The Leisurely Historian…

"The Quilting Frolic" is a work of art that is used frequently as a window into the material culture of the middle class of the Early Republic.  It was painted in 1813 by John Lewis Krimmel, a German-born American genre painter best known for his paintings of middle-class families in Pennsylvania.  Because of his interest in depicting the quotidian pleasures of middle class life in that time, his paintings of interiors are richly detailed, and illustrate well the booming consumer culture of the post-Revolutionary period.  As Krill and Eversman explain:

Pictures provide intriguing glimpses into the material life of Americans of a more modest means than the federal elite… [This painting] depicted the interior of a Pennsylvania German home, a scene fairly bursting with consumer goods: silhouettes and paintings hang above the fireplace while the cupboards are filled with ceramics.  Although sparse, the furniture includes a Windsor chair and a tall-case clock (a favorite status symbol of the Pennsylvania Germans.)

Even picking a single item in the picture can, with a little research, yield a great deal of historical information about the time.  Let’s look at the china cabinet.

I haven’t, in the last few days’ digging-around, been able to find much information about china cabinets per se.  They, and other kitchen furniture like the Hoosier cabinet and the pie safe, don’t seem to get quite as much attention in histories of material culture as do, say, chests, desks, or beds.  They do tend to be somewhat less ornate, as they were intended for the kitchen, which was not a place for guests, so this may be the reason.  Alternatively, one might argue that these objects are culturally gendered items, furniture that is associated with women’s work, and this might bring down their cultural capital. 

Whatever the case, a few things can be said about the china cabinet.  From its rectilinear lines and simplicity of design, it can be identified as belonging to the federal style of furniture– also known as early classical revival, Louis XVI, Adam, Sheraton, and Hepplewhite.  This style avoided the curved lines and ornate designs of the earlier Chippendale and rococo styles, or the the empire style of furniture that came after it.  It lacks, however, some of the characteristic ornament of that style: it has no gilt, no intricate carvings, no paintings or wood inlays.  I initially thought that perhaps this meant that it’s a cheaper piece of furniture.  However, when I started thinking about its sliding glass doors, I reconsidered. 

If you’ve ever taken a stroll around Beacon Hill in Boston, you likely noticed the purple window panes.  These panes were originally created by accident– the glass maker in England added too much magnesium to the glass, which resulted in the purple tint.  Most of Beacon Hill was developed in the period between 1800 and 1830 by a group of Boston Brahmins that included the celebrated architect, statesman, and real-estate speculator Charles Bulfinch, and the purple panes date back to the Bulfinch Era.  Or at least the originals do.  It has been a long-standing statute in Boston that if you have one of the famed purple panes on your house, and it breaks for any reason, you’re required to replace it with purple glass.

…At any rate, the point of this little digression into Boston History is that in 1813, flat glass panes were an expensive import item.  They were fragile– more fragile structurally than other glasswares, like bottles, and costs were driven up by the risk of damage while making their transatlantic journey.  Panes of glass were also smaller– the glass at the front of this china cabinet is much larger than any single pane on Beacon Hill.  Such large panes of glass would have gone for a pretty penny indeed.  For this reason, I would guess that this china cabinet must be at least a middle-price-point item, if not a relatively expensive one.  It could well be one of the most expensive items in the painting.

The other reason the glass front of the cabinet is interesting is that it reveals the piece of furniture’s dual purpose: the cabinet was not just a storage device, but it was also intended for displaying the china.

The china.  Here’s where the sources I was able to track down get a little more helpful.  Apparently, the early republic was a time of great change for porcelain, both in America and internationally.  In the colonial era, most ceramics were imported to America by the British, the Dutch, and from China by the British and the Dutch.  American-made tableware had been produced throughout the colonial era as well– in fact, the first soft-pour porcelain (proper porcelain, of the type that had previously only been produced in China) to be produced in America was made in 1770, only twenty years after the British first figured the process out.

The British considered the American colonies as something of a dumping ground for old and unpopular designs.  However, by 1800, tariffs on British ceramics had become prohibitively high on the continent, and  the US had become the primary target of British china exports.  Porcelain exports from China shifted dramatically in this period as well.  In the seventeenth century, European export from China was dominated by the Dutch East India company, but this near-monopoly was lost at the end of the 1600s with civil war in China.  In the next century, the British would come to dominate the shipping of goods from China.  This period of dominance came to an end soon after the American Revolution, when the US became the main supplier of Chinese goods to Europe, aided by their status as a halfway-point.  (In fact, one of the oldest museums in the country, the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, was founded in 1799 by the elite import/export men of that city– which was at that time one of the largest trading hubs in America.  It has an amazing collection of East Asian art from that time period.)

