See Saw

DIAMOND DYES

The Wells Richardson Building on College Street is a Burlington, Vermont landmark. These days it houses Bennington Potters, but in it's heyday at the end of the 19th Century, Wells Richardson & Company patented, manufactured and distributed analyne dyes under the name of Diamond Dyes, as well as butter dye, baby food and proprietary medicines like Celery Compound.

Print Advertising was a part of their marketing strategy. Before the advent of color ads in newspapers and magazines manufacturers and distributors relied on trade cards and medical pamphlets -featuring their own cures - to sell their products. These they made by the gajillion, and distributed nationwide. They would be distributed for free in retail stores or any public venue where they might drum up  business.  Trade cards were hugely collectible, even in those days, and would often end up in scrapbooks, which were also the rage. The trade cards and pamphletss were printed by chromolithography, and retain their brilliant colors to this day.

Two links in the above text are from The Library Collection of Philadelphia, which has great collections. Check out their website.

All Images are from the Pine Street Art Works Ephemera Collections.

Diamond Dyes, Wells Richardson trade card. 1890's Vermont. PSAW ephemera collections.

Diamond Dyes Trade Card. Detail.

Diamond Dyes booklet. Cousin John's Extravagant Wife, A Story. 1890'st.  PSAW ephemera collections.

Diamond Dyes,  detail.

Diamond Dyes booklet, detail.

Diamond Dyes. Unequaled for making Ink, or for coloring any articles any color. PSAW ephemera Collections.

Diamond Dyes, detail.



Diamond Dyes booklet, front and back covers. PSAW ephemera collections.

Diamond Dyes, back cover detail. Dying Easter eggs.

Diamond Dyes, back cover detail. Easter eggs.

 

Diamond Dyes booklet, front cover

Diamond Dyes, back cover detail. Color your childrens clothes with  Diamond Dyes.

 

Diamond Dyes booklet, detail. She's sad because her clothes haven't been dyed with Diamond Dyes.

Wells, Richardson & Co. Lactated  Food.

 

Wells Richardson & Co. Lactated Foods, What Are These Babies after. Die cut trade Card. PSAW  ephemera collections.

 

Wells Richardson & Co. Lactated food. Die  cut trade card. PSAW ephemera collections. The background here is blue because I scanned it on  a piece of blue paper. 

 

Wells  Richardson & Co Lactated food trade card. PSAW ephemera collections.

Paynes Celery Compound probably contained opiates or other drugs, which were perfectly legal. Before the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, manufacturers didn't have to list ingredients or prove their effectiveness. This Wells Richardson & Company ad from the 1889 book from Burlington Business Association.

In this ad it is touted as a cure for Nervousness, one of the most "popular" diseases of the 19th Century middle class. Here is a link to a good post about 19th Century Nervousness from  the blog (what is this).

I did my Master's Thesis in Anthropology on 19th Century American Uterine diseases, in which I write a lot about middle class women and nervousness or neuresthenia. Someday I'll write more here about it.

 

TRAVEL

 It's probably a good omen when a car trip starts out with seeing a truck with your name on it.

Cowan truck. Vermont Rt. 89.

I took some time off last weekend with my parenting partner, Laurie Essig, and our two kids to visit our old house in Greenport, NY. We sold the house about five years ago and none of us had been back since then.

Naturally, we visited the carousel.

Allen Herschell horse, Greenport Carousel. Liza Cowan photo.

I hadn't remembered that there are several Charles Dare horses on the Greenport Carousel, which was a wonderful surprise for me.

Charles Dare horse, Greenport Carousel. Liza Cowan photo.

I got to spend a little time at the Greenport Shipyards, site of my Shipyard Archeology photo series. I only had my point and shoot camera with me, and I just can't get the same quality I got from my trusty Nikon F100 and a roll of film, but still it was nostalgic just walking around.

Siding and Rudder. Greenport Shipyard. 2008. Liza Cowan photo.

On our way home we stopped for a few hours in New York City so Laurie could tape a TV Show about Gay Marriage. (No, we're not. Families have all kinds of shapes and configurations.) The show was the Laura Flanders show on GRITtv, and although the kids wanted to go shopping during the taping, we did manage to catch the last few minutes and hang out in the control room to see the backstage operations. You can watch the segment here

Control Room - taping the Laura Flanders Show.

And then a quick hello to the panel and Laura.

