A watery day

2015-04-26 14.31.45On a blustery spring day, I visited the charming Colonial town of Essex, CT.  I started at the delightful Connecticut River Museum, celebrating all things about that river.  I had always heard it was terrific.  No understatement!

While I’ll share my favorite part in a moment, the American history that touched the riverbank at Essex makes the museum worth a visit.  In the Revolutionary War, Connecticut’s war ship (all 13 colonies were asked to build one), the Oliver Cromwell, was built here in 1776.  An 1814 skirmish with the British, part of the War of 1812, was likened to Pearl Harbor for its surprise and devastation.  At the unmanned fort, 27 ships were burned, and the town’s economy was blasted apart.

Artist rendition of how the Turtle worked

But, oh boy!  The best part was climbing into a replica of the first submarine, called the American Turtle.  Now this thing is small.  I can tell you because I smacked my head on it getting in.  Ouch!  2015-04-26 14.41.53

The idea was to take a bomb in the submarine and hook it to the bottom of a British war ship, and bye bye ship.  Well the submarine worked – the propeller was a huge innovation.  The bomb was ready.  But drilling through the submarine to attach the bomb to the warship hull, not so much.  So even though Yale graduate David Bushnell made a great case to Benjamin Franklin and made three attempts, the submarine was scuttled and the original eventually lost.

Two replicas at the museum were built off detailed plans that survive.  Climbing inside — it’s worth the price of admission.

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I also really enjoyed the special exhibit on Connecticut artists working under the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.  The pieces are small enough that maybe they served as studies for the ultimately larger works, like murals in post offices and schools.

You know I want to know all about women artists and women’s lifestyles.  Here’s a glimpse from this exhibit.

Haddam, Looking East, Cornelia Vetter

Cornelia Vetter, Haddam, Looking East, n.d.

At nearby Haddam, Cornelia Vetter began working for the government arts project after her husband died in 1933.  She did 18 paintings for the Federal Arts Project.

Grading the Tobacco, Harold Barbour, 1938

Harold Barbour, Grading the Tobacco, 1938

Harold Barbour painted a series of watercolors, on work in the tobacco barns.  Here, woman work in the sorting shop.  After the tobacco leaves cure in the hanging shed, the leaves are sorted into grades.  During the Depression, sorting and transplanting, as seen below, proved to be great jobs for women.

Transplanting, Harold Barbour, 1938

Harold Barbour, Transplanting, 1938

Look at this beautiful charcoal.

Tuna Boat, Beatrice Cuming

Beatrice Cuming, Tuna Boat, n.d.

So many women artists to discover and enjoy.

 

Then I strolled down the street, from the gem of the little museum to the country’s oldest, continually operating inn, open 239 years.  The 33-room Griswold Inn was build in 1776, a busy year in busy Essex.

Inns were central to Colonial and early Federal life, and the Boston Post Road was essential for information flow between New York and Boston.  How did information flow?  Over the communal tables at inns like the Griswold.  We all sat around one such table to hear the owner Geoff Paul tell great stories about the art collection in the inn.

Owner Geoff Paul, an enthusiastic speaker

Owner Geoff Paul, an enthusiastic speaker

Geoff spoke about the origins of the steam-powered ship in Connecticut, long before Robert Fulton, and the intricacies of ship portraits, that owners were pickier about than paintings of their wives.

Like a good art historian, Geoff taught us what makes a great marine painting.  Flags show the wind, so create movement; the more flags the merrier (and more expensive).  Angling a boat toward the viewer enhances that sense of power.  Geoff favors works made at the time the ship sailed, not nostalgic works painted later.  Paintings of the moment often are celebrations of American ingenuity and prowess and could be coupled with the Brooklyn Bridge or highlight new installations of electricity–other technological marvels that allowed ‘man’ to get the sense of ‘triumphing over nature’.

The Connecticut

Antonio Jacobsen, The Connecticut, n.d. c 1880s

And steamships, Geoff pointed out, represented the birth of the cruise ship industry, providing pleasure outings for the Connecticut middle class.  Board the City of Hartford steamer in that city, steam overnight, spend the day in New York, before returning with another overnight ride.

Once, when a steamer hit a part of a bridge that wasn’t made to open en route, maritime law changed, requiring all bridges to have red lights as markers, distinct from lights on shore.  No one was hurt, so the happy ending was that the passengers got to spend the night nearby and see a show at the Goodspeed Opera House, also written about in this blog.  Plenty of other steamer accidents were deadly, borne of races and other mishaps, leading to the founding of the Coast Guard for monitoring and rescue.

