On the Road: Seeds at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem MA

Yesterday was rainy and windy, so what could be better than heading out with my hub to a museum followed by a lunch somewhere?

We chose the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.  One of our favorites for decades, the Peabody has a great permanent collection relating to the China Trade of the 1800s and ships in general, working craft, seamanship and art from around the world that sailors would bring back to Salem.  With the "new" addition to the museum they have good gallery space for traveling shows, too.  We were hoping there would be something there, but didn't really care. I assume the PEM wanted to attract more visitors so they have expanded their
coverage to the arts, fine and industrial, of all eras.

This large hall has been kept as it was originally. 

It is a delightful feeling to walk into the space.

The cabinets displayed artifacts brought home to Salem and donated to the museum by the original members of the East India Marine Society which was established in 1799.  

This giant seed caught my eye.  Actually the chicken caught my eye  and I eventually saw this...but it is a BIG nut!!!!

You can see the opposite wall in the reflection!

From Wikipedia's Legends of the Coco de Mer:

"The nuts that were found in the ocean and on the beaches no longer had a husk, and resembled the dismembered lower part of a woman's body, including the buttocks. This association is reflected in one of the plant's archaic botanical names, Lodoicea callipyge Comm. ex J. St.-Hil., in which callipyge is from the Greek words meaning "beautiful rump". Historically these floating "beautiful rumps" were collected and sold for a fortune in Arabia and in Europe."

This looks like a niddy noddy with extra cross pieces...in a bottle. I don't know what it is supposed to be.  I wonder if it was supposed to be a niddy noddy to amuse a sweetheart...but the sailor forgot exactly what it should look like.

Above: Great show... designs of my past that influenced me.

That's my reflection :-)

1936 The first Airstream, called the "Clipper" in 1936, was named after the first trans-Atlantic seaplane. It slept four, carried its own water supply, was fitted with electric lights and cost $1,200.

Larkspurs and Potatoes

1880 was a good year for color illustrations in the Vick catalog. A very nicely written short piece on these magnificent catalogs can be found at the New York Historical Society Museum & Library's site.  Written by "sue" last year, I enjoyed reading it.  

I love these turnip illustrations and their appearance on the page.  Why?  I don't know.

Silly Bean

It is gloomy and rainy out.  Even though I know April showers bring you know what, I feel the need of a silly seed.  And here it is! 

Science for kids, turn of the 20th century, Seed-babies by Margaret Warner Morley...

Published 1896

If you have a first grader,  try this as a bedtime book when they are learning about seeds!

Want a mini virtual vacation in Maine?... go to this PBS site to share the sights and sounds of nature on a Maine island. Time of Wonder, by Robert McCloskey, 1958 Caldecott Medal Winner.

An Early 1866 James Vick Flower Catalog - Rochester, NY

 Ah...spring and the promise of summer flowers.  James Vick started to make that promise glow once inexpensive  chromolithography was available around 1880.

But, this first catalog is an early one from 1866, so it is visually plain in comparison.  The one color plate seems more like folk art than advertisement!

To think, the year after the Civil War people were looking at this catalog.

The b&w engravings have a formal charm I like a lot.

 

I forget where I read it, but some of these engravings of flowers may have been used by more than one seedsman in their catalogs.  An engraving business that specialized in botanical illustration to the seed trade would offer the "off the rack" plates for sale at a more attractive price than having your own illustrations custom engraved.  That left more money in the budget for interesting "bespoke" art.

 View the whole catalog, or download it in any format you like, from the Internet Archive.

1893 - A Disappointment; and Pansy Faced Sailors

James Vick's catalog would keep you busy reading for a long time.  It must have been a very welcome  delivery!                                                                                                                       
This catalog has a  chatty oddness that is charming.  The "novelties and specialties" at the front of the catalog were printed in violet ink.

(I found this ticket to the Fair somewhere online and wanted to use it...so here it is.)

Plain old black ink for the more regular offerings :-)

This ad was being used in magazines the same year.  Surreal pansy head dude is here too. 

James Vick - Marketing the Garden Dream

Yesterday I posted a piece about the seed exhibits at the Columbian Exposition.  James Vick was acknowledged as a major contributor to Class 180 (seeds) in the guidebook.  Thirty years before, when he started his business in Rochester by importing seeds from Europe he was often disappointed with the quality.  That led to his establishing his own reliable seed fields.  His catalogs and writings were incredibly effective in popularizing his brand!

 

The above from The Selling of the English Garden: The 19th Century Seed Merchant, James Vick 

Good Links:

• The American Antiquarian Society page with info and great images from Vick's.
• The Selling of the English Garden: The 19th Century Seed Merchant, James Vick - a paper by Thomas J. Mickey for the Conference on Historical Analysis & Research in Marketing
  
  from the above: