Conserving the Collection: Ceramic Repair Techniques

This summer we have been joined at the Alice by Adelaide Steinfeld, the first recipient of the Burke Scholarship established in honor of long-time museum board members Joseph and Joan Burke. Adie has been dividing her time between the Alice and Miner Institute, working on a variety of archival and collections-related projects. During a day spent cleaning part of the ceramics collections, she became interested in the history of ceramic repair techniques. This blog post is the result of her research!

Adie cleaning a very dusty tureen lid

Alice’s Ceramics Collection

Alice T. Miner’s antique collection began with ceramics. During her time collecting in the early 20th century Alice was able to acquire a large and varied collection of mostly English and French pottery dating from the late 18th to mid 20th centuries. Throughout her collection we can see evidence of the lives these pieces led. Several have cracks and chips, in some cases even whole pieces have broken off. There is also evidence of past conservation treatments to repair this wear and tear. We can see this in fragments that have been glued together, sections of loss that have been replaced, and what appear to be staples joining broken pieces together. 

Repairing Ceramics

As ceramics are often utilitarian objects, it is almost inevitable that throughout their lifetime they will incur damages from consistent use. Ceramics are a brittle media that is mainly susceptible to temperature changes and breaking from being dropped or mishandled. Likely for as long as people have been using ceramics, they have been repairing them. The methods that evolved for doing so were carried out both by specialized repairers, known as China-menders, as well as at the home by servants or housemaids. Repair techniques would vary depending upon the function and aesthetic value of the object. 

Mug. Tan slipware with brown spots, ca. 1810.

Detail of chip in mug, was likely never repaired as
the object would have still been fully functional. 

Pair of Vases. White with painted floral reserves, foliate
and floral motifs in relief and decorated in
blue, green, and gilt, ca. 1850.

Detail of vase. This was primarily a decorative object that has been repaired with an unknown fill. The fill appears to be dark grey and there is a large piece missing at the corner. 

Joining Broken Pieces

The most common type of repair needed for ceramics is the joining of broken pieces after a break has occurred. Methods for joining pieces of pottery have been around since we started making pottery and involve the use of either an adhesive or mechanical technique.

Prior to the early 20th century synthetic adhesives were not stable or widely accessible. As a result people mainly relied on natural adhesives such as starch pastes, natural gums, resins, protein binders, beeswax, and fats (animal glue). Because these materials would often be combined together and due to their poor aging, it is difficult to analyze the organic materials that have been used in past treatments. A few inorganic materials may have been used as adhesives as well, including Portland cement, waterglass, and sulfur. 

Due to the instability of these adhesives, mechanical methods to repair ceramics have been in use since antiquity. There are three main techniques used: tying, lacing, and riveting. Tying, much like the name implies, uses a binding (metal, reed, or twine) to tie around the two broken pieces and secure them. Lacing and riveting are very similar techniques. For lacing holes would be drilled through the ceramic and then a wire would be threaded through, joining the two pieces. Riveting, likewise drills holes into the ceramic, though not all the way through. A piece of metal would then be used to join the two halves together--giving the appearance of staples. Riveting was common in China by the 17th century and had spread to Europe by the 19th century.

Tureen. Chinese export porcelain, white orange peel
glaze with blue and gilt borders and scenic reserves
in sepia, early 19th century.

Detail of tureen showing rivets and metals
visible on the exterior.

Fills

Often when a ceramic breaks it will have some loss, either in the form of chips or a larger missing piece, that require the addition of a fill material in order to be fully repaired. If these losses were large enough they would often be filled with other ceramic fragments. Other times we see that a whole part has been replaced with a newly fired and glazed addition. In both of these cases we need an additional material to adhere either the new pottery fragment or the replacement to the original vessel. Often this comes in the form of one of the adhesives mentioned above. For example animal glue would have been used in excess along with a pigment to produce a fill that was quite strong. Wax that was pigmented and mixed with resin forms a durable fill, but ages very poorly. Clay could be used as a fill, with either shellac or animal glue acting as an additive. A low firing glaze could also serve this purpose, though this has to be done very carefully in order to avoid damaging the original ceramic. Cement can also be seen but it causes the migration of salts to the ceramic, therefore degrading the original object. 

Tureen. Blue transfer print, Beauties of America:
Boston Alms house (body)and Cambridge College (lid).
John Ridgway, English, ca. 1825.