Who wouldn’t love the mural that, when the switch is flipped, rocks like the waves on the Connecticut River?  Apparently drunks, that’s who.  They’re not too fond of a suddenly rolling room.  It’s a really ingenious feature that came with this 1960s mural.

Yes, this mural actually rocks back and forth, like waves

Yes, this mural actually rocks back and forth, like waves

You can probably make out the wake at the center.  This perspective puts us on the back of a steamer, viewing our own trailing wake in the wide river.  What fun this whole experience is!

The Inn also has a fragrant, evocative taproom–a busy place on Sunday afternoon.  And then, there’s this room.

It’s another Wow, in a day full of them.  Hung truly salon style, the paintings and ephemera jam every inch of wall and ceiling space of the Bridge Room.  My most favorite were the posters of the women fighting for Temperance.  Starting in the 1820s, women advocated against the reckless drinking that was notoriously tearing up families in the young country.  Recognizing that total abstinence could be difficult when both religion and medicines used alcohol, the petitioners sought moderation.

Great Sots Temperance - cleaned up and frameless

The women marched.  The inn keepers agreed.  Men signed the pledge to take care of their families and stop drinking to excess.  If a man signed his name with a T, then he pledged total abstinence, or to become a T-totaller.  I always thought it was tea-totaller, as in being a tea v alcohol drinker.  Geoff tells otherwise.

Of course, these women went on to fight slavery and advocate for the vote.  Get this.  As late as 1969, women could not stand at a bar in Connecticut.  Yes, really.  So a woman, yet another protester, came in demanding to be served.  In cahoots with the innkeepers, she demanded her arrest.  The case went to the Connecticut Supreme Court in Griswold Inn v State of Connecticut, and the Inn won!

Geoff made clear that the Inn relies on drinking for its sustenance.  And Prohibition didn’t stand in the way.  It is located right on the river.  Sailors knew how to navigate in the dark.  The inn did just fine during those years.   About fifteen years ago, when renovations were being done in the library, Geoff finally learned where at least some of that rum was hidden.  In the ceiling of the library was an 8′ long copper container.  In the ceiling!

Don’t ever be shy about looking up in historic places.  Who knows what you’ll find?

Looking up at a beautiful fan window on Main Street in Essex

Looking up at a beautiful fan window on Main Street in Essex

Like Sunday, Like Rain

A beautiful, small film with a genuine relationship of two characters at its center.  I found myself wanting so much for both of them, with some doubt that they would ever get even close.  So true to life, but probably not quite like anything you’ve seen before.

I didn’t know the actors, but there a teen-hearthrob or two in there.  Don’t let that, or Debra Messing’s brittle character, deter you.  The tender cello theme at its center, like any affecting music, will stay in your mind’s ear long after the final credit line rolls.  Enjoy.

Pitchforks

Long-time blog readers may remember the scary Halloween post from 2012 about Eliza Jumel and Aaron Burr (or brrr for all those shivers running up and down your spine!).

Eliza Jumel with the infamous pitchfork

Well, turns out one of my snaps is getting renewed life.  Here’s the photo in question–of Eliza with the pitchfork she (may have) used to off her first husband, before marrying Burr.  I ask you, would you marry someone who may have murdered her first spouse?  Kind of like marrying Lizzie Borden…

Designer and artist Camilla Huey. had an exhibition at the Morris-Jumel Mansion entitled The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding.  Great stuff!

Design & Photo: Camilla Huey

The exhibit steeped us in the politics of Federalist New York, while also making us voyeurs drinking in Camilla’s designs.  She explains, “Historically, the Georgian woman was viewed as a body without a voice.”  She uses corsets as a form for combining the women’s hand-transcribed letters, books, and other ephemera “to reanimate their voices” and symbolize “each woman’s ‘body work’ in sheer volume.”

Now, Camilla is making a documentary about the exhibition-making process and the history.  She focuses on nine of the women Burr loved, mentored, or was mentored by, to include the dark side.  Camilla writes me, “I am just thrilled with flawed characters!”  Here’s the trailer:

So spread the word and look for the film.  It will premiere The Morris-Jumel Mansion on May 14, 2015.  You might just catch a glimpse of Eliza and the pitchfork, re-imagined as a historic photo in black-and-white or sepia tones.

 

 

Keeping Up with Time

A display of wood parts

A display of wood parts

For hundreds of years, clocks were made from wooden parts.  Connecticut jumped into the clock-making world with an innovation by Eli Terry that kicked off the Industrial Revolution here.  Yes, Terry made clocks out of wood parts, the traditional way.  In 1802, he made 200 clocks.  Slowly, by hand.  Then he invented the mass-produced, interchangeable brass part.

