Sugar and spice… but what are Valentines made of?

pinterest screen shot

The new John Johnson Pinterest site aims to answer this question by finding examples of each element of valentine manufacture. We draw on valentines not only from the John Johnson and Harding collections at the Bodleian,  but also from Nancy Rosin and the National Valentine Collectors Association (USA), with whom we are delighted to collaborate again this year, from the Museum of London (whose 1871 valentines are online)  and from Michael Russo.  This is only the beginning. We hope that collectors and institutions will draw our attention to other elements to be found in valentines and allow us to pin examples of these, so that we can build up these Pinterest folders into a scholarly resource for anyone interested in valentines.  Please send contributions to jjcoll@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

The manufacture of elaborate valentines in the Victorian era fascinated Charles Dickens and continues to intrigue us today.  These were true confections, made by hand: imaginative, but repetitive. While the printing and embossing was done by men, each of the  female workers (referred to as ‘nymphs’ by Dickens) added a precise piece to the ensemble: a colour from a watercolour pot, a scrap, a paper or fabric flower, a tinsel ornament, a shell, a glass bead, gauze, lace, netting….  The results, protected in boxes, were luxurious love tokens, far from the cruelty of  crude contemporary ‘comic’ valentines.

makingvalentinessmall

Dickens’ article published on Febrary 20 1864 as Cupid’s Manufactory (All the Year Round, volume XI, pp 36-40) is now online through the wonderful Dickens Journals Online project (University of Buckingham).  Flamboyant in style, the article describes in meticulous detail the process of  making valentines at the (unnamed) manufactory of Joseph Mansell and lists the componenents he saw being applied to the embossed lace paper which is the basis of most elaborate valentines.

This page from the Illustrated London News of February 14 1874 shows the whole process, very much as described by Dickens ten years earlier, but at the premises of George Meek and the workshop of Eugene Rimmel.

For more information about valentines in the context of the John Johnson Collection, see the two posts on this blog (February 2012, February 2013) and the online pages from The season for love (exhibition 2010). For the wider context, see the valentine entries from The John Johnson Collection’s Ephemera Resources blog.

Work experience in the John Johnson Collection: a guest post by Amy Shaw

Amy did work experience in the John Johnson Collection in October 2012. She writes:

In October I was fortunate enough to gain work experience looking at the John Johnson collection. This was a really valuable experience which helped me to understand the complexities of cataloguing printed ephemera and allowed me to see some of the collection. I was struck not only by the volume of ephemera but additionally by the range of the collection.

One of the aspects which I found particularly interesting was the opportunity I was given to look at some book jackets from before 1960 as I had studied this period in History and was therefore informed about the contextual background to what I was viewing.

Additionally I was given the chance to explore some of the online facilities offered by the collection which allowed me to see how this collection is made accessible to the public. These facilities enable people to look in detail at an item or to search an individual and see if/where they are mentioned within the collection. These online facilities were brilliant as they were a quick way of viewing the range of the collection and enabling individuals to focus on a single item in detail, and indeed, view the collection as a whole.

I was also able to see how ephemera are used in exhibitions and to look round the Dickens exhibition which was recently displayed at the Bodleian library. This was a really interesting exhibition which enabled me to witness the thought and planning which goes into displaying exhibitions and how ephemera is carefully chosen and displayed to the public.

In October the collection was in the process of acquiring and cataloguing a new donation of games.  It was really interesting to see games from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century in order to evaluate how entertainment has developed over the years. It also enabled me to view the complicated cataloguing process which each item has to undergo.

In summary, my time at Oxford was invaluable; it has enabled me to focus on how History is used in the modern world and allowed me to look at the John Johnson collection which was fascinating. I am really thankful to Julie Anne Lambert for allowing me to visit the collection and gain an insight into her line of work. The collection itself was really interesting and thought provoking with regard to how our world has changed particularly with regard to entertainment.

