Violet Oakley

            Back in 2010 my family took a trip to Philadelphia.  On the way we stopped in Harrisburg and went to the Capitol building (we’d go to any capitol building we could when on vacation).  One of the first things you notice about the capitol is the gorgeous green dome.  When you enter the building it’s just as gorgeous.  A big part of what makes Pennsylvania’s capitol special is the murals throughout.  The murals were done by Violet Oakley, the first American woman to receive a public mural commission.

            Violet Oakley was born on June 10, 1874 in Bergen Heights, New Jersey (her birthplace is often listed as Jersey City; Bergen Heights was part of Jersey City, so neither is wrong).  Both of Violet’s grandfathers were members of the National Academy of Design, so when Violet wanted to be an artist, she had a relatively easy path.  In 1892 she started at the Art Students League of New York, and the following year went to study in England and France.  In France she studied at the Académie Montparnasse.

            In 1896 Violet returned to the US to study.  She began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, but less than a year later she left and transferred to the Drexel Institute School of Illustration after the urging of her sister, Hester, who was already attending Drexel.  At Drexel, Violet studied under Howard Pyle.  At this time she also made friends with Elizabeth Shippen Green and Jessie Willcox Smith, other students of Pyle’s; Pyle nicknamed them the Red Rose Girls because they lived together at the Red Rose Inn (1).

            Violet had success as an illustrator.  She had pieces in The Century Magazine, Collier’s Weekly, St. Nicholas Magazine, and Women’s Home Companion.  At the time, about 88% of subscribers to magazines were women, and so there was a push to show the world from a woman’s perspective, and so women were hired as illustrators. (2).

Despite the success at illustration, and teaching her illustration, Pyle actually encouraged Violet to pursue large scale pieces and helped Violet get commissions for murals and stained glass pieces.  Violet still worked on small pieces when she could.

            Violet attributed her style to Pyle and to the Pre-Raphaelites.  Her art also showed a “commitment to Victorian aesthetics during the advent of Modernism” (3).  Violet had also become a Quaker in her adult life (she was raised Episcopalian), and wanted to showcase the Quaker ideals of pacifism, equality of races and sexes, and economic and social justice (4).

            In 1902, architect Joseph M. Huston chose Violet to create murals for the Governor’s Reception Room in the state capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, purely on the basis of her talent (5).  Before this point, her only mural had been at the All Angels Episcopal Church in New York City.  Violet admired William Penn’s utopian vision for Pennsylvania, and wanted to highlight this.  She travelled to Europe to study about Penn’s life.  The murals in the Reception Room took Violet over four years, and highlight her talents as well as her interest in history.  Violet would do fourteen murals total for the Reception Room, and 43 murals in total in the Capitol building.

            In 1903, while she was working on these murals, Violet joined Christian Science.  While she had been in Florence, Violet had her asthma cured through prayer and so joined Christian Science.  She was a member of the Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Philadelphia from its founding in 1912 until her death in 1961.  In 1939, Violet even illustrated a poem by Mary Baker Eddy (the founder of Christian Science) in the style of illuminated manuscripts.

            In 1911, Violet was working with Edwin Austin Abbey on the Senate Chamber and Supreme Court Rooms at the Capitol, when Abbey died.  Due to her talent and work with Abbey, Violet was chosen to finish Abbey’s work.  This work took Violet nineteen years, over which time she completed the murals, six illuminated manuscripts, and a book about the murals.

            After her work at the Pennsylvania Capitol, Violet did a mural at the League of Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland; the Henry Memorial Library at the Chestnut Hill Academy in Philadelphia; and the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown in Philadelphia (6).

            Throughout the rest of her life lived on and off with the Red Rose Girls and Henrietta Cozens.  Their home in Mt. Airy, PA was called Cogs from their initials (Cozens, Oakley, Green, and Smith).  The home was later called Cogslea, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Violet Oakley Studio in 1977.  Her home and studio in Yonkers, NY, where she lived on and off from 1912 to 1915, are also in the National Register as Plashbourne Estate.

            Violet lived at Cogslea with her longtime companion Edith Emerson after the other Red Rose Girls moved out.  Edith was the director and president of the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia.  They lived together for the rest of their lives.  Violet Oakley died on February 25, 1961.  She is buried in the Oakley family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery.

            While Violet’s work had fallen out of favor after World War II, there was renewed interest starting in the 1970s.  In 1996, Violet Oakley was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame - the last of the Red Rose Girls to be inducted.  In June 2014, Violet’s grave was featured on the first gay themed tour of Green-Wood Cemetery (7).

1, 2, 3, 4, 7 - Violet Oakley

5 - Women of History: Violet Oakley

6 - Violet Oakley Historical Marker

Happy Presidents Day!

I'll be back with a regular post next week!

Edmonia Lewis

            This is another person I found on Pinterest.  Edmonia Lewis’s caption reads “Mary Edmonia Lewis (ca. July 4, 1845 - ca. 1911) was the first African American and Native American woman to gain fame and recognition as a sculptor in the international fine arts world.  She was of African American, Haitian, and Ojibwe descent” (1).  If that doesn’t sound interesting, I don’t know what does.  When I started reading about her, she’s even more interesting, but with some said parts to her story as well.

            It’s not entirely clear where or when Mary Edmonia Lewis was born.  She claimed July 4, 1844 for her birthdate.  She could have been born any time between 1840 and 1845 though.  She was probably born around Greenbush, New York (now in either Rensselaer or East Greenbush).  It’s also possible she was born in Albany, New York or Newark, New Jersey.  In one interview she said she was born in Greenhigh, Ohio.  July 4, 1844 in Greenbush, New York seems to be the agreed upon date and place.

            Edmonia was the daughter of an African-American gentleman’s servant and a Mississauga Ojibwe/African-American weaver and craftswoman.  Both of her parents died when she was young.  Her mother’s two sisters took in Edmonia and her brother Samuel (who was about twelve years older than Edmonia).  At this point Edmonia was known as Wildfire, and Samuel went by Sunshine.  Edmonia lived with her aunts for about four years in the area near Niagara Falls.  She helped sell Ojibwe baskets and other souvenirs to the tourists that came to Niagara Falls.

