Comfort in Cats

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Just coming off the Louis Wain Catland bio (I posted about that last week and it can be found here) I am self-consciously thoughtful suddenly about how the public sentiment about cats has shifted over the past 100+ years since humans just started finding their sea legs with them as domestic beloveds.

It wasn’t long after the Victorian period that cats were taken up in popular advertising at the dawn of the 20th century. This grinning black kit with the yellow bow was the longstanding spokes-cat for the Black Cat Hosiery company and was so popular for decades that the advertising items from it remain in high demand and often is quite pricey today. (This bit of an ad with thanks to Sandi Outland, via @curiositiesantique who sent it several months back – the the sea, my desk has spit it up from the depths for today’s consideration and helped inspire this post.)

I have written about the company on other occasions so if you want more info on the company you can find it in a post here – and more here. The above ad is from a July, 1907 McCalls magazine and other ads on the page are for, most fascinatingly, H&H Pneumatic Bust Forms (yes, like stuffing your bra – no one will know) and Modene hair removal for face, neck and arms – it cannot fail! Our black cat was in good company.

So in a mere few decades cats began to morph into the area they would command for many decades to come. However, I think it is fair to say that with the part of our lives that are now lived online some of us have taken our interest in cats to a much more highly developed level.

*A photo of a young Betty Butler, holding our cat Snoopy back in the 1960’s from a Mother’s Day post this year.*

Speaking for myself, my interest in cats began as a small child. Pictorama readers know that I have written numerous times about my childhood cat friends, Snoopy, a white cat with black cow spots with whom I shared many important childish conversations. But there was also Pumpkin who came to me as a tiny kitten ball of orange fluff and grew into an enormous faded-orange tabby who followed me around with dog-like devotion. As I got older my cat Winkie, a tiny tortie polydactyl with huge toed front paws like mitts, was my particular confidant. As a young adult Otto Dix (Miss Otto Dix), a tuxie from a corn farm in New Jersey, became my constant companion and closest friend, a very special cat especially smart cat who I still miss to this day.

However, until relatively recent years, my love and interest in cats (other than what I collect of course) was limited largely to those I knew – mostly my own or those of my mother. I suppose it started even before the pandemic, but certainly during those long days and nights that following cats online became a habit. First there was Maru the Japanese cat (to be precise, a Scottish Straight cat who lives in Japan) who can’t resist box and likes to get into boxes, some that are way too small for him. There was the somewhat neurotic French cat, Henri, a long haired tuxie who has Existential angst. The French also brought us cats playing Paddy Cake which never fails to make me laugh and for some reason is only funny to me in the French – there is an English version.

Still, those were occasional and one-off entertainment. I believe for me that cats as a form of online entertainment and escapism was born of the darkest period of the pandemic, fueled by late nights of waking up and worrying about work. Unable to sleep, I would read Judy Bolton novels (the first in a lot of early series books I read and I wrote about Judy Bolton here) and take a spin through Instagram, sometimes buying the odd item, but also entering the world of cats online and sometimes following even their most daily routines.

I’m probably skipping ahead a bit but Sadie and Dottie (@sadieanddottie), a tuxie and a white kit with cow spots, and who appear to live in Queens, brightened many a dark day when I realized a new post or story had been posted. These largely consist of these two cats growing up, but mostly doing cat stuff like watching birds and napping. Yes, I can watch my own cats do that (although Deitch Studio is situated a little high for birds out the window) and I do, but it turns out I like to watch other cats do it too.

*A screen grab of this little video of Sadie.*

With almost 14,000 viewers cat mom Lauren Grummel and cat dad Chas Reynolds, Jr. appear to have their hands full supplying frequent doses of their kitties going through their daily paces. A favorite post is an imaginative one of Sadie (the tux) sailing away on a boat at night in search of parents who will give her more treats instead of telling her she’s had enough. (Find it here.)

There is @Fatfink (aka Devlin Thompson) who I first got to know on Facebook, but now is an Instagram constant. His record of the comings and goings of his small menagerie of four cats, (these days Clawford, Kookie, Mr. Biscuits and Miss Rupert), which includes some recent rescues and things like his daily fight over his dinner with them or other such tidbits, are interspersed with an aligned interest in comics – but it is really over the kits that we bond. He sends me great cat videos too which I often find first thing in the morning and cheer my day.

A friend on the west coast started supplying me with both funny and moving video snippets of cats during the difficult period of caring for my mother although she continues to send them since I like them so much. These videos, many from The Dodo are chock-a-block full of cats paired with a myriad of other odd animals as friends (deer, dogs, cows) or doing un-catlike activities like motorcycle riding or boating. It is especially lovely and a real kindness as she herself isn’t especially fond of cats so she seeks them out just for me.

Most recently I have fallen hard for team Penny and Felix on Instagram. Penny (@pennythegingercat) is a somewhat sardonic and absolutely adorable orange tabby female (yes, a rarity) and Felix (@felixthepalegingercat) her younger brother, a lean and lanky light orange fellow. (Penny alone has upwards of 650,000 followers!)

