Saturday, January 30, 2010

Dames & Dogs #11

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Posts Of Halloween Past


I've been busy this Halloween; here's a round-up of the Halloween posts I made this year:

1. Vintage Halloween party recipes, from this issue of The Royal Neighbor.

2. Halloween's a blast! Back when you could shoot children who annoyed you, anyway.

3. My review of the retro skeleton game based on Dark Shadows' vampire, Barnabas Collins.

4. My review of a gravedigger's memoirs.

5. Did you see the antique vampire killing kits up for auction?

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Friday, July 24, 2009

Last Dance With Mary Jane


Die-cut candy advertising piece from the early 1900's.

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Friday, June 5, 2009

17 "Don'ts" For Men (1890's Style)

From Old Stuff, May/June, 1975, a publication which proudly boasted "All paper in this copy of OLD STUFF is 100% recycled." Something which was almost equally true of the content printed on the paper, for all the stuff is indeed old articles etc. from antique publications -- save for the obligatory letters to the editor (called "Correspondence") and classified ad section (called "Collectors Market").

Today's selection from Old Stuff was previously published in an untitled 1899 newspaper. It's advice from an unnamed male "men's fashion consultant" who was concerned with customers "preserving the finer points of sartorial elegance."

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Baby Got Back-Fat

A back cover illustration from The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, published by Elbert Hubbard, titled (or captioned) "Removing his Pocket-book."



I'm too amused & enthralled to really research this one, kids... Besides, isn't it time you told me something?

The illustration dates to 1909; Vol. 30, December, No. 1, of The Philistine.

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Such A Hoot To Be A Socialite In Nineteen-Ought-Two

The New York Times, August 31, 1902, reports society affairs -- including society women dressing up as flowers and Mr. Goodrich portraying a Chinaman on a package of tea.



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Friday, February 6, 2009

Revenge On The Clowns

Spotted in a local antique shop, an old tin or metal clown toy with a metal rod through his nose, holding his hat 'up'.

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Sewing Is Misogynistic

Don't touch it, stick a Pin in it

So reads this antique postcard (postmarked 1908) -- the kicker is that the woman's ample bosom (and sleeve) are padded fabric, becoming pin cushions.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009

"Mr. Frog led the angry beaver around to the front of his shop..."

So begins "Everyone Is Happy", from The Tale Of Ferdinand Frog.


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Monday, January 12, 2009

Ferdinand Frog & Friends

The decorated endpages of The Tale Of Ferdinand Frog, Sleepy-Time Tales, by Arthur Scott Bailey, illustrations by Diane Petersen; Grosset & Dunlap, copy; 1918. As you can see, some child has colored in the characters a bit.



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Magic Trick Fan



An ad in an 1890 issue of Peterson's Magazine.

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

Hires Root Beer Package, 1890

Make five gallons of beer for just a quarter -- and it's medicinal!



Ad in the December, 1890 issue of Peterson's Magazine.

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

"The Potato Babies, And How They Grew"

A story of grandma entertaining the kids with people and animals made from potatoes...





From The Maple Leaf Book Of Stories.

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Monday, August 4, 2008

Modern Woman Monday: Consumption Information Gives Me The Vapors

From pages 96 & 97 in Pathfinder Physiology No. 3, Hygienic Physiology, by Joel Dorman Steele, PhD., 1888.


First an illustration of the "deformity" of tight lacing of corsets (which I've already disputed -- NWS), then this gem on "consumption":
Consumption is a disease which destroys the substance of the lungs. Like other lung difficulties, it is caused by a want of pure air, a liberal supply of which is the best treatment that can be prescribed for it.*

...* If I were seriously ill of consumption, I would live outdoors day and night, except in rainy weather or midwinter; then I would sleep in an unplastered log house. Physic has no nutriment, gaspings for air can not cure you, monkey capers in a gymnasium can not cure you, stimulants can not cure you. What consumptives want is pure air, not physic, plenty of meat and plenty of bread, -- Dr. Marshall Hall.
I've always heard consumption and the vapers were catch-alls for undiagnosed illnesses, like cancer, and/or diseases in the minds of fragile women. But in case I am wrong, anyone tried monkey capers for their consumption?

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

1910 End of World Souvenir


Found at Ruby Lane, the Seller Says:
This is a very rare French postcard marking the mania over the approaching of Halley's Comet. Published in Germany (FM Cologne noted on back), the text is all in French and the card is described on the back as "the official souvenir card of the end of the world, the 19th of May, 1910." Quite strange, but the sender Lily looks like she followed her name with the word "aeroplane" and a long curving line .... imitating the tail of Halley's Comet. In the Zeppellin, the words are written "On s'en f..... pas mal!!" That's a little risque for Edwadian times....the f.... word stands for fessess or buttocks. The moon with the outstretched arms is saying, best I can understand, "It will be good to come here." "Good by and thanks" a man hanging onto an umbrella says. "Expedition to the moon: grand speed, 200 francs per blow (from the canon)." Le dernier salut" is French for "the last goodbye or salute."

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Put That In Your Pipe & Smoke It

Many innuendos for this antique clay pipe featuring the figural form of a lady with her end-o on the potty.