Styles in china patterns shifted quickly and radically in the early republic, enough so that we can glean a little bit about the pieces in the painting that one might not expect.  Look again at the porcelain in the china cabinet and on the table.

The dinnerware and the teaware patterns don’t seem to match.  This would be in keeping with Miller et al.’s assertion that it was likely more common for families to have mismatched tea- and dinner- wares, as they were manufactured by different processes and marketed differently.  Moreover, when one compares the patterns, as best they can be discerned from the painting, to a chart of popular china patterns from 1750-1840, something surprising emerges.

The china in the cabinet most resemble the the feather-edged bisque, which was popular between 1760 and 1790.  The tableware in the painting would probably be seen at the time as quite old-fashioned, and was most likely actually fairly old. The teaware, seen most clearly on the table, looks more like a combination of the blue shell edge pearlware and the brown-line creamware– having the lined and rounded edges of the latter and the white and blue coloration of the former.  The teaware was likely newer, and more stylish.

It seems logical that the teaware might be newer than the tableware: teaware was used in entertaining guests (as we see here in the painting,) and as such can be seen as occupying a nominal position between domestic and public, where the plateware was much more firmly part of the domestic sphere.  However, as Diana diZerega Wall has noted, the domestic sphere was a rapidly morphing beast itself at this time, and this affected china and table service. 

As the economy shifted away from households and more men began to work outside the house, dinner took on a whole new cultural meaning in America.  The meal hadn’t been thought of as particularly important in the days when most production was done within the house– the family saw each other all day long, and dinner was merely the largest meal that happened around midday.  As men began working outside the house, dinner was held after the end of the work-day, and took on a whole new set of rituals.  It became a symbol of the values embodied in the new "cult of domesticity."  Around this time, plateware fashions shifted to the more and more ornate, embodied in the complex patterns of chinoiserie.

…This is all getting quite long-winded, but I think I’ve definitely proved that with sufficient deep digging, (which this blog entry is not pretending to represent) there is a lot you can dig out of this painting.  Honestly, you could probably put together an edited volume, thematically linked by items in this book– it would probably be more interesting reading than one might initially think.

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Works Consulted:

"John Lewis Krimmel - An Artist in Federal America" by Milo M. Naeve

"Changing Cunsumption Paterns: English Ceramics and the American Market from 1770 to 1840" by George Miller et al. and "Family Dinners and Social Teas: Ceramics and Domestic Rituals" by Diana diZerega Wall, both from Everyday Life in the Early Republic, edited by Catherine E. Hutchins

Early American Decorative Arts, 1620-1860: A Handbook for Interpreters by Rosemary Troy Krill and Pauline K. Eversmann

In Praise of America : American Decorative Arts, Sixteen Fifty to Eighteen Thirty by Wendy A. Cooper

One of the really nice things about blogging is that you can edit your posts at any time.  This is just a start to what I’m sure will be a much longer list.

Primary Sources:

American Federation of Labor. American Federation of Labor Industrial and Social Economic Exhibit at the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition. Washington, D.C.: American Federation of Labor, 1907.

An account of the AFL’s exhibit at the Fair.  An induction into Progressive-Era labor consciousness, the exhibit highlighted the quality products manufactured in unionized factories, even going to the lengths of having a "Model Union Store" stocked with union-made goods.

Glimpses of the Jamestown Exposition and Picturesque Virginia. Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1907.

A commemorative photo book of the Expo, its buildings, and exhibits.  Great source for photo reference.  The wording of the captions can be interesting as well, giving a good sense of the messages or lessons conveyed in individual exhibits.  The Philippines exhibit is quite interesting, talking about their uniquely high "potential to civilization."

Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition Corporation. The Official Blue Book of the Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition. 1907.

This book is the mother load. It’s actually a bit intimidating, as it’s probably a source of information overload.  It clocks in at 800 or so pages, and gives an official daily account of the goings-on at the Expo.  It lists full texts of most important speeches made there, accounts for what day was what– almost every day was in honor of some group, from Georgia Day to Negro Day to Women’s Day… It’s definitely the organ of the organizing committee, so it will not be the best source for dissenting voices, but it is quite exhaustive in its coverage of the Expo’s goings-on.  If you want to know what day Mark Twain or Booker T Washington came to the fair, what they saw and what they said, this is your book.

Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition Corporation. Official Catalogue of the Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition. 1907.