Laura Flanders, left.  Laurie and kids, right. Not in this picture is panelist Kenyon Farrow, whose excellent blog is worth taking a look at.

So if you watch the show and Laurie briefly mentions her kids and parenting partner, that's us. I'm in the Vermont media fairly often, usually about art, so it was fun to be on the sidelines and out of the spotlight.

The best part about travel, when you know things are going really right, is when you are happy to get home. We were all glad to cross Lake Champlain and be back in Vermont again.

Charlotte, VT and Lake Champlain from the Lake Champlain Essex/Charlotte Ferry.

NEEDLE WOMEN

If you've been reading this blog, or if you scroll down the  ephemera pages, you know that I've been collecting needle books for a while. I'm still actively collecting but I thought I'd try to make some order out of the jumble. Of course, there are many ways these can be combined, but here I'm sorting them into categories of women, and women with children. Other needle packs feature travel, space age technologies, or just down and out advertising.

 I've posted most of these images before so you can scroll through the Ephemera category if you want to see larger images.

Needle books from Pine Street Art Works Ephemera Collection.

These feature groups of women. I have more, and some featuring solitary women, and I'll bring 'em to you soon.

And here's a brand new one. New to me, old to the world, that is. I find it particularly charming.

Superior Needles, collection PSAW

Superior Needle, collection PSAW, detail

Superior Needle, collection PSAW, detail

MORE VINTAGE NEEDLE BOOKS

It's been a while since I posted any new images of needle books. Needle books are one of my many collecting obsessions. They are beautiful, full of social history, and relatively inexpensive.

Air Traveller Needle Book. Made in Occupied Japan, which dates it from between 1945 and 1952

There are several major themes for needle books. One is travel, which makes sense because a sewing kit is a hand travel item. Needle books contained only needles, no thread or scissors or anything. But still.

Fashion Quality Needles

This follows another major themes: women sewing. A subset of that is women sewing with their children. Girls, actually. This is one of the mother child. Child is probably sewing for dolly.

One Hundred Needles.

Another theme is the Future/high tech. This poplualr needle pack combines the two:

FRIGIDAIRE 1931

Here are some beauties from a 1931 Frigidaire booklet. According to the Frigidaire website, 1931 was the year freon was introduced as a refrigerant. Previously refrigerators had depended on ammonia and methyl chloride and sufor dioxide which proved fatal in several accidents. Freon, it turned out, wasn't so great either, since the chlorofluorocarbons destroy the ozone layer. See about.com:inventors .

For more information on the history of refrigerators, The History Channel history.com has some good stuff. Including that the ice trade between Boston and the South was one of the first casualties of the Civil War, and then warm winters in 1889 and 1890 created severe shortages of natural ice in the US which stimulated the invention, commercialization and marketing of mechanical refrigeration for fish and for the brewing, dairy and meat industries. Home refrigerators came later, in 1911. According to History.com frozen food storage at home didn't become widely used until the 1940's, so the freezer shown below must have been a luxury- even more so than refrigerators - although they had been introduced in the 1920's. You can see in the Frigidaire post below from 1925 that there are ice freezing compartments.

1931 Frigidaire booklet. Collection PSAW

This is the cover. It follows the theme of mothers and daughters (or sometimes sons, but not as often) standing in front of the wonderful refrigerator. Mothers nurture and feed. And they teach their daughters that they will be doing so for their own offspring. And nothing says loving like a full fridge. Polemics aside, isn't this a gorgeous, compelling illustration. Beautifully rendered to display the warmth and joy of a happy home. I love how the mother and daughter are bathed in a pool of light, the daughter quietly contemplates the new appliance, which you can tell even from behind, while the mother lovingly and casually enjoys her daughter's attitude.

Chilled puddings. A marvel of modern mechanics. It looks like the girl is eating an apple, and the boy is drinking a glass of milk, so I'm betting that Mom made the treats for dessert and is putting them away, rather than taking them out. Maybe it's Jell-O.

The salesman shows off his wares to....the wives. Somehow the husbands are not in on the decision making here. We can make believe that the two women shopping actually live together rather than with husbands,but we would most likely be imposing a 21st century narrative on an seventy year old moment in history.