Woo hoo!  The cost of clocks plummet, and now every parlor can have one.  Good thing, because everyone now had to be on time for that factory job.  You had to ‘punch the clock’.  Of course, you could take your chances, relying on the factory bell.  But with New Haven and Bristol and Torrington and Waterbury and a number of smaller towns all churning out timepieces, why not have one of your own?  Bristol alone had 275 clock-related businesses.  Horology run amok!

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You could get a New Haven Clock, the Wayland style on the left, say, for $25.50 in 1923, before it’s price zoomed to $32.10 in 1925.  If you didn’t hurry though, you’d be out of luck.  The Wayland was discontinued in 1930, making way for new styles.

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As a woman, you might get a job with the clock world, too.  Using a stencil to paint the clock face.  And they are charming indeed!  Every style you can think of and more you haven’t.

 

 

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And I think there’s at least one of each style clock at the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol–with its 6000 timepieces.  A wonder, when the hour strikes and so do all the clocks.

A Braille Clock

A Braille Clock, which I touched to feel the braille

 

 

 

 

 

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You’ll get a history lesson there, too.  Some clocks wouldn’t be so okay today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I finally learned how a sailor’s clock works.  The ship’s bell strikes one bell at 12:30, 42015-04-04 15.07.20:30, and 8:30, both a.m. and p.m.  Then an additional bell is rung each half hour until 8 bells (the max) are rung at 4, 8, and 12, then the process repeats.  I finally know what 8 bells means!  My literary knowledge of Moby Dick feels one step closer to completion.

The little mouse was the first.

The little mouse was the first.

 

You probably know I’m a huge fan of wind-up toys.  I had no idea that these toys were invented in Bristol and are based on a clock’s gears and key.

Glad there was time for some inventive fun.

All those clock companies.  What happened to them?  Many burned down.  Shellac used in the factory, highly flammable.  Others went bankrupt from poor management.  But go to Bristol and visit this unassuming, big-ticking-heart of a museum to get a flavor for its heyday.

Penny whistle pipe organ clock

1845 Whistle Pipe Organ clock, that played one of seven tunes each day at noon

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Up and Down

Reginald Marsh, "Wooden Horses" [detail], 1936, tempera on board; 24 x 40 inches, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, The Dorothy Clark Archibald and Thomas L. Archibald Fund, The Krieble Family Fund for American Art, The American Paintings Purchase Fund, and The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 2013.1.1. "Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008"

With two exhibits and an entire museum, I’ve been thinking a lot about carousels.  Yes, the Wadsworth Atheneum has its Coney Island exhibit mounted, the same one I worked on 15 months ago.  And the Yale School of Art has the “Side ShowScreen Shot 2015-04-06 at 3.43.02 PM” exhibit, as a literal side show about the freaky side of the carnival.  In the Reginald Marsh painting from the Wadsworth, the women seem be deadly serious about racing to the finish line, beating out the man in the red bowler.  No simple up and down ride for them.

I learned at the New England Carousel Museum in Bristol, CT that carousels didn’t even go up and down until 1907.  In fact, carousels started as a training tool for knights.  Um, yes, medieval knights.  They would practice spearing rings with lances.

Maybe you’ve ridden a carousel where you tried to snare a ring.  In the Golden Age of carousels, that is the 19th century, that’s where we got the idea of “grabbing the brass ring.”  A winner on the carousel, and in life, grabs the brass ring.  But liability put a stop to that.  Now we have to be content riding up and down.  No killer scenes like Marsh gives us.

Who knew there are different styles of carousel horses?  The first permanent park carousel was in Philadelphia, and the Phily style is oh so graceful.  Moreso than the solid and chunky Country Fair style.  And then there’s the Coney Island style, showy and pretty.

2015-04-04 16.00.18The menagerie animals are great fun.  Hard to believe they fell out of favor for the more popular horse carousel.  Who wouldn’t want to ride a rooster, a giraffe (who’s eyes follow you no matter where you move), a tiger, a hare, or a camel?  If not a horse, then why not a zebra or a seahorse?

 

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The horses are completely wonderful, too.  I’ve never seen a three-dimensional carved flower on a carousel horse before.  Tres elegant!

 

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Or what about a bulldog or a leprachaun, hidden under the saddle?

 

 

 

2015-04-04 15.49.51The museum shows how the animals are constructed form wood and in pieces, even if they appear whole.  Also the animals get smaller closer in to the center pole, an attempt aso the most elaborate carving is saved for the outside ring.  Notice that when you next ride a carousel.  Or maybe, you want to go to Bristol and ride one there!

This slide show will further introduce you to its glories…