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George Johnson Takes a Historical Look at Valentines

1/24/2021

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Looking through his collection of antique postcards, George Johnson plays part detective, part historian and part storyteller. After all, each postcard has a story to tell, but it often takes a little bit of detective work and historical research to complete the full story.

A large floral and gold ring card from 1851 that Johnson acquired is the perfect example of this, as not every part of the story the card shares is obvious to the eye.

With the card maker’s name, “Mansell,” embossed at the top and bottom of the center medallion, the paper is watermarked “Twogood 1851.” The card opens, but there is no interior message—a feature Johnson says was not unusual during this time since great care had been given to embossing the cards on a copper plate and hand painting them with watercolors.

“In the early ones, there was no greeting on the inside so the sender could put their own thoughts in them,” he says. “Sometimes they were blank and they may not have had words inside, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t used.” In fact, some of the cards Johnson has collected over time have come with stamped envelopes, signaling that they were in fact sent even though there was no message inside. 

“Imagine that you must have paid 5 cents in 1790, which was a lot of money, for a beautiful Valentine, and you smear ink or write the wrong word,” he said. “So you may have written a separate letter and inserted it in the Valentine.”

The border displays beautiful perforated lacework showing roses and various other flowers and foliage, while the center is embellished with applied silvered paper flowers, garlands, a gilded wreath and painted flowers and garlands. 

The gilded motto of “Remember me” is at the top and a gold ring is displayed at the bottom—something Johnson says may uncover the sender’s intentions. “A gold ring on a Valentine is often considered to be a proposal of marriage,” he said.

Addressed to “Sue S. Slaton, Martins Ferry, Ohio,” the card was sent on Feb. 24 from Wheeling, Virginia. Johnson says this may catch the eye of someone today, but notes Wheeling was part of Virginia until 1863 when West Virginia became a state. 

Inside the envelope is a handwritten note, “According to Mrs. Edna Buckwalter this Valentine came on Pony Express dated 1851.” Research indicates, however, that the Pony Express did not ride between Wheeling and Martin’s Ferry, leaving Johnson to believe that it is likely a postal rider who delivered the Valentine.

This proposal Valentine is just one of more than 100 valentines that Johnson shares as part of a special Valentine’s Day exhibition in February at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio. The exhibition, due to COVID-19 restrictions, will be entirely online, offering a unique opportunity for people from around the world to view these snapshots in time through the lens of Valentines Day. 
With cards ranging from the late 1700s to around 1950, the exhibition reflects nearly 150 years of valentines, Johnson says.“I tried to pick out Valentines that were interesting and had a story that went with them,” he said. “There are Valentines that have actual dates on them, as well as poetry and other notes in them.”

His collection has grown thanks to a variety of sources, from antique stores and dealers to museums that have gone out of business and sold their collections. It can be difficult for Johnson to choose his favorites, because each has its own unique features and story. He often imagines what the stories could be behind each, such as an 1849 Irish Valentine mailed from Zanesville, or handmade school valentines that children exchanged during the Great Depression in the 1930s.

“I find it interesting that a mother or older child sat down and made these valentines so they could have something to put in the Valentine’s Day box at school,” Johnson said. “One is a recycled Christmas card, and one is a page cut out of a wallpaper book or a Sears and Roebuck catalog glued together.”

Although a virtual exhibition does not offer the opportunity to see these Valentines in person, Johnson says it offers visitors the chance to see the notes in more detail. “If you would have come last year, you may have seen the valentines, but not seen all that it offers,” he said. “The vast majority are at least over 100 years old, so they’re fragile, and I can’t open and close them a hundred times during an exhibition.” 

This year’s online exhibition, however, will offer photos and video, which can show individuals viewing the exhibition all aspects of the valentines without opening them repeatedly.

“So that’s a major advantage of a virtual tour,” he said. “It’s also a way to make a historical record of these 200-year-old Valentines.”