The antics of these two (two accounts means twice the fun) include but are not limited to: Felix’s impatience over getting his breakfast in the morning, Penny’s preference of Dad over Mom, Penny sleeping as a face down loaf and the like. These have cheered me endlessly over the past year. Highlights have included Penny entering the Olympics this year as a gold medal winning cat loaf champion and I credit the duo for having invented the term skippity pap (or at least made it enter my personal lexicon) – which is accompanied by a sort of whoosh-smack sound effect that is especially satisfying. It is among the few accounts I turn my sound on for routinely.

The dynamic cat duo’s mom and dad (mom is the voice over for the most part) do a brilliant job of editing, voice over – they are top pros at it and I bless them daily for these inventive missives that come over my transom, brightening all days. Quite simply I cannot recommend them enough for a cat dopamine daily dose.

*Four out of the NJ Five here – Gus missing.*

*Blackie and Cookie peevishly sharing the bed with each other and of course Kim recently.*

I have written before about social media and my belief that if content is carefully chosen and tended it can be a rabbit hole of blissful escapism. During the brutal hustle and full-on assault of our shifting political world I have found myself diving deeply into this somewhat alternate universe of cats. As the mother of the NYC duo Cookie and Blackie, and the Jersey Five (Beau, Milty, Gus, Peaches and Stormy) and the head of fundraising for a major emergency animal hospital – you’d think I would get enough daily dose of the kitty world, but simply, no – quite simply, I prefer even more.

I started subscribing to a daily newspaper in high school and have more or less read one daily every since, butI lately find my ability to read above the fold reduced to a nervous skittering across headlines as I head down the page to stories about things like a research study on puppy kindergarten – the super socializing of puppies to see if they make better service animals (NYT and can be found here). So today I pay tribute to those folks online who may not inform my politics, nor deliver my news, but who are vital community which cheers my daily existence.

Let the Season Begin

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: A friend and colleague who began her life in Finland (she lives in Ohio today and works remotely for me a few hours a week), told me the other day that when she was little parents were so invested in the idea of the Christmas holiday that it was common to hire a Santa to come to the house. She said that when she realized that Santa wasn’t real, she felt she could not say anything because it would hurt her parents.

I love that story, and I have great affection for this card I just bought which shows the other side of Nordic holiday spirit. I am unsure what country this originally hailed from, although I purchased it from someone in the Netherlands who also did not know the origin of the card. There is a tiny NTG in the lower left corner and writing in another language and incredibly small that I cannot decipher. The internet was not much help on this front although another seller of postcards thought NTG was German. I have not found evidence of other cards like it, but perhaps a series of them lurks somewhere yet.

Gnomes are evidently thought to deliver Christmas presents in Scandinavia in the 18th and 19th centuries, helpers to Father Christmas. (Families left bowls of porridge for them – perhaps a bit less appealing than our cookies and milk!) I would suspect this is where the idea of our elves as Santa’s helpers come from.

I will say that I purchased this card on eBay for very little and utterly uncontested! I gather that I am the only one who was looking who saw its charm, but I am pleased to add it to the Pictorama collection.

Of course it turned up for me because of the weird tabby cat. If you look very closely he appears to have a tiny antler, possibly drawn on. Puss seems to be pouncing on him while this gnome protects Santa with this long stick. Santa and the gnome are small children in costume and the cat is, well a cat, probably one that hung around the photo studio catching mice and playing bit parts. His tail is curled upward and we can see his nice white tummy and white feet. I think we can assume if left to his own devices he would have liked to knead biscuits on the Santa suit and take a cat nap.

Santa plays his role with some drama – oh no, the antlered cat attack – his cottony beard, brows and hair contributing to his look. The gnome goes at it with great gusto as well. Also beard and with curling hair coming out of his pointy cap (his own?) he grins with gnome-ish fervor as he saves Santa. I like his pointy shoes.

One can imagine that the day shooting this was pretty much a good time for all. The set certainly is stark with a few large stones to the left and in front and this sort of nest of twigs behind the gnome. In addition to that odd little antler being drawn in, a very careful examination shows a very small smattering of white dots down the middle of the card which I assume are meant to be snowflakes. Otherwise this is a rather barren set making it feel a bit like Santa on the Moon.

*Back of the card – no evidence of being mailed despite being addressed.*

I share the back of this card which I cannot decipher although omitie appears to be Romanian and means to omit – I assume that this was meant to say – I didn’t forget Edmund! While fully addressed there is no evidence of it being mailed with a stamp or cancellation. The writing in pencil seems to be earlier seller’s marks. So was it just dropped by a mailbox perhaps?

So here we go, kicking off this holiday season here at Pictorama. This photo postcard embodies both some humor, but also a tiny bit of historic grit and well, a pleasant sort of meanness. Just what we need as we sally forth into the season ahead.

On the Wall

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: The other evening I was meeting a former colleague and we were discussing the shifting sands of the office place – he who now works entirely remotely for a national not-for-profit and I am who am still adjusting to life at an animal hospital where many things are different. The conversation somehow turned first to mail (I am struggling with the local post office) and then to handwriting. I told him that when I worked at the Met I handwrote many notes and that I hoped over time that when people saw the envelope they would recognize my handwriting immediately.