New website for the John Johnson Collection

The John Johnson Collection has a new website, with revised content. The Bodleian’s new style web pages have prompted us to look afresh at our site and make changes. We would value comments on its usablity, especially in relation to finding information:  jjcoll@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Screen shot of new John Johnson Collection website
The new John Johnson Collection website

‘The poor man’s encyclopaedia’: An exploration of the depiction of fine art on cigarette cards. A guest post by Hannah Wills

In the introduction to The (New) World Tobacco Issues (Cartophilic Society of Great Britain, 2000) Gordon Howsden refers to the common description of cigarette cards as ‘The poor man’s encyclopaedia.’ From birds of paradise, to the monarchs of England, to fine art – the subjects depicted on some cigarette cards indeed seem to explore themes that when collected present a repository of knowledge about both the natural world and the culture and history of man. In particular, I have been interested in the depiction of fine art subjects on cigarette cards; the use of images produced by the great masters seems to form an interesting tension with the fact that artists who produce the images for cigarette cards are largely anonymous.

Cigarette Cards: The vigil by John Pettie and Ulysees deriding Polyphemus by JW Turner
The vigil by John Pettie. and Ulysees deriding Polyphemus by JW Turner. Badminton: Spinet series 1, no. 25 and 26. Lillington 22

What kind of art is it possible to find in a fine art series of cigarette cards? Subjects range from classicism, such as the works of Ingres and David, to Dutch genre scenes, including those of Pieter de Hooch, and even works produced by English painters, such as Turner.  Upon examination of such cards, what is perhaps most notable is the sometimes crude transposition of the images onto card or silk. Whilst it is clear that this is most likely due to the realities and limitations of available printing methods (naturally it is impossible to depict in miniature form an image that is faithful to the original in both colour and form) this might suggest something interesting about the function of such cards in a collection. Arguably, the works depicted all belong to the Western canon; the collector is reminded of the great masters and their works by the crude miniature copies that sit in their collections, standing as encyclopaedic metaphors for the works themselves.

Verso of cigarette card: Joanna of Aragon (Raphael)
Verso of Joanna of Aragon
Cigarette Card: f Aragon by Raphael. Badminton: Spinet series 2, no. 38
Joanna of Aragon by Raphael. Badminton: Spinet series 2, no. 38. Lillington 22

It is interesting to consider the purpose of collecting symbols of works of art, as represented by a fine art series. Fine art has long been associated with moral improvement; Winckelmann, a German art historian of the 18th century, often said to be the father of the history of art as a discipline, was among the first to praise the moral edification to be offered by the consideration of classical art. Such a view has been promulgated and strengthened up until the modern day; the notion of art as ‘good for the soul’ is arguably a key factor behind the rationale of the art museum. Perhaps cigarette cards depicting fine art can be located within such a discourse. In accumulating such cards, the collector is not only acquainting himself with the Western canon, but also furnishing himself with a kind of culture and civilisation. Such an assertion chimes with the fact that classical and Renaissance subjects feature fairly prominently within such series; tied to notions of the Academy, classical history painting, which sits at the apex of the hierarchy of genres, was often thought to provide the greatest moral improvement for the viewer.

Returning to the notion of the ‘poor man’s encyclopaedia’, it might be suggested that in the production of such series of cards, cigarette companies sought to provide individuals who may not have acquainted themselves with culture on a regular and conscious basis, with some form of cultural contact. Individuals would have collected these images of old masters alongside their collections of popular culture, seen in film star series, the natural world, and the history of England. Within such a spectrum, fine art forms one facet to a multi-dimensional encyclopaedia, acquainting individuals with a myriad of fields perceived as important to notions Western knowledge and culture. Cigarette card collections might indeed be described as encyclopaedias.

