Bogue’s Soap

Pam’s Pictorama: This kitty cut-out is about six inches high. She (pink ribbon makes me think she and there’s a certain girl cat quality) sports a rather enormous bell – gosh, birds were certainly safe around this cat unless they were stone deaf. Kim is not a fan of this particular acquisition in the cat advertising category. I admit that is later than the Victorian cards I have been purchasing and it seems to have had another purpose. As you can see below, the back of the card is both advertising for the soap and instruction for the use. Soap Kitty had a Doggie partner as well and you could obtain on of these Cats or Dog. Purchase 3 cakes of BOGUE’S SOAP for 25 cents. I have supplied the dog as a grab off of Google and he is missing his “stand-up strip” which obscures the interesting if racist diatribe on the back of the cat card, also shown at the bottom of the post.

Dog image, not in my collection.

With a quick search I was interested to find out a bit about Charles B. Bogue from the Historic Albion, Michigan website. Despite the NYC Hudson Street address on the card, Mr. Bogue hailed originally from Michigan and then made his soap fortune in Chicago.

In his personal life, Charles B. Bogue was married to Martha Gleason Harris in 1876, and the couple had three children, all of whom are buried in Riverside Cemetery. After their divorce in 1899, Martha married Charles’ brother George Bogue. Charles in the meantime married Eva Knight of Chicago and moved there where he continued in the mercantile trade under the firm name Bogue Soap Company. He had one daughter by his second marriage. Charles was still living in Chicago in the late 1920s.

The claims made by the soap, complete with instructions – for use in all seasons, no boiling…saves labor, shortens the wash day, and makes home happy. My favorite is no more blue Mondays. Not to mention the $100 offer for any bar of Bogue’s Soap that will not do all that is claimed for it.

A Bogue’s soap company (artisanal and utterly devoid of cats, dogs, or racist advertising) exists today in Ojai, California. Their soap can be purchased at Whole Foods and other venues. There’s no reference to the soap’s history and perhaps is not even the same company. Artisanal or not, I would personally like them much better if they were still offering cat and dog cut-outs with every 75 cent purchase. However, buy it, try it, you’ll like it!

Back of cat cut-out with cardboard strip to stand-up

Kitty Chorus

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Scan(2)

Me-ow!

Pam’s Pictorama Post: Not surprisingly, this cat choral card attracted me for the kits, not the ad. These anthropomorphic kitties appear to be the cats of a Louis Wain influenced pen and their pop-eyed expressions may pay tribute to him. However, there is much that is their own to applaud, such as the conductor using his tail as a baton and the little fellow without music who has his claws into that pole – although we will assume he is lifting his voice in lilting cat song while he puts his back in to a good scratch, tail pointing up. J.M. Ives must have been pleased enough with the that he has planted his copyright at the bottom – a surprisingly early 1881, making this card earlier than most. Perhaps that explains its single color printing.

While these Victorian cards rarely turn up anything much about the what or where that is being advertised a quick search on D. McCarthy & Co. revealed that this family owned business was headquartered in Syracuse, New York. In 1893 they constructed the building, shown below, for the department store. The building still exists in Syracuse today and evidently one can visit a small exhibit about the history of the company there.

D. McCarthy, Sons & Co. store in Syracuse and restored today.

I admit surprise when I realized that JM Ives is the Ives in Currier and Ives – or at least it most likely is as the name and the dates are right. I cannot explain why he would have published this only under his own name. I also didn’t realize that neither Currier nor Ives were artists, just publishers, Currier was a lithographer and Ives was an accountant in the company who Currier took in as a partner over time. So Mr. Cat Artist is lost to time on this one. But whoever he was, I like his style and I’d buy shoes from his cats.

Poor Mr. Canary!

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Pam’s Pictorama: The parade of Victorian advertising continues with this card from the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. – a company which seems to have embraced cat card with great enthusiasm. I wrote about a rather famous series of advertising cards portraying a brief cat tale of love lost and found in my post of the same name. Leaving the topic of the efficacy of cats in advertising, instead I am taking a peek at the history of the smug expression of cats that inspired this popular phrase.