*The verso of a postcard from a prior post – sometimes the writing is half the fun, other times indecipherable.*

Even less than a decade ago mail was a much bigger part of my job. This area in fundraising has had a continued contraction and, while I am far from an expert, I am struggling to find its place at work as older supporters still like it but it is expensive and you can lose money. Direct mail aside, my days at the Met were packed with notes written – a constantly dwindling pile of cards atop my desk for notes to attach to things, my business card and stacks of cards from the museum’s shop which I worked my way through with birthday wishes and other occasions. For years all of our invitations were handwritten and stamped. We did them at home and were paid by the piece – I helped pay for my trip to Tibet by addressing envelopes when we opened the new Asian Art Wing there.

At the Met we had a mailroom which collected our piles of mail and delivered ours to our office. I have learned over time that this is a luxury in offices.

*Our Top Dog Gala invitation this year. We are celebrating the work of the police dogs and this handsome German Shephard is representing for it.* *Invitations have printed envelopes now.*

At Jazz I immediately noticed fewer written missives, as well as less time on the telephone – everything was pretty much online and email including invitations. If not a dedicated mailroom, an office manager did distribute mail and bring it to the post office daily. Covid interrupted even that and mail stilled to a full stop and barely ground back into use in the post-Covid work world.

My office today slots mail into boxes in the main hospital building which we try to pick up daily. Somehow I have never gotten the swing of mail pick up there (due to construction it moves around) and we tend to stamp and mail things from public boxes or a trip to the post office. It isn’t true but sometimes I feel like the only person who produces mail beyond the occasional mailing of things like Gala invitations.

*Very recognizable Louis Wain signature as per yesterday’s post!*

However, what we really touched on the other night and what has stayed in my mind since is the memory of handwriting I have known. I recently had to go through check registers of my mom’s for tax purposes and spending the day immersed in her (slowly deteriorating) handwriting made her and that final year together very real again.

I have only a few samples of my sister’s writing, although it was a neat distinctive cursive I would recognize anywhere – she had the habit of looping the bottom of her capital L’s backward as part of her signature. I never asked her about that.

I saw less of my father’s handwriting than other family members, but certainly would recognize his signature. Somewhere I have a few letters from him, written while he covered the Olympics in Sarajevo. Meanwhile my maternal grandmother had a round script that would come with birthday cards, some of which I still have.

*Autographed books, always with a picture, by Kim here and below.*

There are those folks whose handwriting I realize I do not know, or only have an inkling of, like my father’s parents who died when I was fairly young. (To my brother Edward, I am realizing that we never correspond with handwritten notes. I don’t really know yours although maybe I would recognize it if I saw it?) I have friends whose handwriting I can see in my mind – some former colleagues and others like my friend Suzanne who is an artist and whose very round writing is distinctive in my mind’s eye.

Kim’s handwriting and his signature are of course well known and very recognizable. Legibility in his line of work is essential. He eschews my cursive as hard to read. (There was a time when I was younger when I corresponding in a tiny neat print, but I found it labor intensive for my needs.) Recent trouble accurately reading numbers people have written on things has reminded us of the importance of neatness – not just for cartoonists, but for all of us. After all, first and foremost, it is a form of communication.

One of the nice things about living with Kim is he continues to receive (and send of course) letters and packages in the mail. We get more real mail than most folks.

*I especially like this one for Shroud for Waldo!*

When I was in college I remember a professor at the beginning of a course talking about how handwriting was a mark system like any other, one we use constantly and defines us. (She also pointed out that how we dress is another visual vocabulary all our own and I think of that sometimes when I put on make-up which in some ways is the closest I get to painting these days.) However, handwriting is the one that is intimately tied to who we are and is our very own – obviously like finger prints our signature can be used to identify us in a court of law; it is that singular.

Of those folks like my mother, father and sister who are now lost to me the thought of their writing, coming across it or remembering it, makes me miss them all the more. However, it is a comforting odd bit of us that we keep, thoughtfully or unconsciously, and remains in the world long after we are gone.

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I haven’t posted a book review in a very long time and I am not entirely sure I have ever written one for a contemporary volume (Kim Deitch books notwithstanding of course), let alone a non-fictions one. (My reading and therefore posting runs heavily to very early 20th century fiction, largely by women. For a few examples you can look here and here.)

However, it seems quite logical that I would break that ground today with this recently published book as it combines Louis Wain (of whom I have posted often – try here and here for items from my collection) and the Victorian cat craze which helped launch the cat as house pet relationship as we know it today. Catland Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania by Kathryn Hughes is more or less hot off the presses. Hughes has worked the Victorian history side of the street before and draws heavily on her accumulated knowledge for this sizeable volume.

Hughes uses Wain’s biography as a rough parallel to the rise of cat breeding and ownership – perhaps a fair measure as one could say that Wain’s art, intertwined with the newly found fondness for felines, helped drive the mania but was also driven by it. She loads it up with an equal amount of stories and tidbits from broader Victorian life, but centered mostly on a newly formed cat craze as it were.