            In 1852, Samuel went to California to look for gold.  He must have been fairly successful because he was able to send money back to Edmonia for a number of years.  Samuel helped pay for Edmonia’s education at the New York Central College in McGrawville.  This school was a Baptist, abolitionist school.  Edmonia started at NYCC in 1856 but left after just three years “when she was ‘declared to be wild’” (2).

            In 1859 Edmonia started at Oberlin College with help from her brother and some abolitionists.  Oberlin was one of the first schools to admit women and minority students.  At Oberlin, Edmonia began studying art, excelling at drawing.  It was around this time that Wildfire chose to be called Mary Edmonia Lewis; a few years later she would drop Mary and just be Edmonia Lewis.

            At Oberlin, Edmonia boarded with the Reverend John Keep and his wife.  Keep was an abolitionist and an advocate for coeducation.  Keep was also a member of Oberlin’s Board of Trustees.  At the Keep residence also lived two white students, Christine Ennes and Maria Miles.

            In the winter of 1862, Edmonia, Christine, and Maria were going out for a sleigh ride and had some spiced wine.  Edmonia didn’t have as much as the other girls and the other girls got very sick.  It was discovered that they had been poisoned with Spanish Fly.  They were very sick for a while, but recovered.  It was believed that Edmonia had poisoned them, but since they recovered, no charges were filed.  People in town were very upset by this though, and Edmonia was dragged off to a field and beaten.  Due to public pressure, she was charged with poisoning Christine and Maria.

            Oberlin defended Edmonia.  Her lawyer, John Mercer Langston, was shot by one of the sick girls’ fathers.  In court, Langston argued that “the contents of the girls’ stomachs had never been analyzed, and thus the charges against Lewis could not be proved” (3).  Witnesses testified against Edmonia, and she didn’t take the stand.  She was either acquitted or the case was dismissed, and so she was free to go.  (Langston “would go on to become the first African-American elected to public office in the United States and a founding dean of Howard Law School” (4).)

            The following year Edmonia was accused of stealing art supplies from Oberlin, but was acquitted of this charge as well.  The women’s principal would not allow Edmonia to register for classes for her last term, though, and so she never graduated.

            After leaving Oberlin, Edmonia debated returning to the Niagara Falls area and her mother’s tribe, but instead went to Boston.  The Keeps’ wrote to friends in Boston, introducing her to William Lloyd Garrison.  Garrison introduced Edmonia to area sculptors and writers.  She tried at least three people before she found a teacher willing to take her on in Edward A Brackett.  Brackett specialized in marble busts and had abolitionists for clients.  He lent Edmonia fragments of his pieces for her to copy and be critiqued.  It’s not clear what happened, but Brackett and Edmonia split and it was unamicable.

            In 1864, after a solo exhibition, Edmonia opened her own studio.  Her pieces at this time were mostly of abolitionists.  Her 1863 and 1864 subjects included John Brown and Robert Gould Shaw.  Shaw’s family purchased her bust of him, and the success of that allowed her to make plaster copies and sell them for $115 each.  She also made medallion portraits of Brown and Garrison.

            Between 1864 and 1871, Edmonia was written about by a number of prominent Boston and New York abolitionists.  While she wasn’t opposed to the coverage she was getting, Edmonia didn’t want false praise.  “She knew that some did not really appreciate her art, but saw her as an opportunity to express and show their support for human rights” (5).

            Due to the success of her bust of Shaw, and the medallions of abolitionists, Edmonia was able to save up enough to travel to Rome in 1866.  In Rome, the sculptor Hiram Powers gave her some room in his studio.  She also was supported by Charlotte Cushman, a Boston actress, and Maria Weston Chapman, an anti-slavery advocate.

            In Rome, Edmonia first began sculpting in marble.  She also started pieces about Emancipation, the first of which was Freedwoman and her Child.  She used the neoclassical forms and mediums to create pieces related to blacks and Native Americans.  Edmonia was profiled in London in Atheneum and Art-Journal.  In 1868, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited her in Rome and she sculpted his bust; his family praised the piece.  She had previously created pieces based on Longfellow’s poem, Song of Hiawatha, and it’s possible he saw these pieces when he visited her.

            Edmonia was rare in Rome at the time because she did all of her own work.  Most sculptors would create the model and then hire Italian workers to carve the marble.  Edmonia did all the carving herself, possibly “to forestall expected suggestions that a black woman could not possibly have created works of such skill and accomplishment” (6).  Because of this though, “fewer examples and duplicates of Lewis’s work survive than other sculptors of the period” (7).

In 1870 Edmonia had an exhibition in Chicago, and in 1871 in Rome.  In 1873, Edmonia received two $50,000 commissions.  Her studio became a tourist spot in Rome, being featured in guide books as a destination.  A big boost to her profile was having a piece in the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.  For this Edmonia created a 3,015 lb., full length sculpture of The Death of Cleopatra.  People weren’t sure about the subject matter dealing with death, but thousands still came to view it.

After Philadelphia, Cleopatra was exhibited in Chicago in 1878.  It was eventually purchased by a gambler and was used to mark the grave of a racehorse named Cleopatra.  After this it was put in storage and damaged by some Boy Scouts who painted the sculpture.  Eventually the piece was rediscovered by the Forest Park Historical Society and was donated to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 1994.  Cleopatra was cleaned and restored to near-original condition.

As neoclassical art decreased in popularity, so did Edmonia.  She had become a Catholic in 1868 and continued to do work for Catholic patrons, but her profile was on the decline.  She travelled to the US for exhibits of her works.  In 1883 she created an altarpiece for a church in Baltimore.  Two of her pieces, Hiawatha and Phyllis Wheatley, were exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In 1901, Edmonia moved to London, but after that little is known of her life.  She never married and never had children.  It was speculated that she died in 1911 in Rome, or in Marin County, California (she had travelled to San Francisco at some point).  But recent digging has discovered that she died on September 17, 1907 in Hammersmith Borough Infirmary in London from chronic kidney problems. 

Edmonia’s pieces had faded from memory, but many have been recently rediscovered.  As mentioned, Cleopatra is now at the Smithsonian.  Other pieces are at Howard University’s Gallery of Art.  In the early 2000s, a play about Edmonia, Wildfire: Black Hands, White Marble, was written by Linda Beatrice Brown.