The phrase, cat that ate the canary (the Australian or UK version is evidently the cat that ate the cream) and usually used as smiling like the cat that ate the canary refers to a pleased, smug, self-satisfied and perhaps a tad guilty expression – like this fellow on the card and his toothy grin. Interestingly enough the phrase seems to have just emerged at about the time this card would probably have been issued, in the late 1880’s or early 1890’s when trade card advertising would be at its peak. In 1891 and 1892 several newspapers in the United States, UK and Australia published the same joke which appears to be the first reference:

Father: That cat made an awful noise in the back garden last night.
Son: Yes, sir. I guess that since he ate the canary, he thinks he can sing.

In researching this phrase my favorite reference was a fellow blogger and their post can be found at Cat That Ate the Canary. My favorite part is their reference to a story of a cat in New Hampshire that ate five canaries, published in the Victoria Advocate in 1952. He was accidentally locked in a department store overnight in Keene, New Hampshire. Oh my. I show him below, he really does have a bit of a criminal look about him.

Cat that ate five canaries photo, Keene New Hampshire, 1952

As some of you know, I come from a lineage that not only loves cats, but also birds. My mother is extremely active in preserving water fowl and rescued and rehabilitated them for years as well. The cat eats bird thing has always been a sore point and luckily Cookie and Blackie do not have an opportunity to put their bird largess (or lack thereof) to the test. Still, those Sylvester and Tweety cartoons always nag at me a bit. Poor Sylvester, forever trying to get a meal out of that one, lousy, annoying little bird!

And for or those of you who need a refresher, this is the first appearance of Sylvester and Tweety together!

Powo! Cat Boxing

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This summer of cat advertising cards continues with this newest in the series by this popular artist. I do not know who this fellow or woman was, but he or she had a significant share of this trade. I love these! Each one seems a bit puzzling, but the group seems to form a loose narrative. Perhaps when I get enough of these together I will see the whole story.

This card barely left space for the ad at the bottom – I couldn’t find a reference to Lawson Baths, clearly printed on after the card was already made. The overgrown baby cat seems to be the one saying, Now Pa brace up and have some style. It is the same toothy cat as in the post Arctic Baking Powder and, probably, more recently the entry Westerman’s Shoe Bazaar.

It is perhaps politically incorrect of me to say, but I have always been a fan of cat boxing. I am not alone – film of cat boxing goes back at least to Thomas Edison – 1894 Boxing Cats. A quick look turned up the very delightful Cat Fight in Boxing Ring with Dog Audience – sort of a variation on the Dogville comedies, but as a commercial for Chevrolet. Kim says he remembers seeing cat boxing on the Ed Sullivan show. Of course of contemporary vintage there are many on Youtube, something along the lines of 1.83 million results at a quick look. A very popular favorite however is Cats Playing Patty-cake – I thought I would fall off my chair laughing the first time I saw it.

Cookie and Blackie indulge in this pastime occasionally. As brother and sister it seems it is natural to square off once in awhile, stand up on their hind legs and take a poke at each other for a few minutes – usually in slow motion. As cat fighting goes it is usually the least likely to get serious and many of these early filmed efforts are likely to have been staged – although I will say those cats really seem to be going at it in the Chevrolet commercial. It is mostly very theatrical, even here in the apartment. I don’t know why, but it does make me laugh when they do it. I will let you know if I manage to reach for the iPhone to tape them at it any time soon and we will make them internet stars!

Tommy Dodd

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Pam’s Pictorama: The trade card bonanza continues with this card, which does not appear to actually advertise anything. The back is blank and looks like it spent some time glued onto an album page. This fellow, sporting his medal and with his somewhat human expression, would be a tad creepy if he showed up looking just like this at your house one day – and I like cats as you know. His origins are a bit obscure, although I guess a picture does form, so read on.

First, there is a tweet from the San Francisco public library of this card with the following post about the image on this card: Tommy Dodd sends his #caturday greetings! This adorable cat won first prize at the International Cat Show, and then was featured on a trade card for a shoe store specializing in children’s shoes, on Stockton Street. In the San Francisco History Center’s trade card collection. Mine shows no evidence of San Francisco or children’s shoes, however these cards were clearly purchased by companies which printed their own message on the back or bottom. Still, um, somehow I doubt this was a real cat who one a prize at an international cat show – just a guess.