While Hughes does take the opportunity to set both Wain’s autobio and previous chroniclers straight on some points, his biographical bits are interspersed throughout by chapters devoted to other aspects of cat related Victorian life. (Somehow I had missed the fact that Wain had a cleft palate which was largely hidden by facial hair as an adult and I had no knowledge of the family history designing and making liturgical fabrics – the latter being of much interest when you consider his sense of pattern and design.) Evidently Wain gilded the facts of his life liberally (lied) during his lifetime making some of it up out of whole cloth more or less.

*circa 1900: Cat artist Louis William Wain (1860 – 1939) draws inspiration from a pet. (Photo by Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images)*

Hughes’s Wain is a socially awkward fellow, albeit it with flashes of attempted showmanship, who was most comfortable wandering off into his own world, In his public persona he judged (the newly created) cat shows, gave demonstrations of two fisted simultaneous cat drawing, and wrote some vaguely (and then increasingly) unhinged editorial pieces for the papers of the time. On the other side of the coin, he and his family declared bankruptcy more than once; he had a tendency to wander off for periods of time, and of course eventually he sadly drifts (almost retreats) into his decorative cat laden world of insanity.

Much the same could be said about Victorian England and its relationship to felines. First, it is clear that there was a pretty hard line between the nascent “purebred” (often pampered) pets of the day, and the run of the mill kitty of the street. The practice of bringing a street kitten or cat into your home was not the norm and, aside from those which were kept for work such as mousing, those cats were at best left to languish in the streets.

*Tabbies in the Park and black and white print by Wain.*

Some of the Victorian practices concerning cats are not for the weak of cat-loving heart to read so fair warning here. There were descriptions and stories I glossed over at best and I suggest same for Pictorama readers. A chapter on Victorian taxidermy (including a woman with a literal cat hat and cat tail cape – Eeeck!) isn’t even the worst of it as the period does seem to have a glib cruelty to it. However, not all the cat tales are bad ones and there were numerous fun bits and pieces that I’ve been reporting to Kim in bed for weeks now.

The book is gloriously well illustrated including, but happily not limited to a color section. Wain’s work lends itself even to black and white reproduction and Hughes uses it to good effect in support of her points as well as being fun to look at.

My favorite chapter in the book was on the Wain futuristic ceramics which I have always had an interest in and it answered at least some of my questions about these. A somewhat luxe line of teapots and the like in true Futurist forms, Wain had the bad luck of launching his line in June of ’14, just as war was overtaking Europe and Great Britain. Not the best time for offbeat ceramic cat-ware.

Produced by a company called Max Emanuel there were 19 patented designs in the first batch with names as diverse as The Mascot Cat and Road Hog Cat. The choice of colors where the larger designs were produced was referred to by a critic as an angry cake decorator on acid. Evidently there was even at inception a riot of designs, colors and finishes for the items, manufactured at two different plants which would make positive identification hard even then and almost impossible now that forgeries have flowed into the market. Still, I would snatch one up if I could and liked it and remain unconcerned about proof of origin.

The most disappointing chapter was on Wain and Felix! Other than the story of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Felix factory on the East End of London being told (Pictorama readers may remember that from a very popular early post that can be found here), Hughes does a rough retelling of a the plot of a silent cartoon that is easily viewed on Youtube. I’m mystified by why she included Felix if she was so disinterested.

*Christmas was a favorite and very lucrative time of the year for Wain from the beginning of his career.*

Wain and his sisters eventually leave London to reside in a suburban seaside town near Margate (one of his boosters in the magazine world was an early investor and set them up there), and this holiday retreat lifestyle inspires some of Wain’s most entertaining cards and images – cats golfing, boating and swimming as well as sly social commentary found even in Catland.

*From the Pams-Pictorama.com collection. Sadly not Wain and Eliot, not yet…*

Meanwhile, of course I have wonderful day dreams about Louis actually wandering over to the Felix photographers in Margate where so many of my Felix photos were made and having a postcard made with an arm tossed around the shoulders of a tall stuffed Felix – this is now united with my day dream of finding one of the giant Felix dolls from those establishments.

Furthermore, as it happens eventually TS Eliot was also nursing a nervous breakdown in the neighborhood – in a town just on the other side of Margate. It is irresistible to imagine that they met at that time, perhaps had a coffee and were strolling the boardwalk together. And perhaps they wandered in and had a picture postcard snapped for posterity – to show up in my collection one day.

Small Stuff

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: A bit frazzled from a long and crazy week at work I sit down to chat with you today, still in a bit of disarray, with only some disparate bits to share. My new job wraps up its fiscal year along with the calendar year (a merging of very busy times for a fundraiser and a timing first for me) and in addition, we have a gala in early December. Somehow we threw in an annual dinner for members to be held on Monday into the mix and suddenly our tiny office is positively swamped.

In acknowledgment of the season, I have hung a few black cat streamers over my desk. I’m sorry not to have a shot of mine, but here they are for sale. I bought them at Big Lots in New Jersey for just a few dollars on markdown. They may find a permanent place here at Deitch Studio later. (I also purchased candy corn lights but sadly haven’t found a spot near an outlet for them.)

*Soft, stuffed black cat garland – came with another garland of pom poms.*

However, Kim and I took yesterday off and spent part of the day at the Metropolitan Museum, my old stomping ground. I wanted to catch the exhibit on Siena (Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350) before the holiday crowds (and growing tsunami of work) scared me off. (Kim is hard at work having essentially finished a book and due to a rethinking of that lengthy appendix has found himself already deep in another book. We expect the finished book out in the second quarter of next year or so.)