1- Pinterest caption

2, 5 - Edmonia Lewis

3, 6 - Edmonia Lewis

4, 7 - The Life and Death of Edmonia Lewis

Zitkala-Ša

            Sorry for the delay in this.  I was sick, again, last weekend and spent most of the weekend asleep.  By Monday I was a bit better, but since I’d lost a few days, I didn’t have this ready then.   I like winter, but I’m over it this year.  I haven’t been sick this much in a while.

            I found today’s topic somewhere on Pinterest.  I have a board for historical women, and Zitkala-Ša is on it.  The pin came from a “this day in history” thing and it’s for her birthday (February 22).  The caption just says “On this date in 1876, Zitkala Sa was born on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She would go on to write several books, including American Indian Stories, co-write the first Native American opera, and found the National Council of American Indians” (1).  Not a whole lot of information, but just enough to get me interested and wanting to know more.

            Zitkala-Ša was born Gertrude Simmons on February 22, 1876 on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Yankton Sioux Agency, or Yankton Indian Reservation - depending on the source - in South Dakota.  She was the third child of Ellen Simmons, also called Taté Iyòhiwin (Every Wind or Reaches for the Wind), a Yankton Nakota Sioux.  Zitkala-Ša’s father was a European-American by the name of Felker, but he abandoned the family when Zitkala-Ša was young.

            Zitkala-Ša lived on the reservation until she was eight in “freedom and happiness” (2).  In 1884, missionaries arrived at the reservation and Zitkala-Ša was taken to White’s Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana.  White’s was a Quaker school set up to educate the poor and unfortunate so they could do better in life. 

            While Zitkala-Ša was only at White’s for three years, it was hugely important in her life.  In The School Days of an Indian Girl, published in 1921, Zitkala-Ša wrote of the “deep misery of having her heritage stripped away, when she was forced to pray as a Quaker and cut her traditionally long hair, and the contrasting joy of learning to read and write, and to play the violin” (3).

            In 1887, when Zitkala-Ša returned to the reservation, she didn’t feel like she belonged anymore, and so, in 1891, she returned to White’s, wanting more education.  White’s taught girls enough to become house-keepers, but Zitkala-Ša wanted more than that.  She learned piano and violin, and became the music teacher when the previous teacher resigned.  It was around this time that Gertrude Simmons adopted the name Zitkala-Ša (Red Bird) as a way of “asserting both her independence from and her ties to Sioux culture” (4).  Zitkala-Ša is a Lakota name, though she grew up speaking Nakota.  One source posits that choosing a Lakota name “might indicate a profound dislocation from her family origins, as well as a conscious choice” (5).

            In 1895, Zitkala-Ša received her diploma and her mother wanted her to come back home, but Zitkala-Ša went on to Earlham College in Indiana on a scholarship.  At Earlham, though, Zitkala-Ša felt isolated from her white fellow students.  The students only paid attention to her after she gave a speech, “Side by Side”, and won the Indiana State Oratorical Contest in 1896.  Zitkala-Ša did well at Earlham, but unfortunately had to leave just over a month before graduation due to illness.

            Around this same time Zitkala-Ša began compiling Native American legends.  She would translate them into Latin and then English, in the hopes of getting children to read them.  Compiling legends would become one of the focuses of Zitkala-Ša’s life.

            For her violin playing, Zitkala-Ša received a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where she attended from 1897 to 1899.  In 1899, she took a position at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.  Zitkala-Ša taught music to the children, and “conducted debates on the treatment of Native Americans” (6).

            While employed by Carlisle, Zitkala-Ša played at the 1900 Paris Exposition with the school’s Indian Band.  At this time she also began writing about Native American life, getting published in Harper’s Monthly, Atlantic Monthly, and others.  These articles upset the higher-ups at Carlisle and so she was sent out West, ostensibly to recruit students, but more likely to remove her from the publishing centers in the United States.

            When Zitkala-Ša arrived back out West, she found her mother’s home in an awful state and her brother’s family living in poverty.  Additionally, there were white settlers on the lands that the Yankton Dakota had been given in 1877 through the Dawes Act (7).

            Zitkala-Ša returned to Carlisle after a while, but upon her return her conflicts with the founder of the school intensified.  She didn’t like that the school focused on assimilating Native students into white culture, and only trained its students for low-level jobs; the school assumed its students would return to where they had come from and that they wouldn’t need more than a basic education.  Carlisle also didn’t like her stories, calling them “worse than pagan” and “trash” (8).

            Due to her continued conflicts with Carlisle, Zitkala-Ša was dismissed from her position in 1901.  She had had an article published in Harper’s Monthly that year that told of a boy at the school who felt a loss of identity after his education.  After being dismissed, Zitkala-Ša returned home to Yankton, worried for her family.  Also at this time, the Native American stories and legends she had been compiling were collected and published in Old Indian Legends, commissioned by a Boston company.  Old Indian Legends was published to high acclaim; in 1919 she received a letter of praise for the book from Helen Keller.

            Upon returning to Yankton, Zitkala-Ša took a position as a clerk at the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Standing Rock Indian Reservation.  In 1902, Zitkala-Ša met Captain Raymond Talefase Bonnin; they married later that year.  Bonnin was raised Yankton Dakota as well, but was only one quarter to one half Dakota.  Shortly after marrying, Bonnin was transferred to Utah; they moved to the Uintah-Ouray Reservation where they lived for fourteen years, and where their only child, Raymond Ohiya Bonnin, was born.

            While in Utah, Zitkala-Ša met William F. Hanson, a professor at Brigham Young University.  Hanson was also a composer, and the two began a musical collaboration in 1910.  Based on a sacred Sioux ritual that the U.S. government had prohibited from being done on the Utah reservations, The Sun Dance Opera premiered in Vernal, Utah in 1913.  Zitkala-Ša wrote the libretto and the songs for the opera, the first opera co-written by a Native American.  In performances, Ute performers danced and played some parts, but all of the lead singing was done by white people.  The opera received much praise upon its premiere.  It was performed periodically by rural troupes over the years before premiering in New York in 1938.  The advertisements in New York only mentioned Hanson.

