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.

I’m really a "follow the research" kind of guy, so it’s hard for me to present a proto-thesis or "research questions" at the moment… I’m still digging.  Nevertheless, I’d like to talk about what I’ve discovered so far in my most recent little research obsession…

While I was in the LoC print and photo reading room looking for something else, I came across something fascinating: a collection of stereographic cards from the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exhibition.  Digging further, I found there were several lots of photos from the exhibition as well, including a whole collection of printer’s proofs of commemorative postcards to be sold at the event. 

Quickly I became fascinated with the event, as it seemed to be a site of confluence for many "big issues" of its time.  There was an incredibly complex and conflicted view of race being exhibited, for example.  There was the issue of the Civil War– 1907 is still firmly within the period where the discourse of reunification and reconciliation after that conflict was still being actively worked at and played out.  Teddy Roosevelt spoke there, and his very existence always brings up various questions of gender, empire, war, and peace… (The last two are best illustrated by the fact that 1907 was 9 years after the Spanish American War, and two years after Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize.)  And there was this overarching militarism and nationalism– so different from the World’s Fair quality of the World’s Columbian Exhibition 14 years earlier.  Where the Columbian Exhibition had a "Midway," the Jamestown Exhibition had a "War Path."

Then I came across a wonderful pamphlet housed in the Rare Books room– International Justice vs. the Splendors of War: In Protest Against the Diversion of the Jamestown Exposition to the Service of Militarism.  This was a 12-page pamphlet, published five months before the Exhibition’s opening, was written by a splinter group of the Exhibition’s Advisory Committee, protesting the increasing militarization of the event by the Committee.  Among the undersigned were an amazing collection of Progressive Era progressives– Jane Addams, Carroll D Wright, president of Clark College and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Everett Hale, and Cardinal Gibbons.

The group was mortified that the budget of the Exhibition had gone from the initially-allocated $200,000 to $1,500,000, largely due to spending on military spectacles.  (This extra money was procured from congress only after piggybacking it onto a House Sundry Civil Bill, as the Speaker of the House and several key Representatives were highly opposed to the increased spending.)  They further proposed reallocating some of the money dedicated to military spectacle to the building of a "Hall of International Justice," which would celebrate the values of the upcoming Second International Peace Conference at the Hague.

A shorter version of the pamphlet appeared in the January 10th issue of the progressive journal The Independent, along with an article celebrating TR’s winning the Nobel Prize and hoping he would continue to promote International Justice at the Hague, and an article by Charlotte Perkins Gilman advocating paying housewives.

I want to write a paper looking at the Jamestown Exhibition, using it as a window into its era. I’m still sifting through all the sources available to me– I’ve located over 40 primary sources at the LoC, including photos, maps, brochures, and all matter of related materials– but I’m very interested in using this pamphlet, as well as the other, celebratory materials dealing with the battle reenactments, military parades, ship christenings, etc. to look at this event as a celebration of the nascent spirit of US Imperialism at the time– sort of an Americanized Empire Day.  I’m curious to find accounts of the Exhibition in newspapers of the time, to see if it was understood in that way at the time.  I’d also like to dig up the congressional record for 1905-1906, and see what can be understood about the jockeying for increasing funds.  I’d also love to find the actual speech that TR delivered at the Exhibition, on "Georgia Day," and see what kind of world he’s creating with that address.