Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: Day two of cat impersonator photo postcards! Unfortunately as over exposed as the last one was, this one is equal parts too dark. Both yesterday and today’s cards hail from a dealer in England and were purchased at the same time but separately.
Today we have a rather doggy cat in a more elaborate costume – I could go either way on this. One can imagine that this one might have had devices to make a tail twitch or a jaw open and close. He is more furry than yesterday’s model and if I had to guess I might say that yesterday’s was earlier and more primitive but of course it could have just been a cheaper production. The face seems to be a two part affairs with the snout separate.
Like yesterday’s card this one was never sent and has a layer of dirt helping to attest to age which is unknown. I am not quite sure I can guess why kitty is backed into a corner behind a chair for this photo – we will assume that it was part of the plot perhaps?
While yesterday’s card screamed vaudeville act this one might make us think about film as well. I am reminded of my photo still of Nana from Peter Pan, one of my favorite examples of an animal impersonator although a dog of course. (That post can be found here.) Still, practically speaking, likely this was some sort of a stage act as well.
Nana from Peter Pan. Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
The range of design and assembly in these costumes fascinates me. This one, to the extent we can see it, appears to be professionally (very skillfully) made. Still, there’s often some thing a bit indeterminant about the precise species of animal in question on these images. Feline dogs, canine cats and a range of sort of bear like critters. Of course we don’t see them fully inhabited and in motion – their animation may have further described and defined them.
I believe I have commented before on the sheer annoyance of my cats when I plop a pair of cat ears on my head for Halloween. They all but shake their heads in disappointment and distress – like the kitty equivalent of a racist joke. One can only imagine their response to a furry full body costume! (As for fur, on the one occasion I remember an elderly friend wearing a mink in my apartment – my then cat Miss Otto Dix – a feral female feline – went nuts at the sight of it. She and the coat had to be separated by a closed bedroom door.)
*****
As I write this it is Saturday evening and I am in New Jersey with the five Butler cats. They are pleased with the attention of my being here and they have piled all their toys in the living room for a kitty party. These guys are gearing up for an all-night romp which I will be privy to through my bedroom door.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: This one is sneaking in just under the line after Valentine’s Day. It is what I gave Kim for Valentine’s Day this year.
Some years here it is just a heartfelt card, but this year I was digging around on eBay and buying a few vintage cards which you have seen in prior posts (here and here) and this was one little prize I found. It’s a simple design, a bright red heart with this wonderful little cat attached, with silly white hearts drawn around the outer edge.
Of course the little metal cat attached to the top Stanley (the recipient of this card) had the good sense not to take it off. The poem reads:
To My Valentine If you love me you’ll love my CAT And see that it’s befriended; So if I hear you saying “Scat” I’ll know my chance is ended.
Back of the Valentine.
The back reads, To Stanley S. From Madelaine and Dorothy Haskel (?) And we see this bit of twisted wire that sticks out the back, securing the cat charm to the front. I sort of love that two sisters sent this and I like the last name initial too – was there another Stanley in the class perhaps? Which, if either, sister did Stanley like best? Was the two sister approach to hide the real affection of one? One wonders.
Front of the keychain.
Then, I was cruising around Instagram and one of my favorite folks in Texas (@curiositiesantique or www.getcuriosities.com) put this little gem up and I grabbed it. Kim is an inveterate collector of (lucky) heads up pennies on the sidewalk and so this with a penny embedded within seemed just right for him. It is a lucky keyring which promises, Keep me and never go broke around the outer edge and, in case that wasn’t direct enough, I bring good luck at the bottom.
And the back!
The penny has a date of 1972 so we will date it to then. On the back we discover its real missive, Nick V. Caputo County Clerk Essex Vote Democrat. Turns out he was the Essex County (NJ) Clerk from 1961 to 1991. He was known as the man with the golden arm which had something to do with always drawing the Democrats for the first position on the ballot, the odds of which were 1 in 50 billion! Huh. (For those of you who are curious about this, and perhaps understand it better, you can read more in an article from the Jersey Globehere.)
