Notes on feathers, message flimsies & papillons

Feather letter, 1811. Source: The Encyclopedia of Ephemera, Maurice Rickards, 2000.

i. Volante; volantissime! [Fly; as fast as you can!]

ii. Per postas, cito, cito et fidelis. [By post, swiftly, swiftly, and faithfully.]

iii. Birds as emissaries: imperial despatches in ancient China were carried by homing pigeons.

iv. The feather = speed

v. A feather flight in your seal:
- Symbolic of urgency, and used to indicate army mobilization orders in China in the first century AD.
- Express post in Scandinavia from the 1780's.
- Birds printed on the inside of contemporary envelopes still indicate speed, efficiency and lightness.

vi. Tiny written scrolls attached to besiegers' arrows and fired to agents within the city walls of Potidaea, 5th century BC.

vii. Siege of Metz, 1870, defenders of the city flew messages out of the city via balloon. The notes, written on flimsy sheets of coloured paper were named papillons - butterflies, or just called flimsies.

viii. Pigeongram / airgraph / aerogramme / catapult mail / rocket mail

ix. Dead letters: 'Stamp found eaten off by snails', Looe, Cornwall 1946. 'Destruction by tomtits', Exeter, 1957.

Notes on Gazes

Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Miniature eye jewellery: a portrayal of an individual's gaze as opposed to just a portrait of someone's eye.

Subjective or objective?

The observer and the observed: the difference between being seen, and seeing. Here, in this sense, it's confused. The painted eye views the human eye, views the painted eye, views the human eye… ad infinitum. A never-ending and unspoken reciprocal dialogue.

Anonymity. I know it's your eye. You know it's your eye. Everyone else however is in the dark. And a hundred years from now, certainly, that tacit understanding is entirely lost. All that voluminous emotion embedded into one tiny painting, worn on a finger, across the heart or buried away under a shirt. Vanished. Gone.

But it's still relevant.

We know that someone cared for someone. Maybe lovers, maybe siblings, maybe mother and daughter. And something was exchanged. And we know that some part of that something, the part that is tangible, is ever vigilant in its gaze.

Image © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

prosopopoeia
(noun)
1 a figure of speech in which an abstract thing is personified.
2 a figure of speech in which an imagined or absent person or thing is represented as speaking.
ORIGIN: mid 16th cent.: via Latin from Greek prosōpopoiia, from prosōpon ‘person’ + poiein ‘to make.’

More information in:
Treasuring the gaze: eye miniature portraits and the intimacy of vision, Hanneke Grootenboer, The Art Bulletin, September 2006.

The Art of Mourning

Grafik Part II

p.54 - 55, Grafik 159

Front cover, Grafik 159

Homeward Bound makes it through again onto the pages of Grafik, this time through into their issue of favourite design for 2007. Thank you! And I like to think it's nothing personal that they decided to stick my work right in the gutter! But with this kind of flattery, you just can't grumble.

2007 - A Year of Great Graphic Design, Grafik 159, January 2008

On the turned leaf vol. I

ER & LR © Lizzie Ridout, 2007

Whilst working on Homeward Bound I came across these old nametapes and was so inspired by their beautiful reverses that I created my own stitched ribbons in their forgotten honour. The text was embroidered in reverse, requiring the viewer to read the back of the label instead of the front. Follow this link to see my adapted version in an older post (scroll down to the third and fourth image).

* * *

'My' - with stars © Lizzie Ridout, 2007

A piece currently in Mix it up - a show of a works all 12" square in size, at The Salt Gallery, Hayle, until 5th January 2008.

Inspired by a text found in William Tassie’s Catalogue of Mottos & Devices (1830), back when I was researching at the British Library. This small catalogue offers jewellers interpretations - in list form - of the symbolic meanings attached to images and words used in jewellery engraving. The definition for ‘my’ stood out as completely distinct from all the other explanations in the catalogue. Whereas many offered logical readings, this one stated simply: ‘with stars’. This ambiguity made it attractive as a starting point for a series of drawings.