Researching the slang phrase Tommy Dodd turned up many meanings, some related and some clearly not. I list them here for your consideration in no particular order: odd or peculiar; a cemetery may be known as Tommy Dodd’s garden; thank Tommy Dodd for this or that; a phrase related to coin tossing (mid 19th century) as in tossing odds; penis; sodomite; a style of hat; a glass of beer or a walking stick. (The last three were from Australia.)

The coin tossing allusion is the one most frequently sited and referred to. It appears that there were numerous beer hall songs devoted to Tommy Dodd and below is the chorus to one I was able to find, as well as a link to the lyrics of the full song:

I’m always safe when I begin. Tommy Dodd, Tommy Dodd I Glasses round, cigars as well. Tommy Dodd. Tommy Dodd I Now, my boys, let’s all go in, Tommy Dodd, Tommy Doddl Head or tail, I’m safe to win, Hurrah for Tommy Dodd! (Lyrics for Tommy Dodd)

As is the case with many of these cards, there was a series that would have been collected – a nascent form of comics? I also turned up another in the series, as well as some companion dog cards shown below:

Other cards from the same series.

Westerman’s Shoe Bazaar

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This post kicks off a series of cat advertising I have indulged in recently so hang onto your hats! More than 100 years before cat videos people realized the entertainment value of cats and that they sure can sell. Trade cards like this one from the late 1800’s still exist in abundance so they must have been a primary way of advertising. I am not sure I have yet grasped how they were disseminated – this variety is small, the size of an early baseball card, and do not appear to have been sent via the mail. If they were handed out – where? On the street? I have to continue to look into this.

A search on Westerman’s Shoe Bazaar revealed an advertisement (without cats I might add) on page 8 of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from Thursday, November 27, 1890. They respectfully say, if you want something in the way of FOOTWEAR NICE or FETCHING in STYLE Westerman’s Shoe Bazaar was evidently the place for you. For the local St. Louis folks, you may wish to note that it was at 1232 South Broadway, French Market.

Now for this splendid card – grandma is an enormous, bespectacled, grinning (and fang-y) kitty – a real wolf in grandma’s clothing of a cat. At first I thought Grandma’s Pet was a brave if rooty tooty, little mouse fellow, but a closer look revealed that he too is a cat – tiny by comparison, with a striped tail, more or less identical to Grandma’s. He holds a little sword and a pair of spectacles, like hers, and a jaunty cap with a feather. Does he do her bidding, and if so what? I adore it, but I have no idea whatsoever what the meaning might be or the inspiration – let alone what it has to do with shoes. Unlike some of these cards, there is no information on the back.

Pictorama readers with a good memory will know that this is likely by the same artist who did the art for the card I posted in Arctic Baking Powder several weeks ago. I provide that card below for comparison and your enjoyment. As the collection grows, perhaps the mystery will unfold.

Cat Tales, John Rosol

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This great little book was a thoughtful gift of our friends Tony and Sue Eastman who know of my love of all things black cat. An initial search of the author and artist, John Rosol, turned up surprisingly little. (I am very spoiled and have gotten used to information on even the most obscure topics turning up with ease, I admit.) To start with however, the comics in this book were all published in the Saturday Evening Post and all feature his cat, Tommy.

As per the dust cover, Tommy was a stray who strolled into Mr. Rosol’s Philadelphia studio and calmly seated himself on the drawing board. Rosol got Tommy’s idea immediately and went to work. In exchange for small steaks, liver, cream and catnip (no wonder he was a fat cat!) Tommy consented to stay for a while and be Caterer Rosol’s idea man…When he finally took his leave – destination unknown – he had trained Mr. Rosol so well that not even an expert can tell where Tommy left off and John began…P.S. Mr. Rosol hopes if this little books happens to come under the eye of Tommy, he will drop into the studio and turn off the light which is always burning for him. I, of course, teared up at the idea of the disappearance of Tommy. While my edition dates from 1944, the first printing appears to go back to 1934.