If you would like to sign up for our mailing list to learn more about special exhibitions like this, please email kennedy@decartsohio.org. Stay tuned for the virtual tour, available Feb 1.

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Professor to provide look into tsarist Russia through virtual talk

11/30/2020

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Transport to tsarist Russia, exploring the savage destruction of the First World War to the 1917 Revolutions and the establishment of the world’s first communist society—all from your home. Professor Nicholas B. Breyfogle, Ph.D., will present a virtual talk, called Historian Talk: Russia in War and Revolution that will soon be available virtually. 

This fascinating look at the end of tsarist Russia will delve into topics like the Civil War and the establishment of Bolshevik power.

“I’ll give a historical background to the remarkable artifacts and in particular focus on certain aspects of the history of the Soviet Union,” Breyfogle says. “We’ll look at Soviet history in the 20th century, at Russia and the Soviet Union in World War I, the socialist revolution and what life was like in the Soviet Union into World War II.”

Breyfogle, who contributed to the DACO exhibition, Russian Decorative Arts from the Tsars to the USSR, is an associate professor in the history department at The Ohio State University. He also serves as the director of the Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at the university, has authored or edited nine books and is a magazine editor.

Despite his extensive research in Russian Soviet history and society, his love for this intriguing time in world history was a bit of an accident.

“My parents sent me on a school trip to the Soviet Union while it was still the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, and that was one snowflake that created the avalanche,” he says. “I got so interested by what I saw there, that led to college and grad school. I got interested in how times began to change in the Soviet Union and then it collapsed. It was watching history unfold before one’s eyes. It remains a fascinating place to me.”

Helping to bring the exhibit curated by Michael Reese to DACO that focuses on this culture and time period brings many memories to life for Breyfogle.
“Michael’s collection is a pretty remarkable personal collection of items,” he says. “Eclectic and quite remarkable what he was able to pick up from the former Soviet world.”

During Breyfogle’s travels, he recalls spotting similar items.

“I remember these things being sold as people were trying to pay the bills, and to see it all together in an apartment in Victorian Village, it has been incredible to see and get to know him,” he says.  

Through Breyfogle’s virtual historian talk, he hopes to help bring this visual and cultural story to another audience.

​“It’s part of the work I do at the university in public history, bringing great stories from the past to as wide of an audience as I can,” he said.  

The Virtual Talk will be online at 2 p.m. Jan. 10. Tickets are $5. Register here.


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A Russian Christmas: History Through the Lens of Christmas

11/20/2020

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Visitors to the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio will travel to the other side of the world this holiday season as they explore Russian-made decorations and their symbolism from a conflicted time in the U.S.-USSR history.

A Russian Christmas, which runs from Nov. 21 to Jan. 8, complements the exhibition, Russian Decorative Arts from the Tsars to the USSR. This main exhibition, which also opens Nov. 21, explores Russian history through an incredible personal collection of Russian art acquired by curator Michael Reese.

Dr. George Johnson, who curated A Russian Christmas with his wife Jeanne, says DACO has worked to tie its annual Christmas display to that year’s exhibition in the main gallery upstairs.  “Having been successful with that, it’s a complete experience if you are coming over Christmastime,” he said.

This year’s theme, however, presented a few challenges for the curators.

“Christmas is primarily a religious holiday with secular overtones, and this time period in the Soviet Union discouraged religion,” Johnson said. “We have had some time to prepare, and we have come at it sideways.”

​For example, the silver forest of 1950s aluminum trees in the Double Parlors represents a closer look at an important time in history.

“It’s the space race, so we will look at USSR and U.S. relations in terms of these aluminum trees,” he said. “We are working in nostalgia that people will recognize from the 50s and 60s, and we are coming at it from the space race.”

In the back part of that same space, a Siberian forest adorned with snow and ice will represent a time period during which Russians began making ornaments for New Year’s trees as a symbol of patriotism, Johnson says.