Before heading into the museum we made a quick stop at E.A.T. (a pretty if over-priced emporium) on Madison. They often stock up for Halloween and, although I might have purchased more (there was a great black cat woven basket for your treat holding), I contained myself. I only purchased a new pair of cat ears on a headband and a nice little wooden black (tuxedo-ish) cat which moves when you press the bottom. I have had a series of these since childhood and used to play with them by the hour. (I also own a rather nice Felix one which predates my adult Felix buying mania.)

*Lost the little tips of his ears at some point.*

I understand that our animal hospital embraces Halloween fondly and there is a contest for costumes among the medical services. (I gather clients dress up as well and I am already becoming familiar with canines in costumes and clothes in other festive settings.) I have a date to take our new videographers through the hospital on Halloween so my new cat ears on a headband are my feline Cat Mom of many nod to the day.

*Cover of the 1989 exhibition catalogue.*

I was introduced to the paintings of Siena when I first started working at the Met. It was back in 1989 that they held the great exhibition, Painting in Renaissance Siena: 1420-1500. It’s hard to compare after all these years and knowing that the earlier one had such an impact on me. I own a very beat up copy of the catalogue (I probably bought it at a damage sale to begin with because that’s how I got most of my art books then) and I might prefer the slightly later period presented in that exhibit but this one is glorious too.

There is just something about the space and sensibility of these paintings that simply rewires my brain. If I was a cartoonist they would make me rethink panels and pages and space entirely. When I saw the first exhibition I was still drawing and painting and they did heavily influence my thinking. I find even without that scratching at my brain I will be thinking about them for a long time. (I have not purchased the catalogue but most likely will. It’s been years since I have added an art catalogue to this crowded library of ours!)

I don’t want to bore you with all my thoughts about it except to say that the sense of space and architecture is fascinating and a great reminder that people were designing things in all sorts of creative and wild ways at that time. What they didn’t know they just made work with a convincing conviction – cut away the side of a mountain, show what’s underground, put a tiny city over here. Amazing. There is also something about the colors and they tend to almost glow. The exhibit plays this and the vast amount of gold up by hitting them with light in an otherwise dark setting. They are little gems.

We wandered through the European Paintings galleries to find a few Bosch paintings I wanted to share with Kim. (He just read Guy Caldwell’s book, Delights: A Story of Hieronymus Bosch, which Guy was kind enough to send. Recently published by Fantagraphics it can be purchased here.) While we did find one or two, the more inspiring painting was van Eyck’s Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych. (The amazing Google image that you can drill down into can be found here)

Not too much else to report from our visit except that we could have voted early, but were too tired to get in the long line. (The Met is our early voting location.) We ate in the public cafeteria – sandwiches and, in a rather parsimonious way, each saved half for today’s lunch. (I have gone from being a rather voracious eater to having shrunk my appetites during a long period of dieting. There was a time when leaving half a sandwich would never have happened.)

Apologies for this being long and rambling. Wish me luck with my cat ears this week. Blackie looked confused and rather baleful when I tried them on yesterday. And a happy Halloween to all!

Pillow Puss

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s is a rare contemporary cat purchase, one which may be familiar to some because it came from Target. It is a limited edition Halloween item by the interior designer John Derian. As it happens I had recently read an article on Derian’s house in Provincetown. (A friend sent it to me and this may or may not be the precise one here.) Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have known who he is and passed it by.

This article produced some house envy (I wonder if that is the point of the article in a sense), but more importantly made me want to visit the small shop on his property where he seems to sell the overflow from his own antiques collecting in addition to his own line. Oh to be able to paw through that on a regular basis! Alas, I haven’t been to Provincetown in many years so it is unlikely. He has a shop in the West Village but that one seems more dedicated to his life of housewares, rather than those bits that help inspire them.

*John Derian store next to his house in Provincetown. Lovely looking bits.*

So I went down the rabbit hole of the email Target promo for his collection, figuring that anyone who had cool stuff couldn’t be all bad and might make some Halloween items I should see. And he did. Given a lot of space and a surfeit of spending money I might have purchased more, but I was restrained and only came away with this reproduction of an antique cat, made into a sizeable cushiony pillow.

The cat, which as I write is still available on the Target site (although also already at an approximately 100% mark-up on eBay, let the buyer beware!), with the following description:

…This novelty pillow features artwork by decoupage artist John Derian that showcases a black cat wearing a red bow collar with a jingle bell and yellow eyes. Made of 100% cotton fabric with polyester filling, this black plush pillow offers soft comfort, and the sewn-seam closure provides a neat-finished look.

John Derian is an American decoupage artist and designer living in New York City whose aesthetic encapsulates a curious mix of natural oddities, antiques and eccentricities.

It is a tad confusing – did he make a decoupage cat and then they reproduced it? I assume that’s what they mean, although there is no real indication of the decoupage and of course I’d be curious to see the original if there is one. Still, the man has a good eye.

The shape is similar to a popular design of a flat stuffed cat one frequently sees. One in the category is for sale on eBay now, some are older than others.

