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Posing Together Today

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I spent yesterday starting a big end of summer clean up of the apartment which sorely needs it. Kim pitched in and we had a reasonable day one cleaning, more to come today. I’d say I cleared about a third of what I need to off my desk, and in the process coughed up these two photos which are an interesting segue from yesterday’s post (it can be found here for those who missed it) and these make me wonder about my attraction to a similar composition of sorts. I know I purchased them online, however I do not remember who I bought them from so apologies to one of my sellers out there.

Unlike yesterday’s tintype, these are mounted cabinet cards and while yesterday’s ladies were seated in front of a faux landscape, today’s women are obviously really outside in front of this lovely house with a deep porch and that great striped awning. And of course, they are very much together in these photos unlike our ladies who turned away from each other yesterday.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

The house is really the star here for me. The shadows from the trees make it clear that it is a shady, cool spot and the enormous overgrown boxes of ivy are so welcoming. The textures and patterns are amazing in this photo. There’s the horizontal siding on the house, the stripes in the awning, that jolly lattice work under the porch and an especially interesting design on the railing, all helping to make this more interesting. Taking that thought a bit further if you look at the top of the house the siding switches to a decorative wavy design (my neighbors in New Jersey have some mermaid style bits at the top of their house I love) and the closed shutters create something more interest for the eye too. Finally a careful look also reveals that the top of each of the porch columns has a decorative design.

The front door is an old fashioned (to us) double door – two glass paneled doors which I guess you could slip into half or open fully. Light is hitting the door and the window to the (our) left of it and shining brightly. The lawn around the women is grassy but littered with some leaves and those are what our eye really sees. There is a blurb of light and chemicals perhaps at the bottom of the phot which in no way takes away from it. (It is also where the photo starts to go out of focus as the lens of the day may have.) The photo is slightly underdeveloped in the printing and there is something else about the chemicals which has left tiny dots on the surface in places.

Finally, the two women are seated facing each other, one in a wooden rocking chair and the other in what appears to be a straight back chair – I assume these were likely taken from where they resided the porch; a careful look shows these chairs have twisty wicker backs. The woman on (our) right is somewhat younger and they wear their hair gathered in the same top knot. Their dark skirts and white blouses are also virtually identical. The older woman has a small purse in her lap.

Pam’s Pictorama.com Collection.

Moving to the other photo, we’re on the steps of the house. We’re closer to the front of the house and are on the stairs. The woman in the middle is the same older woman from the other picture but now she has these two different women in white on either side of her and, although it took a bit for me to see him, a man seated in a chair behind them – sort of there and not there at the same time.

The plants that I took for ivy at a distance actually appear to be enormous geraniums – or maybe geraniums and ivy or another trailing vine in these planters. (I too have geraniums – much smaller – on either side of my door in New Jersey.) The steps are old and sort of just this side of in need of repair. The striped awning in both photos is a bit askew upwards. The second photo is evidence that it rolled up unevenly rather than maybe blowing in a breeze.

The people in this photo are very centered although the railings to the house are a bit off the middle. The woman on the right seems to be a bit older. She holds a metal bucket with a top. I don’t know why but I think of it as the sort of thing you would have gathered berries in. The other woman, younger than both of the others by at least a little, is holding something I cannot identify – it is long and perhaps is metal. She holds it in one hand and something else in the other. If I make a wild guess I would say it is chimes of some sort?

The woman in the middle is the woman from the first photo. A very careful look reveals that she now has a man’s flat cap rakishly placed on her head. Her feet which we now see are in the leather boot-shoes of the day. Behind them is the man I mentioned, older, beard and mustache, seated. He wears a deep hat which sits to the side on his head. Close inspection shows this to be a sort of fun set up although no one is cracking a smile here.

These photos are faded and I imagine they spent time up or out somewhere over a long period of time. The gray cardboard they are glued onto has faded as well. There are no notes on the back about who this family is or when they were taken. When that happens I always imagine that the people were so central to the lives of those who had the photos that they couldn’t imagine not knowing who they are.

