Fun With The Milkman!

By the turn of the last century the availability of personal cameras meant that photography was often used for entertainment. Here the scenario is simple: three little girls and a male relation are having some fun with the milk delivery wagon – and the driver is a willing participant. Every era has its own brand of humor, and though this may predate Charlie Chaplin or the Keystone Cops, the heads poking out of both ends of the wagon indicate why the early film versions of comedy, growing out of Vaudeville, found wide audience appeal.

The milk business belonged to Vanderslice & Son of Williams Corner, PA. Over a century ago it was already necessary to assure customers that the food product was pure.

This very small unmounted print proves that the amateur photographer was having as much fun as the group in the picture and forgot to keep the camera level – the scene was uphill about 25 degrees right to left; restoring some equilibrium meant rotating the image, re-cropping to a rectangular format as well as supplying the resultant missing parts of the right lower corner including parts of the wheel, all of it before retouching the usual ravages of time – all in a days work for photo restoration.

The Streetcar Blues

Paying your fare and riding to your destination would seem simple to the New York City commuter in the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century, but the machinations behind the conglomerate street railways of Manhattan were as snarled as the traffic. Reading a short 20 year history of NYC Railway Company and the Metropolitan (one of dozens of iterations) in Wikipedia will tax your brain and reveal two things of significance: (1) Our legacy of impenetrable, opaque corporate financial dealings (organizations, mergers, leases, collapses and reorganizations) has been a long, long time in the making in America, and (2) Corporate law was (and still is) a very good business with job security.

This blurry little snapshot from someone's photo album was taken between 1907 and 1911, or so the "facts" suggest, before electrification of streetcar lines pulled by horsepower which had begun as early as 1832 in the city. There are four horses in this picture, which means that a second car is abreast of this one and is hidden from view (there were only two horses per car). The streetcar companies were called railways – confusing to us since we think of steam and diesel locomotives – but rails made it much easier for horses to pull heavy loads and had the added benefit of iron wheels that were more durable than wagon wheels, provided a smoother ride and did not mire in mud in rainy weather. Of course there were steam locomotive railways, both street level and elevated, and subway systems contemporary with the horse drawn variety in NYC. This car's exterior is enameled sheet metal which replaced the much earlier painted wood siding.

Here is an engraving of an earlier version and company name of the Metropolitan streetcar.

Confectionary Figure

Another fine piece of work by Horner, the transplanted Swede in Boston, late 19th century. Baby girl or boy – it hardly matters, just a sweet and beautiful infant that was the object of affection as it should be.

And once again, stucco furniture that looks like it was designed by the folks who manufactured circus wagons – makes the baby look like one of those figures set atop a wedding cake!

Let's Hear It For Goldi!

Dad is tolerable, Mom is putting on her best dazzle, but Goldilocks steals the show for sheer panache!

A. Heinemann at 5042 S. Ashland Avenue, Chicago, sets the tone with fine furniture and interior for this well-dressed 1920s couple (can't say much for the socks, Dad). She wears a considerable rock on her left hand, he has a cameo signet ring, even Goldi has her bracelet. The photo is large and has been kept very well in a stylish monogrammed folder, but no one knows who they are now.

Boy With Shovel And Pail

How's that for a creative title – worked hard coming up with that one. At least I assume it is a boy considering that they were often in skirts up to the age of five well into the 20th century (my father was born in 1911 and his early photos show him in skirts).

This photo by Horner, 48 Winter Street, Boston, Massachusetts, may be 1880s. Horner bills himself as The Photographer from Stockholm, Sweden – what cachet that brings I have no idea; does the photo look Swedish to you, do photographers from Stockholm have a recognizable photographic style? He also offers Pastels, Crayons, Water Colors and India Ink – I will assume that he sells these supplies at his establishment and that he doesn't mean that he is also an artist (the back of his card is shown below).

The child wears a wool tartan skirt with more buttons than are needed for utility, a jacket trimmed with lace collar and cuffs. He holds a small wooden pail and an odd little spade that would serve no useful purpose except at the beach; do you suppose he brought these items or did the photographer have a stash of toys that his young clients may choose from (that could be risky because they might decide they want to take them home)?

Most studios of the period had semi-architectural and garden-related props that ranged from the bizarre to the merely absurd and rarely sublime, most of them constructed from flimsy cards or hollow plaster stucco meant to be light and portable and looking like nothing more than the shabby fakes they were. It occurs to you to wonder what the useful life of a prop would be and how many choices you would typically offer to your clientele – surely Miss Miniver is not about to have her portrait taken in the same environ as her rival acquaintance, and Mrs. Bolliver is not going to consider the same background she stood before year before last! One would hope that people chose their photographer for ability and not for an up-to-date selection of the latest in props, but I miss my guess if our ancestors were any less fickle than we are today.

If you want a subject that every publisher is dying to add to their book list, you might research and author The Designers, Manufacturers & Distributors of Photographic Studio Paraphernalia, 1870 – 1920 (complete and unabridged in three volumes) for the clamoring public. Somebody like me – and one or two others – would probably buy it. Wait, let me check Books in Print, someone may already have done it!