Several countries that aligned with Soviet policies, however, continued to make Christmas ornaments that were sold to other countries like the United States. The income generated from these ornament sales were used by Soviet-controlled governments, Johnson said.

“We are going to put up a tree that has Soviet bloc-made Christmas decorations in the lower gallery, as well as a Russian-made aluminum tree,” he said.

Other components of the exhibition include a snow village, Russian folk story figures and a display of highly-collected Christopher Radko ornaments.

To share personal insights on his A Russian Christmas exhibition, Johnson will present a curator talk that will soon be available virtually. 

“We hope that folks get an appreciation of Christmas and link it to history,” Johnson said. “It’s not just pretty decorations. They are linked to a time period when we had a Cold War and conflict between the USSR and the U.S., and it gives a perspective.”

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Etching in the Age of Instagram

8/1/2020

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Far from being obsolete, printmaking is enjoying a resurgence, and as more look to disconnect from a digital world, this artistic process is finding a whole new generation of fans.
 
Yet for Ohio University Art Professor Art Werger, printmaking has been a rewarding form of expression for years, ever since he was a young student at the Rhode Island School of Design. “I enjoy the challenges that continue to present themselves with each new piece,” he says. “Having worked in etching and mezzotint for 45 years, I still find renewed interest in the pursuit each day I enter the studio.”
 
Now Werger is hoping to share his love for printmaking with others through his upcoming Artist Talk, Etching in the Age of Instagram. The lecture is scheduled for 2 p.m. Aug. 9, and will take place at First United Methodist Church, 163 E. Wheeling St., to accommodate appropriate social distancing.
 
At the lecture, Werger will provide information on resources in the region for anyone who is interested in pursuing any of the printmaking media that he will discuss, including lithography, mezzotint, etching and letterpress.
 
“The resurgence of interest in printmaking appears to be a counterbalance to the creative directions that digital media have opened up in recent years,” Werger said. He says this artistic process allows for a great range of personal expression through techniques that have been refined and evolved over hundreds of years.
 
“Printmaking provides physicality that connects the artist to his or her process,” he said. “While digital media provide ease and immediacy, printmaking is based in problem-solving and delayed gratification.”
 
Cost for the lecture is $8 for the public and $5 for members with prepaid registration, or $10 at the door. Register for this Artist Talk here.
 
Support for the exhibition has been provided by the George and Dollie L. Zimpfer Memorial Fund of the Fairfield County Foundation, The Fox Foundation, Ohio Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Federal CARES Act of 2020.


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Featured Artist: Melissa Vogley Woods

8/1/2020

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We recently sat down with Melissa Vogley Woods, a multimedia artist based in Columbus, whose work appears in our new exhibition, 2 + 3 x 18:
Diptychs and Triptychs by 18 Contemporary Ohio Artists, to learn about her philosophy, life and art. 


How did you become an artist? Tell me about your journey.  
My mom was an artist, and still is—a portrait artist. I grew up seeing her work. From a very young age, I wanted to be an artist. I went to art school in Kansas City and was at Fort Hayes in the 80s, in their art program. After college, I spent a few years working freelance. I had two stores in the Short North when I was 25 and ran a mural business for 15 years. After that, in my 40s, I decided to go to grad school for printmaking. I have always been very multi-disciplined! I spent the last nine years teaching at different universities in the area, like CCAD, OSU, Denison and Kenyon, and I decided to take this year off. I had planned it ahead of the pandemic. I chose well and got lucky with that!

How has the pandemic impacted your work?    
I am in a bunch of shows right now! Somehow everything came to a head. Everything got moved back because of Covid, and (the shows) got stacked up on each other. At the beginning of social distancing, I did a piece, now called Always CMA, that the Columbus Museum of Art purchased and had installed. The piece itself is about looking back into history. In a hundred years if something like this (pandemic) happened again, they could recreate it.

