The Walls of My Study (one cent)

Sitting in my home office, my eyes naturally tend to look at the walls (when not looking at the birdfeeder outside the window, or not being distracted by the television). It is important in a room where you spend a lot of time that you are comforted, and encouraged, by your wall decorations. But I have never given them any systematic thought.

So, for the next few moments, I thought I would.

My home office is not large (maybe 12 feet by 15 feet?), and it has four doors and two windows, so the wall space is limited. Nevertheless, as I sit here and count, there appear to be 18 items hanging on the walls.

As I sit at my desk and look straight ahead, the wall opposite me has two, the wall to my left has two, the wall to my right has three, the wall behind me has (wait a minute while I turn my head) 6, and the short passage to the family room (also to my right, but hard to see well from my chair) has the final 4.

The two items in front of me.

1. One of my favorite items is a hand colored map of the Kingdom of Poland, the map about 22 x 24 inches, with a nice double matting in a red/rust colored metal frame. The map, dating from 1750, was published in France (and in French) and made by Tob. Mayer. It shows most of the places from which my grandparents came (most of them were, in 1750, in Poland), but it is harder for me to locate them than it was when I could read the small print without artificial support. I bought the map in an antique map and print shop in Philadelphia, probably 20 or so years ago.

2. To the left is an engraving on Napolean, which I bought in Budapest in the early 1970s. Black and white in a black frame. It is a fine etching, but it is not a numbered limited edition, although it is signed. I cannot read the signature. It was not expensive. Why it has held this prominent position in my study all of these years is an unknown. I guess I like the way it looks (it is a portrait going from mid-chest up, and shows a relatively young Napolean), but I certainly have no particular affinity for Napolean.

But wait. A couple of things. Maybe I do like Napolean. Did he ever do anything bad? (For a military conquerer, I mean) And, come to think of it, maybe it's not even Napolean. Maybe it is a Hungarian guy who looks and dresses like Napolean. Why would they be selling engravings of Napolean in Community Hungary in 1973?

More research needed.

The two items to my left.

They are placed vertically, not horizontally. A photo on top; a map beneath. They are related to each other.

3. The photo at the top, not particularly well framed (there is no matting; I framed it during days of my impoverishment), of the Old Court House in St. Louis. It is an original photograph, maybe 15 by 20 inches (you can see that I am not using a tape measure as I write). It dates from, I would guess the very late 19th century. The courthouse looks very dirty (the concrete needs cleaning, perhaps coal in those days dirtied everything and it was well before the extraordinary invention of pressure washing), and the top of the dome is cut off. There is an electric streetcar running in front of the building, on Broadway. There are several horse drawn vehicles, and a number of people on the street in late 19th century dress. It is summer time, although no skin shows on any of passersby, but the streetcare is an open car with people hanging out the windows and the courthouse, and two buildings in the background have awnings over the windows (on the courthouse, they are striped) to hold off the summer sun. It does not look very pleasant there, and clearly does not look as spiffed up as this building does today. I bought this a long time ago, as well, at a gallery on Euclid, in the St. Louis West End.

4. Under it is a St. Louis city street map, drawn and published by S. Augustus Mitchell in 1872, probably a little earlier than the photograph. The western boundary of the city, for those of you who know St. Louis, is just beyond Grand Avenue. The furthest most street to the South is Chippewa, and to the North Angelica. Several major roads head off beyond the city lines to the west, including Arsenal, New Manchester, Old Manchester, Clayton, Page and St. Charles. Also the "Central Plank Road", which of course does not exist under that name. I am sure it came from an old atlas. It could stand to be reframed, as well, because the gold painted plain wood frame is beginning to peel, and the clay colored matting is pretty ugly. Probably always has been. I am not sure where I bought this map. Won't speculate.

Looking at the wall to my right, I see three smaller maps, again placed vertically (the vertical placements in general are due to lack of wall space, as I am sure you can figure out).

5. The top map is a map of the Western Hemisphere. It is a round map on a square piec of paper, in a larger square frame with an antiqued bronze paint and a dark aqua matte. It was published by P. Lapie in 1810 in Naples. The projection is very graceful. It is hand colored in pastel blues and yellows. Boston, Washington, Charleston and Savannah make the map; New York City does not. Nor does Philadelphia. (Part of this has to do, I am sure, with the small size of the map.)