Detail of tureen lid showing rivets and metal bars
joining the broken pieces

Detail of tureen handle that appears to be a
replacement, with a matte finish and metal pegs
that have been used to attach it.

Teapot. Blue transfer print, floral pattern, ca. 1825.

Teapot lid showing dark blue green fill material
used to repair a loss.

Finishes

Depending on the ultimate purpose of the repair—aesthetic or functional—the ceramic repair might be left unfinished or painted over to match the original finish. Most common paints and coatings were shellac with pigment as they would harden and produce a glaze-like finish. 

Contemporary Repairs
In the 1930s there was somewhat of a revolution in the types of adhesives available as the development of modern chemistry allowed for the discovery of plastic, synthetic resin, and rubber glues. Common glues in ceramics conservation include acrylic copolymers, though in some cases epoxies are more suited to the repairs. These glues are more stable and longer lasting, and as a result ceramic repairs were able to become a lot more seamless in their appearance, often being hardly detectable. There are numerous objects throughout the collection that appear to have been repaired in this manner. 

Bowl. Mocha ware, brown stripes enclosing caterpillar
band in mottled blue and brown, early 19th c.

Detail of repair on bowl. Discoloration along
the seam, with some staining on the surface of the ceramic. Adhesive is unknown.

Addressing Old Repairs

The modern conservator is usually looking to make a repair that is minimally invasive, reversible, stable, and doesn’t impact the overall appearance of the object. This is often at odds with these older repair techniques which didn’t have the same aesthetic and long term goals in mind. In many cases, especially with the use of organic adhesives, they aged very poorly causing discoloration on the original object. Other fills may have caused salts to deposit on the surface of the ceramic, which can lead to fracturing and cracking down the line. 

Generally, when it is possible to safely and effectively undo one of these older techniques, conservators will do so to avoid having the object degrade further. There is some debate about undoing riveting and other mechanical techniques, as they are viewed as somewhat of an art and point to the objects’ history.

A Partner in Collecting: Emma B. Hodge

Publicity photo of Emma B. Hodge

After Alice T. Miner herself, the individual who probably did the most to shape the way the museum looks today is Emma B. Hodge. Her influence is most evident in the ceramic collection, which Alice acquired under her mentorship, but she also donated books, textiles, Japanese prints, and ephemera such as Valentines. An early collector of American folk art, Hodge also played an important role in the Art Institute of Chicago as a patron and a donor.

Emma Blanxius was born in 1862 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the daughter of Christian and Amelia Petterson Blanxius. Like Alice, Emma came from a large family and had three older sisters. By 1870, the Blanxius family had moved to Chicago and as a teenager Emma—whose parents were both immigrants from Sweden—joined the Freja Society, a Swedish and Norwegian choral group. Through the Freja Society she met Walter Hodge, an English immigrant working in a dry-goods store. They were married in 1879 and had three children.

Frank Gunsaulus (left), Emma Hodge (second from right),
and other Central Church Choir members at Heart’s Delight

The 1900 census shows that by that time Hodge was a widow living with her children, her mother, and her sister Jene (both also widowed). She supported her family as a professional musician, singing in the choir of the Central Church in Chicago. This nondenominational church had been established in 1875 and was as much a theatrical venue as it was a religious one. Music was a focal point of its services, and in 1879 it had moved into the newly built Central Music Hall, a multi-use building that held shops and offices along with an auditorium. Emma Hodge had previously been a member of the Plymouth Congregational Church choir, but when its pastor, Frank W. Gunsaulus, moved to Central Church in 1899, she came with him. In addition to singing at church services, the Central Church quartet performed widely throughout the United States, often accompanying Gunsaulus in “musical lectures.”

Quilts from Emma Hodge’s collection on display at
the Art Institute of Chicago, 1915

It’s not clear if Alice Miner originally met Emma Hodge through her friendship with Frank Gunsaulus, or the other way around, but the three of them shared interests in collecting books, ceramics, textiles, and other decorative arts, and were early supporters of the Art Institute of Chicago. Between 1912 and 1915, Hodge and her sister, Jene Bell, lent and then donated over one thousand pieces of American and English ceramics to the Art Institute in honor of their mother Amelia. Hodge also became interested in collecting textiles, particularly quilts and samplers. To Hodge, quilts represented “the story of American women from Jamestown and Plymouth down; the story of their thoughts and hopes and dreams, as well as the skill of their fingers.” Though Hodge and her fellow Colonial Revival-influenced collectors tended to romanticize the past, they also were some of the first people to recognize quilts, samplers, and other women’s work as art.