This edition of 25 was originally created as a series of prints, to be exhibited alongside Homeward Bound when it was launched in February this year. But I've always felt dissatisfied by the way it was necessary to exhibit these pieces, and recently decided to re-frame them in the way that I would have originally liked to. This is the first - the remaining two will follow.

'My' - with stars is laser-cut into paper, and when it is framed between two pieces of glass and hinged to a wall, movement and changes in light create a flickering effect through the holes. When light is cast directly on to the front of the piece it also casts light-text onto the wall behind. Click on the above picture to enlarge.

Nature's chief restorer

Source: University of Delaware Library

Well. I've got electric tablecloths, dresses, fruit and jewellery. And now I can add electric belts to the collection.

This novel product would have conducted a mild electric current through the wearer and was recommended for a variety of ailments including tiredness, kidney disease and any reproductive or sexual disorders.

If only it lit up too, then in addition it'd be good for walking back from a Guy Fawkes celebration through darkest Cornwall…

Homeward Bound getting out

I'm delighted to announce that at last I've had some time to get copies of Homeward Bound (the publication I made at the end of my fellowship at the British Library) out into the world to be seen by a few people. Homeward Bound now adorns the shelves of the lovely Tatty Devine, London (thank you my faithful scout, Ian, out and about taking photos for me, above), Magma, London, The Fruitmarket Gallery Bookshop, Edinburgh, and Jam, Falmouth. Hopefully a few more soon.

Thoughts on flat-pack figures and scale

© Lizzie Ridout

After writing about dummy boards in a previous post I've begun to notice how common the dummy board's descendant is in modern culture. It seemed like such an archaic notion, and yet not only do two-dimensional paper and wooden figures lure us into restaurants (see above, a dummy board outside a restaurant in Beijing earlier this year), but they've been employed to add a certain human element, a sense of scale or instructional purpose to objects or products that would otherwise remain mute and characterless. I love the sly grin and the coquettish stance of these two dummy boards in the National Museum of Gardening at Trevarno. (And no, they weren't placed anywhere near each other, despite looking as though they may be in flirtatious conversation.)

© Lizzie Ridout

© Lizzie Ridout

In Sweden at new year, the house we were staying in Nensjö was home to this little dummy board. She was created in 1931 (handwritten in ink on the reverse) and is probably about 15 cm high. Whether she was produced commercially or as a gift by a friend is unsure, but clearly she was made by backing a photograph with some sort of plywood. She's by far the most compelling snapshot I've seen, and all because she's been cut out and removed from her background, allowing her to really nestle into whichever landscape she's placed in. All of us staying at the house commented on her. We talked about devising our own series of figures for the entire group, even going so far as to pose everyone outside in the snow for the shots from which we could create each individual character.

© Lizzie Ridout

I'm still not entirely sure why I've become so fixated with these figures, but link it back to work that I created at the end of my fellowship at the British Library. The various photo montages are still pinned to my wall and there's a pile of junk shop snapshots that I've been gathering beneath them, which I intend to work on in a similar way. Only now I want to scale it up a little.

Couple II © Lizzie Ridout

Friends I © Lizzie Ridout

Couple I © Lizzie Ridout

Stockholm Stadsmuseum

In Stockholm at the Stadsmuseum in January 2007, we were greeted with an entire floor of the museum devoted entirely to folklore and old swedish customs (we'd actually gone there to see an exhibition about wallpaper). The folklore section had a vague sense of being an almost forgotten part of the building: in that traditional museum way, everything seemed to be covered in a thin layer of dust, and the figures used in the displays had a clunky quality about them. All qualities that assure me there will be something appealing somewhere. Unfortunately the captions were all in Swedish, so I everything I write is a half remembered interpretation of what I was told by a friend who was with us.

