Of Railways and Balloons

As we prepare for our program next week on Benjamin Franklin’s kite, we have been looking through the collection for Franklin-related items. One of the things we found, a facsimile of a letter written by Franklin on balloons, is interesting both for its subject matter and for the story behind the document’s owner. William K. Bixby printed 250 copies “for his friends,” presenting the letter (nicely bound along with a transcription) to Alice and William Miner as a New Year’s gift in 1924. Like William Miner, Bixby was a railroad man, though by this time he had retired to devote himself completely to collecting and philanthropy. There are a lot of similarities between the two Williams, as a matter of fact, and it’s not surprising that they became friends.

Cover (featuring a design adapted from an 18th c. toile de jouy) and title page

William Keeney Bixby was born in 1857 in Michigan. At the age of 16, he left home to work as a railway baggage handler in Texas. Here he caught the eye of H.M. Hoxie, president of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, who eventually convinced W.K. to come work with him in St. Louis. In 1883 he made what would turn out to be a wise decision, switching from railway management to railroad car manufacturing; by 1887 he was the vice president and general manager of Missouri Car and Foundry. In 1899, he led the consolidation of eighteen railway supply companies into the American Car and Foundry Company, of which he was the president. The St. Louis-based company controlled all aspects of railroad car production, from ore deposits and timber tracts to the car-building shops.

W.K. Bixby (1857-1931)

After just six years as president, at the age of 48, W.K. Bixby retired from business and turned his attention to collecting art, rare books, and manuscripts. He was a great admirer of Robert Burns, and is said to have developed such expertise that he could identify a forged Burns document from a single letter. Bixby also endowed institutions such as the St. Louis Art Museum and Washington University, and served as president of the Missouri Historical Society. Bixby produced several dozen books of facsimiles of manuscripts from his collection, which he had printed in small editions and gave to friends and fellow collectors. The reproductions themselves are collectors’ editions, with great attention being paid to illustrations, covers, and paper—for Benjamin Franklin on Balloons, Bixby used paper made by the same company that provided the paper used to make the Montgolfier brothers’ first balloon!

Charles and Robert’s first (unmanned) balloon,
which was destroyed by the residents of Gonesse

The letter itself is one written on January 16, 1784 by Benjamin Franklin, who was then United States Ambassador to France, to his friend and fellow scientist Jan Ingenhousz. Ingenhousz had evidently asked Franklin for information about the balloons that had recently been launched in Paris, with the idea that he might try to construct one himself. Franklin sent him this information along with some advice not to promote a ballon launch unless he was really sure it would work! As Franklin said, “It is a serious thing to draw out from their Affairs all the Inhabitants of a great City & its Environs, and a Disappointment makes them angry.” A would-be balloonist at Bordeaux had learned this the hard way, when the crowd tore down his house when he failed to deliver the promised spectacle.

The “Charlière” rising above the Tuileries

Franklin himself had recently attended two historic ballooning events. First, on August 27, 1783, Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers launched the first hydrogen balloon (which ultimately crashed outside Paris and was destroyed by alarmed villagers). Then, on December 1, Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert made the first manned hydrogen balloon flight. Charles and Robert launched their balloon from the Jardin des Tuileries and ascended to about 1800 feet and traveled about 22 miles in two hours. Charles then made a second ascent to nearly 10,000 feet, but had to return to earth when he began feeling the effects of altitude. It is said that some 400,000 spectators witnessed the launch, 100 of whom had paid a crown each to help pay for the balloon’s construction and had access to a special enclosure where they got a close-up view of the takeoff. Franklin was part of this group, and presumably he and his fellow spectators felt that they got their money’s worth!

The second Montgolfier balloon

This launch came only ten days after the first manned hot-air balloon flight, during which Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier piloted a balloon designed by Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier. Thus, in January 1784, Europe seemed to be poised on the brink of a new era, when the possibility of flight would reshape geopolitics. As Franklin said to Ingenhousz, “Five Thousand Balloons capable of raising two Men each, would not cost more than Five Ships of the Line: And where is the Prince who can afford to cover his Country with Troops for its Defense, as that Ten Thousand Men descending from the Clouds, might not in many Places do an infinite deal of Mischief, before a Force could be brought together to repel them?” In fact, it would be a long time before aircraft played a significant role in warfare, but Franklin was certainly correct about its far-reaching possibilities. 

If you would like to learn more about Benjamin Franklin and the world of 18th-century science, join us at the museum on Friday, July 22 at 7:00 p.m. for “Secrets of Benjamin Franklin’s Kite.” The program is free and open to children of all ages.

You can read the complete text of Franklin’s letter here.

“Where Liberty Dwells There Is My Country”: Anna Hubbell’s Quilt

I recently had the opportunity to take a closer look at the quilts in the Alice’s collection when Hallie Bond came to document the quilts for a project she is working on with Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (she also gave a fantastic talk on Adirondack quilts). Some of these quilts don’t get to come out of their boxes very often and there was one that I had never even seen that I found particularly interesting.

The whole-cloth quilt was made by Anna Moore Hubbell (1793-1861), the daughter of Judge Pliny Moore of Champlain and wife of Julius C. Hubbell of Chazy. Unlike the patchwork quilts (made of many small pieces of material sewn together) that became common later in the 19th century, this quilt is made of just one fabric—and it’s a very unusual textile with an interesting history of its own.

Textile historian Whitney A. J. Robertson has written about this pattern, which is known as “The Apotheosis of Franklin and Washington,” and is one of the most common textiles of its kind to appear in museum collections. You can find it in at least 18 different places, including Colonial Williamsburg, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Old Sturbridge Village, and the Winterthur Museum. As Robinson notes, it’s hard to say “whether this fabric is so ubiquitous because of its popularity during its own time, its appeal to collectors in the 19th and 20th centuries or both,” but I think it’s easy to see why many people might have been attracted to its wealth of patriotic imagery.

Robertson explains that patterned cotton and linen bed furnishings became popular in Britain in the 17th century as washable, inexpensive alternatives to wool and silk. These early fabrics were printed with wood blocks; initially they were imported from India and later were produced domestically. In 1752, Francis Nixon of the Drumcondra Printworks in Ireland figured out how to use the copperplate printing technique used on paper to produce patterns on textiles. Copperplate printing allowed for more detail and larger pattern repeats than wood-block printing, though it was limited to a single color.

Copperplate-printed fabrics, also known as “toiles,” frequently borrowed designs directly from existing engravings. Pastoral scenes and landscapes were common, as were political and military subjects. Many of these fabrics were made by British and French manufacturers specifically for the export market. This market really boomed after the Revolution—American industry wasn’t advanced enough to produce these textiles, but English tradesmen realized that there was a good deal of money to be made in providing fashionable and patriotic materials to Americans.

The unknown maker of “The Apotheosis of Franklin and Washington,” which was produced in England ca. 1785-1800, clearly felt that it was a good idea to put as many different symbols into the pattern as possible. In one scene, George Washington drives in a chariot with a female figure wearing a plumed headdress, representing America; she carries a caduceus, symbolizing the blessings of commerce. The chariot is pulled by jaguars and is led by two Indians, one with a trumpet and a “Unite or Die” flag and one with an early version of the American flag. In the background are scenes from the Battle of Bunker Hill.

In another scene, Benjamin Franklin, accompanied by Liberty, is being led by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, to the Temple of Fame, where two cherubs hold a map of America. Over the heads of Franklin and Liberty is a banner reading “Where Liberty Dwells There Is My Country.” Liberty carries two conventional symbols, the liberty pole and liberty cap, while Minerva holds a shield decorated with thirteen stars. In addition to these two major scenes, the textile also depicts a Liberty Tree with a copy of the Stamp Act tacked to it, instruments of war, and distinctively American flora and fauna such as the beaver. While all of these symbols would have been familiar to most people in the late 18th century, it is definitely unusual to see so many different forms of iconography in one place.

So how did Anna Hubbell come to make this quilt? Because she signed it with her married name, we know she must have made it some time after her marriage in January 1812—probably many years after this textile was first produced and became fashionable. A label attached to the quilt gives us some clues. According to the writer of the label, the quilt was taken from a bed in the home of Pliny Moore by M. A. Mygatt—presumably Anna and Julius’s daughter Martha Anne Mygatt (Martha’s daughter Isabella donated it to Alice Miner). There is also a barely legible line that says something about “bed curtains.” 

Did Pliny Moore once have an entire set of bed furnishings made from this textile? Moore permanently settled in Champlain in 1789 and built a fine Federal-style house in 1801. He is said to have owned the first piano in Champlain, and he sent his daughter Anna to Litchfield Female Academy, one of the most important institutions for women’s education in the early republic. As a wealthy landowner, judge, and Revolutionary War veteran, he was just the sort of person one might expect to purchase a fashionable toile like “The Apotheosis of Franklin and Washington.” Champlain may have been considered the frontier in those days, but clearly its residents were aware of the latest styles in furnishings. 

