Corn Gems for Breakfast; The Burpee Strategy to Educate

Yes, the recipe is in this post :-)

W. Atlee Burpee was a
very good businessman as well as seedsman. 

If you don't know what to do with a vegetable, you certainly won't buy seeds to raise it!!

Burpee published many books, most of them on horticulture.

Horticultural Books

WHY WE PUBLISH THEM

In the success of the planter is the germ of our success. First, the best Seeds, Bulbs, and Plants; next, the plainly told practice of accepted experts in gardening and farming.

Books Free as Premiums. 

With the standard high and prices low we go further, -by allowing a credit of ten cents, on every dollar sent for seeds, plants, or bulbs toward the purchase of any book we publish that the purchaser may desire. Thus, a $2.00 order, with 10 cents added, can select any book offered for 30 cents, with 30 cents added, any book offered for 50 cents; or a $3.00 order can select entirely free any book offered for 30 cents; or a $5.00 order any book offered for 50 cents; and so on, we more than meeting our customers half way in our desire to give them FREE the best books for the Farm and Garden.      

It will be noticed that these premiums are entirely Free, and do not prevent the selection of $1.25 Worth of seeds in packets for Each $1.00 sent us for seeds in packets. If the purchaser's order is all for seeds by weight or measure, on which we do not allow this discount, he is still entitled to the selection of any of our books.

CORN GEMS from Mrs. Rorer's book

I pint of corn, 

3 eggs,

1 pint of milk, 

1 1/2 pints of flour,

1 tablespoonful of butter,

1/2 teaspoonful of salt,

    2 teaspoonfuls of baking powder.

Scrape the corn and press it out as directed on Page 40 (page 40 - Corn Fritters - Score the corn down the centre of each row of grains, then with a blunt knife press out the pulp, leaving the hull on the cob. Never grate corn, as in that way you get all). 

Add to it the milk, salt, yolks of the eggs and flour. Beat well and stir in carefully the whites of the eggs beaten to a stiff froth and the baking powder. Bake in greased gem pans in a moderate oven thirty minutes; serve hot. These, if carefully made, are delicious breakfast cakes.

from How to Cook Vegetables, By Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer

Note: The term gem likely comes from the cakes being small and decoratively-shaped, like "gems". Another possibility is that the term came from a kitchen housewares company named Gem that sold baking tins which came to be generically referred to as "Gem pans".  http://www.castironcollector.com/gems.php

Beauty in a Line - Engravings for Seed Catalogs

Just look at those lines!  A sharp steel tool, guided by an experienced hand, plowed out the lines.  Where the metal or wood was removed you have no printing.  The ink is applied to the remaining raised areas.  

This post will look at some engravers who worked with the seed trade.  Engraving is a theme I keep revisiting, with its passing, and that of chromolithography, being the watershed of my interest in seed catalogs.  Before illustrations were used seed catalogs are useful as documentation to what plants were in trade, but they are usually dull visually.

The following is from America’s Romance with the English Garden -

Albert Blanc's work has caught my eye before, but this time I started looking at his work in view of the work of other engraver's images used in the same seed catalog.  I poked around in some Philadelphia seed companies, Burpee, Johnson & Stokes, and Dreer.  I see that the companies hired engravers to make images just for them...copyrighting the images.  Both firms also used engravings done and sold to the seed trade.  That sort of image might be found in many companies' catalogs...the 19th century version of clip art.   Special order, copyrighted engravings are often NOT signed by the engraver, but rather the company name.  You can play detective and make a good guess by looking at their style though.

You can spot A. Blanc signed in the shade on the ground under the begonia.   Initials and names are often done in the shadows.

Here are a few more of Blanc's cuts.

Just the initials here in this simple Burpee carrot cut.










Then his full last name in this fancier illustration.

Below is a nice scene in perspective that was in the Dreer catalog. He even adds he is from Philadelphia.

Look at the rope border on this Johnson & Stokes cut.  Think how long it took to do such an "unnecessary" detail.  The companies thought it was worth the additional cost to have their featured plants appear special.

The narcissus are in a scene that suggests how you would use them in your house.  I wonder, did engravers pick what flowers were popular and generic and did them as "clip art" they would license?  I'd like to know pricing.

That's it for today.  I have more to do on this but the house trim needs painting before winter and school starts Monday...things are going to slow down in my blog world I bet!

 

Vegetable Garden Harvest Humor from Iowa

A neighbor just stopped by and gave me bags of string beans and tomatoes and cucumbers from their garden.  He keeps many families in fresh vegies all summer! Gordon said a pumpkin he threw out into the field last year for the chickens to play with had been so successful in sprouting this spring that his pumpkin harvest is his best ever!  They are so big his neighbors have to drive over and get their pumpkins!!