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Happy holiday weekend to you all! Next week, on Thursday, Kim and I depart for four days in Bethesda. He has a bunch of book signings and the SPX con, but also he will give a talk at the Library of Congress on Friday afternoon. (Let me know if you are in the area and would like information!) I hope to still log in for some sort of blog post but we’ll see what I can manage!

Tinned

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: A relatively small portion of my collection is devoted to tintypes, and out of those most are ancient pictures from fairs or seaside resorts of people posing with Felix the Cat or occasionally an off-model Mickey Mouse. I don’t seem to be compelled very often to acquire one like this, that just had an odd appeal and I snatched it up.

This picture comes via Instagram and my friend Mike Zohn over at @obscuraantiques. He has taken to doing a show-and-tell of recent buys for sale online. This has resulted in several purchases for me, most recently this advertising piece shown below which I purchased for Kim’s birthday. The post for it can be found here. (I actually spied the same piece in the antique annex in Red Bank a few weeks ago although in worse shape.)

Deitch Studio Collection.

I have written before about a rather beloved junk and antiques store Mike had on the lower eastside where I bought many photos, a display cabinet and many other treats. (A few of those posts can be found here and here.) Mike has been selling at a flea market in the city here over the summer but sadly we were in Jersey and missed him. I hope to eventually catch up with him here.

He was selling several tintypes and had divided them into a group with men and a group with women. This one caught my eye immediately. Hard to tell here but it is small, what would have been called a sixth-plate or about 2.5″x3.5″ image.

These two women are seated in front of a painted set of a landscape and as if they are seated outside in a fancy garden or on a veranda of sorts. I feel like we see the edges of the set, definitely at the bottom and perhaps at the top, which confirms that this is just a fictional background, perhaps even an indoor one.

Of course, it is the way they are decidedly turned away from each other, seeming to refuse to look at each other. As Kim said, you could easily write a story about it. Both are in summer dresses of the day and period. One is in white with a dark belt, with a dark parasol (a prop or hers?) leaning against her leg. She is looking downward. Her dark hat is hard to see clearly, and she leans on her arm with her other hand folded in her lap while she looks directly at the camera.

The other woman is in a wonderful summer-plaid dress with a white bib, also a dark belt and a very perky straw hat which sports something I thought was a feather but now I think is more of a flower or leaf. She is leaning on something which I thought might be the end of the bench they are sitting on, but I have decided it is something more in her lap. Both are wearing pretty bracelets which are hard to see without magnification. It isn’t a given but they could be sisters.

It is the space between them, the dark plant and the faux balustrade it is perched on that define the dark space divide created between them. Trees and clouds are in the painted distance which gives the image a sense of depth. At first I thought they were pointedly alienated from each other but spending time looking at it I think they are perhaps bored and not happy with being there and have placed themselves thus and are just sort of staring off rather than smiling for the camera. Nonetheless, the effect is as if they are somehow two halves of a whole, split down the middle.

Hanging on the Moon

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: although this is clearly a photo collage of sorts somehow on the fence about calling it a photo post today; nor is it a cat card. However, it is one of many made to entice people to the Catskills on holiday with current revelers sending word home on them. (With their funny cat images my collection of them is burgeoning. Recent posts with Catskill cat cards can be found here and here.) This is a nod to those folks who are commencing their holiday and vacation travel on this July 4 weekend. Let the summer begin!

This card was both written on and addressed but not stamped, so unclear if and how it got to its destination. At the bottom is says, Dear Ethel how is this. Iva Ott November 4, 1907. It is addressed, in a more adult hand, to Miss Ethel Sanford Kelly Coss Del Co, N.Y.

It’s a nifty card and kudos to the person who put it together. The bottom is a landscape photo of the mountains the area is known for, dotted with houses and farms. A space of white has been left and then the sky. The couple are originally from a photo although how the sky and the moon were actually made is lost to me. There is a sort of deckle edge at the bottom of this portion like it was actually carefully torn by hand for the effect wanted.

Appropriate for today! An Uncle Sam puzzle card by Huld I found online.

The couple sit close to each other, hanging off the moon, with a very long spyglass, evidently peering down at the people and places below. It is held by the woman while the man is pointing to something (or someone) specific in the landscape below. Printed at the bottom it says, Viewing Fleischmann’s, Catskill Mountains, N.Y. They seem quite jolly and content with their perch in a cat bird seat, high above the valley.