If part of the job of advertising is to teach people class behaviors, usually just slightly above the class they are actually in, this one teaches the smooth elegance of shopping in your best clothing, listening quietly, and paying attention to the authority of the salesman in a beautifully appointed showroom. In my own Jewish upper class New York City childhood in the 1950's, we always had to dress up to go shopping. Although my mother encouraged me to wear dungarees for play at home and in the park, if we were going out to a restaurant or to a store or on a trip we always had to wear "nice" clothes. My brothers had to wear ties if they were going four blocks from home, unless it was to the park for sports.

In an alternate universe, the women come home to their new fridge. In the 1931 advertising universe, however, the wife who just bought the Frigidaire is showing it off to her friend. Part of the appeal of the new appliance is that it excites admiration and perhaps even envy from one's friends and neighbors, which is always rather satisfying. 

 This picture, in my opinion, could be featured in the Museum Of Modern Art. A perfect modernist study of form, line and color.

Lovely, cold ice. At your fingertips. It must have seemed miraculous, really, and so different from having ice delivered for your ice box. Or, if you remember Almanzo in Laura Ingall's Wilder's Farmer Boy, it took three grown men (Father and his two French Canadian hired men), plus Almonzo and his older brother an full, long day to cut the ice from the frozen pond, haul it to the ice house, and pack it tight in sawdust. "Buried in the sawdust, the blocks of ice would not melt in the hottest summer weather. One at a time they would be dug out, and Mother would make ice-cream and lemonade and cold egg-nog."

Ah, so that's where the men were. Off playing golf. Well, never mind. They've come home for brunch, and the wives got on just fine, making some big financial decisions with enough time left over to make a chilled punch. And here comes the ice, fresh from the freezer.

And now, back to the daily day. Making a pie with those eggs and butter? Maybe a ham pie? Because, of course, the ubiquitous ham is sitting there waiting. What a well fed family. How happy they are.

PS: I found another great web essay from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

KITCHENS IN ADS

I'm still scanning my kitchen ads. So, in no particular order:

Nai Linoleum, 1925 Good Housekeeping

"The kitchen, where you spend so much of your time, should be just as attractive in its own fashion, as any room in the house"

Doesn't she look happy, all alone, perched on a stool wiping the dishes?  The kitchen as living room theme is repeated in this ad:

Hotpoint, 1956 Better Homes & Gardens

"Just think of creating a kitchen exactly as you want it - a center for family activities, entertainment - yet completely equipped with modern electric appliances."

This happy homemaker has her daughter for company, at least after school. Maybe the daughter is scheming and plotting her eventual escape from the world of household economy.

American Gas Association 1949 Saturday Evening Post

Probably it's the yellow and blue and the view outside, but this kitchen always makes me happy. Face it, even though I've been a feminist, media/cultural theorist, patriarchy resister for my entire adult life, the all- gobbling woman=home paradigm grabbed me as strongly as anyone. "Resistance is Futile" and patriarchy might as well be The Borg. That's how strong it is. Now think about people who never even imagine resisting!  Yep, that's why ads work so well to sell us the product, the lifestyle, the paradigm.

I joke that resistance is futile. Of course if you engage your brain at every moment you can think your way to another way of looking at the world. Nevertheless, I'm a sucker for these ads directed at women, engineered to create a world of consuming, serving wives and daughters. Partially because it is virtually the only mainstream representation of a world of women, partially because the brainwashing worked so thoroughly that this world feels "natural"  and partially, or so I argue to myself, the images are really wonderful. So, here come some more.

Norge, 1944 Better Homes & Gardens

This is a wartime ad. The woman is making the purchasing decisions alone, possibly for the first time. She turns to her Norge Dealer for advice.

 "All over the country Norge dealers are working for today by helping their customers through this difficult period when the purchase of new household appliances is restricted. They are preaching the doctrine of conservation - of better care, less repair, they are suggesting ways and means of prolonging the life of valued equipment... Norge dealers of all types...are planning for that great day when their showrooms will again be filled..."

 
Norge ad, detail

GE 1945 Good Housekeeping

Mother, mother in law, neighbor? It's important to have her approval.

GE 1945 detail

It's important to have her approval for the appliances because of what they say about how good a housekeeper/wife you are. The borders of femininity are patrolled not so much by men, but by other women.

Magic Chef, 1939 Saturday Evening Post

"1. Gadding around all afternoon...land sakes! Her poor husband probably eats his dinner right out of a can, and her house must be a sight!"

"2. I know my duty when I see it. I called on that new Mrs Jones next day, to tell her a wifes' place is in the kitchen. But did she surprise me!"