Embroidered Russian towel
Art Institute of Chicago,
gift of Emma Hodge (1919)

Emma Hodge also understood the power of art and museums to shape public opinion. In 1918 she organized an exhibit at the Art Institute of textiles from Armenia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Russia—all areas that experienced profound suffering during World War I. As one newspaper reporter observed, knowledge of what was currently happening in those regions “looms like a ghost at the feast of enjoyment of color and design.” The beauty of the textiles stood in contrast with the suffering of their makers, and helped to humanize people who might otherwise have seemed distant and foreign to Americans. By generating sympathy for those ravaged by the “war machine,” the exhibit also had the potential to encourage support for organizations like the Red Cross.

Hodge’s 1918 textile exhibit was held in Gunsaulus Hall, a recently opened addition to the Art Institute which had been funded by a $50,000 gift from William and Alice Miner. Even as the Miners turned more of their attention to Chazy and Heart’s Delight Farm, they remained connected to Chicago’s art world through friends like Emma Hodge. As for Emma, she became nationally known as an expert in antiques, and was the frequent recipient of queries from people who believed—or hoped—that they were the owners of some rare and valuable piece. As her obituary notice in the Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago stated, “It was often her uncheering task to reply that these cherished possessions were worth little or nothing, a duty she accomplished with rare tact and kindness.” Until the end of her life in 1928, she remained an “enthusiast and delver into the historical past,” and an “unfailing and patient adviser of the new collector.”

Sources:

In 1924, Emma Hodge presented Alice Miner with a massive scrapbook of newspaper clippings, programs, photographs, and other material about herself and their mutual friend Frank Gunsaulus. Much of the information in this post comes from the scrapbook. Information was also drawn from Judith A. Barter and Monica Obniski, For Kith and Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (2012). 

New York State History Month: A Pilgrimage to Niagara Falls

The final stop on our trip through New York on transferware brings us to the western part of the state. These pieces from the Alice’s collection feature two great marvels of the early 19th century: the Erie Canal, a man-made technological triumph, and Niagara Falls, a natural wonder of sublime beauty. It was the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 that for the first time allowed large numbers of Americans to visit the Falls, and made Niagara the premier tourist attraction of the age.

Ralph Stevenson, Erie Canal at Buffalo

 This plate, manufactured by Ralph Stevenson between 1830 and 1840, is one of many ceramic items produced in the 1820s and 1830s featuring towns and other scenes along the Erie Canal. This one depicts the canal’s end at Buffalo, showing both canal boats and sailing ships on Lake Erie. 

By connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal revolutionized the transportation of goods and people. American farmers had started exporting food crops to Europe on a large scale during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). However, even as international exports increased, it remained very expensive to transport goods within the United States. In 1816, $9 could move one ton of goods across the Atlantic, but only 30 miles across land. The construction of the Erie Canal, which began in 1817 and launched a canal-building boom, would change all that. Now farmers who had previously grown crops for their own families began growing for the market. They earned cash and purchased goods they had previously made themselves—or gone without. 

Canals were accompanied by other improvements in transportation—the continuing development of steamboats, new roads offering swift stagecoach service, and, by the 1830s, railroads. New York City, as the port of entry to the Hudson River, secured its position as the largest and most economically important city in the nation. The flourishing steamboat industry turned St. Louis and Cincinnati into centers of trade, and Chicago would ultimately become the railroad hub of the Great Lakes region.

Map of the Niagara region from
The Northern Traveller, 1831

The revolution in transportation made tourism possible. The development of urban commercial centers created a population of prosperous middle-class Americans with the means to travel. Tourists could travel with relative comfort and safety, and there was a growing body of travel literature that told people how to be tourists and what they should look for. For most of the first half of the 19th century, Niagara Falls was the place to go. Indeed, it took on an almost sacred status, with some visitors referring to themselves as “pilgrims.”

Travel to Niagara from places outside Canada had been difficult through most of the 18th century, because it involved crossing through the territory of the Iroquois Six Nations Confederacy. In the early 1800s, there was not much in the way of accommodation for those travelers who did make it—just a small village at Lewiston, with slightly more on the Canadian side. The disruptions of the War of 1812 also hindered growth in the area. 

The first tourist guidebook
published in the U.S.