© Lizzie Ridout

The above image shows a bottle of dew, collected on Midsummer's day. This dew, if used in baking assured a good loaf and also a healthy constitution. The other option was to roll around in your neighbour's dew-laden field on Midsummer's morning to guarantee good luck through the rest of the year. In Finland anyone who finds the seed of a fern in bloom on Midsummer's night will be able to travel unseen and invisible.

© Lizzie Ridout

Above are photos taken of funeral sweets. The sweets were packaged in net and decorated with silk flowers and cut out paper images. Some of them even look like they incorporate woven hair. This custom of making sweets (which never get eaten and are instead saved as a memento) was also carried out at babies’ christenings. Nourishment for the beginning and the end of a life.

Dummy Boards

Source: Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards; Clare Graham

Last year I was contacted by Florizelle, a historian-come-curator (my definition) working with incredible zeal on a really interesting blog called Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien. The site documents a diverse selection of themes: a wandering journey through art, fashion, interiors, product design, history and more. As a result most weeks I've discovered something that has hit a chord. Florizelle introduced me to dummy boards. She showcased them on the site and I instantly went out and bought Shire Album number 214: Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards by Clare Graham. Dummy boards are the distant relatives of those figures that you still occasionally see outside restaurants, proffering menus to a world too busy to notice.

In the 17th and 18th centuries though, these fullsize and life-like flat wooden figures were found in domestic environments. Influenced by the trompe l'oeil style, they stood quietly in corners, often deliberately placed to take guests by surprise. They provided light, by holding lamps or candles, or conveniently covered fireplaces that weren't in use during the summer months.

Source: Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards; Clare Graham

Dummy boards modelled on servants were the most popular. The pair of boards above are Vanity and Industry and would probably have been placed in a hall. The figure would have been based around the lady of the house (look at her jewelley and lace), acting as a constant reminder to employees to work hard. This work hard ethic was further reiterated by Vanity.

Source: Dummy Boards and Chimney Boards; Clare Graham

Grafik

Homeward Bound proudly makes its way into the pages of this month's Grafik. (Volume 151, May 2007.)

Fait Accompli

Photos © Lizzie Ridout

All done.

Done and dusted

Photos © Lizzie Ridout

Two days of walking round a table picking up 36 loose-leaf sheets, booklets and posters, placing inside a jacket, slotting an introduction poster into the front cover and bagging the whole lot up. All in order to make up my 1000 copies of Homeward Bound. I actually lost my fingerprints through too much contact with paper! One of the printers delivered the jacket late, further heightening the pressure. The other printer (who did the rest of the work) was exemplary. Thank you Active Colour. Thank you my team of complilers (Paul, Iris, Ingrid, Tim and Mark) - you were flawless. And fast.

Time to breathe again.

Hair Jewellery

Source: Forget Me Not; Geoffrey Batchen

My time at the British Library has been hugely inspiring. Almost every source has something that could be the beginning of a whole new project. One of the things that encouraged me to start drawing again after a long spell of conceptualising, was this image of a piece of Victorian memorial jewellery, with ‘Lizzie’ engraved on the back of the clasp. This particular example has a strap woven out of human hair. That got me started...

And then I saw the real thing in the Manuscripts section of the Library. Two bracelets belonging to a member of the Trollope family, possibly Fanny, were enclosed in a box, alongside other containers holding a painted miniature, a watch and several private letters.

In the case of both bracelets, the clasps are made of metal and are the part that gives the jewellery weight. The straps, made of intricately braided hair, appear like very fine metal thread. It's the lightness and elasticity of the strap, and a few rogue hairs that have freed themselves that reveal that it is hair.

See one of the pen and ink results below.

Elf Lock © Lizzie Ridout

The drawing was named after the old belief that tangled hair was deliberately knotted by Queen Mab and her elves and would bring the wearer bad luck. As a result 'bed head' was then known as 'elf locks'.