How did you get involved with the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio?
I had a relationship with curator Dr. Christine Fowler Shearer before her diptychs and triptychs show at the Riffe Center, and I had these pieces that really went along with her theme. That’s how it came to be. She wanted to travel the exhibition and I was all in. 

I have always wanted to have art at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio. My work has often dealt with houses, so it seems full circle. I created Rooms to Let Temporary Art Space and hold exhibitions and bring artists together in a house. The last project was in my house. I have always had this relationship with the house structure, and it’s so cool that the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio is in a house. I am excited to keep this thread running through my work. It’s also a nod to my work with exterior and interior themes.  

You have a talk coming up at DACO about “the lost art” of scagliola. What is scagliola and what is your relationship with it?
You’re saying it wrong; it’s actually pronounced “sky-ola.” That’s how they say it in Italy. When I was there, they told me I wasn’t saying it right either! I thought I was saying it exactly how they were, but I guess not! 

It is a traditional process used in Italy and in Germany, that region. In northern Italy is where it was created. It stems back to the 1700s. Nobody knows where it was invented, but it’s a process to make a faux marble look and it has developed on its own into a very complex art form involving inlay and image making. It has many different realms it can go into.

In my work, I always like to showcase some kind of historical making process. But I like to manipulate it so it speaks the way I want to speak. I like to create a cloud of information to search around within to grasp at some familiarity with the image or form. It’s like looking back at history; we interpret it the way we can. Everything is muddled by what is recorded. I like to do that in my work by muddling it up so you can kind of get a glimpse of what it is. 

With scagliola, I like its tradition; I like that it looks like stratification of rock. It looks like it goes back in time. There are layers of information and I like the fact that I can manipulate it and speak to its historic roots. It’s really fun; I love it. 

What do you want people to think about when they view your work?
The three inlays are pulled from the exact same image. So if people want to try to look and see if they can find the forms on each image, they are the same, just manipulated, on each of them. Also think about black and white versus color. It’s something I use in my work. 

It’s kind of a bodily experience you have when you look at the work. Think about how you look at it, and why we look at ruins. There’s a sadness or nostalgia to a ruin that I think is interesting. Think about what is in ruin now, and how we can currently fix it. There’s always a way to correct things later. 


See Melissa Vogley Woods' work in our current exhibition, 2 + 3 x 18: Diptychs and Triptychs by 18 Contemporary Ohio Artists. Register for her artist talk, The Almost Lost Art of Scagliola, held at 2 p.m. on Sept. 20.
Support for the exhibition has been provided by the George and Dollie L. Zimpfer Memorial Fund of the Fairfield County Foundation, The Fox Foundation, Ohio Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Federal CARES Act of 2020.


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New Exhibition Preview

6/30/2020

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Curated by Dr. Christine Fowler Shearer, 2 + 3 x 18: Diptychs and Triptychs by 18 Contemporary Ohio Artists displays art works created in a wide range of two- and three-dimensional mediums – including photography, paintings, glass, ceramics, mixed media and paper – and bearing stories with messages of topical relevance in today’s world.

Historically, diptychs and triptychs were largely devoted to paintings portraying religious subjects or political victories. The works in 2 + 3 x 18: Diptychs and Triptychs by 18 Contemporary Ohio Artists update these ancient genres with stories of contemporary experience.

“In the past, most diptychs and triptychs were done for religious purposes, but the artists in this exhibition have pushed beyond that initial idea and tradition to create unique and complex connections,” Shearer said. “The idea of the diptych and triptych was to tell a story—whether it be a secular or religious narrative, and this idea is definitely evident in the works in the current exhibition.” 

Stories among the exhibitions works range from narratives about the sometimes challenging relational between women to surviving cancer and questions about motherhood and hope for the future.
 
The exhibition will include The Circle, a linocut (linoleum relief cut) print diptych by University of Dayton art professor Erin Holscher Almazan, who will serve as the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio’s Artist-in-Residence Aug. 3-7 in conjunction with this exhibition. This work explores “the complexities and dualities that exist within our female identities,” said Almazan. “Sexual undertones, gendered rituals, memories of girlhood and the desire for approval are embedded within the work.”

By way of interactive videos created by Classic Interactions, guests also will have a chance to watch short videos of the artists working in their studios and to hear the artists explain how they create their work.
 
This exhibition is made possible by the Ohio Arts Council, the George and Dollie L. Zimpfer Memorial Fund of the Fairfield County Foundation, The Fox Foundation, Ohio Humanities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Federal CARES Act of 2020.

 
The exhibition opens on Saturday, July 18 and runs through Sunday, October 25.

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Cartoonist Barbara Shermund’s Niece Uncovers Lost Family History

5/4/2020

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PictureAmanda Gormley poses with a Barbara Shermund etching from 1919, when she was in art school. It is a drawing of Mission Dolores in San Francisco and was published in “A City of Caprice,” a book of poems written by Neill Compton Wilson in 1921-1922, who may have introduced Shermund to the editor at the New Yorker, Harold Ross.
A nearly decade-long investigation yields fine art, family facts and a final resting place for the artist.

Like many family histories, Amanda Gormley’s has a lot of holes, or “caverns” as she calls them. Having inherited a collection of original art signed simply “Shermund,” Gormley, who knew she had an aunt who was a New York artist, decided to delve deeper into her family’s history to learn more. For most people, this task would be daunting, but as a long-time professional investigator, Gormley had the skills and the wherewithal to uncover her aunt’s lost history. She began by collecting Barbara Shermund’s work. 

“She was born in 1899. That was about all I knew,” says Gormley. “My grandfather, who was her father, died when I was one-year old.” Without living family members to share information, Gormley scoured auction houses to track down and purchase Shermund’s work. She probed sellers for information about how they obtained the work with the ultimate goal of finding out where Shermund was buried. 

“If I could figure out where she was buried, I could work out the background,” the investigator says. “My goal in finding her was that I felt that I was violating her privacy. I didn’t know her and I am poking around in her private life. I thought I should apologize—at least put flowers on her grave.”

Gormley had a general idea where Shermund had died and began calling around to area funeral homes to try to obtain information about her burial. Finally she landed on John Pfleger Funeral Home in Middletown, New Jersey. “He said, ‘You are looking for your aunt? She’s still here,” says Gormley. Nobody had claimed her ashes for 35 years. 

Gormley let her husband know that they would be having a family member stay with them for a while and the funeral home shipped her the ashes. “She was in a temporary receptacle, what looked like a paint can,” says Gormley. “I was feeling very shell-shocked, partially elated, then very, very said. I felt it was kind of reckoning; that I had her permission and that I was doing the right thing. But it was like carrying two dozen eggs in your shirt. I didn’t want to break it. I didn’t know what to do with her. So I put her in my china cabinet.”

She says sometimes she would talk to her ashes, trying to piece together the history aloud. “Her mom died in 1918, and my mom didn’t know much about her. When my mother was born, Barbara was 35 years old. My grandfather was around 60 when she was born.” That large age gap would prove difficult for Gormley’s grandfather, who would later request money from Shermund, as he was close to 70 years old and not working anymore, but had a child (Gormley’s mother) and family to support. 

The next step in Gormley’s search was to find Shermund’s mother. She used her professional investigative resources and found the death notice in the San Francisco paper. Shermund’s mother had died in 1918 during influenza pandemic when the artist was only a teen. “In funeral homes, they have these huge ledgers and they were able to pull that out and tell us where Barbara’s mother was buried in an unmarked grave near San Francisco.” 

Now, Gormley had a tough choice. “I didn’t feel like I knew her enough to decide, do I bury her next to her mother? Do I spread her ashes on the Jersey Shore, where she lived?” she asks. So she continued her investigation and let the story unfold on its own.