Contextualizing political satire using the Gallant-ee Show: a guest post by Ian Matzen

Image
Plate associated with article: The Gallant-ee show. from The Magic Lantern, vol. 1, no. 1. November 1, 1822. JJColl: Cinema 1 (9b)

“The Gallant-ee Show”, an article from the periodical The Magic Lantern (Vol. 1, no. 1), and its accompanying aquatint were published in 1822. Together, they illustrate a private magic lantern performance in an upper-class drawing-room, operated by showmen (a projectionist and organ-grinder). In the illustration, the organ grinder stoops below the projected image while the projectionist appears to be describing the image, in keeping with standard magic-lantern show practice. The family is gathered behind the performers, observing the scene of a Chinese emperor and his court. The supplemental article begins by describing the dysfunctional family dynamic and then segues to the father’s capitulation to his family’s entreaty to hire the showmen, who are touting their services outside their home. The article then elaborately recounts the personalities shown in the projection. The characters include the emperor and his harem, statesmen and clergy. In front of the emperor sits a court fool; “he has a soup ladle in his hand, and a chain of sausages round his neck, he is a good-humoured, harmless animal”. Who are these strange characters and how might they be related to the intended consumers of this ephemera?

It immediately struck me as unlikely that the projected image depicted actual Chinese personages. For one, at the time of this publication, little was known about Chinese civilization. Since Lord Macartney’s failed embassy to China in 1793 (Cranmer-Byng, 1957), China remained closed until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Furthermore, the image and description appear to resemble an English scene more closely than a Chinese one. For example, Qua-li Kurt-hees, the court fool, is wearing Western-looking garments and using a European tool (ladle). Finally, the ‘Chinese’ names associated with characters sounded distinctly English (i.e. Lie-ver-puhl). I soon realised that the names were probably pseudonyms for English statesmen, altered to sound Chinese. Hence, the item is unlikely a caricature of a Chinese court, but rather a satire of 1822 English politics. I have quoted the character names below with their accompanying descriptions. I derived the politician names in square brackets. All but Vansittart were corroborated by the British Museum catalogue entry, which lists the politicians by name (“The Magic Lantern”, n.d.). My interest piqued, I searched for further information about this entertainment.

Dating back to the travelling peep shows of fifteenth-century Europe, raree shows or gallant-ee shows commonly satirised political figures. The online catalogues of the British Museum and the John Johnson Collection online catalogue returned a handful of nineteenth-century satirical prints labelled with these keywords (as in the example below).

John Johnson Collection: Political General folder 1 (49)

In the article, The Magic Lantern seems to have appropriated this type of entertainment to poke fun at the society and politics of its time. According to The Senate House Library in London (“Book of the Month, December 2005, n.d.) , “the [Magic Lantern] journal highlights aspects of society in a satirical fashion.”

The John Johnson Collection copy of The Magic Lantern is rare for several reasons. First, the article and the aquatint (which is hand-coloured) are co-located in our collection, just as they would have been when first published; the tri-fold engraving would have originally been bound in with the article. The British Museum and the Library of Congress each have a copy of the image but lack the accompanying article (“The Magic Lantern”, n.d.; “The Magic Lantern: About This Item”, n.d.). The copies located at these repositories, in contrast, are orphaned from the periodical and therefore lack the original explanation. The print is remarkable for a second reason: the print illustrates three aspects of a lantern show seldom depicted concurrently, namely the projection, the showmen and the audience. This last aspect is important in that it contextualizes the projected slide as designed for performance in an upper middle-class household. One can argue that the performance was designed for private home consumption; the lantern requires a small, enclosed space, while the entertainment’s exhibition relies on serendipity. An inn, for instance, could scarcely accommodate an ad hoc spectacle such as this. Although further evidence is needed, one can surmise that the satire was probably intended for families in the privacy of their home.

This is not just any family, however, but a comically dysfunctional one. As the accompanying text makes clear, this family spends their time tediously bickering over finances.  The father, a penny-pincher, is also anti-Semitic: upon hearing the showman crying his ware outside, he describes his accent as ‘israelitish’, and only after hiding his silver and loose articles does he invite them in. The British Museum has suggested that the head of the household is John Bull, a personification of the United Kingdom (“The Magic Lantern”, n.d.). It would seem that the article’s author is mocking a part of the English society.