            While in Utah, Zitkala-Ša joined the Society of American Indians, which was formed in 1911.  She served as its secretary until 1916, and edited its journal, American Indian Magazine, from 1918 to 1919.  SAI members had to have Indian blood.  They were assimilationist, but also promoted Native American self-determination.  A main goal was to get full American citizenship for Native Americans.  (Towards the end of the twentieth century, SAI was criticized “as misguided in their strong advocacy of citizenship and employment rights for Native Americans.  Such critics believe that Native Americans have lost cultural identity as they have become more part of mainstream American society.” [9])

            Zitkala-Ša criticized the Bureau of Indian Affairs for prohibiting Native American children’s use of their native languages and cultural practices.  In the 1920s, Zitkala-Ša helped promote a pan-Indian movement to help get citizenship rights.  In 1924 the Indian Citizenship Act was passed, but it did not secure citizenship for all Native Americans.

            In 1926, Zitkala-Ša and her husband founded the National Council of American Indians.  This group, too, worked to unite all Native Americans in a hopes to get full citizenship rights through suffrage.  Zitkala-Ša served as NCAI’s president, speaker, and major fundraiser from its founding until her death.  When the group was revived in 1944, Zitkala-Ša’s work was dismissed.

            Zitkala-Ša died on January 26, 1938 in Washington, D.C.  She is buried in Arlington National Cemetery due to her husband’s service in World War One.  She is buried as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin.  There is a crater on Venus named Bonnin in her honor (all craters on Venus are named for women or have women’s names).

            It’s agreed that Zitkala-Ša had two major periods of work.  The first is from 1900 to 1904.  This period includes the Native American legends and her autobiographical pieces, showing the conflicts between her cultural traditions and assimilation into white culture.  Many of these pieces were published in Harper’s Monthly and Atlantic Monthly.  The second period is from 1916 to 1924.  These are her political works.  Zitkala-Ša and her family had moved to Washington, D.C., and Zitkala-Ša became increasingly political on behalf of Native Americans and women.

            Some of Zitkala-Ša’s most influential works are from this second period.  American Indian Stories was published in 1921.  She was also co-author of 1923’s Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians: An Orgy of Graft and Exploitation of the Five Civilized Tribes, Legalized Robbery.  Her co-authors were Charles H. Fabens, from the American Indian Defense Association, and Matthew K. Sniffen of the Indian Rights Association.  Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians exposed “the corrupt land allocation policies in place at the time in Oklahoma” (10).  This work “resulted in her appointment as an advisor to the U.S. government’s Meriam Commission of 1928, the findings of which eventually led to several important reforms” (11) and influenced Congress to pass the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.

            Zitkala-Ša’s writings were “the first major literary pieces written by a Native American in English that deal with Native American culture and the process of assimilation from an Indian’s point of view” (12).  She’s so interesting.  I’m going to have to read some of her writings now, many of which are available online.      

1 - Pinterest caption

2, 3, 6, 7, 9 - Zitkala-Sa

4, 5, 8 - Zitkala-sa, Sioux Indian

10, 12 - Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin)

11 - Zitkala-Sa, Encyclopædia Brittanica

Fordite

            This is probably going to be short, as there’s not a whole lot of information on the topic.  It had a very limited window of production, and is gaining in popularity, making it rare, but it’s not really… historical, or a thing that there’s been a lot written about.  There are lots of pictures, so there will be a fair amount here too.  Having grown up and lived most of my life in metro-Detroit, the auto business is everywhere.  This is another one where I’m not sure where I first heard of Fordite, probably on some clickbait article with pretty pictures, to be honest.  But it’s interesting.

            Fordite is a man-made “stone” created in car factories before the 1970s.  It’s also called Detroit Agate, Motor Agate, and paint rock.  The agate moniker comes because of the similarity in appearance to real agates.  Before the 1970s, auto plants painted cars in bays, by hand.  The coats of paint would be heated to harden the paint, and more layers would be added.  Paint would build up in the tracks in the ground, and would also be heated and hardened.  Some of the tracks had up to one hundred layers of paint in them.  The paint would just build up until it became too thick to work around, and then it would be removed.

            James Pease, an auto worker in 1967, “recalls contractors cleaning paint booths during model changes” (1).  An urban legend has it that workers would just bring home pieces for their family members.  Cindy Dempsey, one of the first people to make Fordite jewelry (more on that in a bit), recalled being shown some of this layered paint in the 1970s.  “A family friend who worked for one of the Detroit automakers told her that her vividly painted Pet Rocks … resembled pieces from the plant where he worked.  He brought a chunk and showed it to her” (2).  Cindy “used sandpaper to showcase the paint lump’s colors, then topped the finished stone with varnish.  It became the prototype for her later creations” (3).

            In the late 1970s, the auto companies changed the way they painted cars.  No longer was the process done by hand, and the paint was different too.  The paint nowadays is electrostatically attached to the cars, and there is almost no excess paint sprayed.  Because of this, there’s no buildup of paint on the floor or otherwise.

            Fordite was not unique to Detroit, and the name is misleading: all built up paint from old car factories is called Fordite.  Fordite from Detroit generally has layers of a grey primer between the layers of colorful paint.  In Ohio, where a lot of vans were produced, the colors are more earthy, though there are pops of colors from the 1970s.  In Great Britain, there are more opaque, metallic, and translucent layers (4).  Fordite can be dated by the colors in the pieces: in the 40s there were more blacks and browns, giving way to lots of brighter colors into the 60s.  Fordite collectors and experts can even tell which company or factory the sample came from.

            As mentioned earlier, Cindy Dempsey was one of the first people to make Fordite into jewelry.  Now you can find quite a number of sellers online and, presumably, in shops.  (One website I found, in addition to selling Fordite jewelry, sells jewelry from old bowling balls as well.)  Original Fordite does contain lead, but generally not in levels that are harmful, and not usually unless ingested.  Modern jewelers can recreate Fordite because of it being a finite resource, and so real Fordite is much more valuable.  Fordite is popular for its nostalgia factor and because it is a recycled material and so more eco-friendly.