"3. Neat as a pin her kitchen was, with a bright, shiny new gas range. Seems it all but cooks by itself! That girl's not lazy...she's smart!"

"4. 'I'm ashamed' I told susan. 'Just think how long I've slaved over my old range! Fiddlesticks! come on. let's do something about it!' "

REFRIGERATORS PART 2

In a recent comment about Jello ads,  David Apatoff wrote:

It's funny... this week on Leif Peng's Today's Inspriation blog he showed illustrations for U.S. Steel which used a highly attractive spokeswoman standing around construction sites talking about all of the important applications for steel. She obviously had no connection whatsoever to the product, and everyone had a big laugh about what dopes men are, and how easy they are to manipulate.

Now I am looking at your ads for Jello and I see wedding gowns and handsome husbands, which again have no connection whatsoever to the product. I would hate to think that women are as easy to manipulate as men...

First of all, you should all check out David's blog, Illustration Art, and Leif's blog. Today's Inspriation.  I read them both daily and highly recommend them. But on to an answer, as relevent here about refrigerators as it is about Jello.

Of course women are as easy to manipulate as men. Otherwise advertising wouldn't work. Because what they are really selling isn't product, but values. Advertisers sell products by selling values. For men, the value is masculinity: the appeal to masculinity is through heteronormative sex, i.e. pretty girls, or other forms of masculinized behaviour, such as beer drinking, or driving cars. Or supporting a family, being a protector, provider etc.

Advertising appeals to women through values like family, home, frailty and beauty. Not that these need to be values associated with women, (or with men)  but advertising is one of the most effective venues for creating femininity and masculinity. In short, advertising works to sell product, but more important, it works to sell culturally shaped masculinity and femininity. And until we learn how to read advertising critically, we are all suceptible to it. Even then, it's hard to resist.

Frigidaire 1925. Showing off the new fridge. Notice how little food is actually in it. This looks more like the inside of my fridge. My children often accuse me of only having condiments, which isn't exactly true, but they'd be happy if I'd always stock up on puddings, ice cream and cake. Real foods like vegetables, fruit and yoghurt don't count.

 
Gurney, 1925. Still not much food in the fridge. Enough, but not crammed.

frigidaire 1940. Why would you put canned food in the fridge? Isn't the point of canning that it doesn't need refrigeration? After it's open, don't you put it in another container that has a lid? I guess it doesn't matter to the folks who live in ad land, since they put slabs of unwrapped meat right on the fridge shelf.

 Another stuffed fridge. Meats, puddings, cake, milk, frozen food, salads. The milk is still in glass bottles.

Norge 1946. An abundance of unwrapped food, including what looks like a ham and a roast.

GE 1948. Even more food, including the ham, a whole turkey, puddings, fruit, frozen foods, milk in cartons.What is is about the hams that seem to be in every fridge? They must be fun to draw, or they are thought to be very recognizable. I suppose they didn't consider the market segment that kept kosher.

international harvester 1954. "Femineered" I love that. She gets to decorate the outside.

Frigidaire 1933. This is one of the very few fridge ads I've seen featuring a man, but notice that he's not going to prepare a meal, he's just grabbing a few beers. That's better than yelling, "Hey hon, get me a brew" but still...

REFRIGERATOR ADS

I've been collecting kitchen ads for about twenty years, on and off. Mainly I have refrigerators, sinks and stoves.  I've just started to scan them. Of course, I love the illustrations and the cultural history, but what I think I love most about kitchen ads is seeing all the food in the refrigerators. You'll see, as we get further into the collection, just how abundant the food is, and how it's never wrapped.

Frigidaire, 1940, detail. Saturday Evening Post. PSAW ephemera collection

Frigidaire, 1940.  Detail The Saturday Evening Post. PSAW ephemera collection

When you get such a fridge as this, you must invited the girls over for a look see.



Just how big is the family, one wonders.


Frigidaire. Detail


Frigidaire. detail.

LITHO DETAILS

Yesterday I posted a couple of details from Jello recipe books. I'm enamored of the way the details of the lithography breaks down into dot patterns. Here are some more.

Jello Booklet, detail.
You can see that someone wrote over the "W" with pencil. People leave mysterious traces of themselves.