It's sold, but I'd love to talk the buyer.

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

Because I Like Storks, And You Like Camera Stuff



An 1887 motion study photograph by Eadweard Muybridge, who apparently used this 1884 "Folmer and Schwing division, Eastman Kodak Co." camera.

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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Sotheby's (To) Auction Hoax

Sotheby's is to auction off this famous hoax photo on July 17th, in London:

"Elsie was playing with the gnome and beckoning it to come on to her knee. The gnome leapt up just as Frances, who had the camera, snapped the shutter. He is described as wearing black tights, a reddish jersey and a pointed bright red cap. Elsie said there was no perceptible weight, though when on the bare hand the feeling is like a 'little breath'. The wings were more moth-like than the fairies and of a soft neutral tint. Elsie explained that what seem to be markings on his wings are simply his pipes, which he was swinging in his grotesque little left hand." (Edward Gardner, Fairies: The Cottingley Photographs and Their Sequel, 1945)

This is one of five "Cottingley Fairy" photographs taken by Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths which together comprise, the most famous hoax of its kind every perpetrated in the history of photography, and one which deceived a number of eminent public figures, most infamously, the writer and creator of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.




From the catalog note:

From July 1917 onwards, in the small village of Cottingley, near Bingley in Yorkshire, the fifteen-year old Elsie Wright and her ten-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths produced a series of photographs (some taken as late as August 1920) showing fairies and gnomes in rural settings, mostly in company with one or other of the girls themselbves. Originally conceived as a joke, the group came to be taken seriously through a series of accidents three years later. The theosophist Edward L. Gardner, who was interested in the paranormal, came to hear of them, as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who subsequently wrote extensively about them in Strand Magazine (December 1920 and March 1921) and in his full-length book The Coming of the Fairies (1922: see Sotheby's sale 15/16 July 1998, lot 448, for a copy inscribed by Doyle to Frances Griffiths). Despite attracting ridicule from sceptics in the huge publicity which ensued, Doyle, Gardner and others involved believed implicitly in the genuineness of the photographs, which they believed bore witness to protoplasmic thought forms emanating from the girls psychic auras. Doyle's credulity and reputation ensured that the story--which has been the subject of numerous articles, books, television programmes, and films, including Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997)--remained well known from 1920 onwards.

The mystery was not properly solved, nor the hoax fully explained from a technical point of view, until an extensive investigation by Geoffrey Crawley was published between December 1982 and April 1983 in The British Journal of Photography. This finally prompted public confessions from the unrepentant perpetrators themselves, who explained how they had produced coloured cut-out drawings which were mounted with the help of hatpins, and then used super-imposition techniques. However, Frances Griffiths maintained until the end of her life in 1986 that one of the photographs was not produced by trickery, but showed genuine fairies.

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Thursday, June 12, 2008

The Microbe: A Contagious Rag


Via University of Colorado Digital Sheet Music Collection.

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Monday, May 12, 2008

Modern Woman Monday: Get Myself A Girl Like You

An old promotional invitation for the After Easter Ball, arranged by the White Lily Socials, at the Bahn Frei Turn Hall, Sat. Eve., April 13, 1912.


Printed on the back, is the following cheeky and charming song:

I've Got to Go and Get Myself a Girl Like You
Little Miss Muffet sat down on a tuffet, whatever a tuffet may be,
When young Sammy Snyder sat down right beside her and spoke unto her soothingly;
Be quite alarmless, for I am quite harmless,
But I saw you were human like me,
So I thought I might sit and look at you a bit,
And this is the answer, said he,
The more of you I see
The more my heart tells me:
REFRAIN:

I've got to go and get myself a girl like you,
That's some job to do,
For they come feew, but believe me,
If I can't find one just like you,
I don't care who you belong to,
I'll come right back again,
Right straight back again and steal you.

Little Miss Muffet stood up on her tuffet, and said, Vas is los mit your head,
You're feverish, mercy, run right home to nursie and tell her to put you to bed;
Where can you find sir, a girl of my kind, sir,
If your optics could "op" you would see,
That while boys will be boys and while girls will be girls,
There is only one me, and that's me.
Said he, I guess that's so
But still I guess I'll go.

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Future Hauntings

When at the Trash or Treasure event for CQ, students from Studio One guilted me into an interview which has now been posted.

In it you get to see more of me than I'd like. Not only do I discuss that ugly little sad folk art piece and my boudoir chair, but I threaten my children -- publicly:
"I keep telling my kids if they get rid of my stuff when I die, I will haunt them. So they are not allowed to get rid of it."
So I guess if I haunt them, I'd legally be without a leg to stand on. And, if the chair is one of the items they get rid of, I won't even be able to sit on that. But I don't suppose either of those things matter to ghosts.

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Friday, October 26, 2007

What's This?

What's this? A blogger, unsure of what this heirloom's purpose was, turned to the wisdom of the masses and posted it in his blog.

People posted their suggestions, figuring something sewing-related, something craft- or carpentry-related, and all sorts of imaginitive and strange things, somwhat like a committee of the blind examining an elephant. What to know what it is? Eventually, the truth came out.

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