The cartoons are simple and cheerfully fun. The idea that he turned one cat into a consistent five identical twins brings certain very busy cats to mind. I have had several who had such a penchant for trouble that you would swear that there was more than one cat underfoot. (Cookie!) The gags are mostly of the kind assigned to cats – attempts to obtain fish and milk and to chase mice for food. Most notably the Tommy quints are patriotic during these WWII years and even turn their fat cat noses up at crab meat when they realize it was shipped from Japan, abandon their mouse chase when reminded to embrace a “meatless day”, round up dogs for service, and even help a female soldier who is afraid of mice.

A fellow blogger over at Comics Kingdom has the scoop on Rosol’s two brief syndicated strips, The Boy and the Cat (1939-1941) and Here and There (1941). Comics Kingdom offers some samples of Here and There and the black cat/s are tucked into these as well. In the style of earlier comics these are large single panel tableaus, with a different strip (about the cat) running occasionally up one side. This entry, combined with his obit, add the following facts: Rosol was trained as a commercial artist at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, which later became the Philadelphia College of Art. His full name was John Rolosowicz and he died at the age of 85, still living in Philadelphia. In addition to his comics which were syndicated to numerous papers across the country, and his work for the Saturday Evening Post, he also worked for Bazooka bubblegum. He published a children’s book The Cat’s Meow which I can find no evidence of online and evidently was working up until his death.

So I salute John Rosol, a cat loving cartoonist, barely saved from disappearing entirely from view by the internet and this popular volume.

Pins and Needles

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Pam’s Pictorama: A discussion of somewhat disparate topics continues with this absolutely splendid item which was given to me the other day. I know this nice couple via the Met and had not seen them in quite a while. Evidently they remembered my passion for all things cats and put aside this wonderful little item for me, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

As it happens, one of the first black cat items I acquired was a soft tape measure and pin cushion kitty. (For those of you who have been following in recent weeks you will understand that this cat, and most of the others, is packed away for the duration of our building’s HVAC work which required the dusty dirty demise of our ceiling. I am sorry not to be able to share a photo of him.) I was in an antiques market Kim and I frequent in Red Bank, NJ – not far from the Butler family ancestral home – when I happened on it. Like this fellow, he has a tape measure tongue you can pull out and was entirely soft so you could stick pins in him, I suppose.

This guy would have sat proudly on your sewing stand, at attention, waiting for the sewing to commence, never lost or misplaced, as I constantly loose both my stashes of needles and tape measures – not to mention thread. I especially like his red felt tongue which is the pull on the tape measure and matches his red bow and of course the nice velvet pincushion on his back. He is a tad too fragile to resume his responsibilities keeping my needles, but he will have a proud safe shelf to perch on in his retirement as soon as the dust, quite literally, clears here.

While I admit I always wished to be a gifted seamstress, nothing could be further from the truth I am afraid. Thanks to the efforts of a roommate in London during a stint in college, I can sew a button on with great confidence it will stay. However, aside from that there has never been a sewing machine bobbin I didn’t destroy on sight and, beyond buttons, my hand stitching tends toward the lopsided and, shall we say, organic. I appear to come from a long line of barely functional sewers. My maternal grandmother could do a hem under duress, but neither grandmothers or my mother were churning out daily wear. My sister showed promise in this area and made a number of garments before drifting away from it. (She also made bread well which is another skill I can’t master. Of course, she was also a PhD in Math – need I say more? I can barely balance a checkbook.)

I am the first to say, one can’t be good at everything so I long ago ceded to my ineptness in this, and other areas. However, that is not to say I don’t enjoy the related accoutrements for these activities – especially if a cat is involved.

Puss in Boots Revisted

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: A study of the cat collection rolls on with this very early Puss in Boots doll. Unlike my other Puss in Boots toys (featured in the early post Puss ‘n Boots – a tale of stuffed kitties) this fellow is much smaller, about ten inches, and maintains his boots – proof of his origin. Puss was purchased on eBay for a modest sum; I was the only one looking that day I guess. He bears no label, but is clearly well made with glass eyes. I have a yen for Puss in Boots toys and find them a tad irresistible.