Jello recipe booklet, detail

Jello Recipe booklet, detail

Jello Recipe Booklet, detail

Jello Recipe Booklet, detail

Jello Recipe Booklet, detail

Jello recipe booklet, detail

Jello Recipe Booklet, detail

Jello Recipe Booklet, detail

Jello Recipe booklet, detail

Needle pack, detail

Needle pack, detail

Needle Pack, detail

Needle Pack, detail

Needle Pack, detail

Needle Pack, detail

Needle Pack, detail

Needle pack, detail

Atlantic City Rolling Chair Postcard, detail

Atlantic City Rolling Chair Postcard, detail

Corset trade card, detail

Diamond Dyes Trade Card, detail

Corset trade card, detail

MORE JELLO IMAGES

Here are some more images from my Jello Ephemera Collection. We'll start with the 1916 recipe book, which is all about the new bride starting her family life with Jello.

Jello Recipe book 1916. PSAW ephemera collections

Jello Recipe book 1916. PSAW ephemera collections.

"Though the honeymoon is not yet over and everything she does is still perfect, the young housewife who is no cook has gone through a period of awful trepidation while preparing that first dessert."

This was in the day when young ladies of a certain class didn't live alone before they were married, and most likely had household help doing the cooking.

Jello recipe book. 1916, PSAW ephemera collections.

"In her old home she had never been taught to cook, as so, when her father and mother, making their first visit to "the children"miss her from the room for a moment and then witness her triumphant return, bearing a tray with tea things and napkins and spoons for two, and two beautiful dishes of Jell-o upon it..."

Jello recipe book, 1916. PSAW ephemera collections.

"Father and mother and other "company" have come and gone many times  before baby arrives, and the lovely bride, looking hardly a day older, has become a proficient housekeeper."

Jello Recipe book, 1916, centerfold. PSAW ephemera collections.

Jello recipe book, 1916. PSAW ephemera collections.

On this beautiful summer afternoon three of her schoolmates - all happily marries- gather at her home to live again their girlhood life and exchange confidences regarding the whims of their husbands and the cleverness of their babies..."


Jello recipe book, 1916. PSAW ephemera collections.

The Jello girl made her first appearance in 1904. She was Elizabeth King, whose father, Franklin King, was an artist at the ad agency that made the Jello Ads. The Jello girl remained a staple of Jello ads for forty years. She appears at the end of the Jello Bride Recipe Booklet, as well as on the front cover.

"Attention, children! Some day you will be buying groceries, and if they have continued to go up in price, you will do well to consider the cost of different articles of food."


Jello recipe book. PSAW ephemera collections


Jello Recipe book. 1912. PSAW ephemera collection


Jello Recipe book. 1917. PSAW ephemera collection
 


Detail. Jello recipe book 1917. PSAW ephemera collection.

Look how beautifully the lithography tolerates enlargement.




Jello Recipe book. 1918. PSAW ephemera collections.

 


Jello Recipe book, 1915. PSAW ephemera collections.


Jello Recipe book. Date unknown. PSAW ephemera collections

This book has more gorgeous beautifully printed images than any other. And the copy I have is in brilliant shape. The rest of the images in this post are from this book.

NEW STYLES OF 1938

Here are some fun finds from a 1938 Spiegel Catalog.

Love the little camera she's holding.

There were no similar outfits for little girls. Hmmm, I wonder why.

The cover. The text says, "The best thing in life is a happy, comfortable, attractive home. When the day's work is done, it's our haven of peace and quiet, rest, pleasure and security."  What the text deletes is that the day's work for the wife is at home, working hard to provide that peace quiet etc.

Spiegel 1938 Cover, detail. At first I thought this was a peddler, which would be appropriate since my Spiegel relatives came to America and worked as peddlers, eventually starting the store that would become Spiegels. However, on closer inspection he seems to be an itinerant knife sharpener. His clothing style doesn't match the clothing style of the woman and girl, and the proportions of the people to the house are way out of  scale, so I suspect the whole image is rather fanciful.

ATLANTIC CITY - ROLLING CHAIRS

My blog banner says, "wherever the ride goes" and I swear I never know what that will be. I was looking a the postcard of the Ambassador Hotel in Atlantic City and I remembered that my mom, Polly Spiegel Cowan, took me to Atlantic city for a weekend when I was about ten years old. It was rainy and cold and I hated it, but I did enjoy her stories about her visits there as a youngster. Of course she stayed at her Uncle Simon's hotel, The Ambassador. It would have been special trip, since she lived in Chicago as a girl. Her favorite memories seemed to be of the rolling chairs. And the salt water taffy. Honestly, I wasn't paying that much attention, I just wanted to get back home. But this vague memory inspired my search for images of Atlantic City rolling chairs.