A close examination of the surface shows sort of half tone dots which means the images came from something already printed. This really is a collage of probably three images.

One section of a Puzzle card also found online.

Along one side there is the publisher’s copyright. It says No. 4003. Copyrighted 1906 by Franz Huld, Publisher, New York. An interesting article on Huld that the internet spit out can be found here. (Someone named George Miller is the author and he has done some extensive research in order to write it.) Some highlights from the article are as follow below.

His first business address appears at 170 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in a 1900-1901 era directory and is among the first listings for postcard publishing. The author of the article describes his wares as occasionally ugly, without gilt trim or compelling pictures of children or animals. However, he was creative (as evidenced by this card) and according to the article, primarily Huld published commemorative issues, views, comics (especially “write- aways”), collector’s issues, and novelties. That makes a lot of sense skill and sensibility-wise when we consider the construction of this particular card.

The only feline postcard I found among his images.

Huld’s New York listing remains only until 1910 with a filing for bankruptcy in 1914. It is believed that Huld died in October of 1928 at age 67. The man liked a good novelty card (including some puzzle ones that were mailed in an envelope), and I recommend the article above for more information and some additional images. Clearly he was an early player in the business of postcards and a somewhat formative one.

With our temperatures still hovering around 90 after days over 100 here in New York City, we do not have any travel on our agenda here at Deitch Studio. We will be staying here in the city with air conditioning (we hope), cats and ice cream to keep us company on the country’s 250th birthday weekend.

You Oughta Be in Pictures

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: I now realize that I did a sort of lousy job taking pictures of these photos when I came across them while unpacking things at my mother’s a few month’s back and I apologize for that. These photos are large, at least 8″x10″, and both are matted the same and set in blond wooden frames. (I cropped them because my photos of them were uneven and a bit cockeyed – they are in reality more of a matched set.) These pictures are of me and my sister as tiny tots – apologies to my brother as he wasn’t born for another six or so years. I am the younger of the two, in the playpen, and my sister Loren is sitting on some steps, looking a bit like one of the Little Rascals in her slightly grubby looking garb.

Without knowing it for a fact, I assume that these were taken by my father. Pictorama readers know that dad, Elliott Butler, was a cameraman for ABC news for his entire career. Ironically this meant that there weren’t that many photos he took of us as kids because he was never content with the simple snapshot. Photo taking with dad involved a panoply of light meters and carefully considered compositions, and my memories of it are of the somewhat tedious variety of standing around as a subject – especially frustrating as a child, but the family tradition continued into adolescence.

The end result was that he didn’t bother with all the truck and nonsense that often and, like the shoemaker’s kids who go shoeless, we do not have all that many photos of us as small children. Despite all of that, somehow he captured us here pretty much in our native state of kid-ness.

This pair of photographs hung in my parent’s bedroom as long as I can remember. (Another set were in my grandmother’s living room and I was reminded of that recently. It popped a small bubble of memory in my mind, but I can’t say I really remember it.) These hung over a bureau – above a television at one time as I remember, but on either side of an antique mirror in more recent memory. (Many years ago I was flying home from Russia when my photo, which had already hung in the spot for decades, fell off the wall. My mother, who barely suppresses a superstitious streak, told me she was a nervous wreck until she heard I was safely on the ground. Luckily me and the pilot of my plane were ignorant of this incident.)

While retrieving these from a leaky garage before they could be ruined, I piled up a few others and perhaps we’ll get future posts on those. Most memorable are the photos of my mother and her brother John, also large, framed professional photos taken when they were in high school. These have the skillful hand coloring of the period. Ironically those I remember distinctly from my grandmother’s living room, hanging on silver-gray wallpaper with a design of green vines. I used to stare at them in fascination and try to mentally equate them with the adults I knew at the time.

I think Kim and I agree that I do not make a case for an extremely attractive child here. As he put it kindly this morning, I grew into my looks. On the other hand, Loren looks very charming here with her wild curls. Knowing my sister and her restless energy, it must have been quite a coup to get her to sit still as long as it would have taken to achieve this photo.