            So that’s Fordite.  Like I thought, a short article, but pretty pictures!  I’d love to have something made of it, but at the prices it goes for, that’s probably a bit of a long shot unless I save up.  Next week, back to something with a bit more substance!

1, 2, 3 - Mary M. Chapman, “Your Earrings Remind Me ofGrandma’s Gran Torino,” The New YorkTimes, Aug. 23, 2013.

4 - Fordite: A Jewel Made From Layers of Old Car Paint

Happy birthday, Alice Paul!

I lost track of time this week and don't have a post ready for today.  I will have one tomorrow, but in the meantime...

Happy birthday, Alice Paul!

"They'll say 'Aww Topsy'..."

            When coming up with ideas, for a while I’ve been trying to do people’s births or deaths, or other events, that took place on the date that they would be published.  I haven’t had a lot of success.  At the beginning I wasn’t paying attention and was just picking things (not a bad thing, just a different approach).  When I started trying to pay attention, things that I found interesting didn’t happen on the dates I publish, so I would look close to the date and hope I struck something.  But today we have something that actually happened on today’s date!

            By chance, this topic came up over the weekend too.  My parents were visiting and we put Bob’s Burgers on to watch and to have in the background at various points of their visit.  One of the episodes was the episode “Topsy” where Louise wants to take down her Edison-obsessed substitute science teacher.  The librarian whispers “Topsy” to Louise, causing the kids to look up Topsy.  They watch a video of the elephant’s execution, and eventually there’s a whole musical number about Topsy and Edison being in love…  It doesn’t have all the correct information, but it’s still interesting and has a fun song.  (The song is where today's title comes from.)

            Topsy the elephant was born around 1875 in Southeast Asia.  She was captured by elephant traders and wound up in the United States.  Topsy was sold to the Forepaugh Circus and was billed as the first elephant born in the U.S.  Forepaugh was in competition with Barnum & Bailey over who had the most elephants.  By saying Topsy was born in the U.S., Forepaugh would have a leg up over Barnum & Bailey.  Barnum exposed Forepaugh’s deception though, and so Forepaugh had to stop making the claim.

            Topsy worked for Forepaugh for twenty-five years.  Towards the end of this time, she was gaining a reputation for being a bad elephant; a previous trainer had tried to feed her a lit cigarette – he, or another trainer around this time, was killed.  This reputation would stick with her for the rest of her life.

            Animal trainers at this time were rough with their animals, especially large animals, like Topsy.  Elephants would have hooks used on them near their eyes or elsewhere on their head, to try and get them to cooperate.  Other trainers would use “beatings, hot pokers, and even guns” on the animals they worked with (1).  One of the ways Topsy was promoted was by drawing attention to her crooked tail; the crook in her tail was due to abuse she had suffered.  It’s really no wonder that Topsy grew, seemingly, increasingly violent with all that was done to her.

            In 1902 Topsy was sold to Sea Lion Park at Coney Island.  Around this time, James Fielding Blount was one of the trainers working with Topsy.  He was often drunk and on at least one occasion tried to give Topsy whiskey.  Topsy refused and so Blount got mad and burned her with his cigar.  This upset Topsy even more, and she threw him away from her, causing his death.

Another of Topsy’s trainers, Whitey Ault, had come to Sea Lion Park with her from Forepaugh.  When Sea Lion Park didn’t last, Tospy became part of Luna Park.  Topsy helped move attractions to new locations.  When she didn’t do the work that was expected of her, Whitey got upset and would abuse Topsy.  On one occasion, that we know of, Whitey “prodded her trunk in a ‘savage manner’ with a pitchfork” (2).  Whitey was arrested for “animal cruelty, but later was acquitted because the amount of prodding was deemed acceptable” (3).

On another occasion, a drunk Whitey rode Topsy through the streets of town.  When the police stopped him, he threatened to release Topsy in the streets.  Because of this threat, Whitey was arrested.  Despite all the abuse he had done to her, Topsy was attached to Whitey, and tried to follow him into the police station.  Because she was a ten foot tall, three ton elephant, Topsy got stuck in the entrance and started trumpeting.  Whitey was allowed to take Topsy back to the park, but this was another strike against her.

After his arrest, Whitey was fired from Luna Park.  There weren’t any other elephant handlers around, though, that could handle Topsy.  Frederick Thompson and Elmer Dundy, the owners of Luna Park, wanted to get rid of her one way or another.  Because of her reputation, Topsy wasn’t sellable; they couldn’t even give her away in a raffle.  Thompson and Dundy then decided to kill Topsy, but of course they wanted to turn it into a public spectacle and sell tickets.

When the ASPCA heard about Thompson and Dundy’s plans, they stopped them.  The ASPCA said that tickets could not be sold to such an event.  Thompson and Dundy decided to hold a free event, then, and have press cover it.  How to kill Topsy was another matter.  Luna Park didn’t have a big enough gun to execute the elephant.  Ultimately they decided to try multiple tactics, culminating in Topsy’s electrocution.

Thompson and Dundy, always hungry for a spectacle, advertised the event for January 4, 1903, where “man-killer Topsy would be publicly hanged for her crimes” (4).  The plan was to use “large ropes tied to a steam-powered winch with poison and electrocution planned for good measure” (5).  This, too, was to appease the ASPCA.  Hanging alone was cruel and unusual punishment, they said.  Even New York State had done away with it in favor of the electric chair.

During the 1880s and 1890s, Edison and Tesla (and Westinghouse, backing Tesla) were involved in the “War of Currents”, trying to show if AC or DC was better and safer for use.  During this time, Edison electrocuted a lot of dogs and cats, and even horses and cows, trying to show how dangerous AC was.  Edison’s people even helped develop the electric chair as another way of showing how dangerous AC was.  Due to all this “expertise” the Edison company was called on to perform Topsy’s electrocution.

For Topsy’s execution, her former trainer, Whitey Ault was offered $25 to lead Topsy to the platform where she would be killed.  Despite all their differences over the years, Whitey refused, saying “he wouldn’t do it for a thousand” (6).  Since there was no handler for her, Topsy was very difficult to get into position.  Additionally, she shook off the electrodes that had already been attached to her, and refused to eat the cyanide-laced carrots that were made for her.