Gormley learned of an antique dealer on the Jersey Shore who had artwork and personal letters from Shermund, so she traveled from her home in San Francisco to New Jersey to see it for herself. “I was very upset, elated, hurt. This woman had all these letters. It was like walking into a store and seeing your life history on a shelf.”

As she read through the letters from her grandfather to Shermund, Gormley learned that the artist was secretly married to Ludwig Sander, an accomplished American painter. “I was able to find an interview with him, and he talked about her, but he didn’t say her name. His second wife destroyed everything, but there was a single picture of Barbara Shermund and on the back it said ‘Ludwig’s first wife, Barbara.’” The letters were an incredible find, steeped in history. Sander wrote home to Shermund from the frontlines of WWII—sometimes on U.S. Navy envelopes or U.S. Army or Gestapo letterhead. “The juxtaposition of him being in Germany and then the content of his adoration for her is amazing. He wrote about how they were going to go on leave and would bring some watercolors and charcoals. He was still doing his art in the middle of WWII,” Gormley says. 

All this time, Gormley continued collecting Shermund’s artwork. “Every piece of art represents a different part of her life,” she says. “I started reading about who she worked with and what her life was like. Then I turned to the plates my father gave to me.”

Those plates turned out to be etchings created by the artist herself. “I found someone who was cleaning the etchings, and she said you have to take a look at this one plate. It’s never been inked. It was very small, almost completely corroded.” When it was cleaned up, it was sent back to Gormley, and she took it as an omen. “It says ‘Greetings from Barbara Shermund.’ It was another sign to me that I was on the right track, that she wanted me to do this.”

After taking a break in 2015 from her research and collecting for about a year, Gormley got back at it. She continued her research at the New York Public Library and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the Ohio State University and continued to connect the dots of Shermund’s story and her own personal history, finding many books that Shermund had illustrated. 

In 2017, Gormley reached out to Caitlin McGurk at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, who was working on putting together an exhibition of Shermund’s work. “When I came out, I brought some etchings, sketch books and all of the materials I had uncovered over 7 years. Caitlin had enough artwork, but didn’t know the story,” Gormley says. “Caitlin curated this fabulous exhibit and did a successful fundraiser so we could bury Shermund. It was amazing. I am very proud and I just feel great that it came out the way it did.” 

The Decorative Arts Center of Ohio is pleased to exhibit “Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life & Art of Barbara Shermund. You can see the Virtual Exhibition here!



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Humor, Sophistication & Social Relevance: The Work of Barbara Shermund

3/2/2020

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When editor Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he sought a new kind of comic art. Ross found the wit and satire he desired in a cartoonist named Barbara Shermund, who created a picture of metropolitan life that spoke to the modern-day woman.
 
Later this month, Judith Yaross Lee will once again bring Shermund’s work to the forefront as she speaks on “The Humor of The New Yorker Magazine” at DACO. Lee, Ohio University Distinguished Professor Emerita of Communication Studies, will host the lecture at 2 p.m. March 29. Cost is $8 for the public and $5 for members prepaid, or $10 at the door. The event will give participants the opportunity to learn how the covers, spot drawings and cartoons by Shermund and her contemporaries brought Ross’s editorial vision to life.
 
Lee recently answered our questions about the New Yorker and Shermund’s role in it.
 
How did Barbara Shermund's work fit into the New Yorker at the time in which they were published? Shermund’s art had three qualities that founding editor Harold Ross and art editor Rea Irvin sought for the new magazine: humor, sophistication and social relevance. The stylish women and men she drew exuded sophistication themselves, partly because her clean, efficient lines matched her subjects’ elegance, and she flattered her readers by playing with their expectations regarding social norms, especially gendered behavior, at a time when educated white women were staking out modern, independent roles in American society.
 
How was her work received at that time in our history? The best evidence of her success is that the New Yorker not only bought her original comic ideas for cartoons and covers, but also assigned her to illustrate service departments such as film and shopping reviews, and sprinkled her smaller drawings across the magazine’s pages as “spots.” Her work appeared in the magazine more than 300 times in its first five years—an average of more than once per issue.
 
