#history commercial

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[babacontainsmultitudes]

He's a used car salesman. He has a heart of gold. He can't parallel park. He has two gay witch italian dads. He chops the wood. He has a magical talking cat mom. He's an assassin. He isn't an assassin. He's actually the cat from earlier. He's trans (female cat to male human). He's been shot through the heart. He was in Dewar. He was not in the war. He was in Dewar. He's on his last of nine lives. He just had a marble shoved down his throat. He's even bisexual. I didn't say his name, but he popped into your head, didn't he?

[the-cricket-chirps]

Niklaus Stoecklin, Still Life with Burning Candle, Matchbox and Dead Moth, 1950

[uwmspeccoll]

Wood Engraving Wednesday

Here are a few delightful wood engravings from a recent gift showing the various processes that go into binding a book. This little pamphlet is entitled A Short History of Bookbinding and a Glossary of Styles and Terms Used in Binding . . . .printed in London at the Chiswick Press for the bookbinder Joseph William Zaehnsdorf in 1895.These images were probably printed from metal plates that were made from the original wood engravings. The engravings are not attributed, as was the case for most commercial engravings.

Click or tap on the images to see the definitions for these activities as provided in the booklet’s glossary. 

View more posts with wood engravings!

[deadpresidents]

Favorite Presidential campaign television advertisements?

It's the obvious answer, but that's because it is a legendary campaign ad. And if the visuals and overall messaging weren't direct enough, that tagline at the end by LBJ certainly hammers home the point: "We must either love each other, or we must die."

I can imagine a modern Presidential candidate trying to squeeze that line into a commercial as their campaign consultants are saying, "Yes that's good and then...wait WHAT?!?!? Those are the only options?" before having a stroke.

[theafroamericaine]

Ms. Janet Jackson starring in a Japanese cellphone commercial Tu-Ka in 1993 Pt. 2

[4064]

[oldshowbiz]

Vancouver comedian Matt Frewer became famous in the United States as Max Headroom

[peteneems]

[maeamian]

Becoming deeply radicalized against the idea of crewed Mars missions, y'know how the Rovers keep sending back better and better data what if instead of that we made an even bigger one and devoted nearly 90% of its capacity to holding a guy in a bubble on top of it instead of sending back useful data, but wait! They'll eliminate like a half hour of latency and also almost certainly contaminate the landing site and possibly the entire planet, so it's not all downside.

[katerinaaqu]

I have a question I've had for a while now and i was wondering if you had any insight on it. In the Odyssey, Sicilian people are mentioned a couple of times, like Laertes' maid. Then we have Trinacria, the island of Helios with the ancient name of Sicily, as well as the island of the Cyclopes (?). So I was wondering, what reality is Homer (or the earlier tradition) trying to describe here? Sicilians as indigenous people prior to historical Mycenaean and later colonization or as Greek citizens of the forming Magna Graecia of his time? Would these Sicilians have shared their land with Cyclopes and/or the Sun god in myth?

That is a very good question. Arguably Homer mentions various locations by name for example Egypt (not only as the place of shipwreck of Menelaus but also in the Iliad Achilles says that "even if you gave me gifts as rich as in Egyptian Thebes" ) while other locations are either hinted (Tynisia for Lotus Eaters for example) or not named as some official name we recognize (Scheria, Ogygia etc) and Sicily is a famous place to check as well which is probably yet another reason why Butler suggested the theory that the woman he believed that wrote the Odyssey lived in Sicily (see my other ask)

Trinacria is by general decision placed indeed at a small island off the coast of Sicily and some accounts and researchers believe that the isle of Sicily itself is the land of Cyclops as well as the passage between South Italy and Sicily is said yo be the passage of Skylla and Charybdis due to the dangerous currents there I even had done a small research on the area while studying on greek colonies at university at postgraduate degree. The area around it is also linked to myths like the sirens as well. So yeah it does seem like Odysseus did a tour around Italy many times over hahaha 😆 even the land of Kimeria is mentioned most likely to the passage between Italy and Spain. In fact there are many people who place the land of Scheria off the coasts of Spain instead of the isle of Corfu (Kerkyra) because of the location being too far from Ithaca and fitting the homeric description.

The area of South Italy and Sicily is a precious area for the ancient Greeks for it was one of the most famous area they built their colonies (earning the name Magna Grecia aka Big Greece). The are is linked to various of myths as well including Titanomachy (Zeus vs Typhoon), Skylla and Charybdis, Sirens even as you said the Land of Helios and Aeolia. Some of the earliest colonies the Greeks had in the area was the one I studied, the placed named Pythekoussai right off the coast of modern day Napoli and was inhabited already by Homer's time.

I would say your question has one possible answer; both!

We do know the area was known to Greeks before otherwise they wouldn't have inhabited it so early. We also know that the Mycenaeans traveled a lot across the Mediterannean sea by the zenith of their palatial system (around 15th century BC). In fact people from nowadays Greece were traveling around. We discover pottery from the renounced Kamares of Minoan times to North Africa and Egypt as far back as Middle Kingdom. Depictions of Ramses's favorite wife, Nefertari, show the queen wear a silver earring that resembles a Minoan axe in shape as well (and by the way Silver was mostly an imported good in Egypt for Egypt was poor in silver) We even discovered a papyrus that is estimated to depict Mycenaean warriors working in the pharaonic army. They are drawn obviously in an egyptian style but this yellowish helmet is estimated by some to represent the boar tusk helmet.