Eventually Topsy was able to be put on the platform, and she did eat the carrots (though they didn’t seem to do much on their own).  Once the electrical switch was flipped, Topsy died almost immediately – an Edison worker was electrocuted as well, though he survived.  Despite her having been declared dead, Topsy had a noose strung around her neck for about ten minutes as well, just to be sure.  The ASPCA doctors on hand said it was “the most humane way to kill an animal they had ever seen” (7).

In addition to providing the electricity for the event, the Edison Company also filmed the execution.  Edison probably didn’t attend the event, though his name has been stuck with it for all these years.  It also wasn’t part of the War of Currents, which took place over a decade earlier.  Topsy had fallen into obscurity for about seventy years after her death.  When she was rediscovered, it was false information that has tied Edison to Topsy in such a way.  A lot of places still perpetuate that false information too (including one of the sources I used a bit from, as well as Bob’s Burgers).

After her execution, Topsy’s skin was sent to the Museum of Natural History; her bones were sent to her owner; her legs were turned into umbrella stands (8).  A couple years after her death, Topsy’s three-hundred pound skull was exhumed.  The skull had been buried, pretty much at the spot where she fell, behind Luna Park’s stables.  New elephants in 1905 “sensed her remains and refused to walk in the area” (9).  After the exhumation, the elephants were fine walking over the area.

While Topsy definitely wasn’t the only elephant to have been treated so cruelly by her trainers and owners, the spectacle of her death has made her memorable.  It doesn’t hurt to have her named tied to Edison’s, no matter how tenuously that is.  The film of Topsy’sexecution is available on YouTube (be warned, it is an execution), and there is a memorial to Topsy at the Coney Island Museum.

1, 3, 6, 7 - Derek Potter, “Theme Park History: The DarkStory of Thomas Edison and Topsy the Elephant,” Theme Park Insider, November 2014.

2, 8, 9 - Myth Buster - Topsy the Elephant: Did Edison reallyelectrocute Topsy the Elephant?

4 - Topsy the Elephant

5 - Topsy (elephant)

Well...

Well, I was going to have a new post today, but when I sat down to write it I realized I didn't really have any information of any substance.  (It was going to be on Caroline Reboux, a milliner often credited with coming up with the cloche hat.)  So, instead there's this little thing.

RIP George Washington, who died on today's date in 1799.

I'm going to take a couple weeks off for the holidays (between travel and work it's just not going to happen).  I'll be back on January 4th.  Until then, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

The First Miss America

            I apologize for the complete silence here over the last couple weeks.  Just over two weeks ago I got sick and had been sleeping pretty much non-stop, causing me to miss the post on the 23^rd.  Last week, I was still sick and was also recovering from Thanksgiving, so last week I missed as well.  I should’ve said something, but… Too late now.  Sorry.

            I’ve been thinking of doing this person for a while now.  She came up when I was looking at Pinterest for neat old photos of people that might work.  I’d started research before I got sick, but hadn’t finished.  I’ve been finishing this week and came across a quote of hers that she “never cared to be Miss America.  It wasn’t my idea.  I am so bored by it all.  I really want to forget the whole thing” (1).  At that point I was running out of time for a post for today.  I stuck with her, but I admit it feels a little weird since I picked Margaret Gorman precisely because she was the first Miss America, and here I’m finding out she later didn’t like it…  So there’s information here about her, but also about the first year or so that “Miss America” existed.  Hopefully Margaret wouldn’t hate that so much.

            Margaret Gorman was born August 18, 1905.  She was the second child in her family; she had an older brother, and a younger brother and sister.  Her father, Michael J. Gorman, was the executive clerk to the Secretary of Agriculture (I’m not sure which one though).  Margaret’s family lived in Georgetown, in Washington, D.C., near Montrose Park.  She would continue to live in D.C. for her whole life.

            When Margaret was between her sophomore and junior years in high school at Western High School (now the Duke Ellington School of Arts), her photo was entered into a popularity contest run by the Washington Herald.  Margaret had blue eyes and blonde ringlets; her looks were compared to those of the actress Mary Pickford.  Margaret was chosen as one of the finalists for the Washington Herald’s contest, and, with the other finalists, was toured around the city before a winner was chosen.

            Margaret was chosen as Miss Washington, D.C., for 1921, “due to her athletic ability, past accomplishments, and outgoing personality” (2).  When she was notified that she’d won, and would be competing in a contest in Atlantic City, she was at a park playing marbles in the dirt.

            In 1920 Atlantic City had been trying to figure out how to keep tourists in the city after Labor Day, which was the traditional end to the summer holidays.  What the city came up with was the Atlantic City Pageant.  Miss Atlantic City, Ethel Charles, acted as the hostess for the pageant, a tradition that would continue for years.  Margaret was invited to the Second Annual Atlantic City Pageant as Miss Washington, D.C., to compete over the September 7^th and 8^th weekend.

            The Pageant was kicked off by a parade and the actual competition part of the weekend started “by the arrival of King Neptune on a barge that landed at the Atlantic City Yacht Club” (3).

Margaret was going to be competing in the “Inner-City Beauty” contest, competing against seven other finalists from cities in the northeastern United States.  The contestants for Miss Inner-City Beauty were “judged in stylish afternoon attire by the judges”, as well as by the public “who shared in fifty percent of the final score” (4).  The public crowded the contestants, asked them questions and tried to get to know them.  While this was definitely a beauty contest, personality did play a part when talking with the public.

One of the other titles up for grabs was “The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America”, so of course the contestants were in bathing attire.  Some of the contestants “violated a local modesty ordinance by appearing barelegged on the beach” (5).  Margaret, though, “wore dark, knee-high stockings and a chiffon bathing costume with a tiered skirt that came almost to her knees” (6).

For the announcement of a winner, the contestants were “escorted and presented on the stage of the Keith Theatre on the Garden Pier” (7).  There were multiple prizes being awarded in the Inner-City Beauty contest.  Miss Washington, D.C., Margaret, won the amateur prize, the Watkins Trophy; Miss South Jersey, Kathryn M. Gearon, came in second, winning one hundred dollars in gold.  There was also a professional prize awarded to the silent film actress, Virginia Lee, who was Miss New York.

