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, April 23, 1881
Well-dressed boulevardiers clutch handkerchiefs to their faces as they pass barrels of filth;
the local garbage gleaner digs right in

Columbus Park, Bayard and Mulberry, c. 1910

Garbage picker, Lower West Side, 1915, Lewis Hine.

Department of Sanitation "White Wings" sweeping up— linen-suited and pith-helmeted,
they were a public relations coup and a success for decades. Photos by Alice Austen

.

Part of a map Encroachment of Nuisances upon Populous Up-town Districts, 1865; A pig in a bakery cellar, 1902;
Fifth Street, March, 1893. From the brochure to the New York Public Library exhibition Garbage! (1994)

From the brochure to the New York Public Library exhibition Garbage! (1994)

When the temperatures rise so do the aromas of the NYC pavement so it is in springtime this lady's fancy lightly turns to garbage. Waste, trash, refuse, rubbish-garbage is interesting to me or at least the history of it is: how it was collected, what was done with it, and even how the city's filth has manifested differently over the years. My attention was initially captured in the early 90s when I worked on a fun exhibition at the New York Public Library, Garbage! The History and Politics of Trash in New York City where the depths of all manner of sanitation and health issues were plumbed. (We even went to Fresh Kills landfill as research!) Lately interest has been rekindled by my mudlarking jaunts to Dead Horse Bay and Barren Island (now Floyd Bennett Field) picking up 19th century glass, marbles and ceramic shards. Read about Barren Island's fascinating history as an isolated community living in, and making a living from, a dump and garbage boiling facility here and here. (Boiling you say? Yes, "reduction" plants cooked down refuse and offal to reuse blood, bone, fat and tallow. As one garbage scholar astutely notes, the past was a grease- and bone- based civilization as we are a petroleum-based one.) 

Nineteenth century New York City would probably be unbearably offensive to 21st century sensibilities. For instance, in 1880, 15,000 horse carcasses had to be retrieved from city streets along with tons of manure from those thousands of beasts that were still alive. (Though we perhaps still face other noisome assaults, sanitation workers--and citizens--do not have to deal with too many carcasses or dung heaps anymore.) Manhattan street sweepings including manure and ash would be carted to dumps lining the periphery of the island. There, the contents of innumerable wagons was spread by  "trimmers" into 100 x 30 x 9 foot scows used to dump the trash out at sea. On the West side there were dumps at Canal, 30th, 47th, 79th, 97th, 134th Streets keeping real estate prices down, on the East side there were those at Jackson, Stanton, 30th, 46th, 60th, 80th, 107th, and 139th Streets. And that was only the Manhattan river dumps-- there were land dumps, incinerators, grease skimming and bone boiling plants, and horse rendering factories pocking the landscape through out the boroughs. Brooklyn and Queens marshlands were “reclaimed” and made “valuable” with trash dumps. With a history like that no wonder New York turned away from its waterfronts for decades. It is only in recent years New Yorkers have had access to the riverside—or would even want to.//
You might be surprised to learn just how many books there are on garbage—and I just came across a review of another, Picking Up, by Robin Nagle, the Department of Sanitation's official anthropologist in residence. I'd like to spend a day with her.

Garbage scows like these hauled trash out to sea from stations along the waterfront.
The last scow to dump garbage set forth on June 28, 1934.

Excessively watermarked image from the Municipal Archives.

Garbage picker under the 30th Street dump, Jacob Riis, 1890s. From the New York Public Library exhibition Garbage! (1994)

Barren Island relics, 2013. 'Garbage' I picked up on one of my excursions...

Ready for the Weekend

slickers, 1929

Japanese women in the rain, c. 1770

Madison Square, Alfred Stieglitz, 1911

Scrapbooking: mishaps and object lessons

The scrapbook is pretty large, about 15 x 17. Each linen page is pasted back and front with scraps of printed woodcuts and engravings hand-colored with watercolor paint.
The whole thing is dirty, creased and coming apart— but its fabulous.

At last years Ephemera Fair, Doug, Sam, and I bought a large scrapbook of brightly hand-colored printed illustrations. Culled from a series of British children’s chapbooks, the scrapbook’s most recent image appears to date from about 1837 but many of the images are “cuts” created years, even decades before. All the clippings are affixed to pages of linen edged in red silk and are bound in a now-disintegrating cover marked “Juvenile Scrapbook” and “B. de B. Russell.” 

“B. de B. Russell”? Was that a business, place, or person?

Person.

We discovered what we had purchased in Connecticut in 2012 was a scrapbook created 175 years ago to mark the birth of a little tyke with a preposterous name. It turned out Blois de Blois Russell was born at the very start of the Victorian era, on June 6, 1837, near Birmingham, England. He rowed crew for St. John’s College, Oxford, and, according to a sniffy email response from the Oxford registrar’s office, he was most certainly matriculated as a “commoner” (not nobility or even a “gentleman-commoner”). We also discovered he died under unrecorded circumstances in 1860 just before his 23 birthday. He seemed to have come from compromised stock as his brother and a sister both died very young as well. Whether being saddled with the name Blois de Blois Russell had any impact upon his health is unknown.

And now, a bit of background on the chapbook: Stories, ballads, rhymes and popular tales of piety were passed down through the generations verbally. These oral transmissions started to be written down and printed in the 16th century as broadsides, leaflets and booklets called chapbooks. These were popular, cheap, and cheaply produced texts of instruction of any sort, typically from 8 to 32 pages and sold by itinerant peddlers called chapmen. “Chap” is etymologically related to an old (Middle?) English word for “trade” (see place name Cheapside in London), and by extension, cheap. Chapbooks in the form of manuals of instruction and entertainment specifically for children became popular in the mid-1700s. These small chapbooks and other printed matter proliferated and gradually took the place of the medieval educational form of hornbooks—the alphabet carved on a wooden paddle and literally covered in a transparent sheet of horn. Chaps were sold plain as printed or colored for an extra cent or two. Who did the coloring? Surely women and children. Pure speculation, but what a Dickensian thought: little waifs with their paint pots working in the dim glow of a lamp, so other, more cosseted children, like B. de B. Russell could enjoy their handiwork...