My theory is that Anna may have used some of the bed hangings and refashioned them into a quilt—perhaps during the War of 1812 when nationalistic fervor was running high and the British naval blockade limited the importation of new fabric. A close examination of the quilt shows that the material was patched in one spot, the pattern carefully matched so that it is hardly visible. Stories that are still told about Anna Hubbell’s actions when British troops were quartered in Chazy before the Battle of Plattsburgh indicate that she was a spirited and patriotic woman; as the young wife of a newly-minted lawyer she probably also had to be economical in her housekeeping. By refashioning an older textile, Anna would have demonstrated both her patriotism and her resourcefulness.

Sources:

Whitney A. J. Robertson, “Sleeping Amongst Heroes: Copperplate-printed Bed Furniture in the ‘Washington and American Independance [sic] 1776; the Apotheosis of Franklin’ Pattern,” Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, Paper 739, 2012.

Walter Hubbell, History of the Hubbell Family (New York, 1915).

Duane Hamilton Hurd, History of Clinton and Franklin Counties, New York (Philadelphia, 1880).

Nell Jane Barnett Sullivan and David Kendall Martin, A History of the Town of Chazy (Burlington, 1970).

Litchfield Historical Society, Ledger of Students at the Litchfield Law School and the Litchfield Female Academy.

Interpretive panel about Pliny Moore’s home in Champlain.

First Impressions

before

after - including the settee and barometer

Every winter we keep our maintenance man Steve busy by renovating a room in the museum. In all of the rooms and halls, with the exception of the third floor ballroom, the wallpaper dates to some time in the 1950s or 60s - it is dingy and repaired in places. The tired old wallpaper does nothing to accent the collection or the wonderful building details and construction. So we remove the paper and choose an appropriate paint color - and then move objects around to fit the space and the theme of the room or hall better. Often the pictures on the walls seem haphazardly hung so this is our opportunity to bring an aesthetic eye to the walls and to create a more inviting and lovely room.

looking north - before

after... this little south hall holds the Battle of Plattsburgh exhibit

After finishing renovation of the third floor last winter, this winter we moved to the first floor hall and Steve renovated this very important space over the months of January, February and March. The results are stunning. The collection shines and the hall is so inviting now! I have taken the liberty of placing the wall objects so they relate better to the furniture and themes. I have also moved a few pieces that were easily overlooked in their previous homes, such as the handsome barometer.

below the stairs - before

after

Along with new paint and a fresh view, we have the newly conserved settee back from Williamstown Art Conservation Center. It is a George III carved mahogany settee from 1820 that has received a new show cover of crisp black hair cloth. You can read about the process and what the conservators discovered in my Wednesday, October 2, 2013 post, ‘Touring the Settee’. Stay tuned for a post about the completed settee. And come in for a tour! We are open Tuesday - Saturday with tours at 10am, Noon and 2pm.

look at the lovely settee!

For the Bookish

Today would be a great day to find a shady seat and relax with a good book. Perhaps Alice Miner, after finishing her needle work, would have wandered from Heart's Delight Cottage toward a stately elm tree and cracked open a good book. It's clear she enjoyed reading - as evidenced by the large collection of her books here at The Alice. She read about many things - fiction, history, reference, biographies, travel journals... Much of her non-fiction collection deals with how things were made. Specifically, the books are about china, American furniture, English furniture, decorative arts, Japanese woodblock prints, porcelain maker's marks, silver, silver maker's marks - in other words, she read a lot about the objects she collected. These books are part of our reference library at the museum, as opposed to books that are part of the collection - Alice Miner gathered some amazing and sometimes rare books together to preserve in the museum collection.

Lately I have been revisiting some of the more extraordinary books Alice collected. Here I will tell you about six of them, organized by publication date from 1914 all the way back to 1498. They are just a few of the amazing tomes stored in my office and I love to occasionally take them down from the shelves and carefully wander through their pages. Right now you can see them exhibited on the first floor in the Weaving Room.

A Century of Fashions from Contemporary Magazines 1800 to 1900 by M.J. Levey, 1914
Includes 100 hand-colored engraved costume plates representing a century of ladies fashions from magazines of the time. 

Atlas to Cruttwell's Gazetteer by Clement Cruttwell, 1808
A gazetteer is a geographical directory or reference for information about places and place names, population GDP, etc. - used in conjunction with an atlas or maps. Cruttwell's Gazetteer is an atlas of the known world including numerous maps. Clement Cruttwell was well-regarded in his time and even corresponded with George Washington - to whom he sent his own translation of the Holy Bible. Our copy of this book is inscribed "Levi Platt Esquire", indicating perhaps that Alice Miner purchased the book from descendants of the Platt family as she did numerous other pieces in the collection. Levi Platt (1782-1849) was a son of Zephaniah (1735-1807) and Mary Van Wyck Platt (1742-1809). 

Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America in the Years 1766, 1767, 1768 by Jonathan Carver, 1781
The journal of Jonathan Carver's expedition into the interior of America. Carver (1710-1780) traveled further west than any British explorer before the Revolution. Illustrated with copper engravings. Carver was a captain in the Massachusetts colonial militia during the French and Indian war, enlisting in 1755. His expedition was sponsored by Major Robert Rogers (1731-1795 - of Roger's Rangers fame) with an aim to find a western water route to the Pacific Ocean. Despite the immense success of the book, Carver died a poor man in London in 1780.

The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director by Thomas Chippendale, 1754
A furniture pattern book illustrated with 161 engravings of Chippendale's own designs. He was the first furniture maker to publish a book of his own creations. The book includes furniture patterns in the Gothic, Chinese, and Rococo styles along with more plain domestic designs. The drawings established the fashion for furniture for the period and were used by many other cabinet makers. The term "Chippendale" is now regularly used to describe English Rococo furniture. This book sold well and helped to increase Chippendale's clientele. 

A Treaty with the Indians of the Six Nations compiled and edited by Benjamin Franklin, 1744
Also known as the Treaty of Lancaster between Virginia, Maryland and the Iroquois League. This is an original copy of the treaty published and sold by Ben Franklin from his printing office in Philadelphia. These treaty negotiations were held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania between June 25 and July 4, 1744. The Iroquois agreed to hand over their claims to the Shenandoah Valley in exchange for 200 pounds of gold. The demarcation lines were vague and not agreed upon by all parties, resulting in later treaties. Although the leather binding is a more recent addition, I like to think that perhaps Ben himself once held this book!

Enneades ab Urbe Condito ad Inclinationem Imperii Romani (History of the World) by Marcus Antonius (Coccius) Sabellicus (1436-1506), 1498
A history of the world from its inception to 1504. Published by Bernardinus and Mattheus de Vitalibus, commonly called Li Albanesoti, who were brothers. This is the only book they published together. They were active between 1494-1536 in Venice and Rome. Their printer's mark is shown below.

It is interesting that this history supposedly covers through the year 1504 when it was published in 1498. It is decorated with woodcut outline initials that have been hand colored, and printed in Latin. This wonderful book was purchased by Alice Miner from her friend and fellow collector, Frank Gunsaulus in 1919. 

Please come to see these amazing objects here at The Alice. Due to their delicate nature they will be on exhibit for only a short time and then carefully boxed and stowed away again in my office.

Likeness in Profile

Art and history can often be found in the most surprising places. For example, while driving along the interstate recently, I spotted a silhouette... we've all seen her - she may be the most commonly reproduced silhouette of our time - mud flap girl! Although this may seem to some a modern and novel way to depict a beautiful woman, this type of illustration has a long history and was once a very popular form of low-cost portraiture.

The Alice's collection holds a lovely group of thirty slightly more sophisticated silhouettes of men, women and children, collected by Alice in the early 20th century. The silhouettes are displayed together in the Sheraton Room on the second floor. They are wonderful little gems, exhibited in a wide variety of metal and wooden frames. Most are portraits of unnamed persons, but we know who a few of the people are - Benjamin Franklin, Martha Washington, John Ruskin, Aaron Burr, you may not recognize other names; Oscar Dinsmore-Davis (age 10 months and four days,) Margaret Davidson (her daughter was a poetic prodigy who died quite young,) Lucretia Platt, Alexander Potter, Eugenie (which may be the likeness of Empress Eugenie - wife of Napoleon III, and the last Empress of the French.)

Eugenie, 1870

The silhouette collection runs the gamut of the ways people were pictured - from the view of only the head, to full body profiles. One of the latter method depicts Alexander Potter and his dog. The Potter silhouette was created in 1829 by Auguste Amant Constant Fidéle Edouart (1789-1861.) Mr. Potter's and his dog's silhouettes were cut out of black paper and mounted on white paper, on which a split rail fence was lightly painted. The riding crop he holds is partly of cut paper and partly painted.

Alexander Potter by Aug. Edouart 1829 photo: PHOTOPIA/Shaun Heffernan

On the back of our Edouart silhouette is the following printed label,

"LIKENESS IN PROFILE
Executed by Mons. Edouart,

Who begs to observe, that his Likenesses are produced by the Scissors alone, and are preferable to any taken by Machines, inasmuch as by the above method, the expression of the Passions, and peculiarities of Character, are brought into action, in a style which has not hitherto been attempted by any other Artist..."