Miss Washington, D.C., also won The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America.  With two titles under her belt, Margaret went on to win the grand prize for the Atlantic City Pageant, The Golden Mermaid Trophy.  She also was given a key to the city that she shared with King Neptune.

Upon winning, one of Margaret’s friends from school back in D.C. sent her a telegram, telling her “Congratulations.  Don’t get stuck up” (8).  Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, also commented on her win, telling The New York Times “She represents the type of womanhood America needs – strong, red-blooded, able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood.  It is in her type that the hope of the country rests” (9).

Since she had won the grand prize, Margaret was expected to defend her title the next year.  However, the Washington Herald had already named its new Miss Washington, D.C., for 1922, so Margaret could no longer use that title.  The titles she had won in Atlantic City (Miss Inner-City Beauty, Amateur and Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America) were long, clunky titles.  The Atlantic City committee wanted something easier to call Margaret, and decided on Miss America.

This first Miss America title is funny.  Because of all the confusion over who had what title, and what those titles all were, causing confusion about what to call Margaret, Margaret was crowned 1921’s Miss America at the end of her year, in 1922.  This made her not only the first Miss America, but the only Miss America to receive her crown at the end of her reign.

Margaret did compete in 1922, defending this new, but yearlong, title.  She was still popular with the crowds, who still compromised half the vote.  However, Margaret didn’t successfully defend her title, losing her crown to Miss Ohio, Mary Campbell.  Mary Campbell went on to successfully defend her title in 1923, making her the only two time winner of Miss America.

As well as being the first, Margaret set other Miss America records.  She was just 5’1” and 108lbs, making her the smallest Miss America winner.  (In 1949, Jacque Mercer, Miss Arizona, became the lightest Miss America at just 106lbs, but was two and a half inches taller than Margaret.)  Margaret is also the slimmest Miss America with measurements of just 30-25-32 (of course this is helped by the fact that Margaret was just sixteen when she won).

            Over most of its run, the Miss America contest has been heavily criticized as a beauty pageant and for having women on parade.  This is something that started almost right at its creation.  Throughout the 1920s the contest was protested and so the early organizers “presented the contestants as natural and unsophisticated, stressing their youth and wholesomeness.  Publicity stressed that they did not wear make-up nor bob their hair” (10).

            Margaret competed for a few more years in the 1920s in Atlantic City, but never won anything again.  In 1925 she married Victor Cahill, who worked in real estate.  They lived in D.C. together until Victor’s death in 1957.  Margaret became something of a socialite over the years, and enjoyed travelling throughout her life.

            As the years went on, Margaret tried to distance herself from Miss America and from having been a beauty queen.  As the quote at the beginning says, Margaret “never cared to be Miss America.  It wasn’t my idea.  I am so bored by it all.  I really want to forget the whole thing” (11).  She also said “My husband hated it … I did too” (12).  In 1960, Margaret was persuaded to attend that year’s competition, but “later called the organizers cheap for not reimbursing her for $1,500 in expenses” (13).

            Despite all that, Margaret did keep her outfit from her winning year: a sea green chiffon and sequined costume.

            Margaret Gorman Cahill died on October 1, 1995 at age 90.

            I admit, I don’t know how to feel about Miss America.  Part of me loves it because it’s a competition and you can see all the gorgeous clothes they get to wear and some of the talents the women have are neat.  But part of me hates it because it is just a beauty contest, ultimately, and it presents such a narrow idea of what beauty is.  I think the inception of the contest is interesting though, that it was a popularity and beauty contest, first won by a high schooler.  That it was seen as this all-American, “red-blooded” thing, like Samuel Gompers said.

I also find it really interesting because of when it was created.  The 20s are one of my favorite periods to read about and study.  The rise of the beauty industry, the new ideals of femininity, the higher waistlines, the rush forward into modernity after the Great War.  It seems appropriate that Miss America was born out of this decade.

1, 2, 11 - Margaret Gorman

3, 9, 10 - People & Events: The First MissAmerica Beauty Pageant, 1921

4, 7 - 1921:Margaret Gorman

5, 6, 12, 13 - Robert McG. Thomas Jr., “Margaret G. Cahill, 90, Is Dead; Was FirstMiss America, in 1921,” The New YorkTimes, October 5, 1995.

8 - Margaret Gorman: First Miss America and Washingtonian

Coles Phillips

            A few years ago I saw a book at the store, drawn to the cover art.  I didn’t remember what the book was called or who it was by, but I remembered that cover.  Early 2014, I found the book again because I remembered the cover.  The book is Fadeaway Girl by Martha Grimes.  I bought the book and read it (it was fine; turns out it was the latest in a series I hadn’t read), and the book talked briefly about the Fadeaway Girls of artist Coles Phillips.  I’ve been a little obsessed with his art ever since.  Not just the Fadeaway Girls, but his advertisements and magazine covers too.  As of this writing, two of my social media profiles are his work.

            Clarence Coles Phillips was born in October 1880 in Springfield, Ohio.  From the age of eight, and throughout his life, he raised pigeons.  He was always interested in art, too, but that wasn’t really a viable career in late-1800s Ohio.  After Coles graduated high school, his father got him a job at the American Radiator Company in Springfield.  Coles didn’t really care for this though and, after securing a letter of recommendation (you can never be too safe), he enrolled at Kenyon College in 1902.  While at Kenyon he joined the Alpha Delta Phi literary society, as well as doing illustrations.  The 1901-1904 editions of the Kenyon College yearbook, The Reveille, published some of his illustrations.  Coles decided that, like American Radiator, Kenyon wasn’t really right for him, and moved to Manhattan after his junior year.

            In New York, Coles pulled out that letter of recommendation from his boss at American Radiator in Ohio, and got a job at their New York office, rising up to be a salesman.  While at American Radiator, though, Coles was caught with a caricature of his boss and was fired.  By chance, a friend of Coles’ told J. A. Mitchell, publisher of Life, what happened.  Mitchell offered Coles a job at the humor magazine (not the photo-journalism magazine that would come later).  Coles decided to go to art school first though.