However, the War of 1812 also decisively settled the boundary between the United States and Canada, which allowed for rapid expansion of trade. The powerful Indian nations of the region were displaced, and emigrants, businessmen, and tourists began to flood westward.  Even before construction began on the Erie Canal, there were enough travelers along the route between Albany and Buffalo to create an infrastructure of roads, stagecoach routes, and inns. And indeed, long before the canal was complete, its construction led to huge improvements along the route, as roads, bridges, and ferries were needed to transport workers and supplies.

The development of Niagara as a tourist destination was also closely linked to the Hudson Valley. As noted in my previous post, the Hudson Valley became a tourist spot in the 1810s. As travel and facilities in the valley improved, access to destinations beyond the valley improved as well. The Hudson Valley, Saratoga Springs, the Erie Canal, Niagara, Montreal, Quebec, and Boston all became linked in a standard tourist itinerary known as the “Fashionable Tour.”

Enoch Wood, Niagara from the American Side

Niagara’s first genteel tourist hotel, built by William Forsyth, opened in 1822. Within a decade, Niagara Falls had become such a common destination among tourists that it was already something of a cliché. Visitors came to the falls already having seen and read countless depictions and descriptions of them—perhaps on a piece of transferware like this platter made by Enoch Wood. They knew they were supposed to feel overwhelmed by the grandeur of the experience, but many found themselves disappointed by the reality. Besides, it was hard to appreciate nature with so many other tourists around, not to mention the souvenir-sellers, entertainers, tour guides, and hucksters of

Niagara Falls from under the Table Rock
John Hill after William James Bennett, 1829-30

various types that surrounded the falls.

Still, many visitors did find that Niagara lived up to, or even surpassed, their expectations. The English writer Frances Trollope, who was highly critical of the United States in Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832), had only praise for Niagara Falls:

“Wonder, terror, and delight completely overwhelmed me. I wept with a strange mixture of pleasure and pain, and certainly was, for a time, too violently affected in the physique to be capable of much pleasure; but when this emotion of the senses subsided, and I had recovered some degree of composure, my enjoyment was very great indeed. To say that I was not disappointed is but a weak expression to convey the surprise and astonishment which this long dreamed of scene produced.”

Two excellent sources on the history of early American tourism are John F. Sears, Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1989) and Richard H. Gassan, The Birth of American Tourism: New York, the Hudson Valley, and American Culture, 1790-1830 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008)

If you’re interested in the later history of Niagara Falls as a tourist destination, check out Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls (Rutgers University Press, 1999).

Much more on the Erie Canal can be found at eriecanal.org

New York State History Month: Picturesque Views of the Hudson River Valley

Picturesque Views, ca. 1829-1836

The plates and platters featured in this week’s journey through New York State on transferware are part of the “Picturesque Views” series by James Clews (who brought us Lafayette’s landing last week). These three pieces depict towns on the Hudson River: West Point (sepia), Newburgh (blue), and Fishkill (black). The source for all the “picturesque views” (twenty in all) is a series of prints engraved by John Hill after watercolors by William Guy Wall, called the Hudson River Port Folio, issued between 1821 and 1825.

Clews, Near Fishkill, Hudson River

William Guy Wall was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1792 and came to the United States in 1818. He studied art with John Rubens Smith, and in the summer of 1820, the two took a trip up the Hudson River, reaching as far north as Luzerne. In 1821, a prospectus appeared in newspapers in major American cities, offering readers the chance to subscribe to the Hudson River Port Folio, “containing twenty-four views of the north river, selected by W. G. Wall, during a tour in the summer of 1820, and painted by him in his best manner, and with a faithful attention to nature. To be engraved by J. R. Smith, in aquatint, in a manner peculiarly adapted to represent highly finished drawings.”

W. G. Wall, View Near Fishkill

The Port Folio was to be issued in six volumes of four prints each, “carefully coloured under the immediate inspection of Mr. Wall.” The prints would be enhanced by descriptions of the scenes, written by the novelist John Agg, who had accompanied Wall and Smith on their tour. Whenever possible, “this literary accompaniment will be enriched with historical narrative, so that the scene and chronicle of glorious achievement will be transmitted, side by side, to posterity.”