Someone liked it enough to keep it all this time and it made its way down to Texas. It is back here in the tri-state area though, bringing my sweetheart luck and prosperity.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: There are a handful of traditions here at Deitch Studio and Pam’s Pictorama that we hold dear and none is so anticipated and celebrated than the annual Valentine Kim makes for me. A tradition that reaches back to our first year together (now a few decades back), today’s is an entry in a long line of wonderful drawings, all which have depicted me and illustrated my interests over the decades and placing me at the heart of my own Catland. (This includes frequent allusions to me as the jolly and of course benign ruler of the land, Queen of Catland. A few examples can be found here, here and here and other pictures below.)
A February 2020 edition. This too could be Margate! Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
This year is very special however. The idea grew out of a recent post some of you may remember devoted to review the splendid new biography of Louis Wain, Catland, which can be read here. Kim has brought to life my suggestion that there was a moment when Louis Wain and T.S. Eliot were living on different sides of the same beachside community, Margate, where I have noted, many people had photo postcards made posing with a splendid giant Felix the cat doll. (Some of those posts can be found here and here.)
Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
Kim has brought all these elements together. Rather than running into each other and meeting TS and Louis are both so wrapped up in their own views of the world they never see each other – although Felix loitering outside the photo studio arguably sees them both. They are both witnessing a (real) catburgler in action – for Eliot it inspires the poem Macvity the Mystery Cat (who appears to be reading about his exploits at the bottom) while Wain wanders off into a world of anthropomorphic kits which, around the perimeter of the picture range from jaunty to disintegrating, and forming Cubist cat delights.
A Margate Felix. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.
Louis is painting the very scene, or a variation on it, while some of his humanoid cats enjoy exploits swimming and strolling just out of the frame. Big white kitties standing on their hindlegs point at the scene with even more imaginative cats portraits above them. T.S. Eliot recovering from a nervous breakdown, meeting Louis Wain drifting off into his own world of ever morphing felines.
In some ways, this is the perfect melding of worlds, Wain’s, Eliot’s, mine and Kim’s. Bravo yet again my beloved Mr. Deitch!
T.S. Eliot 1888 - 1965
Macavity: The Mystery Cat (1939) Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw — For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law. He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair: For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity, He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity. His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare, And when you reach the scene of crime - Macavity’s not there! You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air - But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin; You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in. His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed; His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed. He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake; And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity, For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity. You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square - But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.) And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s. And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled, Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled, Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair - Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!
And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray, Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way, There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair - But it’s useless to investigate - Macavity’s not there! And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say: ‘It must have been Macavity!’ - but he’s a mile away. You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs, Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare: At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN’T THERE! And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known (I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone) Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: I think the impression people may get is that I like my birthday, although the reality is actually that I am a bit ambivalent about it and have taken control of it to the extent I can. As my mother would say however, it is far better than the alternative. Years and years ago in my 20’s, I decided that I would try to take the situation in hand and create birthday traditions for myself and therefore be less disappointed in the enterprise. This has largely worked, some years more successful than others.
Those who have been down this road with me before know that my birthday occurs alongside Valentine’s Day (the great Kim Deitch Valentine’s Day reveal is here tomorrow – mark your calendars!) which posed challenges for the admirers and boyfriends of the young Pam Butler.
I was born in a snowstorm if not downright blizzard. Mom and Dad sussed out the situation pretty quickly and got her to the hospital to have me in the late afternoon (He was annoyed I interrupted his office hours, Mom used to say) amidst growing piles of snow. It frequently snows, sometimes a lot, on my birthday. I remember at least two whopping snowstorms in my early adulthood, stop everything kind of days, here in the city. And along with the snow, a myriad of plans cast aside at the last minute for alternative plans. I learned to lean local for my birthday.