*Cat pillow. Not in Pams-Pictorama.com collection.*

Kitty is about 16″ high and the bell hung on his nice bow rings. He is pleasantly pillow cushy. He is, of course, black with a jolly red face and fur indicated. His big yellow eyes stare and he has a toothy (but not all the way to cartoony, nor scary) grin. He is charmingly goofy.

*Pams-Pictorama.com collection, still available at Target.com*

I admit to having been tempted by Derian’s platters with skeletons dancing on them – if we spent more time in Jersey they might be put to use there – and from his Thanksgiving line, the asparagus candles entertain me and the turkey would also make a fun centerpiece. As my Thanksgiving needs appear to be modest at best (and in the house with five cats – lit candles don’t have a chance there!) I am unlikely prey for these holiday temptations, at least this year. His own line of upscale dishes, with beautiful images from nature, are a bit rich for my blood – especially as I seem to be hard on plates and cups.

However, this kitty will join a large black cat head pillow in New Jersey – future post! For a nice cuddle on our bed or a day bed in the space where Kim works upstairs, he will be perfect. Meanwhile, that house is slowly transforming into a cat refuge of an antique sort as well. We’ll see what the Jersey five think of him come Thanksgiving!

Opal Oddity

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: In the rhythm of Pictorama posting, jewelry posts tend to appear a bit randomly, as items are purchased or catch my imagination over again. I have written about my passion for opals before and in particular for a ring I wear very often which is referred to as a boulder opal. (That post can be read here.) This is a recent acquisition post.

The charm of the boulder opal (for me) is that it was caught in the act of becoming an opal – forever frozen in the process of change. Wearing this ring so often I have had time to reflect on how much I like that aspect of it. Embracing growth and ongoing change is such an important aspect of life, I like reflecting on it when I look down at the ring and see it’s tiny flares of opal fire.

*From my post on the boulder opal ring, shown here in the original listing.*

Yesterday a friend was looking at some gem stones at a jeweler we know. One stone she mentioned seeing was lapis on one side and malachite on the other – fascinating! Forever frozen in their native fusion in a shared atmosphere for their evolution. I haven’t seen the stone, but the concept makes my mind twirl a bit.

Therefore, as a result, I keep my eye out for boulder opals which have been snatched from the wilds and made into jewelry. I saw a newer silver ring recently and agonized a bit – I didn’t like the setting so I would want to reset it and the stone was hard to see in the online posting. It sold and I still have mixed feelings about my choice not to buy it.

However, a few months later this necklace came up and from a seller I have never bought from or much seen in my feed before. (The seller can be found at http://trademarkantiques.com.) They were celebrating and promoting October’s birthstone, the opal. The pendant flashed before me in a video in a series of opal items and I snatched it up immediately.

The setting is such that it is clear it is the same dawn of the 20th century period as my ring. (This makes me wonder, was it a sort of thing at the time that fell out of fashion? If I keep looking is this the period I will largely find them from?) Upon receiving it in the mail, I realized that the bezel (the do-hickey where you string the chain through) is unusually small. Luckily I had a very thin gold chain the belonged to my sister, but the fragility and weight of it on the chain worries me a bit.

I gather that the idea of a boulder opal is that it retains some of its “host” rock. I am not clear if that is what is happening in this pendant or if it was manmade or something else entirely. I’ve done my best here to show you that it is a clear sphere chock full of tiny opal bits. These bits are full of fire when the light catches them – the essence of the charm of opals. A little research turns up the answers to my questions – once I figured out the right question to ask, always a trick with Mr. Google.

It turns out that this is a technique called floating opals. This method of suspending bits of opal in a glass orb filled with liquid. The idea for floating opals was created and patented by Horace Welch, a mechanical engineer, in 1920. From what I can find online this would be one of those early designs although others snatched up the technique after his death in the late 1940’s.

*From the website where I purchased the pendant.*

While the development of this may sound straightforward as a technique it was fraught with issues. Most notably, opals have a large percentage of water in them. This is in fact one of the things that contributes to their being quite fragile. (I once met a woman who sold fabulous high-end vintage jewelry and she told me never to wear my opals on an airplane, especially large ones. The altitude makes them crack. I worry about even shipping them by air now as a result.)

Just floating them in glass didn’t allow for their natural expansion and the sphere would crack. Ultimately Welch settled on the newly discovered Pyrex as his medium and a design where there is a space, hidden by the bezel, which allows for natural expansion and contraction. The “liquid” suspension appears to be confirmed as glycerin which also allows for the natural expansion and contraction of the tiny flecks of opals stones.

Mine has a patent mark (barely visible under a strong loupe) of 1931, the third of four patent marks on his jewelry. The site I found with much of this information gives tips for storing the pendant which I am grateful for (away from other pieces which could damage it), in an upright position if possible (have to think about that…) and of course away from temperature extremes. The chamber can be damaged it seems and air can get into it.

The pendant, which I have not done justice to here, is like a tiny snow globe (I love those too!), worn around my neck. It is infinitely cheering.

I will of course continue to look for boulder and now early floating opals. There is something else called a fire opal (bright orange!) and I have yet to find one that fits my collection. Opal lovers, more to come I hope.

Hot Popcorn

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: It’s a crisp fall weekend here in New York City. Tomorrow will, in part, be devoted to a Halloween Howl dog parade over at Carl Schurz park. I will stop by the animal hospital’s table and visit my colleagues handing out animal care info. Costumed cuties will likely abound so keep a weather eye out for pics on Instagram.

Meanwhile, today’s photo is one of those odd one off purchases for me. Saw it, liked it and followed my nose to purchasing it. I can imagine this being a much loved family photo of this proud family business owner of yore.

It came to me via the Midwest (dealer of all things vintage @missmollystlantiques), but there are no identifiers as to location. Emanelo Fine Cigars are boasted and Camels proudly in large letters below it. The sign that reads Pharmacy is decidedly less prominent, at least for the purposes of this photo.

Clearly the pharmacy was also where you went for your cigars and cigarettes and there is a sign for something called Penetro, which a quick bit of research tells me was a medicated rub. Sort of like Vicks I assume. (That from my childhood – does it still exist? I haven’t heard of anyone using it for years.) There is a tiny advertisement for Kodak also on the far left.

Our fellow, I assume proprietor, stands proudly in front of the establishment and with this splendid popcorn machine which is labeled Hot Popcorn. This is not a photo postcard, but a photo and it shows evidence of having been glued into an album at one point. The Deco border dates it back to the early years of the 20th century, but for decade it is a bit timeless and hard to nail down.

Pictorama readers know that I have restaurants on one side of my family tree and a dry goods store on the other. I would love to have a photo like this of either establishment, but in some ways especially Butler Dry Goods which I retain a very dim memory of having been in. It is more a memory of light and smell and space than of the specifics of the interior.

I inherited a large number of photos which I am going through in New Jersey. I don’t know where they all were because there are many I never saw before. Of course now with mom gone I have largely lost my ability to have the family members identified.

Many of these photos are from my dad’s family and I’m not sure how many she would have known as these were long before her time too. Dad never knew. He seemed to remain somewhat willfully ignorant about his family history and passed almost no stories on. Mom held what tales we had, as told to her by Dad’s mother. I have a few cousins who might find them of interest and I should scan some for them. I imagine I will share the best of the pictures with you all too as future posts.

Pictorama Anniversary: Washington Square Park Edition

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Ongoing Pictorama readers probably know the rhythm of my posting year and October is time for an anniversary post. Kim and I were married on October 14, 2000, although we had our first date over Veteran’s Day weekend six years earlier which means I tend to think of the period between the end of October and early November as a sort of Kim-Pam fest.

We usually celebrate the weekend after (it falls in the middle of the week this week on a day when I start jury duty), however since our plan was for a day outside we decided to embrace a promising fall weather day yesterday and we put on our walking shoes and headed down to Washington Square Park. Kim is researching a story which concludes there and had already done a scouting trip while I was in Jersey a few weeks ago. I played cameraman and you see some of the results here.

Kim and I ran an errand and started our day walking to the Lexington Avenue subway at 77th Street. Over on 78th we were treated to a view of the dollhouse store (whose windows I like to admire) decked out for the holiday and then a few real townhouses extravagantly decorated for Halloween.

Meanwhile, a short history of Washington Square Park tells us that its popularity dates back to the Lenape Indian tribe using it as a hunting ground and references a now gone trout stream which was called Minetta. (I attempted to take us to lunch at the Minetta Tavern but decided it was too expensive.) From this spot has an emerging history which ranges from free land grants to recently freed slaves, to potter’s field, parade ground and onward to residential square.

The actual park was designed by Olmstead acolytes, Ignatz Pilate who was assisted by Montgomery Kellogg. Their work on Central Park with Olmstead was enough to have me wondering if I had missed that it was designed by Olmstead as we walked it yesterday. I am interested to find out that the current fountain replacing an earlier one, actually came from the south end of Central Park and is by Jacob Wrey Mould.

*Fountain is evidently a hand me down from Central Park.*

No less than Stanford White designed the Arch – first a temporary one and then it was so popular the permanent one we see today which was dedicated in 1895. The statues of Washington were added 1916 (Washington at War) and ’18 (Washington in Peace) respectively. The arch always surprises me with how large it is. In my mind it is always about half the size for some reason. A stairwell to the roof and to provide maintenance exists although it is rare to have the opportunity to go up it.

Volunteers were on the scene collecting garbage and tending to copious plants. The park was full to the brim for a beautiful fall day and there was even a tour bus which let off a stream of tourists more than once. A food truck proffering Southeast Asian food had a long line of customers at the south end near a large dog run I never noticed before and some bathrooms which I am sure are much appreciated although stylistically stand out a bit starkly in design. The homeless gather in the northwest corner and long gone are the people who used to approach you to buy pot there.

*Bountiful and well tended beds of flowers.*

There were vendors for t-shirts and furry hats, someone reading tarot cards and someone you could pay to “have a philosophical discussion” with, although the aforementioned food truck was the only food offering making me think that you can’t just wander into this prime turf and start selling. In addition, there were pianos at either side of the fountain. When we were there one was playing sort of jazz and early rock ‘n roll tunes (hear a snippet below) and the other more classical including a wonderful interlude with Philip Glass we sat for. West side guy seemed to have the better spot for tips – the tourists enter there. Later in the afternoon the piano player was replaced by a small ensemble playing sort of Cole Porter-ish tunes.