Clews, West Point, Hudson River

Smith began the engraving process, but was soon replaced on the project by John Hill, a London-born engraver who had achieved fame for his work on Joshua Shaw’s Picturesque Views of American Scenery, the first large-format color-plate book printed in America (1820). The sixth number of the Port Folio was never produced, making a total of five parts with four prints each, issued once per year. Each number cost $16.00, making it well beyond the reach of most Americans—indeed, it’s likely that many more people would have been familiar with Wall’s views through their reproduction on ceramics than through the original prints.

W. G. Wall, West Point

The Hudson River had played an important role in American life since colonial days, when it supported the fur trade and brought grain and timber to New York City. In 1807, water transportation was dramatically changed when Robert Fulton introduced the first steamboat, the North River (popularly known as the Clermont), which could make the trip from New York to Albany in 36 hours. Then, when the Erie Canal opened in 1825, connecting the Hudson with the Great Lakes, river traffic experienced a second boom.

Clews, Newburgh, Hudson River

W. G. Wall, Newburg

In the 1820s, the Hudson River became a destination for tourists from both the United States and Europe. Visitors traveled on it en route to Saratoga Springs, the Adirondacks, and Niagara Falls, but it was also a destination in its own right. The resort hotels of the Catskills and the Revolutionary War sites around West Point were popular tourist spots, but the biggest draw was the region’s natural scenery. The sight of majestic mountains as backdrops to the bustling and prosperous river towns was particularly pleasing to 19th-century viewers. All of Wall’s views combined elements of civilization and commerce (sawmills, steamboats, wagons, churches) with natural wonders like mountains and waterfalls.

Many artists and writers found themselves drawn to the Hudson River as they searched for ways to create a new cultural identity for the nation. The role that the river had played in New York’s unique Dutch history, the Revolutionary War, and the opening of the Erie Canal, all provided exciting subjects for historians and writers of fiction like Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. The English artist Thomas Cole traveled by steamship up the Hudson River in 1825 and painted his first Catskill Mountain landscapes. Cole and the other artists who were inspired by the natural beauty of the region came to be known as the Hudson River School. Like Wall (who might really be seen as the pioneer in this area), these artists tended to juxtapose the pastoral beauty of the cultivated landscape with more rugged, sublime manifestations of nature. Hudson River School artists also saw the hand of God in nature, and believed that the beauty of the American landscape was a sign of divine favor.

For the final leg of our journey through New York State, we’ll be visiting another natural wonder—Niagara Falls—and a man-made marvel—the Erie Canal.


Sources:

Philip J. Weimerskirch, “Two Great Illustrated Books about the Hudson River: William Guy Wall’s Hudson River Port Folio and Jacques Gérard Milbert’s Itinéraire pittoresque du fleuve Hudson,” in Adirondack Prints and Printmakers: The Call of the Wild.

Ellouise Baker Larsen, American Historical Views on Staffordshire China, 3rd. edition (Dover Publications, 1975)

A Hudson River Portfolio, a New York Public Library online exhibit

New York State History Month: New York City Scenes on Transferware

Did you know that November is New York State History Month? To mark this occasion, Alice News will be highlighting pieces of transferware from the Alice’s collection that feature New York’s history and scenery. We’ll start in New York City, then move into the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains, and end our journey out west in Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

Patriotic Americans in the years after the War of 1812 could choose from a wide variety of ceramics that depicted national heroes, military victories, public buildings, scenery, and important happenings, such as the opening of the Erie Canal. Most of these pieces were made in England, in the Staffordshire District. The potteries used the transfer process to create these American commemoratives. The design would be engraved on a copper plate, much like those used for making paper engravings. The plate was used to print the pattern on tissue paper, then the tissue paper transferred the wet ink to the ceramic surface. The ceramic was then fired in a low temperature kiln to fix the pattern. This method was a much less costly alternative to hand-painting, making these ceramics accessible to a wide range of Americans.

J. and W. Ridgway, New York City Hall

Our first piece is a dinner plate that shows New York’s City Hall. This plate is part of a series illustrating the “Beauties of America,” made by the English pottery company of John and William Ridgway. John Ridgway came to the United States in 1822, and traveled throughout the eastern states in search of suitable views of major American cities, as well as to establish business relationships with American ceramic merchants. Ridgway selected 22 buildings, including almshouses, hospitals, churches, and banks, to feature on a wide range of tableware—tureens, platters, gravy boats, tea sets, dinner plates, soup bowls, even a baby’s bathtub!