Birthday traditions include trying to have a meal with my various other Aquarian friends. Currently this has whittled down to just a couple of favorites with folks moving or among the elder generation, passing. Still, they are always wonderful and I saw one friend earlier this week for dinner although have yet to set the date for the other – we’ve been known to wander into March too, spreading it out. Bygone traditions included spending the day with my late sister, Loren, and mom sending flowers or acquiring lavish cakes.
Kim and I will spend a day next weekend sort of gloriously wandering somewhere in the city next weekend. (I head to NJ for a clutch of doctor’s appointments there – and to visit the NJ cats who will help greet the new birth year on Tuesday.) Potentially we’ll be bundled up if the weather predictions hold. Snow is scheduled to start tonight and, after a brief melt possibly tomorrow, continue on through the beginning of the week.
This year, as declared in a post last week, I went on a bit of a vintage Valentine’s Day binge and while looking I came across today’s card which seemed perfect for me to align and honor my black cat, Valentine’s Day and birthday interests.
It is British and therefore the black cat is a lucky symbol – their horseshoe is also facing down whereas I think we usually portray it up (to hold the luck!) on this side of the pond. In addition to this smiling cat there is a four leaf clover, should we have any doubts. (There will be more about lucky objects coming next week so stay tuned.)
Back of card.
It declares: Upon your happy Birthday morn, I wish you Joy and Pleasure. And everything you’d like to have Heaped up in brimming measure! It has a spot for From at the bottom (what about To?) and someone has penciled in, as best I can tell, E. M. Pinder.
Thank you Eden Kennedy!
It has this interesting sort of deckle edge to the card and on the back it reads, Mrs. c/o Mrs. Plumb, 25 Hassett Road, Homerton and on the other side, For Minnie. The stamp is a halfpenny one and it was sent on March 7,1912, just short of 113 years ago. This makes its somewhat discolored state a bit more forgivable.
Beau, the black cat beauty to whom I refer.
In closing I also offer a birthday card from a friend that arrived in the mail last night. It looks remarkably like Beauregard, one of the Jersey Five. Makes an excellent case for a celebratory cat tierra, not to mention cape.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Let the Valentine’s Day and Butler Birthday season commence early here this year. We have a lot to show and share for ourselves this February.
Valentine’s and photography seem to be a natural combination when I look at vintage valentine’s. Although I generally am perusing the cats (I have posted a few past puss ones here and here), but occasionally like today, these interests align. I am a tad puzzled about photography as a sub-category of vintage valentine’s.
Of course movement in a Valentine is also desirable – I am not someone who needs elaborate movement. I might enjoy seeing those, but my space constraints make storing or displaying them untenable.
Liked this one, but decided it was a bit too fragile and large to live here at Deitch Studio.
I am perhaps not the best steward of vintage Valentines truth be told as they are a bit fragile. This one is actually zipping off to someone shortly after the writing of this – surprise! (See if you know who you are.)
Our cameraman kitty has what I think of as a press camera which…seems to produce playing cards in the suit of hearts! Clever cat! He has a nice big blue bow (that and because he is an orange tabby I have decided its a boy) and sits on a more or less matching cushion. The bow is the mechanism for the card to be “pulled out” of behind the camera.
This in the “down” position before the card is revealed!
If you want to get technical there’s maybe something a bit off about the paw holding the camera in front, a bit small. On the cushion it is inscribed, If you, my Valentine will be – you’ll hear a great big Purr from me. On the back in an adult hand it says, To Betty Jo from Jacqueline. It is also marked 10 cents in two places. There is no date, although at the bottom right corner there is a very tiny 1924 copyright date.
Mechanism, old prices and dedication on the back.
Personally, I grew up in the era of the big plastic covered box of small cards which I think may still be produced in some fashion – they were so ubiquitous that if nothing else there is probably old dead stock around. As a very small child we were set to making them out to everyone in the class which seems nicely egalitarian, although I have no particular memory about whether this was an effective solution. It took some effort, writing the card and the envelope, tucking it in. They were then put into a large bag and then distributed.
Etsy appears to reproduce reasonable facsimiles of the packages I might have had as a kid.