This material contains a wealth of content worth exploring. The history and subscribers of The Magic Lantern deserve further study. Certainly an investigation into the publication would reveal clues about the audience the author wished to reach with the satire. Additionally, research into the current events prior to this publication would undoubtedly further contextualise this discussion. Similar illustrations remain undiscovered online and in repositories such as the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera. A cursory search for gallant-ee and raree shows on the Visual Arts Data Service and Google returned several intriguing results.

print showing raree show and sellers of hot muffins, sweet lavender and beau pots
Raree show etc [William Darton]
John Johnson Collection: Trades and Professions 2 (146)
However, the copies I found, while associated with the magic lantern keyword, were not linked with gallant-ee show nor raree show.

This raises interesting questions concerning linking natural language with controlled vocabulary, something of a ‘hot topic’ in information science. A case can be made for an information retrieval system (IRS) to semantically link terms by concept.  For example, entering Gallant-ee show might return semantically linked results associated with peep shows and magic lanterns. Alternatively, others may argue that an IRS should demonstrably link variants to their preferred terms. For example, if a user enters a variant spelling or related term, they would be given the option to re-perform their query using suggested terms from a controlled vocabulary. Without access to a controlled list of terms, how will users know which descriptive words to use in their search? It should be noted that a majority of database administrators post notices on their online catalogue listing the vocabularies that are used. Nevertheless, these announcements are insufficient: many users disregard them or are less likely to spend the required time studying controlled vocabularies before conducting their queries.

Character names (from left to right):

Lie-ver-puhl [Robert Banks Jenkinson Early of Liverpool, with puppet]: “puppet-show-man”, “he moves all the state-puppets, by means of certain secret wires and strings”

Yorge-Hi [King George IV, seated on throne]: Chinese emperor with an “attachment to the fair sex”, “traversed his dominions, and displayed the utmost condescension and affability to even the humblest of his subjects whom chance or business threw in his way”.

Qua-Li Kurt-hees [Sir William Curtis, seated on turtle stool]: “the court-droll”, “shown with soup-ladle in his hand, and a chain of sausages round his neck”, “good-humoured”, “harmless”, “no sense”, “stubborn”

Kahn-hing [George Canning, atop ladder]: “the chief corresponding mandarin”. “Posture-master”. “Descended from the lowest ranks of society (mother having been one of an itinerant corps dramatique), but endowed with an ardent mind and unbounded ambition, he has climbed and wriggled himself through every round of the ladder to the very top…”

Qua-ling-tun [Arthur Wellesley 1st Duke of Wellington, wearing a sword]: “great war mandarin”. “…Skill and success in battle has rendered him no less formidable to the enemies of his country than to his country itself, and even to the Emperor…”

Van-seit-hart [Nicholas Vansittart, 1st Baron Bexley, facing away from the emperor]: “the mandarin of finance, who manages the imperial revenues; and a devilish clever sleight-of-hand man he has proved himself.”

Seid-moth [Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, the right-most figure]: “That dull heavy-looking thing that you see in the Pantaloon’s dress is Seid-moth, late one of the corresponding mandarins; he, Qua-li Kurt-hees, and Balaam’s ass, would form a remarkably congenial trio, and might mutually exclaim – “We three loggerheads be!”

References:

Book of the Month, December 2005 (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://w01.ull.wf.ulcc.ac.uk/specialcollections/bookofthemonth/2005_12.shtml

Cranmer-Byng, J. L. (1957-58). ‘Lord Macartney’s Embassy to Peking in 1793’. Journal of Oriental Studies. 4(1,2): 117-187.

The Magic Lantern. (n.d.).  Retrieved February 27, 2013, from http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/search_object_details.aspx?objectId=1488310&partId=1

The Magic Lantern: About This Item. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2013, from http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006690758/