Ridgway chose just two New York places for the Beauties of America: the Almshouse (later Bellevue Hospital) and City Hall. The building depicted here was actually New York’s third City Hall. The first one was built by the Dutch in the 17th century on Pearl Street, the second in 1700 on Wall and Nassau Streets. That building was renamed Federal Hall when New York became the capital of the United States in 1789. The City Council chose the site for a new City Hall on the old Common at the northern limits of the city, and held a competition to design a new building in 1802. The prize was awarded to Joseph-François Mangin and John McComb, Jr. Disagreements over the design and costs, labor disputes, and a yellow fever outbreak delayed construction, but the building finally opened officially in 1812. 

City Hall in 1919

City Hall was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960. Parks Service historian Charles E. Shedd, Jr., in his report for the National Survey of Historic Sites and Buildings, summed up its importance:

“Since its completion in 1811, New York City Hall has been the heartbeat of the bustling seaport which became the capital of the Free World. The Hall has watched American armies passing in review, going to battle or coming home from the Nation’s wars, from 1812 to Korea. For more than a century and a half it has greeted the great of this and other nations; Lafayette and Lindbergh, Garibaldi and Eisenhower; and it has welcomed to these shores the humble and unknown. Before it have passed generations of immigrants, trudging toward their new homes in the teeming city or in the cities, farms, and plains which stretched westward to the Pacific. The Hall tells the colorful and significant story of civic administration in an American metropolis and preserves the deeds of good men and bad who shaped the American political tradition: DeWitt Clinton, father of the Erie Canal; ‘Boss’ Tweed, the evil genius of machine politics, and the able and flamboyant ‘Little Flower,’ Fiorello La Guardia, among scores of others no less memorable.”

James and Ralph Clews, Landing of Gen. Lafayette

Shedd’s mention of Lafayette brings us to our second item: Pieces depicting General Lafayette’s arrival at Castle Garden on August 16, 1824, made by James and Ralph Clews. I’ve chosen a platter as illustration so you can get a good look at the image; the Alice’s collection includes a pitcher, large washbasin, and a plate. It’s hard to express just how important Lafayette’s visit was, and how absolutely wild Americans were about him. Lafayette was the last surviving general of the Revolutionary War—he had first come to the colonies as a 19-year-old, and now, almost 40 years later, he was back. 1824 was also a presidential election year, and the first one in which none of the members of the old Revolutionary generation was a candidate. During this time of change, Americans joyfully looked back to the heroes of the Revolutionary era.

Lafayette as a young lieutenant general, 1791

Lafayette traveled to the U.S. on the American merchant vessel Cadmus, along with his son, George Washington Lafayette, and secretary, Auguste Levasseur. When the ship arrived in New York Harbor, it was met by two steamboats, the Chancellor Livingston and the Robert Fulton, and escorted with great fanfare to Castle Garden.

Castle Garden had originally been built as a fort, known as the West Battery, on the southern tip of Manhattan. Troops were stationed there during the War of 1812, though it saw no action. It was renamed Castle Clinton in 1815, in honor of New York State’s first governor, George Clinton. However, the army abandoned it in 1821, and by the time of Lafayette’s visit, it had become a place of public amusement, offering concerts, a beer garden, and other entertainments.

Castle Garden was the site of one of the massive public receptions held for General Lafayette during his American tour. The author of the book Memoirs of General Lafayette, published in 1824, described the occasion:

“The most splendid scene exhibited in this proud city, was the fete at Castle-garden. This was an evening party and ball, at which six thousand ladies and gentlemen were present. It was the most brilliant and magnificent scene ever witnessed in the United States. Castle-garden lies at a very short distance from Battery-street, which is a spacious and elegant promenade, on the south westerly part of the city. It was formerly a fort and is about one hundred and seventy feet in diameter, of a circular or elliptical form. It has lately become a place of great resort in the warm season of the year. Every thing which labor and expence, art and taste could effect was done to render it convenient, showy and elegant. An awning covered the whole area of the garden, suspended at an altitude of seventy-five feet; the columns which supported the dome were highly ornamented, and lighted by an immense cut glass chandelier, with thirteen smaller ones appended.

Perhaps some of the ladies at the fete wore
commemorative gloves like this pair in the Alice’s collection.

