Extreme Serene

Grote Kerk at Haarlem, 1636-7

St. Anthony's Chapel and St. Janskerk, Utrecht, 1645

St Odulphus in Assendelft, 1649.
Saenredam includes his father's grave marker on the floor, center right

Interior of the Buurkerk, Utrecht, 1645

Chapel in the St. Laurenskerk, Alkmaar, 1635

Choir of the Church of St Bavo at Haarlem, 1635.
This reminds me of a Tamara de Lempicka

Nave and choir of the Mariakerk, Utrecht, 1641

Nave and choir of the Mariakerk, (detail). Who let the dogs in?

Nave and choir of the Mariakerk, (detail) with Saenredam's signature and "graffiti"

Saint Bavo, Haarlem, 1636; Detail below

Pieter Janszoon Saenredam's (1597-1665) portraits of Dutch church interiors—and that's what they are, architectural portraits—have always appealed to me. They are a strange mix of serenity and rigor, precision and ease, solemnity and humor. They have an other worldly quality not only in the clarity and light, but in the idealized—hyper-realized— perspective. In many of his images you are seeing down several lines of sight at once, and taking in far more than the eye would normally see. To me there is something “modern”, almost Cubist, about these views. The mathematically precise renderings (he evidently made dozens of measurements for each painting) remind me of Charles Sheeler— even, in the extreme, Mondrian.

Charles Sheeler, yachts, 1924

Charles Sheeler, Stacks in Procession, 1943

Piet Mondrian, composition with 3 black lines, 1930

Piet Mondrian, composition No. 1, 1938-39

Great Moments in Art*

Onesipe Aguado, Woman Seen from the Back, 1862; Winkle

 Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930; Winkle

Francis Bacon, Three Studies, 1967; Winkle

Alexandre Cabanel, Samson and Delilah, 1878; Winkle

Weegee, Body of Dominick Didato, Elizabeth Street, NYC, August 7, 1936; Winkle

Pierre Bonnard, Siesta, 1899-1900; Winkle

Alexandre Cabanel, Albayde (detail), 1848; Winkle

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat, 1793; Winkle

Lucian Freud, Naked Portrait With Reflection, 1980; Winkle

Walter Sickert, The Iron Bedstead, 1908; Winkle

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Tepidarium, 1881; Winkle

Parmigianino, Madonna of the Long Neck, 1530; Winkle

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Le Grande Odalisque, 1814; Winkle

* As interpreted by my cat. // The cat photos are random, taken over the course of several years, and are virtually unretouched except for some lighting. The art matches came about this past weekend, part obsessive inspiration, part avoidance mechanism.

Flags of All Nations—and then some

Note the sphinx was still buried-- it wasn't fully excavated until 1925!

A close up of Sicily showing the layers of color and wonderful tiny stippling detail.

The smokestacks of the Northeast

Scenes of Old Dixie and slaves abound, unfazed by Emancipation

A repost with updates: Flags of All Nations-- a keen bit of chromolithography I picked up years ago. Ganged together across several disbound pages, the flag tableaux are small, approximately 1.5" x 2.75" each, but surprisingly detailed. (I am particularly fond of the otherworldly view of Iceland: ice-bound ship, two gratified seals.) The inclusion of a flag for "Washington Territory" tells me, with a little help from Google, that this collection is from before 1889. The Statue of Liberty, which appears elsewhere, indicates it's after 1886.

My small cache of pages doesn't even remotely cover "All Nations" but I do have regalia for a good many territories, states, principalities, and parcels of land that would give even a cartographic historian pause. There are surprises, to me at least, like flags for Tuscany and the Ionian Islands. There are the expected instances of 19th century exotica such as Zanzibar and the Transvaal. And then there are the complete mysteries, like the Heligoland and the Society Islands. (George Plimpton and Brooke Astor didn't die, they retired to the Society Islands! National staples: petit fours and Champagne )

Chromolithography was a wildly popular color reproduction process in the 19th century. I can't understand how it became so common because it sounds like an almost unfathomably cumbersome and complicated process. An image is drawn onto a stone slab– in reverse–with a grease-based crayon. A separate stone was drawn for each color, and as many as twenty stones were used at times. Each stone was inked in an appropriate color on a press and imprinted onto the paper. (A glimpse at engravers drawing on the stones, below. The fellow on the left, Leonetto Cappiello, is working on, I believe, the tremendous poster you see in the background)

Paper would be passed through for each color – each pass having to be aligned and registered exactly. A good example of what progressive proofs in the process of printing looked like here. Perhaps the work ethic was stronger in the 19th century. Or the tolerance for tedium higher.

