Images from the wonderful Jewel Book of the Duchess Anna of Bavaria.Commissioned in 1552 it contains magnificent illuminations of the duchess’ jewelry by Munich court painter Hans Mielich. Vanished into the back corner of history it only reappeared in 1848 so I could share them with you now.

Jewel #4. Image 53.
Jewel #4. Image 53. © Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Digitalized by Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum / Digitale Bibliothek. Fair use license. via http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00006598/images/index.html?id=00006598&groesser=&fip=xdsydenyztsfsdreayaewqweayaxdsydw&no=51&seite=53
Frontispiece.
Frontispiece. © Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Digitalized by Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum / Digitale Bibliothek. Fair use license. via http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00006598/images/index.html?id=00006598&groesser=&fip=xdsydenyztsfsdreayaewqweayaxdsydw&no=7&seite=9
Jewel #1. Image 12.
Jewel #1. Image 12.© Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Digitalized by Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum / Digitale Bibliothek. Fair use license. via http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00006598/images/index.html?id=00006598&groesser=&fip=xdsydenyztsfsdreayaewqweayaxdsydw&no=10&seite=12
Jewel #2. Image 19.
Jewel #2. Image 19. © Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Digitalized by Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum / Digitale Bibliothek. Fair use license. via http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00006598/images/index.html?id=00006598&groesser=&fip=xdsydenyztsfsdreayaewqweayaxdsydw&no=17&seite=19
Jewel #3. Image 34.
Jewel #3. Image 34. © Die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Digitalized by Münchener DigitalisierungsZentrum / Digitale Bibliothek. Fair use license. via http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/bsb00006598/images/index.html?id=00006598&groesser=&fip=xdsydenyztsfsdreayaewqweayaxdsydw&no=32&seite=34

I thank my very good friend Colleen P. who tagged me on a link to this fabulous treasure over on Facebook. I had not known of it before. And look out for more blog posts with images from it.

Check out my books on Amazon, under Sarah B Guest Perry.

Follow me here, on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and Patreon for more from the place where history and art collide. Even I don’t know where I’m going next but its bound to be wondrous.

1920’s American roof gardens on top of hotels, mostly in New York.

Roof garden, Hotel Gibson, Cincinnati, Ohio. 1928.
Roof garden, Hotel Gibson, Cincinnati, Ohio. 1928. Design drawing. Joseph Urban, maker (1872-1933). Image © Cooper Hewitt Museum. Fair use license. via https://newyorkerstateofmind.com/tag/joseph-urban/
Hotel Astor roof garden, New York City.
Hotel Astor roof garden, New York City. Undated. Early 20th c. Vintage postcard. http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/HotelAstor.html
"The Cascades." Roof top dining room, Strand Hotel, New York City. 1920's.
“The Cascades.” Roof top dining room, Strand Hotel, New York City. 1920’s. Vintage postcard. thejumpingfrog.com via https://newyorkerstateofmind.com/tag/joseph-urban/.
Murals for a roof garden dining room, Saint Regis Hotel, New York City. 1927-1928.
Murals for a roof garden dining room, Saint Regis Hotel, New York City. 1927-1928. Joseph Urban, maker (1872-1933). Image © Columbia University. Fair use license. via https://newyorkerstateofmind.com/tag/joseph-urban/

Pavilions and other oddments done up in the best of Art Deco style at the “A Century of Progress” exposition in 1930’s Chicago. Designed by Joseph Urban who also glammed up Broadway. Almost as good as being there.

Federal building.
Federal building. © American Asphalt Paint Company. Artwork in the public domain due to age. via https://chicagology.com/centuryprogress/1933fair05/
Circular Court of the electrical building, Communications' garden of the electrical group and The children's theatre - Enchanted island.
Circular Court of the electrical building, Communications’ garden of the electrical group and The children’s theatre – Enchanted island. © American Asphalt Paint Company. Artwork in the public domain due to age. via https://chicagology.com/centuryprogress/1933fair05/
Travel and transport building.
Travel and transport building. © American Asphalt Paint Company. Artwork in the public domain due to age. via https://chicagology.com/centuryprogress/1933fair05/
Sky ride.
Sky ride. © American Asphalt Paint Company. Artwork in the public domain due to age. via https://chicagology.com/centuryprogress/1933fair05/
General exhibits group.
General exhibits group. © American Asphalt Paint Company. Artwork in the public domain due to age. via https://chicagology.com/centuryprogress/1933fair05/

More of these to look at if you want to check out the link. Enjoy!

Mardi Gras from the past to urge spring along. Sketches of float designs out of old New Orleans from the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane University (and one marcher so wonderful I got him too).

"Ali Baba - Morgiana dances." 1927. Float.
“Ali Baba – Morgiana dances.” 1927. American. Float entry from the Mistick Krewe of Comus for a parade with the theme “Arabesques”. Watercolor on paper. Creator unknown. © Louisiana Research Collection. Fair use license. via https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:8186
"All that glitters is not Gold." 1911.
“All that glitters is not Gold.” 1911. Mistick Krewe of Comus entry for a parade with the theme “Familiar Quotations”. Watercolor on paper. Jennie Wilde, maker. © Louisiana Research Collection. Fair use license. via https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:7831
"Amenti." 1903.
“Amenti.” 1903. Krewe of Proteus entry for a parade themed “Cleopatra”. Watercolor on paper. Wikstrom, Bror Anders Wikstrom maker. © Louisiana Research Collection. Fair use license. via https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:5607
"Ammon Kneph." 1882.
“Ammon Kneph.” 1882. Costume for a Krewe of Proteus entrant for a parade themed “Ancient Egyptian Mythology”. Drawing on paper. Charles Briton, maker. © Louisiana Research Collection. via https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane:8225

Florida beach hotels looking like you could sit right down and put your toes under the sand. Postcards, 1920-1940’s.