“The General, made his appearance about 10 o’clock, when the dance and the song was at an end. The military band struck up a grand march, and the Guest was conducted through a column of ladies and gentlemen to a splendid pavilion. Not a word was spoken of gratulation—so profound, and respectful, and intellectual was the interest which his presence excited....In front of the pavilion was a triumphal arch, of about 90 feet span, adorned with laurel, oak, and festoons, based upon pillars of cannon fifteen feet high.—A bust of Washington, supported by a golden eagle, was placed over the arch as the presiding deity. Within the arch was a symbolic painting nearly 25 feet square, exhibiting a scroll inscribed to Fayette, with the words:—‘Honored be the faithful Patriot.’

“Soon after the General entered, the painting just alluded to was slowly raised, which exhibited to the audience a beautiful transparency, representing La Grange, the mansion of La Fayette. The effect was as complete as the view was unexpected and imposing. Another subdued clap of admiration followed this tasteful and appropriate and highly interesting display.”

Castle Garden in its Aquarium days, early 1900s

Though this was undoubtedly a highlight of its existence, Castle Garden went on to have a long and varied life. In 1855, it became the Emigrant Landing Depot, New York State’s first immigrant processing facility, and served this purpose until Ellis Island opened in 1890. Over 8 million immigrants (and maybe as many as 12 million) passed through Castle Garden. Between 1896 and 1941, it was the site of the New York City Aquarium. It was designated a national monument in 1946, and is once again known as Castle Clinton.

If you are interested in learning more about American historical Staffordshire, Patriotic America, a site created by the Transferware Collectors Club, Winterthur Museum, and Historic New England, is a great place to start!

Big Books, Little Books

Alice Miner collected books of all shapes and sizes, but in our current exhibit in the Weaving Room, we’re focusing on some of the biggest and the smallest books in the museum! Some are so big I can almost hide behind them...

...while others easily fit in the palm of my hand.

Old Wedgwood, by Frederick Rathbone (1898), just might be the largest book in the collection. It's 20 inches high, almost 15 inches wide, and a solid 2 inches thick! Rathbone was the foremost expert on Wedgwood china at the turn of the century, and the book is a comprehensive biographical and historical account of the company and its founder. But the highlight of the book is the 67 full-page colored engravings of beautiful 18th-century Wedgwood pieces—vases, plaques, coffee pots, urns, cameos, and statues.

Plate VIII: Three déjeûner pieces (1790s)

Plate XII: Vase in grey-blue jasper, with reliefs of the Muses, etc. (1782)

This particular copy of Old Wedgwood is signed by Frederick Rathbone and was given by him to Alice’s friend Emma Hodge and her sister, Jene Bell.

These next two books, at 4 by 3 inches, are pretty wee compared to Ol’ Wedgwood (but still not the smallest!). 

William B. Tappan, Poems of the Heart (1845)

Rev. William Bingham Tappan was (in the words of one of his contemporaries) “the most industrious and voluminous of our religious poets.” Tappan (1794-1849) was the Superintendent of the American Sunday School Union; most of his verses are religious in nature and many concern the work of missionaries (“The Missionary’s Grave in the Desert”) and the temperance movement (“Song of the Three Hundred Thousand Drunkards in the United States”). He was also a prolific writer of hymns.

A Lady, Teachers' Offering;
or Interesting Stories for School Children (1854)

Children’s literature as we know it today began to emerge in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. New ideas about the innocence of childhood along with new educational theories led to a burgeoning marketplace of entertaining and instructive books aimed at children. Many of these books were sternly moralistic; in one of the tales in Teachers’ Offering, a young boy is “deprived of the use of his feet” as punishment for carelessness. Children would have to wait until the later 19th century for more humorous and imaginative stories of fantasy and adventure.

These three books (3 1/4” by 2 1/4”) are all the work of John Stowell Adams (1823-1893), a writer of inspirational short stories and editor of numerous poetry anthologies. In each, Adams chose verses to suit the theme of the book. Floral Wreath (1851) concerns the “language of flowers”; The Crystal Gem (1853) celebrates the many forms and beauties of water; and The Seasons (1853) contains poems suitable for spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Little books like these were very popular in the mid-19th century as gifts or as tokens of affection.

Hardly bigger than a dew-drop!

And finally we have our very smallest book, Dew-Drops. At just 2 inches high and 1 1/2 inches wide, this miniature volume contains a short Biblical quotation for each day of the year. Its publisher, the American Tract Society, was founded in 1825 to produce and distribute evangelical Christian literature. Small books like this one could easily be carried in a purse or pocket, and consulted frequently.

These books, along with many other treasures large and small, are on view at the Alice Tuesdays through Saturdays.