Fashions Summer 1920

Some illustrations from The New York Times, June-July 1920. Artist unknown - for some reason I suspect an early John Held Jr, but he did illustrations in a completely different woodcut style for the NYT before he started drawing bobblehead flappers. Will post some of those later.

La Mamma di Falco

Eugene de Blaas (1843-1931) - A Young Beauty (1882) Oil on panel.

I imagine Falco's mother would look something like this... a few years before he was born.

Eugene de Blaas was born in Rome of Austrian parents. The family moved to Venice, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when father Karl became a professor at the Venice Academy. Consequently, Eugene studied under his father and Venetian masters, and became an expert of the "Venetian genre" - meaning art aimed at the wealthy upper-class tourists flooding the city. Today, his art may be viewed as quaint and picturesque; he depicted idealized townsfolk and street life, preferably beautiful young women in various everyday activities. He became very popular, especially in Britain, and became a professor at the Academy like his father.

Sheet Music Covers

Originally published on historia.ainurin.net (May 25, 2007)

Sheet music published in the early 1900's has wonderful graphics. The covers range from modern, colourful and stylized art deco to faintly yellowing pastels and filigree fonts from the art nouveau period. Sometimes they feature cartoon characters or rough ethnic stereotypes, sometimes photographs of famous performers. Beautiful women are the most common subject, but there are a lot of other interesting images as well: political propaganda, ideal landscapes, flowers, humorous situations, satirical comments on trends, etc.

I have collected links to some of the best sheet music archives here for our browsing convenience.

UCLA Music Library: APAM
Archive of Popular American Music (my favourite)



Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University:
19th and early 20th century American sheet music



Perfessor Bill Edward's ragtime collection (with midi files)



Brown University Library Digital Collection:
African-American Sheet Music 1820-1920
(This is an odd one. Many of the covers are very racist and many of the songs are so-called "coon songs" performed by white minstrel singers in blackface. But some of the items in the collection have been created by African-American musicians, for example St. Louis Blues by W. C. Handy. Often black artists also performed minstrel songs in blackface for white audiences. It's hard to find a fitting description for this collection.)



The E. Azalia Hackley Collection
- was created in 1943 by a gift of material to the Detroit Public Library from the Detroit Musicians Association, a branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians. The Hackley was the first archive to document the contributions of Blacks to the performing arts.


The University of Chicago's library has a sheet music directory for those who hunger for more.

Cylinder Recordings

Originally published on historia.ainurin.net (2006/10/30)



The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the Department of Special Collections, Donald C. Davidson Library, University of California (Santa Barbara - phew, that's some name!) has made available an incredible amount of digital versions of cylinder recordings from the late 19th and the early 20th century. Browse through themes such as Jazz, Dance Bands, Swedish or Finnish or Japanese music, ethnic humor at the expense of Italians, Irish or Jews, and contemporary events such as the Great War or the Prohibition.

Thomas Alva Edison's invention, the phonograph cylinder (in wax and celluloid), was not easily defeated by the disc. Today, restoration is hard work, since celluloid deteriorates with age, and wax is notoriously fragile. Although Edison was not the only one to produce them, the age of cylinder recordings ended when the Edison Company left the recording business in 1929.

Goldenbird fans can enjoy the novelty jazz song that Mayann is singing on stage in chapter one: Jazz Baby, performed by Rachel Grant (a k a Gladys Rice) in 1919.
Afterwards, you may refresh your Italian with this basic lesson from the 1900's. It seems that it is rather difficult to catch a train directly to Milan. But it is a pretty language, no?

Takiji Kobayashi

"1920s proletarian novel strikes chord with young underemployed" - The Japan Times, Friday, July 18, 2008



I first read about Takiji Kobayashi (小林 多喜二 1903-1933) in the Finnish socialist literary magazine Kirjallisuuslehti (1934, p. 290). He was a politically conscious writer and dissident in imperial Japan, tortured to death by the police. His rediscovered novel, Kanikosen ("Crab-Canning Boat", 1929), deals with the difficult working conditions and labourers' collective struggle 80 years ago, and the modern-day part-time proletariat has discovered its relevance.

Shinchosha Publishing Co. said that in a normal year around 5,000 copies of the book would be reprinted. But this year, it has already printed nearly 380,000 copies.

The Japanarchy blog has a big post on Kobayashi, including many images of the manga based on Kanikosen. The comments include valuable discussions, too (how often do you see that?!). A must-read if you are interested in radical labour activism and Japan in the 1920's and 30's. Warning: The post includes some difficult photos of the deceased Kobayashi.
Here is a 10-minute clip from the 1953 movie by Sô Yamamura.

And here's an article by a guy who worked at fish-processing ships himself, and what he felt when he read the manga versions.

(Crossposted at Chirayliq)