Over time the powers that control small children got less controlling and Valentine’s accumulated from you immediate circle of friends, occasionally widen by an ambitious classmate or, as we got older, a brave boy who took it into his head to send one. I’m not sure we ever got ourselves beyond those tiny cards – the luxury and investment of singular cards like this were not in our orbit.
In addition, there were those boxes of candied hearts with sayings. While accumulating them seemed to be the thing to do, I wasn’t an especially big fan of consuming them being more of a chocolate treat over the pure sugar approach. I believe in addition to the rather classic straightforward messages, Spangler, the current maker in a long line of producers, has kept up and now have messages about things like text me and BFF.
Available from Walmart to Amazon and beyond.
There are classic Valentine’s consumables which I embraced and still embrace. My father was always good for a classic heart shaped box of candy wrapped in lurid red cellophane. I would say when we were young it was Russell Stover, but got a bit more high end as we got older. He would also sometimes bring home something for us and I remember (and used for many years) a silver heart keychain from Tiffany. (I have the remains of it in a jewelry box.) I will likely buy one of these boxes for the office where our new digs has helped create a better sense of community around shared food treats.
Has changed very little over the years. I especially like the strawberry creams…
More Valentine’s treat posts to come – culminating of course with Kim’s picture for me which is a real wonder this year! Stay tuned as we say…
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Last weekend’s trip, which started with our holiday nostalgia train ride as memorialized in yesterday’s post, was largely a shopping venture. I had a few places I wanted to investigate and it was time to pick up coffee from my favorite establishment. Porto Rico Importers has been in business since 1907 with three New York City locations (Bleecker, St. Marks and Essex Street) and I became a true devotee a couple of years ago. I frequent the St. Mark’s one although I guess the Bleecker is the original site.
Porto Rico Coffee Importers last week.
Located next to my eyeglass store (Anthony Aiden Opticians – I have worn transitional lenses for years and I swear by them for the care they take in executing my prescriptions), on St. Mark’s I make periodic trips and buy several pounds of coffee at a time and freeze it. After much experiment I have settled on the Danish blend. I bought four pounds and one will come to Jersey next week. There was a long line out the door of their tiny outpost last Sunday, but it moved quickly and I was undeterred. There is a bench out front and the weather was good so Kim read his book there.
Pams-Pictorama.com purchase in October, John Derian for Target.
One can purchase their coffee online and have it shipped. If you have enough space in your freezer, free shipping starts at orders of $75 or more. I do not and I have the option of occasional trips downtown to purchase it. If you are curious their website can be found here.
A nice ceramic version available at John Derian or online, but it’ll cost you!I purchased a pair of these for a nominal amount via an online auction. August 2014 post about these Corbin Cats.
Another of my goals was to visit the John Derian store on 2nd Street. Pictorama readers might remember several months ago when I posted about a great stuffed cat I purchased from Target which was part of a Derian/Target collaboration. I thought it was worth a trip to the source. It was a bit crowded and I purchased a few small gifts including notecards of said same black cat. However I largely found it out of my price range. In some ways I think Mr. Derian is a brother from another mother, as our collecting sensibility is remarkably similar. He however then takes these items and repurposes them by reproducing them for sale. I can attest to paying less for some of the original items that his copies are made from.
Phebe’s all decked out for the holidays. We wondered about this 98 Street – Playland sign. Rye Playland??
I had a plan to stop in a hat store, a small independent designer by the name of Esenshel. It didn’t open until afternoon so Kim and I popped into Pageant prints and maps which I had no idea resided on East 4th Street. It turned into a goldmine of gift acquisition and I grabbed up three pages, neatly excised from The Book of Bow-Wows, and the original cover to boot. While I don’t really approve of the slicing and dicing of this old book, the pages nonetheless make great gifts for a few of my colleagues at work.
Just the cover to the book, sold for a few dollars separately. Peering into Pageant.