Late 19th or Early 20th Century. The boardwalk was originally built to keep sand out of the hotels. Atlantic city, in it's early days of the 1850's was a health spa and middle class vacation playground. Leisurely walks, or rides, along the boardwalk were a famous attraction.


Sheet music. 1905


Same song, different version


Early 20th Century Postcard



1908 Postcard, Boardwalk at night


No date on this one. But early 20th century.



Boardwalk 1910



A Boardwalk pastime. 1914



1948


Rolling Chairs in 1961, around the time I went with my mother.


This must be late 1960's. The rolling cars have lost their elegance, and there's some horrible piece of institutional architecture added to the othrewise elegant cityscape.

Now Atlantic City is a big gambling strip and since I don't like to print ugly images on my blog I'll stop while the going's good.

SW Straus Family and NY architecture

SW Straus' daughter, Harriet Straus Rachevsky. 1929. Harriet is Zina's mother.I got this photo on eBay several years ago. It came with this text:

This text shows that Harriet's husband, Vladimir, was the brother in law of  Grand Duke Boris. Not royalty himself. I also have several  passenger lists from transatlantic voyages in which he appears  as Vladimir Rachevsky, engineer. Not Duke or anything royal. This text brings up an interesting question: Why was the marriage secret? My hunch is that the dying SW would have been livid that Harriet planned to marry someone not Jewish. Her two sisters, Louise and Madeline, had married Jews, as had everyone else in the family. My own grandfather (a Spiegel, not a Straus, but still...) had explicitly forbidden my mother from marrying a Kike, which to him meant a Jew of Eastern European descent, not the good kind from Germany, or even a Sephardic Jew. My mom did, in fact, marry a Kike - my father - and my grandparents grew to adore him. But to marry a Christian in those days was not something you'd tell your dying father.

update: a relative on the Rachevsky side of the family found me through this blog. Ain't google amazing?!! According to him, it seems that the Rachevsky's were, in fact Jewish. Converted to Catholicism, for a variety of reasons, including safety, but Jews nevertheless.

Now that I look at the pictures of Zina, Mrs Grand Duke, she does look Jewish. I mean, she looks like several Jews I know in Russia. . I'm keeping the rest of this post in, because I don't know if Vladimir told Harriet he was Jewish, and even if he did, he was a Russian Jew, not the "good" kind, a German Jew.

From Growing Up Rich by Anne Bernays -  a wonderful novel about a German Jewish family in New York in the 1940's. The heroine is Sally Stern, a fourteen year old girl. Sally's mother is speaking to Sally about her (Sally's) step Grandmother. She is refering to a conversation Sally and Oma Lucy have had about Jews passing for Gentile.

"Oma Lucy has very firm opinions about 'passing.' She thinks it's a sin. It's her hobbyhorse, dear. Of course, she's the ultimate snob herself. Did you know that when she refers to any Jew who isn't the acceptable kind - not German or Spanish - she always uses the word 'little' in front of their name. Little Mrs. Steinberg, little Mrs. Epstein. It's a dead giveaway. I don't think she's aware she does it. Oh, she'd be horrified to hear what I'm telling you. And don't you go repeating it to her either."

 
Grand Duke Boris and his wife Zinaida (Rachevsky) This is not our Zina. It is her father's sister. I think she is gorgeous.

Meanwhile, Harriet's father, my great uncle Simon William Straus, had been busy changing the skylines of three major US cities. He built the Ambassador Hotels in New York, Atlantic City, and Los Angeles.

Ambassador Hotel, New York City. The building has been torn down.

Advertisement from The Hotel Ambassador, New York City.

Ambassador hotel Atlantic City, NJ
Here's a juicy little tidbit from an Atlantic City history website
In May of 1929, mob kingpins from around the country, including Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz and Al Capone, gathered for a three-day national convention in Atlantic City's Ambassador Hotel....The gangsters gathered at Atlantic City's Ambassador sought to find ways to end their bloody wars, coordinate their national racketeering activities and reign in Capone, whose ferocity unnerved even them.

The Straus Building, Chicago.

