Victorian era not ready for retirement

I read in Art Market Monitor that Europe is saddled with an excess of low-value artwork created during the Victorian years.   

While AMM is interested in that glut for its predictive capacity in trending the value of modern art collections, I see it as another unwelcome example of our giving the 1800s an early shove into the "who-gives-a-fig" category, alongside the 1600s and 1700s.

I don't know what the official shelf life is for a century, but courtesy says it should not be retired as long as there are people living with recollections of persons and events begun/occurring therein.  Using that test of relevancy, the expiration date on the late 1800s isn't until about 2050.

Century dissing aside, high quality images of those Victorian paintings should be captured, cataloged and secured before the artwork itself disappears.  When artwork loses its entertainment value, the cost of preservation becomes an unwelcome expense and leads inevitably to benign neglect and disposal.  Sometime before then the care taking job needs to be transferred to folks focused less on aesthetics and more on history and anthropology.  Artwork from pre-camera times may contain answers to questions scholars will be asking in 2,000 or 5,000 years that we cannot anticipate.  As much fun as it is to interpret, in the long term, the mundane task of preservation is the more important task.  

History is filled with questions that could be at least partly answered if more artwork had survived.  So little artwork was preserved from the 1500s, for example, that we have to guess which portraits definitely and accurately depict Shakespeare, and folks have spirited discussions over whether Anne Boleyn did or did not have an unsightly wen on her neck.  If those examples seem frivolous, go back further and imagine how the discourse about Christianity might differ if we had an ample supply of real time artwork illustrating Christ's activities.  In that context, the worth of a picture shouldn't be determined by the skill of the brushwork.  

A. J. Plate, San Francisco Arms Dealer

1864 advertisement for
A. J. Plate's San Francisco store. 

A. J. Plate, San Francisco's most famous 19th century arms dealer

Herman Adolph Joseph Plate's place in history was secured when he lost a patent infringement lawsuit over the Deringer pistol.

Herman Adolph Joseph Plate
(1818-1878)

Plate Becomes Naturalized
US Citizen in 1844.
Born in Borghorst, Germany (one of the villages merged in 1975 to create Steinfurt), Plate immigrated to New York in 1836.  A cabinet maker, he and two of his five brothers built a furniture business in New York.  

Augusta Agness Tolle
(1820-82)

In 1849 Adolph started a family with Augusta Tolle, with whom he would raise 4 children.  Later that year, after a series of three fires destroyed the furniture business, Plate became one of the Gold Rush Forty Niners.  While his wife and infant son, Henry, remained in New York, Adolph headed for California to work the gold mines.  In May of 1850, when he had accumulated a small stake, his family followed him to San Francisco, their household belongings sent via the U. S. Mail Steamship Company, and Adolph opened his first San Francisco store.

 
That first store was modest, consisting of an outdoor stand where he sold ammunition and used pistols.  Those were boom town years for San Francisco, with the population growing from 200 in 1846 to over 36,000 in 1852. 

About Harry Debevec

Harry DeBevec's work lamp

 

Harry R. Debevec c1980

August, 1946 Chronicle Telegram

Many of our customers like to know how we acquired the things they buy from us, and whatever history we have about the item.  Most often we're lucky if we can supply information about the manufacturer.  In the case of this lamp we don't know the identity of the manufacturer but the web turns up a bit of information about one of its owners: Harry Rudolph Debevec (1921-2001) of Ohio.