Of course, the story appeals to me – a roguish trickster cat who gets what he wants not only for himself, but for his impoverished master. (Cookie and Blackie, please take note.) I have puzzled in my own mind for years over the question of why the cat wanted boots, but nonetheless, he does look very dashing in them. Cats always understand looking good. The tale traces back as far as the 16th century Italy, but it is the 17th century French version by Perrault is what most of us think of when we contemplate it. In some versions, when the cat later tests the fidelity of his master and finds it lacking he turns on him too. Clearly the cat was a great guy when on your team but you shouldn’t mess with him.

The story has become a much-illustrated and beloved one and it seems to be a popular toy at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore it is not surprising that Disney used it as the inspiration for his earliest cartoons. Grab your kitty and curl up to have a look on Youtube as linked below. (Click on the link, not the photo which is just for show.)

Puss in Boots 1922

Toy Hospital

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Pam’s Pictorama Toy Post: The toy posts continue, as does the work in our compact apartment; I write to you from a very dusty computer this morning. I snapped a few quick photos of toys as I cleaned them and packed them for the duration of the ceiling work. Last week I featured Felix-es that could use some work in my post, Felix…the Bad and the Ugly, and it reminded me of a toy hospital that used to reside on Lexington Avenue, near Bloomingdales. I worked in the neighborhood, my brief stint at the Central Park Conservancy, and was of course curious. As you walked by you could see toys piled up in a second story bay window in a old building – a large sign declaring Toy Hospital. Therefore one day, when to my great horror, the arms broke off this Felix I knew exactly where I was headed.

On my lunch hour I chugged up a couple of flights of old, steep stairs in one of those incredibly narrow, dark stairwells you find in very old New York City walk-up buildings of a certain vintage. A glass door opened into a room which pretty much had toys scattered and piled helter-skelter, waist high with no visible path through them to the window. The shop ran the length of the floor, with about a third off it closed off as what appeared to be a workshop at one end. The toys strewn around were not of any particular vintage – all in various states of repair and disrepair. I did not see other antique Felix dolls.

An elderly man greeted me and I showed him the patient. Felix is held together by a wire armature – his arms and legs are meant to move. The armature was so very old, and rusty, that it had broken. The man took Felix and told me he would have a look and he would let me know how he would proceed.

This Felix was one of my early indulgences. It was in the relatively early days of eBay (I was just congratulated on my 17th year on eBay by them – I was relieved that they didn’t show me how much I have spent in that time) and this was the first time I saw this model of Felix and I had to have him. I paid fairly dearly as a result, but had a very deep affection for his real weirdness. I believe he is a Chad Valley made toy – as is my recent Christmas gift from Kim featured in Felix as Cat written several months back. Years after purchasing him, when they had become a bit more ubiquitous on eBay, I was at a grand antique toy market in Atlantic City and saw someone selling an entire basket full of them! The El Dorado of a certain kind of Felix. She said that they were prizes at fairs in Britain. I have never really agreed with that, I believe the quality is too high and they were only purchased as toys, but more on that another time.

When I was summoned to discuss the nature of the repair, I brought Kim with me, figuring that he would appreciate the unusual nature of the enterprise. The elderly doll doc went through his plan for a meticulous rebuilding of the armature. The fee would be somewhat astronomical. I can’t remember what I suggested he might do that would be more simple – I suspect I pointed out that the arms no longer needed to move, as we don’t actually play with him much, and instead just re-attached. The toy doc looked at me and intoned, “No! I must do what is right for the doll!” Of course, in the end, I meekly agreed and Felix was restored to his original glory there. I paid more for the repair than I had for Felix, but of course it was worth it to have him back – the integrity of his moving pieces intact.

Looking back on it, I feel that the fee included the price of admission to one of those dying New York curiousities, ultimately a victim to the toy doc’s advanced age and ever-rising rents. Sadly it was gone a few years after that, a nail salon in it’s place.

Felix from the side – note his hump back!