Hands off my Red Royal Limbertwig

Pomona Britannica ; or, A collection of the most esteemed fruits...with the blossoms and leaves... (1812)

A repost with updates
A highly subjective sampling of some of the more intriguing names
bestowed on the apple:

Red Astrachan, Beautiful Arcade, Bigg's Nonsuch, Bismark, Bottle Green, Bramley's Seedling,
Bulmer's Norman, Calville Rouge d'Automne, Chisel Jersey, Cockagee, Coe's Golden Drop,
Cole's Quince, Cox's Orange Pippin,
Devonshire Quarrenden, Doctor Matthews, Dolgo Crab, Double Red Jonathan,
Edith Smith, Egremont Russet, Ellison's Orange, Esopus Spitzenburg, Etter's Gold,
Five Crown Pippin, Fortune, Foxwhelp, Frauen Rotacher,
Geeveston Fanny, Gravenstein, Gray Stark, Green Sweet,
Horneburger Pancake, Horse, Hubbardston Nonesuch,
Idaho Spur, July Red,
Keswick Codlin, Kidd's Orange Red, Kirk's Scarlet Admirable, Knobbed Russet,
Lamb Abbey Pearmain, Lehigh Greening, Lombart's Calville, Lydia's Red Gala,
Mincham's crab,
Newell's Late Orange, Newton's Wonder, Old Nonpareil, Perrine Transparent, Plum Crabbie,
Queen Cox,
Red Royal Limbertwig, Rubinola, Runkel,Saint Germain, Striped Beefing, Sullenworth Rennet,
Tompkin's King, Tydeman's Late Orange,
Virginia Greening,
Walter Pease, Watkin's Large Dumpling, Wealthy, Winterstein, Yellow Tremlett’s, York Imperial,
Zabergau Reinette

Codling An immature or green apple. Pippin A seedling apple. From the old French 'pepin' meaning seed. Russet The word means red, but the term here refers to the texture of the apple skins–from 'russet coat' the dull red/brown wool coats of peasants.

costermonger– In Britain, a street seller of fruit and vegetables, originally from "costard seller." Costard, which was a family of large British cooking apples popular as far back as the 13th century, became a slang term for 'head' by Shakespeare's time.

Apples of Sodom was a term I'd never heard before. The fruit of trees reputed to grow on the shores of the Dead Sea which, while lovely on the outside, are full of ashes within. Josephus, Strabo, and Tacitus evidently refer to them. Like an apple of Sodom signifies disappointment and disillusion.

Images from NYPL Digital Gallery and Mary Evans Picture Library

Brooklyn Death Trip*

January 12, 1893
“Henry BOERUM, an oysterman, who lives in his shanty on Plum's Marsh, Jamaica Bay, had a narrow escape from freezing to death on Wed. While out in his boat on Jamaica Bay, it became fastened in an ice floe.”

March 22, 1909

“Seized with an attack of vertigo as he sat in a chair at his home today John LAW, 23 years old, of 163 Utica Avenue fell to the floor. He sustained lacerations and contusions of the face and head and was removed to St. Mary's Hospital by Dr. McCluskey.”

 October 18, 1906

“Nora MURRAY, 28 years old, a waitress in the lunch room of the Commercial High School, Albany Avenue and Dean Street, was bitten yesterday on the thumb by a large tarantula which was concealed in a bunch of bananas. It was feared for a time that Miss MURRAY would
lose her arm as a consequence.”

January 10, 1871

“James GREGAN was drowned yesterday while cutting ice on the meadows in Fourth Avenue.”

August 15, 1888

“While Gertrude SCHERMERHORN, of 75 Lawrence Street was walking with her mother at Willoughby and Jay Streets Monday night, a stylishly dressed young man who carried a cane, poured a bottle of ink on her silk dress and spoiled it. The young man is not known.”

January 9, 1879

“Mary FOX, aged twenty-two years, a servant in the employ of
Mr. Orestes P. QUINTARD, of No. 158 Sterling Place, by accident yesterday afternoon, severely cut her foot with an axe.”

August 28, 1877 

“A verdict of suicide was today rendered by a Coroner's jury in the case of Valentine LEM, who shot himself near Evergreen Cemetery. The wife was too poor to bury the remains, but took the rifle home.”

August 13, 1887

“A member of the Coney Island police force last evening found near the Oriental Hotel a bottle containing a small quantity of brandy. Soaking in the liquor was a piece of paper on which had been written the following: “This ship has gone down ten miles off Sandy Hook, with all her cargo of rice and ten souls. There is nothing to save us, as we have not been seen and our signals not heard. The last survivors to the bark Victor H. T. Vallience.” It was dated Aug. 1, 1885.”

June 12, 1879

Deaths of a Week.
Mortality Report of the Board of Health. 

Measles: 1
Scarlet Fever: 8
Diphtheria: 16
Whooping Cough: 2
Erysipelas: 1
Diarrhea: 3
Dysentery: 1
Cholera infantum: 4
Cholera - mortius: 1
Entero Colitis: 2
Remittent fever: 5
Inanition: 1
Delirium tremens: 1
Cancer of breast: 1
Cancer of face: 1
Cancer of liver: 1
Cancer of pelvis: 1
Marasmus: 1
Consumption: 31
Tub. meningitis: 5
Hydrocephalus: 1
Meningitis: 7
Apoplexy: 3
Acute Hydrocephlia: 1
Softening of the brain: 1
Paralysis: 2
Anemia of brain: 1
Epilepsy: 2
Convulsions: 4
Dementia: 1
Melancholia: 1
Insanity: 1
Sunstroke: 1
Disease of heart: 2
Fatty deg. of heart: 2
Hypertrophy of heart: 4
Val. disease of heart: 2
Laryngitis: 1
Bronchitis: 6
Pneumonia: 12
Cong. of lungs: 1
Gastritis: 1
Gastro enteritis: 1
Peritonitis: 1
Hepatitis: 1
Nephritis: 2
Bright's disease: 3
Diabetes: 1
Uterine tumor: 1
Spinal disease: 2
Premature birth: 2
Preterm birth: 2
Cyanosis: 1
Dentition: 5
Flooding: 1
Puerperal convulsions: 1
Puerperal Metritis: 1
Asthenia: 1
Burns: 1
Drowning: 1
Falls: 2
Killed by motor: 1
Killed by blow: 1
Run over by steam car: 1

* cf. Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy, 1973. The Wisconsin Death Trip Flickr stream here.  
News items from the fantastically sprawling Brooklyn Genealogy

images from the Brooklyn Museum Flickr stream  

The real Gashlycrumb Tinies

because it's perfectly reasonable to use beer and coffins to teach the ABCs

A late adaptation of "The Tragical Death of an Apple Pye"

A chapman (also called Running, Walking or Flying Stationers)— an itinerant book and broadside seller

Oh dear, someone's let the Elephant into the room again.

Ephemera Fair 32 this past weekend

Obsessed.
Doug, Sam and I went up to Old Greenwich for Ephemera 32, the antique paper and printed matter fair held by the Ephemera Society of America. It was more paper, posters, postcards, business cards, autographs and advertising than you ever thought could possibly survive the decades, priced from a couple dollars to several thousand. There we stumbled upon a large and (to a bottom-level ephemera collector) breathtakingly expensive scrapbook of brightly hand-colored woodblock illustrations seemingly culled from a series of British children’s books. The latest image appears to date from about 1840. All were affixed to pages of linen edged in red silk and were bound in a now-disintegrating cover marked “Juvenile Scrapbook” and “B. de B. Russell.” We were unable to get it out of our minds as we drank our tepid coffee in the lunch area.

Dear Reader, we bought it. More on the scrapbook as information surfaces.*

Now, on to some background research: Stories, ballads, rhymes and popular tales of piety were passed down through the generations verbally. These oral trasmissions started to be written down and printed in the 16th century as broadsides, leaflets and booklets called chapbooks. These were popular and 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. (There were folding cardboard items called “battledores” that were also used as instructional items in the early 1800s. Named after the paddles used in the game of shuttlecocks, the ones I've seen dont actually look like paddles and dont seem to offer any benefit from having this more complicated folded form. A wash if you ask me.)

Certain publishers became known for this sort of printing expressly. The Newberys of St. Paul's Churchyard, London, for instance—proprietor, son, stepson and nephew— published a couple of thousand titles over the period 1740-1814, including A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Little Goody Two-Shoes, and The Newtonian System of Philosophy Adapted to the Capacities of Young Gentlemen and Ladies.

Just about everything captivates me about these things: their small, beautifully worn and weathered form; the texture of the printing and hand coloring; the elliptical, incongruous, sometimes morbid text; and of course, the strong, graphic illustrations (The celebrated engraver Thomas Bewick and his brother started out carving woodprints for children’s books in the mid -late 1700s. These illustrations were copied, reused out of context, and adapted for decades).

You may have already noticed more than a passing resemblance to the work of Edward Gorey. I wonder if he amassed an actual collection of these? Or was he just proficient in the curious ways of the chapbook... 

All images from these sites:

Ball State University Digital Media Collection

Banbury Chap Books and Nursery Toy Book Literature, 1890 from Google books
The Historical Children's Literature database at the University of Washington—worth hours of perusal!

*In doing feverish research since the Saturday purchase we’ve discovered the scrapbook belonged to someone named “Blois de Blois Russell”, an Oxford alum who died at 22.