Why was her work so important at that time, and how has it transcended generations? Her strong feminist sensibility and her ability to capture the gender politics of her generation and time stood out among the many other artists, both male and female, who contributed to the magazine in the 1920s; the questions she raised about sexual relationships, especially male-female power dynamics, remain relevant today.
 
What drew you to her work and why was her work and story important to share in your book, Defining New Yorker Humor? When I began my research in 1991, I was startled to discover how many women had contributed to the early New Yorker, because no tables of contents existed for the magazine at that point in its history, and the limited research until then was based primarily on memoirs by men, such as James Thurber, who told stories about their colleagues and friends. What studies of the magazine’s literary humor existed so emphasized the misogyny of Thurber’s stories that the whole magazine had developed a reputation as a masculine domain. In this context, the feminism and contemporary sensibility of Shermund’s work stood out all the more, even among the other women artists whose work I recovered and admired, such as Helen Hokinson and Alice Harvey.
 
Register today to learn more at The Humor of the New Yorker magazine with Judith Yaross Lee at DACO at 2 p.m. on March 29: https://tinyurl.com/humorofthenewyorker

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New Spotlight on 1940s Tea Service

2/4/2020

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Q&A with Becky Odom, history curator at the Ohio History Connection and curator of our Spotlight exhibitions

The Spotlight exhibition, with pieces loaned from the Ohio History Connection, will be on display in the double parlors of the Reese-Peters House through July.

What are the highlights of the new Spotlight exhibition at DACO that you have curated? For the next six months, the Spotlight exhibition will feature 1940s tea-service items, coffee pots and tea cups as well--all made by Hall China Company.
 
What’s so special about Hall China? It is an Ohio company that started in East Liverpool in 1903 and is still in operation today. Its founder developed a single-fire process. Usually with ceramics, you fire every time after you paint or glaze. With this process, it would harden the clay and it saves time and makes the piece much stronger and less porous so it lasts longer. 

The company started with 3 brick kilns and 38 potters. Now, the factory covers 6 acres and employs 125 people. It’s huge. Because of the durability of their china, they produce a lot of lines of dinnerware for restaurants. 

So what about their teapots, as this is the exhibition’s focus? Their teapots are phenomenal. The designs changed as design trends changed. The teapots from the 1940s really reflect modern design. 

The idea for displaying teapots stemmed from our desire to support the Decorative Art Center of Ohio’s initiative to highlight the history of the house. Afternoon tea was very important, not just as a meal, but also as a social event. This is really a way to highlight a tremendously important event during the time the families lived there. 

Why was afternoon tea such a big deal? Afternoon tea has a fascinating history. It started in England around the mid-19th century by a member of the royal family who found herself getting dizzy spells around 5 p.m. It was customary to have a light lunch and then a large meal at 8 or 9 p.m., so it started as a way for the ladies to sustain themselves in the afternoon until dinner. 

Teas could be informal, but also became a way for women to get together and socialize and gossip. Families like the Reeses and Peters would have wanted to go to teas to see and be seen at this social event. 

After World War II, the popularity of teas declined because there were more women in the workplace. With more families working, the dinner hour started earlier and there was no need for that afternoon snack. 

What can visitors to DACO expect when they view the Spotlight? There will be 22 items total; 21 of them are teapots, coffee pots, cups and saucers一items that were part of a tea service. We will also include a hostess dress from the 1930s or 40s. The idea is that the woman who would have hosted the tea would have dressed up because it was an event. 
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The dress we chose belongs to Mary White, daughter of former Ohio Governor George White. Mary acted as the host, because her father was a widower. The dress was from Montaldo's, a high-end ladies apparel shop in big cities, including Columbus. 

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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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Decorative Arts Center of Ohio
145 E. Main St.
Lancaster, Ohio 43130
Phone: 740-681-1423