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Talking Vintage Valentines with Curator George Johnson

1/23/2020

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George Johnson will give a talk about “200 Years of Valentines” at 2 p.m. on Feb. 9 at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio. The exhibit runs for the month of February. The public is welcome. Admission to DACO is always free. 

What can visitors look forward to seeing in this special Valentines exhibition this month? We will start with some valentines from the 1820s and will have some into the 1920s, 40s, 50s and 60s. The exhibition will encompass the main floor, including the Rising Room and Double Parlors. I think the public will be interested in the history and beauty of the very old ones—and the ones they put in Valentine’s Day boxes in the 1950s may help some to bring back their memories. 

How will you tie 200 Years of Valentines to the new Barbara Shermund exhibition? We intend to tie in the exhibition in the Main Galleries (Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life & Art of Barbara Shermund) in two ways. First, we will also share information about early valentine entrepreneur Esther Howland. She was a trailblazer in the valentine business in New England from the mid-1850s to the 1880s. This was very unusual for a lady entrepreneur. She is considered “the Mother of the American Valentine.” Pretty much up until that time, all valentines were made in Europe. From the 1850-70s, Esther made over $100k making valentines, which, in that time period, was a fortune. We will also tie in the satirical nature of Shermund’s comics when we feature some of the satirical valentines that started in the 1820s and sold in the 1950s. Many are very cartoon-like with a satirical edge. They were called “vinegar valentines” because they had that sour tone to them. You did not send them to someone you would want to impress. They were often sent anonymously.

What makes the older valentines so unique and interesting? Many of the 1850s-80s valentines did things inside. They opened up, there were hidden messages, puzzles and more. I personally think that the excitement of the valentines of this era is that they did things. They made valentines that open and open and open and open with hidden messages—up to 13 within it. Victorian cards had a lot of symbolism based on the flowers that were used. If there was a gold ring somewhere in the card, it was essentially a marriage proposal. I have a theory that it was for hiding the messages from the parents. The real “I love you” message was buried much deeper. It was fun for the young lady to search through and find all those messages. You can also imagine the young lady and her beau sitting down together and he’s showing her all the messages. Most of the early ones had professional art work on the front, usually in watercolor, and the rest was left blank for the sender to put their own message. A lot of the early ones have long poems. One we have is a proposal for an elopement from the 1820s. The other one I find interesting has 13 stanzas of a very dark and long poem. It basically says if you reject me and don’t love me, I’ll kill myself. It’s always interesting to me as a collector, how these have survived. It may have been stuck in the bottom of a box for decades, so it really preserved them. 

Do you have a favorite era of valentines? The ones I really like are from the 1920s. They started being made around WWI and they are manufactured. They are paper engineered and designed to lay flat and go in an envelope, but they will fold open and have wonderfully clever designs. Some have honeycomb tissue paper and chromolithograph designs—really cleverly done paper engineering. This would be about the same time that Barbara Shermund started to do some of her cartoons for The New Yorker.

What is that you enjoy so much about collecting and exhibiting valentines? We have all gotten valentines over the years—the ones we got in elementary school from classmates, and the ones we received in high school from boyfriends and girlfriends. It’s a tradition that everybody is familiar with, but many people may not be familiar with the history. 
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Q&A with Caitlin McGurk

1/8/2020

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McGurk is the curator of “Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life & Art of Barbara Shermund,” opening on January 25th. She is also an associate curator for outreach & assistant professor at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.

How did you discover the work of Barbara Shermund? I’ve been researching Barbara Shermund for 7 years. I discovered her work in the archives at the cartoon library, but couldn’t find much about her at all. I started digging up information on this woman’s history. I found out she was one of the most famous and well-respected female cartoonists at The New Yorker. Then she went on to become a mainstay at Esquire.

Tell me about the journey this discovery sent you on. A lot of my scholarship is on women in comics and the representation of women in comics, so when I found out about this extremely talented and accomplished cartoonist, I wanted to uncover her history, 

The exhibition itself is a retrospective of her work, while, through the labels, telling her life story. The exhibition is broken down into themes, as she covered a wide range of topics. For example, she would poke fun at high society and modern art and she was the first cartoonist at The New Yorker to cover queer topics. I used those themes from the cartoons and uncovered how those themes related to her personal life.

How did you learn about Shermund’s life, when so little is known about her? I was able to find a couple references to her in a few books, and found out that the New York Public Library in New York City has The New Yorker archive, so I went to New York and did a research stay there, trying to learn about her as much as I could. I did a lot of ancestry research and archival research to try to put together her life story. I was able to connect to Amanda Gormely, one of her living relatives. She was amazingly on the same journey as I was; she was on her own trying to figure out how to put the pieces together. When we connected, it was weirdly serendipitous and we became good friends in the process. 

What are you planning on doing with all of the research you have done on Shermund?
I am writing a book, working with the research that started with this exhibition, and expanding on that. Hopefully, it will come out in 2021. 

Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life & Art of Barbara Shermund opens at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio on January 25 and runs through April 26, 2020. Admission to DACO is always free.


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Renowned Interior Decorative Artist to Restore Original Designs to DACO Parlor, Again

1/4/2020

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Artist Cheryl Fey
Before the Reese-Peters House became home to the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio, it sat empty for nearly 40 years, says Cheryl Fey, a professional interior decorative artist who recreated the stencils on the parlor walls of the house 20 years ago and this month is re-creating the stencil work again.

One of the pillars of the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio’s mission is “to preserve and showcase the architecture and collection entrusted to our care.” In keeping with our mission, general maintenance is required in the parlors and so we again called on Fey, a renowned interior decorative artist, to help again.
“When I did (the stenciling) 20 years ago, I kind of assumed that it would outlive me, but we have had some cracking with the plaster and so forth, so the room needs repaired and repainted and I have to do all of the stenciling again,” Fey says.

Keeping the home historically accurate is important to the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio, although its décor surely changed over time. “It looks as it would have if you walked into the room in the 1870s, when the Rising family purchased the home,” Fey says. “As anyone would do, they would update the home when they moved in, and what was popular at the time was Eastlake decorating, setting the tone from getting away from the fancy Victorian stuff with a simpler look,” says Fey. Additionally, stenciling saw a revival during the 1870s, she says. 

About the Artist
The self-taught artist came to her 20-year stenciling career in an unusual way. As a high school biology and chemistry teacher at Walnut Ridge High School in the 1970s, she joined a craft club with some of the other teachers. “Stenciling and colonial arts were in revival,” she says. “Each of us (in the club) would research a type of art or craft. I researched stenciling, and taught it to the group and I fell in love with it.” 

Fey says her passion lies in historical re-creation of stencils. She has never bought a pre-cut stencil; she creates them all herself.  Her passion led her on a journey away from the sciences and toward the arts. 

She’s traveled all over working as a well-respected interior decorative artist. Then she created Blue Shoe Arts, working with adults with disabilities who have artistic talent and need practice honing their skills and marketing their work. She also taught folk art at Ohio University Lancaster and at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio and created commissioned interior decorative art in private homes and healthcare facilities. “I was very blessed to take a God-given talent that I had a passion for to give happiness to people with it,” Fey says. 
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*All DACO volunteers are welcome to watch Cheryl Fey work in the parlors at 11 a.m. on Jan. 15.
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Decorative Arts Center of Ohio
145 E. Main St.
Lancaster, Ohio 43130
Phone: 740-681-1423