There was also a palace that I studied during my postgraduate degree when we studied the cultural exchanges in Mediterannean sea in northern Egypt that has a Minoan decoration and is dating from the time of Hatsepsut and Tuthmoses III. It is estimated the designer must have been Minoan and either temporarily or permanently living at the area when he was commissioned this building's decorations possibly by an Egyptian.

When the Mycenaeans extended their areas of exploring in order to exchange goods they probably followed known roads. We do discover in Neolithic times for example obsidian that came only from the small island of Melos all over Europe. Probably Mycenaeans already knew some of the roads and based on products and new cultivated plants they probably did reach the coasts of Spain if not already Gibraltar (given how Atlas is said to hold the sky there). We also know or we estimated that local populations already lived there when they arrived. We do not have too many pieces of information on colonies already built at that time like remains of Cities purely greek or anything but it does seem that the locals and the Greeks interacted in various occasions.

I believe one crude way you can use to distinguish when we talk about Greeks or at least Greek influence in Sicily or any other place Odysseus visited vs totally local foreign populations is the custom of Xenia. If Odysseus visited a place and was offered hospitality according to the custom of Xenia then it seems like Homer insinuating Greeks or Greek influence to the locals. If the locals offer some different form of it or not at all or abusing it then we talk about local populations that either never met the Greeks or if they did they rejected them and their customs.

Another crude way would be to see if the area or the people are linked to some Greek God. For example Polyphemus and the Cyclops are definitely linked to Greeks through the myths such as Poseidon or the several genesis myths in mythology but they also represent the locals who know nothing of Greek culture or that they deliberately reject it aka a threat to the Greeks that are linked to possible conflict or wars between locals and Greeks when they tried to establish their culture or their commerce in the area.

For example Odysseus visiting the land of Lotus Eaters we can talk of a land that never interacted deeply with Greeks before because they are naturally hospitable people but do not know the custom of Xenia for they do not ask the strangers who they are or where they come from or offer them food and a place to stay but rather hospitable people that simply give you what they have (lotus) but they do not follow the customs. Scheria is definitely the opposite. Their story even implies a colony as they do seem to travel there and establish their city and civilization there. The customs of Xenia are impeccable in the Odyssey as they treat Odysseus eactly as the Greek Customs of Xenia. And they even recognize the employing ritual (see my other post here) when Odysseus makes a plea to the queen Arete. Polyphemus and the cyclops on the other hand represent the exact opposite. They have almost nothing of what the Greeks estimate as civilization such as agriculture and looming. Polypemus is a son f a greek god and he is aware of the laws of Xenia but he mocks them and even twists them beyond recognition. He knows what it is (he even mocks Odysseus with it when he gets drunk by asking his name after he receives his gift and then says that his own gift back is to "eat him for last") so maybe here we have a clear representation of Greeks being in the area but the local populations antagonizing or even fighting them. Circe and Calypso COULD be added to the category since both are technically goddesses thus Greek gods in the area=Greek presence in the area. Both goddesses though seem to abuse the laws of hospitality for example Circe does invite his en according to custom but she twists it and turns them into pigs holding them hostage (a possible hint of struggles between Greeks and locals and the existence of hostages? Perhaps). Odysseus has to act accordingly to save his men. But Circe is aware of the laws for not only does she do it all emplying ritual and eventually she honors the custom of Xenia to the T (perhaps a hint that the greeks eventually passed their culture in the area? Perhaps that would be me taking stuff out of a magic hat here XD)

Of course one needs to keep in mind that by the time Homer synthesized his poems, Greeks were already forming colonies. We do not know for sure if that was a thing in Bronze Age but we know they moved around for as I said before we can trace the products, toponyms such as Egypt or Ethiopia in Linear B tablets as well as the rare occasions when we discover shipwrecks (one was discovered off the coast of Turkey from Cyprus and, loaded with bronze for commercial purposes towards the Mediterannean sea, possiby Crete)

(here's an experimental replica) and we do find similar findings in the sea to connect the dots of history. So it could be partially Homer's anachronism but judging from the data he is surprisingly accurate according to period. Maybe is too early to assume that there were actual colonies of Greeks in the areas as Scheria seems to hint but I have no doubts that Greeks were already in regular contact with populations there even potentially have small settlements for better distribution of goods to the several ports.

I hope this answers your question. Sorry for the long answer.

[marzipanandminutiae]

I like the historical context and corrections but you could be more concise with them

I appreciate the feedback!

The reason I tend to go on a bit is that I've discovered the necessity of being REALLY thorough on Tumblr. Because if you don't cover every possible way someone could object to what you're saying...they will. And via Murphy's Law, that's always the reblog that goes viral.

(This is also why history people in general are not good at being concise. "Why not just say Boston has the oldest subway instead of 'America's oldest continuously-operating subway?'" Because there are older subways in the world, and technically the first underground rail tunnel in the country was the Cobble Hill Tunnel in NYC. That didn't work out, but it DID briefly exist. So to cover all my bases, I go for the wordier but technically correct option.)

[rabbitcruiser]

On December 8, 1992, the last shot was fired in the Falun Mine, and all commercial mining ceased.

[the-cricket-chirps]

Jane Atche

JOB

1889

[vxmpire-vxlle]