Anyway, I rescued these, cleaned them up a bit and set them up in the room I stay in at my mother’s house. As it would happen, they sit on an old bureau of my father’s, on either side of a television and I will be glad to see them each time I visit.

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ID – #O92

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Over our vacation this week a visit to the Met revealed something I had never seen before – a collection of early photo ID pins. Reminiscent of mug shots these identification tags seemed largely to have been from the industrial world of the 1930’s and 40’s, maybe into the 50’s. (I learned that earlier there had been just metal pins with numbers.)

From companies we still know today, such as Proctor and Gamble and Frigidare, to the rather snappy but little known Textile Machine Works, each of these is interesting individually, but they create a wonderful overall effect when you see a couple of dozen displayed as the Met has currently put together.

Unlike the rather uninteresting identification folks like me carry daily today, these photos in their tin frames are impressive in their weightiness. Sadly, I am not sure anyone will ever find my Jazz at Lincoln Center identification worth recovering and saving, nor will they have the chance as today’s ID cards are of course chock full of electronic information and are generally required to be returned upon leaving employment.

Frigidaire

From the exhibit at the Met, one of many badges in a display case.

 

Although not especially attractive aesthetically, my Met ID was a wonderful thing which not only open employee passageways and activated elevators, but it also gained me free admission to all of the museums in New York and many elsewhere. The photo was decidedly mug shot-esque, but the person taking the photos was usually kind about it and would take a few and let you pick. Over the 30 years I was there I learned a few things about getting the best photo, but lousy at best really. (They were also nice enough to produce photos needed for passports and travel visas.) I do miss that ID and the empowerment it accorded.

My current ID gains me access to our offices and the bathroom in the hall, as well as opening the doors to our backstage area in the hall. In addition it occasionally gains me access to backstage at other venues when the orchestra is playing. The photo, such as it is, is sort of illegible really.

Jazz ID.JPG

These tin badges, worthy of any child playing sheriff I would think, have heft. It is easy to see why they all still exist as one can easily imagine people keeping them after years of service to a company. You can just imagine a retirement after many years, the badge put away and then saved again and again by subsequent generations.

After our morning at the Met Kim and I wandered downtown, stopping first at Blick for art supplies, then lunch and my favorite clothing store, DL Cerney – maker of vintage inspired cloths for both men and women utilizing vintage or vintage inspired fabrics, buttons and designs. (Our day was a well worn path known to Pictorama readers!)

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DL Cerney on 9th Street in the East Village

 

Our afternoon ended with a stop in at Obscura Antiques and Oddities in the East Village. which I wrote about before in my birthday post. There we had the surprise please to meet up with Mike Zohn, one of the owners. In all my visits, I do not think I have every been there when Mike was there, although I think it was he I met at an opening of Kim’s a few years back. I believe that was when I first heard about the store which I like to wander into a few times a year. I asked him to keep me in mind when he runs across early Felix items.

Oddities

Being sold at Oddities and Obscura Antiques, sorry we don’t have room for this somewhat creepy nodder.

 

Meanwhile, to my amazement he was selling a small clutch of photo identification badges in a cabinet near the front of the store, just like the ones we had seen earlier in the day. I chose the one below as the nicest. I suspect that these may become a sub-genre in my photo collecting over time.

 

 

A quick look tells me that the LaPointe factory in Hudson, MA made broaching machines. Now, I have to say, that even as I look at the definition of a broaching machine (Wikipedia’s can be found here in case you are curious) I do not really comprehend what it does. I guess I would say I understand it to be a type of bit that makes grooves and other irregular cuts.

Unlike today’s identifications which, while they have numbers generally require a name as well, this one identifies 092 only that way. Many seem to have had a similar height chart behind the employee as well. I sort of wonder – how useful it was to know that 092 was 5’6″ and a half? While this pin is wonderful in all it’s substantialness, I have to admit my flimsy piece of plastic is easier to hang around my neck daily – and thinking about the holes this must have put in the shirts and jackets of 092. Although perhaps he wore it on a uniform and therefore did not make his wife nuts.

My maternal grandfather worked in a Bendix factory in New Jersey and I am searching for a nice example of what his ID might have looked like. (My grandmother was not a saver of such things.) Hopefully a future post on that.