            For three months Coles took night classes at Chase School of Art.  Those three months were the only formal art training he ever had.  Coles decided school wasn’t right for him again.  He worked for a time at a studio that did assembly-line art; Coles was responsible for feet and ankles (which would come in handy when he did hosiery ads later on).  After this he moved briefly to an advertising agency, but decided to open his own instead.  In 1906, C. C. Phillips & Co. Agency opened with only two employees, one of whom was Edward Hopper, one of Coles’ former classmates.

            In 1907, Coles met with J. A. Mitchell and was hired on at Life.  Coles first nationally published illustration was a black and white centerfold of a young lady across the table from an old lady, captioned with a line from The Rubiyat.  This first illustration came out April 11, 1907, and more black and white centerfolds followed.  Coles’ art was very popular with Life’s readers.

            That same year, Coles met Teresa Hyde, a nurse.  She became his most frequent model in his early years, and in early 1910 they married.  From 1905, Coles had been living in New Rochelle, New York.  New Rochelle was popular with illustrators at this time and for years afterwards.  Illustrators J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell also lived in New Rochelle.

            Shortly after he began at Life, the magazine switched over to color covers and asked Coles to do the art.  They wanted something new and distinct to set their magazine apart.  Coles gave them his fadeaway idea.

            The story goes that Coles got the idea for the fadeaway technique when he was visiting a friend.  The friend was dressed in a tux, playing a violin, in a very dimly lit room.  Coles couldn’t see all of his friend, but rather the friend was suggested by “the highlights on the violin, the shine on his shoes, and the small bits of white shirt that were visible” (1).

Coles had tried his new technique in black and white, but wanted to try it in color.  Doing the fadeaway technique for the magazine cover required studying the proportions of the canvas and the final dimensions for the cover, to make sure the effect would not get lost between painting and printing.  Coles' first cover for Life was February 20, 1908.  This played with the ideas he was forming, but wasn’t a true fadeaway image.  He continued to tweak his work, and on May 28, 1908, the first Fadeaway Girl cover was published.  Like his friend in the tux in the dark, the Fadeaway Girl was “a figure whose clothing matched, and disappeared into, the background” (2).

Over the next four years, Coles did over fifty-four covers for Life, moving on to a contract with Good Housekeeping for covers for them for five years, becoming their sole cover artist beginning for two years beginning in July 1912.  Other magazines he did covers for included Colliers, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Saturday Evening Post, Women’s Home Journal, and Liberty.  In the middle of this time, in 1911, Coles Phillips went from C. Coles Phillips to just Coles Phillips.  Coles was one of the first illustrators to “insist that his name appear with all his images, including advertising work, and he usually painted a signature in print letters into each work” (3).

Part of why the fadeaway technique was so popular, on the publisher’s end, was that, while it was new and striking and popular with audiences left to fill-in the rest of the image themselves, the magazines were “getting by with single color or two-color covers in a day when full-color covers were de rigeur for the better magazines” (4).

In addition to producing art for magazines, Coles was also designing book covers.  These covers started quickly after his Life covers.  His cover for The Gorgeous Isle by Gertrude Atherton came out in October 1908.  Other books Coles did covers or illustrations for included The Siege of the Seven Suitors by Meredith Nicholson, Michael Thwaites’ Wife by Miriam Michelson, and The Fascinating Mrs. Halton by E. F. Benson.

By 1911, Coles Phillips’ art was so popular that a collection of his art from Life and Good Housekeeping was published in the collection A Gallery of Girls.  This was followed with another in 1912 called A Young Man’s Fancy.

            At the turn of the century, the Gibson Girl was the popular girl for illustrations and advertisements.  She was prim and proper, with big hair and sleepy eyes.  The girl of the teens and twenties was modern and athletic.  She showed more skin “but she still had a wholesome look to her” (5).  Coles Phillips helped popularize this image.

            In addition to his art in books and magazines, Coles Phillips did advertisements too, a rare artist at the time who didn’t see a problem with doing commercial art as well.  These advertisements are really what helped popularize the new girl of the teens and twenties.  A lot of his ads were for women’s clothing, including hosiery.  He also did ads for automobiles and flatware.  A lot of the companies he did work for necessitated a more modern and athletic girl than the Gibson Girl had been.  You can’t advertise hosiery without showing a girl’s legs.  Automobiles were seen as fast and daring, and so the girls became so too.  In 1924 he “caused a sensation with his ‘Miss Sunburn’, a bathing beauty created for Unguetine sun tanning lotion” (6).

            In 1920 Coles Phillips entered the Clark Equipment Company’s “The Spirit of Transportation” competition.  While he lost to Maxfield Parrish, James Cady Ewell, and Jonas Lie, his entry took everyone by surprise.  While a number of the entries had classical themes, Coles’ had a winged, naked woman carrying a torch in front of an automobile.  Like the 1924 Miss Sunburn ad, this was more than audiences were used to seeing in such a modern style.  Despite the shock some of his work elicited, Coles’ popularity didn’t diminish.  In 1921 and 1922 the U. S. Naval Academy included his work in its yearbook, Lucky Bag.  He continued to produced advertisements as well.

            In 1924, Coles was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the kidney.  He’d been sick on and off and would continue to be so until his death.  In January of 1927, problems with his eyesight made painting increasingly difficult and so he turned to writing.  He didn’t live much longer though.  On June 13, 1927, neighbor and friend, J. C. Leyendecker took Coles and Teresa’s four children to Manhattan for the Lindbergh ticker tape parade.  While they were out, Coles died at home from his kidney problems.  He was just 47.

            Coles Phillips’ art during his lifetime and afterwards was featured on “magazine covers, illustrations and ads, postcards, posters, poster stamps, prints, book illustrations, calendars, hosiery and silverware boxes, fans, blotters, streetcar signs, and booklets” (7).  In 1993 he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame (8).

            I’m just going to leave you with a bunch of his art (in addition to those scattered throughout this post).  I just love his techniques and the overall feel his art has.  I hope you all enjoy it as well.

1, 3, 7 - Norm Platnick, “Coles Phillips and the Fade-AwayLady,” American Art Archives.

2, 4 - Coles Phillips

5, 8 - Coles Phillips

6 - Coles Phillips: American Imagist