A quick look tells me that you’ll pay up if you want the full copy of this book – as Kim pointed out, I could however, purchase a coverless copy! Illustrated by someone only known as Tad I cannot seem to find further tracks on him. The author, Elizabeth Gordon, seems to be better known for her Bird Children and Flower Children which were illustrated by other people. Those have seen more recent reprinting, however they are a little saccharine for my taste. The Book of Bow-Wows was written in verse and I have shared the now framed (thank you Amazon!) pages I chose for my gifts. (I am laboring under the impression that none of the people I purchased for are readers – apologies on the surprise thing if you are!)
Last, but in no way least, is this book litho illustration. Titled, La Morale en Images the line at the bottom roughly Google translates to: between the child and the animal a close intimate relationship had been established. At the bottom it also read, (La chien de Lord Byron).
Also, in the end yes, I did purchase a hat. It is a wool variation on the Russian wool hat my dad’s father wore. Lunch was had at Phebe’s Tavern, an establishment I have not entered in several decades. My main memory of it was that when I was in my 20’s they sold an extremely inexpensive pitcher of beer and there is a lingering memory of a hair of the dog Sunday afternoon there once. That notwithstanding, Kim bought us a lunch of excellent burgers before making our way back – this time on a regular modern subway uptown.
Pam’s Pictorama Post: It just seems that periodically nothing will do but to purchase another Louis Wain card. They are a gentle mood enhancer – like champagne. I don’t want to immerse myself, but just sipping a bit of the bubbly is very cheering. I recently read and subsequently wrote about the new book devoted to him and tracking the emergence of the pet cat in the Victorian world (that post can be found here) and it sent me meandering over to eBay where I picked this up.
I highly recommend this recently published volume!
Presently, none of my Louis Wain cards hang here at Deitch Studio (which has, after all, very little wall space with Felix taking up more than his share. I’m starting to think there might be a nice spot at the house in New Jersey for my growing collection of these cards. You have to be able to get pretty close to these to fully enjoy them – they need to be at eye level.
Prepping for the Party is the title of this card. It’s a New Year’s card and at the bottom it declares, A very happy New Year to you and it is signed at the bottom, Your tru friend Ida. It was mailed on December 29, 1904 from Austin, Texas to Miss Dona Hannig, in Lockhart, Texas where it was marked received on December 30. (Without doing a proper survey of my posts, I would say 1904 was a very good year for postcards. It is, of course, well before the appearance of my beloved Felix, but the postcard world was buzzing with the likes of Louis Wain among others.)
Back of the card – most of mine come from Britain but this one came from and has been in the US.
In this card we have a very comic two cats doing some party primping. The standing cat, which in my opinion, is somehow inexplicably male, is helping to curl the long hairs of the gray cat. He is using curling papers which would have been heated, as I understand it, with a hot tong device. Understandably, gray cat is wondering what she has gotten herself into. He looks just the tiniest bit maniacal. Would you let this cat come at you with something dangerous? Maybe not…
Because of my chosen career in fundraising, I go to a lot of parties. Most are affairs which go right from the office to the event with barely a brush through the hair or application of lipstick. However, periodically there is a need to dust off the formal wear and put on the dog so to speak.
When I was younger and worked for the Metropolitan Museum there were numerous black tie events scattered through the calendar. There were annual events, the famous Costume Institute Gala in May, an annual dinner to raise money for Acquisitions in December, but with the various exhibition openings and whatnot, I kept a lot of formal wear at the ready, literally wearing out a series of long black dresses and trousers.
Before a major renovation of our offices there sometime in the late ’90’s, we would all gather in a huge women’s bathroom at one end of our hall of offices. It had, oddly for a bathroom, an enormous round window which faced the front entrance of the museum (it is now a gallery devoted to special exhibitions of Greek and Roman Art) and a very tricky and somewhat rickety blind covering it. It was always a question if you’d be able to close it – if you’d bother as well.
From the dinner at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Gala in April of 2023.