Photographic exaggeration postcards are really common so these good humored drawings caught my eye as I cruised eBays postcards one year.  The top one was mailed in 1914. I assume they were drawn by the same hand.

Vegies With Attitude

I hope you enjoy these!  I'm off to school to set up my art room.  I got moved around at the last minute last June and need to rebuild my kingdom :-)  Art teachers in elementary school have tons of "stuff" since we deal with kindergarten through 5th grade!  The trick is knowing what you have on hand AND where it is.  I had my last storage room for 25 years...and now I am unpacking into a new place, new configuration, etc.  Think of all the dendritic growth my brain is working on!!

A Very Self-possessed Gardener - New Yorker Cover

I'm busy ferreting out some stuff about engravings in seed catalogs in Philadelphia AND getting ready to start the new school year... argh... I need to clone me!

TheTalented Mr. Frauenberger of Rochester

George Frauenberger Leaves His Mark

A  history Rochester's notable people mentions the talented Mr. Frauenberger in the section on engravers of wood and copper.  Both Briggs & Bro. and Vick's used his services.

Autumn of 1866, Vick's Illustrated Catalogue of Hardy
Bulbs and Floral Guide included one brightly hand-colored,
 wood engraving "by George Frauenberger,
expressly for Vick's Bulb Catalogue".

"The earliest wood-cut engraver here was Martin Cable. He made a few coarse wood-cuts of our early newspaper offices, for show-bills, etc. He has left no record by which his fame could be perpetuated. V. R. Jackson commenced engraving here about 1835. He engraved on copper and wood; also the first copper-plate map of the city was made by him about the year 1840. He did a large amount of work on wood, and was a man of decided talent in his profession. About 1845 Charles Mix came here and formed a copartnership with John Miller, under the name of Miller & Mix.  This firm for a number of years were the only engravers here. They executed first- class work on steel, copper and wood, and acquired a good reputation as artists. Miller moved away, and Mix continued the business for a time, when he was succeeded, in 1850, by George Frauenberger, who, as engraver on wood or copper, as a draughtsman in mechanical drawing, and as a horticultural draughtsman from nature, has acquired an enviable reputation. George D. Ramsdell and E. M. Sasseville are also good engravers, with plenty of work on hand."

Semi-centennial History of the City of Rochester: With Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers -William Farley Peck, 1884

From a snippet return on a Google search I read -"George Frauenberger (b. Hildburgshausen, Germany, 1829; d. Rochester, New York, April 18, 1899), "Wood Engraver," advertised in the Rochester city directory, 1861, that he was a "Designer and engraver on wood..."

 ‎Read the above...it is an interesting magazine to explore.

George Frauenberger had an office at #60 in the Arcade.  The Reynold's Arcade was a big deal in Rochester.

 from City Building on the Eastern Frontier: Sorting the New Nineteenth-Century City - By Diane Shaw

Below is the 1877 interior of the Arcade.

More History of the Arcade

Abelard Reynolds purchased two lots near the bridge in 1812. 

He brought his family from Pittsfield, MA to the 100 Acre Plot in February 1813 and became the first person to complete a frame house. He ran a saddlery and the first tavern on the west bank on the site and with the help of Colonel Rochester became the settlements first postmaster, a position he held for nearly 17 years. 
In 1828, backed by capital from Albany and New York City, he moved the house 150 feet to the rear of the plot and built the 4 ½ story Reynolds Arcade.

It was built of brick, fronted 99 feet on Buffalo Street and had 86 rooms. The building was divided through the middle by a lofty skylighted corridor. Shops and offices were on the ground floor and a second balconied gallery level. The post office was at the rear of the hall. It had six large stores facing Buffalo Street, hotel rooms on the upper floors and on the roof an observatory 89 feet above the street. It was remodeled in the 1880's and rebuilt in the Art Deco style in 1933.                               from Walking Tour of Rochester's One Hundred Acre Plot

This engraving was done in 1840.






The bustling street below in the photograph is 1920s Rochester.

The building has been changed a bit but still looks good but dated. Not to mention, short.  It was torn down in 1933 for a grand Art Deco building of, I think, 12 floors.   It looks stumpy now.

The Art Deco Building is a little down on its luck.  A pizza place is a featured renter.

Promptitude is Appreciated

I love testimonials!  Two whole pages of testimonials from Briggs and Bros. happy customers were featured in the 1972 catalog.  These encomia are, I need to admit, were often carefully chosen from the more formal newspaper reviews, so they do not have the maximum of folksy charm.  Still and all, the period mind set that carefully crafted the two pages is interesting to observe, and the testimonials are still of interest in themselves!

 

The following is interesting.  I'll have to see if other seedsmen make as big a selling point of their assortment strategy.

Can't forget a cabbage or two :-)

 Couldn't resist the globular magnificence of this Cluster Tomato.

You can find the entire catalogs at the Biodiversity Heritage Library.