Piano on the westside of the square.

All this to say presumably the Conservancy which cares for the park seems to have a clear hand in the running of it and with the huge number and variety of park denizens on a weekend in October they have their hands somewhat full.

*Pianist playing Glass on the eastside of the square.*

Kim and I eventually wandered out and in search of lunch. Much in this landscape has changed drastically, like the rest of New York, post pandemic and I couldn’t really find anything I knew. While looking we wandered into the Sullivan Street Tea & Spice Company where I purchased some Aleppo Pepper. (I discovered cooking with this during the pandemic and it has become a staple for me. A post where I talk about my Covid day cooking adventures can be found here. I usually buy the pepper at Fairway, but wanted to try a different one.)

This is a lovely little shop and I wouldn’t mind finding my way back to purchase some fresh cinnamon and nutmeg among other things. I took their card and it declares flat rate shipping for $8.75 and I will maybe consider that too. Could make some nice holiday gifts for my fellow home chefs.

Ultimately we settled down at a restaurant which advertised itself as vegetarian with double smash burgers on offer. It in fact turned out to be vegan and Ethiopian. It is called Ras (on Bleecker) and I don’t know how their other food is, but man, these were the best veggie burgers of recent memory. Stacked high with two thin pea protein burgers, vegan cheese and mayo; I cannot do them justice.

*Raz, great veggie burgers and open to the street yesterday.*

Kim and I had our wedding party at an all vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown. It was recently opened at the time and has subsequently shutdown. (We had at least one anniversary lunch there before it closed!) We took over the whole restaurant for the party, although take out and delivery seemed to continue on around us. Anyway, the vegan restaurant seemed like an apt and appropriate touch to end the afternoon before wandering back up to Yorkville and hopefully more years and adventures together!

Teddy Bear

Posted by Pam's Pictorama

Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Today’s photo was a photo postcard and it was cut down at some point into this more or less perfect square. Man, the mind boggles a bit at what the rest of it looked like and why it was ultimately cropped – to fit in a frame perhaps?

It comes to me via @marsh.and.meadow on Instagram. While my usual gig with them is jewelry (see one of those posts here), I find that Heather (Hagens) has expanded over time and other tidbits come over the transom. Of course some of them catch the interest of Pictorama. She has expanded her footprint to @marsh.and.meadow.overflow for most of these non-jewelry items. Even for what I don’t buy, I admit to enjoying the passing parade of eyeball kicks.

There is writing on the back and it was mailed. The cancellation survives and it was mailed from Detroit on July 28, 1912 at 8:00 PM. It was mailed to, Hildie Cullen (the name cuts off here), in Nellie, Ohio. A few words exist down the side but not enough to string together, it was a dense note of sorts.

*Back of the card. Looks as if there was a whole story being told on the left side.*

It wasn’t for the man in drag I purchased this photo, but for the very large, marvelous teddy bear, who stands on his haunches and bears arms! He comes up to the man’s elbow.

If teddies came into being in 1902 (famously Roosevelt declined to shoot a small cornered black bear and the toy was invent and dubbed in his honor) this is how Teddy has grown in a decade. He could be a Steiff made bear and they had plenty of time to grow them this large. He reminds me of my beloved enormous Felix toys which people will pose with across the ocean in another decade or so.

(I can’t say much for the visuals on this, but I thought I’d share Bing singing The Teddy Bear’s picnic for the heck of it below.)

Meanwhile, I wonder if the gun the bear holds is a sort of salute to the Roosevelt story which certainly was likely still in popular memory at that time. It appears that somehow Teddy has an empty Coke bottle balanced on his head as well. Could he be both shooter and target practice here?

The man, carrying a parasol, is in a long flowered print skirt which would have been an old one even for the time. (I’m saying he is not fashionably attired!) He maintains his man’s shirt and a tie, but sports, upon very close inspection, some greenery (leaves) stuffed in his shirt and some sort of ribbon pinned to it. His basket is loaded with some posies and more of the same leafy greens.

I thought he was an older man, but the same close inspection shows that he is young. (Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise me.) His man’s boots just about make it into the photo of the cropped edge, peaking out under the long skirt.

Behind him we see a barnyard scene of doors open and closed. It may have been sent in July, but it looks as if the ground is littered in leaves making me wonder if it wasn’t take in the fall and maybe for Halloween. The quality of the photo isn’t great, a bit over-exposed so it is hard to say. Whoever cut it down had a good eye for composition and it works well in this square format.

It is of course the teddy that earned this photo a place in the Pictorama archive, but it is a well cared for picture and I am glad that it has come to rest in a place where we can enjoy it.

Pam's Pictorama

All Pam, all the time

Author: Pam's Pictorama

Comfort in Cats

Let the Season Begin

On the Wall

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania

Small Stuff

Pillow Puss

Opal Oddity

Hot Popcorn

Pictorama Anniversary: Washington Square Park Edition

Teddy Bear