This volume makes for incredibly dull reading, but may be of some use.  It is a catalog of all groups exhibiting at the Exposition, from states to temperance groups to pen manufacturers.  It could probably yield some form of quantitative data as to the nature and character of the event.

Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition Corporation. Official Guide of the Jamestown Ter-centennial Exposition. 1907.

This is the official guidebook to the exhibition.  Main attractions are outlined, descriptions of buildings, events, and exhibitions.

Laird & Lee’s Guide to Historic Virginia and the Jamestown Centennial. Chicago: Laird & Lee, 1907.

This is a rather thick but pocket-sized unofficial guide to the Exposition, much like the official guide except in format, and on a greater emphasis on the greater Norfolk area.

Library of Congress Photo Lot 2832.

This is a collection of fifty or more stereographic photos from the Exposition– great pictures of the buildings, some of the more celebrated visitors, exhibits, etc.  If you’re curious, a small selection of them have been scanned, and can be found here.

Library of Congress Photo Lot 7026.

This photo lot is a collection of postcards and photos from the Expo, many of the photos appearing to be, upon inspection, the images that were used for the creation of the postcards.  Again, a few of these have been scanned, and can be found here.

McCall, Samuel Walker. The American Constitution, a Speech Delivered by Hon. Samuel W. McCall of Massachusetts, at Jamestown, on September 17, 1907, on the Occasion of the One Hundred and Twentieth Anniversary of the Adoption of the National Constitution by the Convention of 1787. Boston: 1907.

I grabbed this because it was a highly patriotic theme, a patriotic speech at such an imperialist event seemed natural and interesting.  To be honest, I’ve only had the time to give it a quick scan-through.  But he focuses much time on the original intent of the framers of the Constitution– much as the protest pamphlet dedicates several pages to arguing the founding fathers were anti-imperialist.  Also interesting in that he does a little high-wire dance about federalism, as a Yankee in the South, at this event that seems to bear the thumb-prints of the Civil War all over it.

See! See! See! Guide to Jamestown Exposition, Historic Virginia, and Washington D.C. Washington, D.C.: B. S. Adams, 1907.

Yet another unofficial guide to the Exposition.  This one is interesting in that it is the version most obviously targeting people from outside the Virginia area– Eastern Virginia and D.C. attractions are given about as much page-space as the Expo itself.

Veloz-Goiticoa, N. Effect of the Jamestown Exposition on the Foreign Commerce of the United States and Incidental Remarks on the Subject. Washington, D.C.: W. F. Roberts Company, 1907.

A speech made the January before the Expo, on its intended economic effects, made before the National Convention for the Extension of the Foreign Commerce of the United States.  Essentially, the gist of it is, "we hope this will make a lot of money and encourage foreign trade."  As with McCall’s speech, I’ve only really given this a cursory look-through, but I was fascinated by the speaker’s conviction that this Expo will have a dramatic and positive effect on Latin American trade…  Are special invitations made to Latin American leaders to an Exposition celebrating America’s growing imperialism and military might less than a decade after the Spanish-American war really the best incentive to trade with those nations?

Wright, Carroll D, et al. International Justice Vs. The Splendors of War: Protest Against the Diversion of the Jamestown Exposition to the Service of Militarism. 1907.

This document, which I mentioned in an earlier post, is a protest against the growing militaristic character of the Expo, cosigned by (among others) Jane Addams, Edward Everett Hale, and Cardinal Gibbons.

Secondary Sources:

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. "Meta Warrick’s 1907 ‘Negro Tableaux’ and (Re)Presenting African American Historical Memory." The Journal of American History Vol. 89, Issue 4. (2003), 1368-1400.

A look at the "Negro Tableaux" in the Negro Hall of the Exposition, and the politics of the Tuskegee Institute folks who coordinated the Negro Hall.  Uses a lot of resources that will be unavailable to me, as they’re in Alabama.

Gleach, Frederic W. "Pocahontas at the Fair: Crafting Identities at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition." Ethnohistory 50:3 (2003) 419-445.

An excellent analysis of the various constructions of Native American identity that competed at the Expo, looking to the agency of the Indians who participated in constructing alternative visions of themselves and their people.

Werry, Margaret. "’The Greatest Show on Earth’: Political Spectacle, Spectacular Politics, and the American Pacific." Theatre Journal 57 (2005) 355-382.

An article on militarism in turn-of-the-century expositions, looking at them as spectacles of empire.  While it mentions the Jamestown Exposition only a couple times, it’s a good article for contextualizing the event.

Winton, Ruth M. "Negro Participation in Southern Expositions, 1881-1915." The Journal of Negro Education Vol. 16, No 1. (1947) 34-43.

