The Amazing Félix Nadar

Nadar Self-Portrait in Balloon

Loretta reports:

A review of When I Was a Photographer, a book published over a century ago and only recently translated into English, had me investigating Félix Nadar, which turned out to be the pseudonym of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (1820-1910).

The name will be as unfamiliar to many of my readers as it was to me. In his own day, though, Nadar was a celebrity. He knew everybody—and he photographed them—alphabetically from Tsar Alexander III to Emile Zola, as his Wikimedia Commons page demonstrates.

He was far more than a sought-after portrait photographer, though. Nadar became the first photographer to devise a way to use artificial lighting, in order to take pictures of the Paris catacombs. He was also a balloonist who one day discovered, after numerous failed attempts, how to take aerial photographs without ruining the plates (the problem was the balloon’s gas valve). This trial and error accomplishment transformed mapping techniques. It also led to this Daumier caricature

Nadar élevant la Photographie à la hauteur de l'Art

as well as inspiring Jules Verne’s Five Weeks in a Balloon.

Along with his identities as photographer, balloonist, and inventor, Nadar was a caricaturist and writer. He was, in short, a man of many talents, living in an era and a city, Paris, of tremendous creative energy.

Nadar Caricature

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

An 18thc. Pocket-Sampler...or is It a Sampler-Pocket?

Isabella reporting,

I've written before about 18thc. pockets, those indispensable accessories that women wore tied around their waists and beneath their skirts. Some pockets are humble and hard-working and made of patchwork scraps, while others are elegantly worked in silk to be admired.

But this one is something special. The pocket from the collection of Colonial Williamsburg, where I saw it earlier this year. (It was stored in a study drawer, which partially obscures the very top of the edge in the photo, above.) This pocket is also a sampler, a needlework practice-piece to demonstrate skill at embroidering.

The maker proudly included her name - Judith Robinson - along with her initials. Nothing more is known about her, but it's likely she lived in Pennsylvania, and likely, too, that this was one of her first girlhood projects as a budding needleworker. The motifs she chose - the lions, trees, and birds - were typical of Pennsylvania German samplers of the time. At first glance, it appears Judith included a date below the pocket's opening. Instead of a date, however, the numerals are simply 1-8, with the 9 a haphazard afterthought in the middle of the design.

Judith's counted-thread cross-stitches were done in shades of blue wool on linen. Some of the wool has become fragile and worn away over time, as has the printed floral cotton used to bind the edges. It's easy to imagine the pocket becoming a favorite piece in Judith's wardrobe, worn with pleasure over and over - and why not, with those cheery lions, right, for company?

Many thanks to Linda Baumgarten, Jan Gilliam, and Christina Westenberger for "opening the drawers" of the collection for me. Colonial Williamsburg has much of their collection on-line here in their E-Museum, and it's constantly being updated as more pieces are researched, catalogued, and photographed. Go explore!

Above: Woman's pocket (Judith Robinson), wool embroidery on linen, America, Mid-Atlantic (Pennsylvania), c. 1780-1820. Collection, Colonial Williamsburg. Photographs by Susan Holloway Scott with permission of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

Breakfast Links: Week of November 9, 2015

It's time for Breakfast Links - our weekly round-up of fav links to other articles, images, blogs, and websites via Twitter.
• Magic in motion: the Victorian toys spinning back to life as GIFs.
• Astonishing trove of 2600+ undelivered 17thc. letters.
• Hester Bateman: an extraordinary 18thc silversmith and businesswoman.
• A stylish gown and coat that survived San Francisco earthquake.
• How the Industrial Revolution made Americans eat like animals.
• Image: beautiful photograph of sunset from the top of Belvoir Castle.
• One of Queen Victoria's hats (when she wasn't wearing a crown.)
• When Wall Street was a wall.
• Thomas Jefferson's ten rules for life, and how they were satirized.
• The deadly history of women using perfume as poison.
• A selection of 18thc. European walking sticks and canes.
• Library of Congress acquires portfolio of photographs of over 600 U.S. public libraries.
• Image: Rare locket with posthumous eye miniature and lock of hair of Princess Charlotte (1796-1817.)
• Ten things you won't see on Downton Abbey (like servants actually working.)
• Designing women: the Hewitt sisters and the remaking of a modern museum.
• An Arizona high school cross-country team is building on the Hopi tradition of running - and winning.
• Uncovering early wooden water-pipes in Salem, MA.
• Image: Window shopping, Kensington High Street, London, 1926.
• The Lake District estate where Beatrix Potter first imagined Peter Rabbit to be restored.
• A mysterious object found in Lyme Regis could have belonged to famed fossil collector Mary Anning.
• A nearly-lost fashion art: making artificial flowers (and there's a museum, too!)
• How to make medieval bread.
• Lottie O'NeilI, the first woman legislator in Illinois elected in 1922.
• Image: 17thc. paper needlework pattern that bears the prick-marks made by the needleworker.
• Birds saved centuries-old documents in their nests.
• Georgian consumerism: living on credit.
• Rogue's gallery: finding the criminals and crimes behind Victorian mugshots.
• Satyr calisthenics and other oddities.
• Digitised vintage kimono patterns.
• Image: Just for fun: Costume change!
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection.

Friday Video: Fashion 1949-1980

Image from video

Loretta reports:

At the start of each month, I present fashion plates from a certain year, usually of the 1800s. Thanks to research for my books, I have a mental image of how women's styles evolved from, say 1810 to 1920, although the transitions for the first half of the 19th century are etched more sharply in my mind.

This video, which takes us from 1949 to 1980, does help us follow the changing silhouette of the second half of the 20th century.

 

One other change in fashion is quite evident in this series of pattern images.

Take a look at the measurements for sizes. True, a pattern size 10 was probably an 8 on the racks in stores. But an 8 then isn't what it is now. The pattern sizing shows how far vanity sizing has gone, in the U.S., at any rate. I don't believe there used to be size 00 in, say, the 1970s.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Return Engagement: Arrows in the Hair, 1805-1830

Isabella reporting,

If you followed Loretta's directions for creating a fashionable early 19th c. hair style and the hair pomade to keep it in place, you're now ready to finish off your Apollo's Knot coiffure with a trendy ornament. Flowers, jewels, and plumes were most customary, but according to fashion plates and portraits, another popular option was an arrow.

The point and shaft of the arrow was thrust through the top of the hair, like a narrow miss by William Tell (though in the fashion plate right, the arrow must have been made in two pieces, to make both ends stick out the front of the hair. An ornament that likely began as a Neo-Classical whim - think an arrow from the quiver of the huntress-goddess Diana - seemed to slide into the Romantic Era with more sentimental connotations. The ornaments were called Cupid's Arrows or Cupid's Darts, and most appear to be brass or other gold-toned metal.

I say "appear" because I haven't been able to find any examples in on-line museum collections. My guess is that the arrows were the kind of fast-fashion hair accessory that wasn't made to last, and wasn't kept. Still, if any of you have come across a Cupid's Arrow hair ornament, I hope you'll share it – Loretta and I would love to see it!

Top left: Detail, Portrait of Nanette Kaula, by Joseph Karl Stieler, c 1829. Schönheitengalerie.
Top right: Detail, women's fashions plate, 1831.
Bottom left: Detail, Mme. Giuseppina Grassini, by Louise Élisabeth Vigee Le Brun, c. 1805. Private collection.
Bottom right: Detail from La Reunion, fashion plate, c. 1832.