Gothic Project Runway

I'll have to add the name of the 1920s couture person here on the left when I have the original wire photo in my hands again; no, it's not Chanel, obviously, but I've forgotten her name.  The dress looks to me rather Poiret-like.  An eerie element provided by the headless man to the side with hat on his lap.  The 'madame' here looks about to hand over the young woman in her diaphanous gown to him.  Strange visual and psychic reminder of Plate I of Hogarth's Harlot's Progress, in which the old bawd, Mother Needham, is likewise about to 'hand off' the innocent young miss, Moll Hackabout, to the invidious rake, Colonel Charteris.  In the Hogarth image, Charteris--an actual historical figure and convicted rapist--is shown discreetly masturbating as Needham sizes up the new girl.

Boxer & Scald Head

Who Loves Whom---

----and why?

The Uses of a Lemon

...plus how to fold a lady's costume coat.  Some Wills's cigarette cards from the 1930s.  I have 19 or 20 of these slim 'household hint' cards--all issued as part of one of the many collectors' sets offered by Wills between the wars.  I find the Larkinesque lower-middle-class world depicted strangely attractive.

Considered as advertising material, this set would seem to have been directed at undereducated, would-be genteel young English housewives --a class of women for whom smoking might once have seemed illicit or outré.  The Marriage of Domesticity and Lung Cancer   And yes, break out the lemons: your husband's gonorrhea is back.

More Girlz

Girls of the Flies

Concert Mistress

A massively damaged tintype--but one beautiful (and perhaps a bit alarming) nonetheless.  The musician seems to play--or at least hold--a violin or viola.  (Considering the odd size and upright position might it be a bass viol?)  Even given the technical ruin that is the image, the gleam coming off the bow where it hits the springs still scintillates--across a mere century and a half.

Modes of Conveyance

From the ever-malleable and expansive not-a-postcard category: two attractive (and thematically related) hand-colored 18th-c. prints from Denmark.

I must confess: not quite sure what exactly is going on in either picture.  Regarding the one with the men in black bloomers: I thought at first some important individual (i.e., the man whose head seems to rise from what looks vaguely like an orange gilded seat back) was being transported in an open carriage.  But soon realized what was being shown was actually a rather stately funeral cortège.  The all-black livery--worn even by the horses--suggests as much and the 'seat back' now reveals itself as one end of an oddly garish coffin.  (The man whose head is framed is simply someone walking on the other side of the funeral coach.)  But whose funeral?  Everyone in the procession seems a bit sly and knowing.


As for the lady about to launch herself forward with ski poles and ice-sled: well.....uhhhh.....  All I can surmise is that she's on her way to compete in the women's bobsled event at the 1744 Oslo Winter Olympics.  The Errant Coquette Individual Slalom.  Strangely, like the friend who romantically bids her adieu, she seems to be wearing very unseasonable clothing for frigid weather travel--flimsy pink chinz or gingham or something.  Several more centuries to wait, I guess, before polar fleece or Gore-tex (and aerodynamic sleds) are invented.

Speaking of. . . .

. . . . projection:   As per the legendary website query--'Lesbian or German lady?"

So fashion forward: two different floral prints (wish this were in color!), the white gloves, the anklet socks.

Anonymous Photo: A Drink from the 1950s

From Defoe's Preface to Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress, his wicked 'whore biography' of 1724:

Scenes of Crime can scarce be represented in such a Manner, but some may make a Criminal Use of them; but when Vice is painted in its Low-Priz'd Colours, 'tis not to make People in love with it, but to expose it; and if the Reader makes a wrong Use of the Figures, the Wickedness is his own.

Which is to say if you find any hint of lasciviousness in this image, it's your own mind that's putting it there. 

Kalsomining and Its Discontents

Some conversations we doubt really got spoken.  1890s-ish American trade card for brushes of different kinds.  Had to look up 'kalsomining' to understand the second frame--the one with the two black post-Recon-struction menial laborers.  One is obviously adept at the practice; the other, foolishly inept.  'To cover or wash with calcimine.'  Calcimine/ kalsomine turns out to be a 'white or tinted liquid containing zinc oxide, water, glue, and coloring matter, used as a wash for walls and ceilings.'  Some kind of whitewash going on here for sure.   Click image to enlarge.

 

By the Truckload

Where does the fake grass end and the backdrop begin?  The ladies are not to scale with one another, or indeed with the man....    The tree may be real.

Click image to enlarge.

If I Were On the Telephone

We could talk about anything you like.

SF Antiquarian Oink Fair

Ah, yes--great fun at the Book Fair this weekend.  Lots of ephemera and a couple of scrapbooky things from which I will no doubt extract material for future posts. 

This card for some reason--along with a gorgeous and surreal hand-colored childrens' book, The Journey of Bangwell Putt, from 1945--were among the trophies of the day.

Zut Alors

Pugh!  Enough with the dreary tintypes!  Feeling a need today for smiles and some Lovely Colors.  I too have an orange glow and little purple mist around my head:   the California Antiquarian Book Show takes place in San Francisco this weekend!--pant, pant.  I will no doubt be seen--much like the inquisitively-pawed young lady here--feeling around in my clothes for my credit card as I circumambulate the exhibition hall.  Some of the dealers have fabu old vintage photos and postcards as well as books!  Zut alors, François, wheres moi's Amex?  

Tintypes: Injuries No Longer Felt

Something more or less odd in these three tintypes: man with strange 'backwards' arm; boy with perhaps one eye (?); a crosseyed girl.   Again: the medium invariably adds its melancholy aura.

Pith Helmet, Dead Thinker, Intense Baby Girl with Shrouded Mother

I'm currently putting together a little book of some of the tintypes in my collection.  Hadn't looked at them for a while and I marveled anew at their strangeness and humanity both.


Man in what looks like a kind of pith helmet (though without mosquito net).

Unknown Dead Thinker and (?) Raconteur.

Marvelous little girl--her hands in her lap in almost the same position as those of the Dead Thinker.  This is what's known as a 'Shrouded Mother' tintype: meaning that someone, usually the mother or nanny, has hidden herself under dark drapery in order to hold the child or baby motionless while the image is being produced.  (The pinched drapery here suggests that the mother is holding the girl's head just behind the ears.)  Extraordinarily eerie, of course.  Also unsettling: the child looks like someone I once loved very much.

A Concrete Thought

...in a concrete shade?  Proto-Amy Winehouse hairdo, attentive and intelligent poodle, flowery artist's smock, fake plants and an easel: what more could one ask.  Was this early 1960s publicity postcard a one-off or did other concrete-block manufacturers of the era also favor such alluring promotional material? 

Fascinating how the pattern repeated in the blocks evokes both the swastika and the 'radioactive' warning signs of the Cold War.  My elementary school had such signs, yellow and black, in every room.  Go to nearest fallout shelter at once.