Ghosts of Stockings

Source: A Discovery Concerning Ghosts; George Cruikshank

In an era when spirit photography was popular, George Cruikshank wrote an essay, mocking the mediums’ claims to be able to contact the dead. According to Cruikshank, if there are spirits of people, then for them to be able ‘to present themselves before company’, there must also be: ‘…the spirits of trousers, spirits of gaiters, waistcoats, neckties, spirits of buckles and shoes and knees; spirit of buttons, “bright gilt buttons”; spirits of caps, bonnets, gowns and petticoats; spirits of hoops and crinolines, of ghost’s stockings’.

A Discovery Concerning Ghosts; George Cruikshank; 1863

Reversed-heel Shoes

As my friend Susanne asked me: “What would backwards walking shoes sound like?” Patent 3,823,494: Reversed-heel shoes, patented July 16th 1974.

Teardrop Handkerchief

Detail taken from my sketchbook of one of Queen Victoria’s embroidered handkerchiefs. After the death of the Prince Consort, the Queen – and the nation – went into mourning. To show the extent of her bereavement, the Queen had all her monogrammed handkerchiefs stitched with white and black teardrops. (White was considered deeper mourning than both grey and mauve).

Electric Current

Source: The New York Historical Society

Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt photographed in 1883 wearing an ‘Electric Light’ ballgown, designed by Frederick Ward.The ballgown, made in blue velvet and satin contained a tiny battery inside the bodice of the garment, off which miniature lamps set into the material of the rest of the garment were run. (Read more in Artificial Sunshine: A Social History of Domestic Lighting; Maureen Dillon; 2002).

In the 1880’s, excited by the novelty of electricity, personal electrical adornments became popular, initially for the stage but later as a fashion accessory. See below. (Read more in Like A Glow Worm Who Had Lost Its Glow: The Invention of the Incandescent Electric Lamp and the Development of Artificial Silk and Electric Jewellery; Maureen Dillon; Costume No.35; 2001)

Source: Like A Glow Worm Who Had Lost Its Glow; Maureen Dillon; 2001

Mrs Gordon, one of the first to wear electric jewels, described the perils in 1891 in her book Decorative Electricity:

Sometimes the battery heated, and leaked, and once I well remember, the old lamps having worn out, I had some new ones given to me that were a wrong resistance for the battery. It heated, and we barely had time to cast the battery into the bath before the gutta-percha sides gave way, and the acids poured out, taking off all the paint. So having spoilt a dress, a carpet, and a bath, I abandoned personal electric light decorations.

The Quick Change Act

Image © Lizzie Ridout

Clayton Hutton worked for MI9 designing and manufacturing escape aids for RAF officers fighting in enemy territory during WWII. These escape aids fitted into two categories: those which were 'pre-capture' devices and those which were surreptitiously sent to POW's in camps through a network of fake organisations.

This page from my sketchbook illustrates two designs.

The first on the left is an image of a design for a new flying boot. Hutton heard many complaints about boots from airmen returning to Britain. The boots became wet in damp weather and caused swelling in the feet and legs when marching for any length of time in dry weather. At all times they were noticeable because of their distinctive appearance.

The new escape boots contained a tiny blade in a cloth loop at the top of the boot, allowing the wearer to detach the bottom part, thereby creating an ordinary walking shoe. The leather-lined top half could be used to form a warm winter waistcoat. The laces also contained a powerful 'Gigli' saw and within the cavity of the heel were hidden silk maps, a compass and a small file.

On the right are sketches made whilst at the RAF Museum in Hendon. Here, I was shown the original artworks commissioned by Hutton for a pamphlet entitled 'The Quick Change Act', issued by MI9 to all officers. One item was an illustration of handkerchiefs wrapped in floral ribbon. It transpires that each combination of flower and leaf on the ribbon represents a letter of the alphabet in Morse code. Although there was no further information about precisely how this would have been used, I imagine that it would have been included in packs sent to POWs, alerting them to escape aids hidden elsewhere, either within the parcel, or on their own person.

For more information see: Official Secret; Clayton Hutton; 1960.