The lamp was originally equipped with a clamp and attached to an industrial machine, such as a lathe.  All those knuckle joints helped a worker to shine the light exactly where it was needed.  In 1960 Harry replaced the clamp with a disk base, into which he stamped his name, probably to prevent a coworker from swiping it.  So far I've failed to learn where Harry worked but perhaps someone who knows the family will drop me a line.  ( Email )  Harry spent most of his life in and around Elyria, Ohio, a steel town, so metal work of

Repurposing a 20-Drawer Library Card File

Replacing the Army green paint on this old metal library cabinet will give it a new personality.     1940s card file cabinet manufactured by General Fireproofing of Youngstown, Ohio

Things to store inside: Spools of thread Kitchen utensils Paintbrushes Rulers  Scissors Needles Toys Tubes of paint Beads Jewelry Doll clothes Craft supplies Spaghetti noodles Fishing lures Fingernail polish RC car parts Sewing notions Herbs & spices Makeup Baseball cards Recipes Medicine Socks Razor collection Hair bows Brushes & combs Photographs Yarn Shells Scrapbook Materials Spectacles Matchbox cars Fisher-Price figures Pens & Pencils Watch collection Stickers 3"x5" index cards :) Seed packets Stamps Little Ponies Coins Miniatures Guitar supplies Weed Salt & pepper shakers Soap Crystals Candles Audio parts Pocket knife collection Lighter collection Christmas ornaments Notes for your novel Receipts String, glue & tape Fasteners Faucets and washers Golf balls & tees Chopsticks Tools Inventory Stationery supplies Headbands Photography accessories Knitting needles

Aardvarks. Even the name sounds funny.

Get an aardvark picture fridge magnet.

Aardvarks (Orycteropus afer) can weigh 150-180 lbs, making them about the weight of a Mastiff dog. They get to that size on a protein-rich daily diet of 50,000 ants and termites found in the grasslands of Africa.  An aardvark eats as it digs into an anthill, ignoring the stinging and biting, zipping out its long and sticky tongue to scarf them in, the ants going directly to its muscular gizzard-like belly, with minimal if any chewing.  Yum. 

Romance & Family Life
Aardvarks team up to mate, then go their separate ways, living mostly solitary lives, though males do have multiple mating partners and cubs stay with their mothers til around 6 months of age.  After a 7-month gestation, a single 4-pound hairless cub is born.  By 2 weeks of age it is able to follow its mother.  After nursing for 3 months, it starts chowing down ants and termites and is ready to mate around age 2. 


Stylin'
In adulthood most of an aardvark's fur is worn away.  Those fun ears and big snout are part of acute hearing and smelling capacities to help them find ants beneath the soil.  They can move their ears separately, or fold them back when tunneling.   (Just checked and some humans can wiggle their ears.  Here's a

Animated Smurf Film a Gotta See

Mark your calendar for July 29

 Cute as puppies and with adult personality traits that
sometimes remind us of people we know.  Columbia
and Sony Pictures are poised to introduce the first 3D
feature film about Smurfs.  We supplied a few props
for the film* so are a little biased but after watching
the trailers we're looking forward to seeing it, even if 
our props didn't make the final cut.

 

Synopsis  When the evil wizard Gargamel chases the
Smurfs out of their village, they tumble from their world
into ours -- in the middle of Central Park, New York
City.  . Stuck in the Big Apple, the Smurfs must find a
way to get back to their village before Gargamel tracks
them down. A young married couple, the Grace's, give
give them a hand.

 

Unfair Rap for Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt's X?

Sometimes bread crumbs lead to unexpected places

While researching a railroad promotional pamphlet I became a bit obsessed with learning about a RR land seller named T.H. Leavitt.  He was one of a pair of sellers cited on the pamphlet and since I'd assembled a blurb about the other fellow I felt obliged to do the same for T.H.  It took some searching but I was finally able to confirm that T.H. was Thomas H. Leavitt who helped bring 100,000 or so settlers to the west and became a valuable citizen of Lincoln, Nebraska.  Mystery solved. 

Well maybe not.

In the process I also learned that Thomas was once married to a famous temperance figure and an outspoken suffragist, Mary Greenleaf Clement Leavitt.  Their marriage ended in separation around 1865 and was finalized by divorce in 1878.   For the next 40 years while Mary traveled the world lecturing and writing about the sins of alcohol and other societal ills, she left the impression with her supporters that her former husband was a bad sort.