Fifteen or twenty women (or more!) squeezing into a such a space to dress always had a college dorm gone wild feel to it. There was a sense of community and corps d’esprit among us of course. Plenty of folks to zip you up, lend you something you forgot or help you with a run in your stockings. You dressed quickly so you could give up your space to someone waiting. The more experienced of us would start early and be done before the majority swept in.
At Jazz at Lincoln Center this was miniaturized with both a smaller staff and a much smaller space which necessitated thoughtful rotation. Sometimes I would just throw something over the window in my office which faced the hall and dress there. By then we had fewer black tie events it was mostly just our annual spring Gala.
My current gig will host its annual Top Dog Gala on Tuesday where we will celebrate the work of NYPD’s police dogs – each dog named for an officer who died in the line of duty. (My evening as a guest to it last year can be found documented in a post here.) Everywhere I have worked in the past has been a destination for events so I have never had to use a venue which we will this week. This greatly alters my sense of control which I am dealing with. I gather that they will devote a greenroom to our dressing needs so another variation to add to the theme – bad lighting (for make-up!) and cramped space.
Top Dog Gala in December 2023.
I used to wonder what it would be like to dress at home and at my leisure for such events. This is of course the difference between working and being a guest! Carefully packing will commence this weekend and I will bring my things on Monday so I have a second chance on Tuesday if I’ve forgotten anything. I wardrobe dry run needs to happen this weekend. It is festive attire and between that and having lost a bunch of weight recently I am in new territory for attire.
Think of us on Tuesday. A couple of million dollars has been raised and we will honor these hard working dogs whose care we endeavor to care for at the hospital, a longstanding partnership with the city. I’d like to work toward a Top Cat year and perhaps today’s card more appropriate for that eventuality!
Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I am pulling a little fellow out of the archive, such as it is. Amongst the (admittedly dusty) Felix toys here at Deitch Studio, there are a clutch of damaged ones that I purchased, usually for the sheer diversity of them. This small example is one of those. Despite his grotty condition, he is outstanding because I have never ever seen the precise likes of him before or since.
He stands about 9 inches high and he sports this large and somewhat elaborate original ribbon. He is in the hands behind his back walking and thinking pose. There is nothing really atypical about his body, although it does have a fair amount of damage, a hole in one leg and a wire sticking out his tail. It is not really excessive damage in the world of 100 year old stuffed toys though. He leaves a small trail of ancient straw and bits when moved around although this is also not unusual.
He maintains his whiskers which are nice and black. He has a small shoe button nose which is also fairly unique. I think that is his nose too – sometimes they look a bit like this but were meant to be covered and I don’t think so.
His good side if you would! Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.
He has one remaining glass eye and that type of eye is pretty typical in the world of these toys, although many have the white felt behind black shoe button eyes instead. The brown stitched teeth are odd and I do believe they are brown not just discolored like the white on his face.
However, it is the shape of his face, head and rounded ears that are unusual. I’d almost think it was Steiff except that is not what the Steiff Felix looks like in the least. They seem to have had only one model and it is decidedly different. Most of the early off model Felix toys are pointy and doggy, definitely unlike this well rounded chap. It implies a different maker and I have no idea which that might have been. This Felix was well made – his head turns, although it must be done very gingerly now and every the extravagant bow makes me think he was a better made toy.
Sadly though I have not figured out cleaning the white of his snout which is what seriously disfigures him. It is grimy and darkly discolored but is also fragile (the remaining eye, nose and especially ears) which has left me in a fugue state about how to proceed. It turns out that I am not a brave nor creative repairman of tattered toys. I know colleagues who jump in with good results, but I am a scaredy cat when it comes to cleaning it turns out. Therefore I guess perhaps I am not the best steward of those in need of repair.
I have owned this fellow for longer than I can remember purchasing him on eBay – probably easily a decade – and still I have not taken the plunge. I am open to suggestions! Let me know your thoughts. Maybe I can devote another post to a before and after on him if I were to get great results.
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.
The Naughty Puss by Louis Wain.
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.
A bevy of the ceramics!
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.
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!
Pam's Pictorama 