Curious Curator: Small Burr Amboyna Cigarette Box

I love this image. I selected it to start my write up this week because I think it evokes the early 20th century love affair with tobacco and the new emerging market for smoking accessories designed just for women and the female purchaser.

Parkwood has many smoking accessories in our collection. Everything from humidors to a myriad of varied ashtrays. Some of the items are evidently more masculine, while others have an overt feminine quality. Adelaide McLaughlin, from all accounts of our knowledge did not smoke, but all five of the McLaughlin girls did. Smoking was a social past time and women were marketed too, especially the "new" woman who emerged in the 1920s, as confident and carefree, and smoking defined this image. Marketing firms also took to employ female celebrities, like Amelia Earhart, who helped market to female vanity, and expose the slimming attributes of smoking to the new 20th century gal who had thrown away her corset, but needed to maintain her slim figure to fit into the new styles that we equate with the flapper.

 

As this part of the blog is to look at items within the collection that the casual visitor may not see/notice, today I have chosen this gem. A small wooden box that sits on the writing desk in the Sunroom.
 

The box, a small burr amboyna veneer boasting boxwood and ebony stringing, opens with a domed lid on a brass hinge to reveal a brass ringed, mahogany cigarette holder. When opened the cigarette box plays a short,
music box version of Mozart's Piano Sonata No.3.


On the bottom of the box stamped into the mahogany base is the word Austria.There is adhesive residue in a perfect rectangle indicating that the sticker that may have been applied at some time indicating the manufacturer, or perhaps the store where the box was purchased from, has fallen off long ago, leaving that information a mystery.

One can imagine, sitting at the desk in the Sunroom, composing a letter or working on a small project, reaching for a cigarette and working away while Mozart, although a tinny sounding version rings out, in the background.

Amboyna Wood

Did you know that amboyna wood was a popular furniture veneer used through the Regency period, or for our American friends, the Empire period, growing less and less in popularity as time went on, having a bit of a resurgence in the early 20th century for small decorative arts, like smoking accessories, since amboyna wood, is rare, adding to its expense due to its scarcity and difficulty to obtain and use as a veneer.

The Vinery Greenhouse Conservation Pilot Project Part II

It's curious how things happen or are discovered during projects. While chagrined that we have selected one of the coldest winters in recent years to dismantle and work on a greenhouse, which is housing a living historic grapevine, fingers crossed it survives in its little mini microclimate habitat, I discussed in the last pilot project blog, that I do not know the provenance of the vine. I still do not. I continue to research it, however, I have also referenced how little documentation we have at the museum of the "working" areas of the estate, like the kitchen and for the purposes of this write up, the Vinery. It's a standard practice, the McLaughlin Family did not take photos of the working areas, or the household staff, of the home. People seem to be shocked by that, but lets put this into a modern day perspective, when was the last time you took a photograph of your washing machine?
The recent discoveries of the Vinery information have proven incredibly useful and rather exciting on various levels. The first happened prior to Christmas. Nancy, our greenhouse grower was referencing one of her college text books, from the 1970s, for something that she wanted to verify and as she flipped through its pages she stumbled upon the attached photo. While in school, it never occurred to Nancy, that photograph marked "greenhouse, Oshawa, Canada" would prove to be a valuable photo all these years later. It's of the Vinery. A Vinery that none of the current curatorial and grounds staff, although our combined time is approaching 80+ years at Parkwood have seen. A Vinery whose single grapevine, although sporting a massive trunk, has never looked like it does in this photo, since the vine, probably cut back in the 1980s as staffing levels were cut, and economies put into place at the Estate, could no longer be maintained at this level.  The photo shows what is likely table grapes being cultivated, just look at the bunches as they hang from the vine, along with the boxes for cultivating seedlings and baskets for collecting.
From the curatorial perspective, this photo find is delightful. The oral history project has documented the use of the wooden boxes for cultivating, which are sitting on the benches, over the heating pipes running below, and the baskets used during the harvesting of the kitchen gardens, etc. have been referenced by former McLaughlin staff, both of these, the boxes and baskets, captured in photograph form, that I no longer must use my imagination to determine what they looked like. For interpretive and research programs/means this photograph was like striking gold. It also leads me to think about the planning and programming for the Vinery as we move forward after the pilot project is complete. Does the cultivation of the grapevine lead to opportunities for the Durham College horticultural students that are working at Parkwood as part of their living lab? Does the Museum Morsels Heritage Culinary Group have a grapevine component?

Last Friday, this photo emerged, from a great grandchild of Sam and Adelaide McLaughlin. The south side of the Vinery, a different year, during a different season.
Again like striking gold. This image allows the architects, contractors and Parkwood staff to view the flooring pattern and materials and add to the rich, diverse discussions we have been having and continue to have during the process of understanding the Vinery structure and its uses.

The adventure continues.......

Curious Curator: Secretaire-a-Abbattant

Selecting the first artefact to chat about in this blog entry was a difficult one. I have my favourites of course, but the Parkwood Collection boasts a sumptuous array of so many different items, of different styles and of course made from different materials, it was a challenge.  I have chosen the secretaire-a-abbattant after having a chat with a few of the former Parkwood interns. For educational fun in 2012, we created the Samantha University, which was comprised of a weekly text of terms that as a Curator, I come across with frequency, but often words or phraseology these museum studies grads had never encountered, for example, the term, eustracheon. I would text them a list of words and they would be challenged to define, and locate within the Parkwood Collection these items and then explain them to me, and their significance with regards to the piece in discussion.

The secretaire-a-abbattant is a piece that is often ignored while guests are touring the estate. Located in the Blue Room ( one of the guest rooms), it sits in its location and is rarely referenced. It looks like a cabinet of drawers, of course a lovely cabinet of drawers, in the Louis XV style, comprised of kingwood and rosewood with crossbanding decoration, sitting on shaped pilasters decorated with the ormolu mounts, but alas a cabinet of drawers.

Secretaires do have a practical purpose, and this one, is no different. The piece actual houses a desk, the furniture item being a fall front desk, which opens to contain a series of small drawers for writing implements, stationary and a leather topped writing surface. It's location within the Blue Room is ideal, because etiquette re: making guests comfortable dictates that in a well appointed home, guest rooms be outfitted with a writing surface, so guests may work on correspondence or journals, at their leisure. In 1922, Emily Post comments on the writing desk within the guest room,

"She <the hostess>must also examine the writing desk to be sure that the ink is not a cracked patch of black dust at the bottom of the well, and the pens solid rust and the writing paper textures and sizes at odds with the envelopes. There should be a fresh blotter and a few stamps. Also thoughtful hostesses put a card in some convenient place, giving the post office schedule and saying where the mail bag can be found." Etiquette in Society, Politics and in the Home, 1922

 

Secretaires grew in popularity and in abundance with the emergence of the growing middle classes in Georgian times, and became a must have in households that were showcasing their means, or trying to establish their status among the upper classes. It is often considered a feminine furniture piece, as they would have been purchased for the female(s) in a family, as their writing desk, as opposed to the more masculine desks that come to mind.
In terms of furniture pieces, they are often considered to hold romantic secrets as they were frequently crafted with hidden or secret compartments for the principal user of the desk to hide love letters or mementos of the heart. Knowing this, believe me and my Nancy Drew alter- personality, the one in the Blue Room has been scoured for hidden compartments, etc. and is, disappointedly, absent of hidden secrets!

Over the last several months, I have left the Secretaire-a-Abbattant open for our guests to see the interior of the piece. In order to preserve the piece and it's hinges, the item will be closing again until the next time.