SW also held the underwriting mortgage  of $6,000,000 on the construction, building and land of the Pershing Square Building, which was right next to Grand Central Station, on 42nd Street and Park Ave.  It was owned by The Pershing Square Corporation, of which Seward Ehrich was the treasurer. Seward Erich had just married Louise Straus - Harriet's sister and Zina's aunt. The marriage tookplace at the Italian Gardens of The Ambassador Hotel. The building was designed by John Sloan, architect at York & Sawyer.

Pershing Square Building Plans Completed, NY Times 1921

Pershing Square, NYC, 1922 postcard

Pershing Square now. It is a trendy restaurant.

Building was nothing new to the Straus family. SW's uncle, Jacob Straus, Jewish pioneer and businessman in Ligonier, Indiana, built this beauty.

Citizens bank, Ligonier Indiana founded by Jacob Straus

And that's it for today's Straus family history. If you are interested in reading more about the Straus/Spiegel clan, and about reclaiming Jewish roots, I highly recommend An Orphan In History by my brother, Paul Cowan. (It's on my Powell's booklist). For a great read about German Jews in New York City in the 1940's, I recommend Growing Up Rich, by Anne Bernays.

more about Zina Rachevsky

SEED PACKS

I've been a bit too busy to post in the past few days, but I thought I'd put up some great old images from seed packs that I have in my ephemera collection.

Lettuce Seed Packet. PSAW ephemera collections

I think these are from the early part of the 20th Century, and the graphics are so delicious.

Early 20th Century Seed Packs. PSAW ephemera collections.

DOLLEY Madison & HOLLY Shulman

A few years ago, when I first thought about creating a website, my main inspiration was my older sister, Holly C. Shulman, and her outstanding website, The Dolley Madison Project . Holly, Dolley. Be confused not.

Holly C. Shulman is probably the foremost scholar on Dolley Madison. Dolley was the wife of President James Madison and the most famous hostess of Washington DC. Far from being stuffily academic, the website is gorgeous, informative and fun. Produced as a project of the Virginia Center For Digital History - University of Virginia, The Dolley Madison Project has both academic clout and design pizzaz. The graphics are beautiful, including probably all the known likenesses of Dolley. There is a section on Dolley and pop culture and a section on how to read old handwriting.

Image courtesy of Holly Cowan Shulman, The Virginia Center For Digital History, University Of Virginia

Jewelry made from hair of a deceased beloved. From VCDH  website. University of Virginia

Now Holly Shulman has published a piece in the Virginia Center For Digital History Website/blog about Dolley, James and the custom of making jewelry from the hair of a dead beloved to use as a memento mori. According to Shulman, "The fascination with ritualized mourning clothes and accessories has generally been considered an outgrowth of Queen Victoria’s intensely private, but socially influential bereavement of her husband, Prince Albert. But Albert did not die until 1861, and Dolley wrote her cousin in the summer of 1837. We can assume that in her practice and assumptions about memorializing the dead, Dolley was not alone among her friends and family in Virginia. These letters inform us about their practices of mourning. It indicates a shift in how the dead were remembered, and it locates the tradition of creating jewelry with hair enclosed to the 1830s."

Holly also edits another website, an exhibition site about Wednesdays In Mississippi: Civil Rights as Women's Work. Maybe I'll post about it another time.

MARY LOUISE SPOOR & CHARLIE CHAPLIN

Mary Louise Spoor, Baby Bunting, chromolithograph 1917. PSAW Collections

Collecting is an adventure. The civilized version of big game hunting. You never know where the chase will  will lead, what roads you will follow. Here, we go from nursery illustrations to the early history of cinema.

A couple of years ago I was hunting at an antiques show. I was fast- walking the aisles, which is how I always do my first scan. I stopped abruptly at  a huge chromolithograph schoolroom poster published in 1917 by Congdon Publishers in Chicago. I immediately fell in love with the Japanese - or Japonism - inspired design. The dealer knew the name of the illustrator, Mary Louise Spoor, but not much about her. 

I immediately began searching for more of her work. I have subsequently found three of the school room posters. Hickory Dickory Dock, Little Bo Peep  and Baby Bunting Went A Hunting.

Mary Louise Spoor, Hickory Dickory Dock, 1917 Chromolithograph. PSAW collections

Internet searches revealed scant information on Spoor.  An interesting conversation among collectors and descendants reveals that Spoor (1887-1985) worked for a brief shining moment from Chicago, publishing illustrations for Rand McNally and Lyons & Carnihan.