The methods used to create these images also varied widely, some were cut black silhouettes, mounted on white paper (which may be blank, or painted, or lithographed with a background scene) - some had the white paper as the cut silhouette which was then mounted on black - still others were produced by painting directly on glass, wax, plaster, or even ivory.

Auguste Edouart began cutting silhouettes in 1825 to prove an argument - he tells a story of "bustling the old father into a proper position, seizing a pair of scissors from a work basket, blacking a quickly torn piece of paper with the candle snuffers, and snipping a silhouette infinitely superior to the mechanical shade the family had been commending. It was at once approved of and found so like, that the ladies changed their teasing and ironical tone to praises, and begged me to take their mother's likeness, which I did with the same facility and exactness." Clearly Edouart was somewhat arrogant, but many others admired his work.

Auguste Edouart self portrait

Edouart was born in Dunkirk, France, fought valiantly in Napoleon's army and was decorated. He later moved to England where he traveled the country cutting portraits of British and French nobility. He came to the U.S. in 1839, just a few months before the daguerreotype made it to America, and stayed for ten years cutting silhouettes of Presidents and well-known Americans. On the return journey his ship sank and most of the folios full of copies of his thousands of silhouettes were lost. It is said that he never produced another after that ill-fated day.

Tracing the shadow of a figure thrown onto the wall was a means of portraiture employed as early as the Greek culture. This method did not receive the name "silhouette" until the 18th century, when it was named for a French finance minister who enjoyed creating likenesses made of cut paper... an inexpensive and fun method of portraiture. Other terms include; shade, scissor writing, paper profiles, paper cuts, black shades (a term Edouart hated!,) shadows, and profiles. The most famous English silhouette artist was John Miers (1756-1821.) Alice Miner also acquired a Miers silhouette of the head of a young woman created with black ink on gessoed plaster.

Head of a young woman by Miers, 19th century

Silhouettes became less prominent with the invention of the camera, rapidly losing popularity in the United States after 1840. They continued to be a type of artwork found at fairs and tourist sites for much of the 20th century, and silhouette artists can still be found today, selling their unique brand of portraiture as a more specialized and nostalgic niche item. If you might be thinking of becoming a silhouette artist, you would do well to visit The Alice and study our collection!

Tours are at 10:00, noon, and 2:00 Tuesday - Saturday.

Dr. Franklin's Maxims (and other bits of wisdom... or decorative art...)

Recently I created an exhibit of objects from the collection related to Benjamin Franklin - it is quite varied in subject and materials; including plates and cups with "Franklin's Proverbs;" a lovely framed silhouette of Ben; and "A Treaty... With The Indians Of The Six Nations..." printed and sold by Benjamin Franklin.

He was a man of many talents and interests, as noted in this entry from Wikipedia, "Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible."

In these lean times I can't help but be struck by some of the words of our wise and inventive statesman. His original maxims appeared in Poor Richard's Almanac between the years 1732 - 1758. We are all familiar with the saying, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." But some of the sayings on our transfer-ware plates and cups will be less familiar. Staffordshire ceramics factories began producing smaller china for children around 1790 (coincidentally the same year Franklin died.) Designs and sayings from books and magazines were freely "borrowed" (despite copyright laws forbidding this) and Ben Franklin's proverbs were printed on plates and cups made for children and containing "Lessons for Youth on Industry, Temperance & Frugality..."

On the cup: "If you would know the value of money try to borrow some. When the well is dry thy know the worth of water..."

Alice T. Miner purchased these cups and plates some time before 1924. They are usually housed with other transfer-ware pieces in one of the cases lining the walls of the ballroom. I've selected a few to include in this exhibit to allow visitors a closer look at this collection within a collection.

"Keep Thy Shop and Thy Shop Will Keep Thee..."

"Women and wine, game and deceit, make the wealth small and the want great. What maintains one vice, would bring up two children."


There are two images in the exhibit representing Benjamin Franklin. One is a framed steel engraving and the other a simple silhouette or "shade." The silhouette of Franklin in The Alice's collection shows the familiar and oft reproduced profile. Held in a lovely gold frame, this image dates to circa 1800.

The most extraordinary item in this exhibit is a 1744 treaty printed by Benjamin Franklin and is his account of a meeting between representatives of the Provinces of Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland with "The Indians of the Six Nations" held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in June 1744.


The last image I'll reveal of this exhibit is a J.F.E. Prud'homme framed steel engraving after John Trumbull's "The Declaration of Independence." This image may be familiar to you from the back of the $2 bill. Ben Franklin is among the five statesman standing in front of the table - he is the gentleman on our right holding his spectacles. To see this image larger simply click on the photo... or, better yet, come to The Alice for a tour and see the exhibit for yourself!