Friday, December 27, 2013

Made in China, c. 1903

Opium-smoking group, toy figures

Executioners, toy figures

Years ago, I took my nephew to visit the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. He was five years old at the time, and already a voracious and very astute consumer. He was an avid collector of action figures (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were all the rage) and he possessed an impressive knowledge of the entire toy category. So it was no surprise that en route to the Intrepid, he negotiated that we begin our visit at the gift shop. I was leaving on a trip to Europe the next day, and I asked him what country, were he to travel, would he most like to visit. It took all him of three seconds to answer, “China.” Why China? “Because that’s where they make all the toys.”

Probably 70% of all toys found under the tree this Christmas were manufactured in China, but in 1901, when German linguist and sinologist, Berthold Laufer embarked upon his three-year shopping spree for the American Museum of Natural History, China was only just beginning to modernize. American museums were woefully lacking in collections pertaining to Asian cultures and Franz Boas, the influential anthropologist of the AMNH and Columbia University enlisted Laufer, to change that. As the sole member of the Jacob H. Schiff Expedition, Laufer was charged with studying the history and culture of the Chinese people and acquiring specimens representing every aspect of ordinary Chinese life, including the home, commerce, the arts, and recreation.

Laufer sent back 305 crates containing some 7,500 objects, plus books, rubbings, photos and wax cylinder recordings. The haul accounts for about half of the Chinese objects held by the museum today. In the spirit of the season, I’ve chosen some toys, games, puzzles, etc. from among the 6,500 digitized items available on the AMNH website.

I started this post quite a while back, after attending a Bard Graduate Center symposium in 2012, Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives. It was Laurel Kendall of the AMNH whose talk about Laufer's expedition in China prompted my own protracted excursion deep into the vast digital archives of the AMNH. There, you can see Laufer's own field notes along with thousands of objects you will probably never see displayed in the museum.

Box of toy insects


Toy monkey on a swing


Toy axe


Toy bow and pellets


Toy dog


Playing cards


Toy mask


European steam boat, toy


Horse drawing cart, toy


Insect kite


Fish kite


Peach of long life, kite


Two men, kite


Toy cats


Toy figure


Game ball


Magical blocks puzzle


Toy animal


Toy camel


Toy rooster


Toy monkey


Toy elephant

Toy duck

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Wearing Mandela

Vlisco Java pattern fabric created after Mandela's release
from prison in 1990. (via The Journey to Batik)

Be it a t-shirt or a commemorative portrait cloth, Africa has a long, rich history of printed fabric as a medium of communication. So it is no surprise that so many mourning the death of Nelson Mandela and celebrating his memory have been doing so clad in textiles bearing his image. 

The following images are from The Guardian's "Nelson Mandela: pictures of the day" and other news sites from around the world.







A trio of Mandela commemorative cloths.






See the post about Nelson Mandela's penchant for Javanese textiles at The Journey to Batik.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Backpedaling

What a great design for a bicycle-shipping crate! I’m pretty sure that it can also double as a caddy for enormous slices of toast or as the armature of a hoop-skirt.
The Victorian-era crate (with bicycle) was sold recently at the final auction of items from the now shuttered Pedaling History Museum. It’s yet another sad story of historic and cultural preservation gone awry in Buffalo, NY.

Lots of cyclenalia(?) to ogle at the Copake Auctions site.

Shawmut racing safety bicycle new in crate (c. 1913). Never uncrated. “New old stock,” as they say.


Some modern “crates.”


Bicycle stand, 1896


Rex bicycle, c.1898


Quintuple five man bicycle, signed "Francisco Cuevas" on frame.


Rollfast ski bike, DP Harris Co. NY.


Identified simply as "Bicycle Photograph."


What will they think of next?
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