A more general overview of black participation and representation in the golden age of Expositions.

Items I haven’t had the pleasure of looking at that look promising:

• The LC has at least three or four maps of the grounds of the event.
• I’ve found COUNTLESS articles in newspapers from the time, but have yet to sort through them.
• I’ve also found several more  pamphlets that were printed for other exhibits at the Expo that I haven’t yet looked at, and there are a few photo lots I haven’t pulled as of yet.
• Representing the Nation: A Reader, eds. David Boswell and Jessica Evans.  London: Routledge, 1999.
• David Blight’s work on the memory of the Civil War.
• Manliness and Civilization, by Gail Bederman.  I don’t have my copy, but I wanna look over the chapter on TR again.

…but I love to check out the visitors’ stats for my blog– see where people are clicking through from. I’ve noticed that there’s some really anal people using Google, who’ve found me on the 14th or 21st hit page.  That’s always interesting.  As is seeing what odd searches people end up finding you with.  I quoted Oliver Wendel Holmes, and when someone Googled about half of his first sentence in that paragraph, I came up pretty quick.  Found that funny.

But the point of this post is just to point out to the rest of the class something that you likely missed if you aren’t weird about such things, like I am.  Namely: several people in this class got link-throughs on this blog post.

If there was any doubt before, we’re officially in the blogosphere.

I’ve been enjoying the class thus far– I haven’t felt too much in over my head until now.  But this week, a lot of the reading had me completely lost.

What’s an API?

Well, it’s an "application programming interface."  Honestly, I have no idea what that means– it’s about as clear as mud.  The impression I get from Wikipedia is that it’s something you embed into a site using XML or HTML or both or something, that lets things talk to each other independently? From Google’s list of their APIs, I get the sense that it’s a method of embedding one set of functions and data within another web page in order to allow users to… I’m not sure. Get information without going to outside sources?  It basically integrates one component of a search or data system into another page or system? 

It’s all just fuzzy to me.

It has something to do with interoperability, I can tell that.  But the interoperability article left me confused as well– it’s just a little too jargon-laden for me, using terminologies that muddle my brain trying to disambiguate concepts that ultimately remained quite ambiguous in my mind.

Maybe one answer to Dan Cohen’s question as to why there aren’t more APIs being produced in the humanities is that few people can do it– and I’m not even talking about code, here, I’m talking about the fact that in a class like this, that tries to bring us into the techie fold as historians, we have to constantly bounce back and forth between the highly difficult specialist languages of Information Theory, History and Historiography, and Nuts-and-Bolts computer-speak.  Personally, I think a lot of people find such constant code-shifting (and I’m using that in the semiotic sense of code, not the techie sense) quite jarring and difficult.  Or at least this geek-in-training is.

I feel like a bad grad student saying this, but my favorite sentence in all our readings for this week was, "To paraphrase Sarah Tyacke of the UK’s Public Records Office, this is the junk which enables the people (users) to get at the stuff (rich content) they want."  THAT made sense to me.  THAT explained something to me.  I like it when authors don’t feel bad about occasionally "talking down to" their audience and explaining things, if they sense some of their audience may be non-experts.  When I was a writing tutor, I always used to quote that line of Denzell Washington’s from Philadelphia: "Explain it to me like I’m a two-year-old."  Honestly, while I used to be about the biggest theory geek you could find, I’m starting to think that’s some of the best advice you can give anyone on scholarly writing.    It’s not patronizing to explain or define.

I know this post is coming off a bit negative, and that isn’t my intent, but I’m just sort of free-flowing it here, since I feel completely lost in the dust. 

The idea of Web 2.0 being all about the bricolage is something I’m a little more able to understand, and I have to agree– it makes sense as a model.  Before, web pages provided content.  Now they provide interactive context.  They have millions of points of articulation, and get shaped around user-provided content in a symbiotic relationship.  The pluses and minuses of this shift for scholarship, I don’t feel prepared to comment on.  I use lots of social-networking sites, lots of web sites that have user-provided content, but I don’t really draw from that fray in my research, nor do I toss my research out into it. 

Also, was I the only one who had some real trouble navigating Yee’s site?  I have the nagging suspicion that I missed a lot of the actual CONTENT there…

…Anyway, that’s my obligatory blog post for the week.  I’m confused.  I’m not sure what to say.  And I wish others were better at explaining these things to me.  I hope this post doesn’t come off as a negativity-bomb– I just wanted to put this stuff out there, and hopefully someone will be able to point me in the right direction as a result.