Saint Augustine Beach Hotel, Saint Augustine, Florida. 1940's.
Saint Augustine Beach Hotel, Saint Augustine, Florida. 1940’s. Published by Colourpicture, Boston. In the public domain. via https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/331804
Postcard Collection
Birdseye view of ultra modern skyscraper hotels at Miami Beach, Florida. Undated. Novelti-Craft Company, Miami, Florida, publisher. In the public domain. via https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/334403
The New Hotel Coquina - Ormond Beach, Florida. ca 1920.
The New Hotel Coquina – Ormond Beach, Florida. ca 1920. In the public domain. via The New Hotel Coquina – Ormond Beach, Florida. ca 1920.
Luxurious hotels along ocean front at Miami Beach, Florida. After 1938.
Luxurious hotels along ocean front at Miami Beach, Florida. After 1938. In the public domain. via https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/329769

Today’s oddment . . .. . book borrowing habits hidden in plain sight . . ..from the 1850’s at the Richmond Library Company and on into the Civil War time at New Orleans’ Lyceum and Library Society.

A little something else that turned up during the research for “Couchsachraga” . . . appears there here

“Back into the library and the Sir Walter Scott section. Two shelves and part of another. Must have everything he ever wrote, and three or four of each one.

Not a surprise. So many ladies loving ‘Ivanhoe’.

‘Saint Ronan’s Well’. All the copies of ‘Peveril of the Peak’ out. Miss Edgeworth’s ‘Leonora’ instead. Supposed to be a good read. Romantic but not going too far. Auntie’s kind of thing.

‘Bleak House’ for parlor reading. Mrs. Hentz’s ‘The Victim of Excitement’ for the underwear drawer.”

An excerpt, you understand. You can read it for real soon.

I have a few shelves of books of Southern history, mostly women’s history. I knew that those ladies read a lot whether they were isolated on their husbands’ plantations or in a house with a doctor or lawyer husband in Baltimore or Mobile. But I had no idea that there were records detailing what specific women had borrowed.

Right into the center of their lives, as it were. Amanda Cochran of Richmond, for example, reading nearly everything James Fenimore Cooper had written including probably a few he was trying to forget. Julia Benedict of New Orleans reading her way through Sir Walter Scott while obsessively looking at ‘Harper’s Weekly’ though how that would have kept anyone’s mind off the war in Virginia and the blockading navy ships out in the roads who can tell.

Maybe it’s just as well the author, Emily B. Todd, did her research in Richmond and New Orleans and not Baltimore. Not sure my great great great grandmother would want me to know what she was keeping in her underwear drawer when she wasn’t running her household chasing after my great great grandfather and his little brother in between dinner party planning.

This way Honora Bankhead Guest’s little secrets are safe . . ..

Works consulted:

Clinton, Catherine. The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South. New York City. Pantheon Books. 1984.

Todd, Emily B. Antebellum Libraries In Richmond and New Orleans and the Search for the Practices and Preferences of “Real” Readers. Research note. 2001. Online at journals.ku.edu. Also available at jstor.org and core.ac.uk/download/pdf/148649256.pdf Draws on microfilmed antebellum records of books borrowed by patrons of the Richmond Library, Richmond and the Lyceum and Literary Society, New Orleans.

The image being of one of the many editions of Scott’s ‘Ivanhoe’. He sold well everywhere but especially well in the southern American states with a huge female following for women read most of the novels.

Image: via pinterest.com.

"Ivanhoe". Sir Walter Scott
“Ivanhoe”. 19th c. edition. Written by Sir Walter Scott. Illustrated by Maurice Greiffenhagen.

 

 

Our first oddment . . . . . . Mississippi ribbon maps . . . .lost in the meanderings of history till now . .

A ribbon map, this is. If only it had come along a decade earlier, Mr. Bordelon could mark off the distance from one drinking and gambling establishment on the Mississippi shore to the next with his new poker friend Martin Harden in my upcoming novella “Couchsachraga.”

Alas, it came into being in 1866, patented by Sidney B. Fairchild and Myron Coloney of Missouri, much too late even if these gentlemen could be time traveled into their future and blasted back again to their seats on a heap of cotton bales with a bottle of bourbon as the paddle wheel starts again.

Eleven feet long, it is only a few inches wide and wrapped handily around a spool small enough to fit in a gentleman’s pocket with a crank but with what must have been a banner like effect if the wind blew hard enough to push the paddle steamer halfway across the river while you were trying to fit it back in its case.

Town to city. Waterfall to river. Sugar lands to cotton. Cotton to corn and then to Minnesota wheat. That part a bit hard to read, it was true, being right at the end that stuck in the inside of the spool. Better the other where the river met the sea with the bayou looking like a turkey’s foot with water lines dashing every which way as they headed for the sea.

This example being part of the collection of the Library of Congress, http://www.LOC.gov. If one looks closely at the southerly end, you can spot Jefferson Davis’s name by the name of his Brimfield Plantation at Davis Bend in Mississippi’s black bottom country.

 

This 11-foot-long “ribbon map” of the Mississippi River, printed in 1866.Myron Coloney and Sidney B. Fairchild makers. www.loc.gov