While North America looks like it has pretty much the right shape, South America is too squat. In what is now California, there are a few cities marked which either did not exist then or have long disappeared. New Orleans is marked, but for some reason is well west of the mouth of the Mississippi. The most unusual facet is that, at the top of Baffin Bay, there is a land bridge that connects North America with Greenland.

My Aunt Loraine gave me this map. I had it framed in Georgetown.

6. The middle map is a map of North America, also of small size, pasteled in yellows and pinks, with a soft blue border on the coast. It is a bit older than the map above, because the Louisiana Purchase has yet to be purchased, and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers mark national boundaries. I would guess it to be about 1800. Unfortunately, there are no identifying marks on it; although it, as well, is Italian. I do not remember where I bought it.

7. The bottom map is similar to, though a bit larger than, the middle map, and not colored. Also the west coast of North America, and particularly the northwest coast is left formless (i.e., no coast line, it just sort of fades away, with Parts Unknown marked). The map is in English, and I assume is English in that distances are "dist. west from London", but again nothing identifies the map maker. It is, I believe, older, and predates the 1780s and the independence of the United States. The colonies are marked as colonies, and not as states (for instance, Boston appears not to be in Massachusetts but in New England; there is one Carolina, not a North and South Carolina). Florida is misshaped, too short and fat; and Mexico is much too skinny,with Yucutan protruding too far.

The wall behind me (which I can only see if I turn around).

8. One of the largest items on my study wall is an old English deed, handwritten on parchment, with signatures of the seller, Thomas Loman, and the buyer, William Mayo, both of County Dorset, as well as their wax stamps, along with the official stamps of the Crown. The handwriting is very attractive, and equally unreadable. It deserves better framing than it has; it is in a plain brown wood frame (not contemporary with the indenture), with no matting, so looks a little cramped. As to size, it is a little larger than the map of Poland. It is dated in 1867.

For some odd reason, when I was in law school, the New Haven Co-op one day got a very large supply of these "old, original English indentures", and was selling them for the ridiculous price of $15, or something like that. I should have bought more, but $15 was about my budget in those days.

9. Next to the English deed is a travel poster (framed in a serrated blue wood frame that I remember buying at Pier One) from Cyprus. My guess is that is from the 1950s or early 1960s. It simply says "Beautiful Cyprus", and is drawn in a simple block style, without realistic detail. In the background is the blue-grey sky, the bluer sea, a grey mountain and a purple mountain (the grey in the background). There is yellow orange village reaching out to the sea, and a golden beach in front, blocked pretty much by a large Venus de Milo like statue (except Venus' hair is flying in the wind). There is a simple white church with a dome and a cross, and a multitude of colorful flowers in the foreground. Beautiful Cyprus. We found this poster was in the basement of my mother-in-law's house when we were cleaning it out.

10-14. More mystery here. We have four original photographs, that I bought in an antique store in St. Charles, Mo. many years ago. They had a large number of these, and I should have bought them all. But I didn't, and I selected four that I liked the best. I do not know who took them, and do not even know when they were taken, although I would guess that they are 19th and not 20th century photographs.

Two are Indian and two are Chinese. They are all sepia prints.

The Indian prints are, first, a young girl dressed up and covered with jewelry, looking at the camera. I would guess that she was 12. Just a guess. One ear has a very fancy earing that hangs straight down. The other ear (I know this won't make sense) seems to have the same kind of earing, half of which is hanging down, and the other half extends to her nose, where perhaps it is attached to some sort of nose ring, or something. Or maybe it is just the wind, but I don't think so. Again, more research needed.

The second Indian photo is the Ganges or some other holy river, with maybe 100 or more people bathing and standing on the steps. Maybe it is not a holy river; maybe they are just bathing. There are fishing boats in the background, and we are in a city.

As to the Chinese photgraphs, one is of a very elegant, very well dressed and well coiffed woman, probably in her 40s, who is sitting on an upholstered chair, with her feet resting on what I assume to be some sort of covered foot-rest. But she is barefoot, and has bound feet, so you can see how they are disfigured. The other Chinese photograph is of a busy commerical street (you are looking right down it) in some unknown city. It is not a wealthy neighborhood. People live above the shops, with their laundry on the windows to dry. There are signs in Chinese. There are many pedestrians, and no signs of any sort of animal or vehicle.

The small passageway to the family room.

15. Here we have a small, old handcolored print of Harvard College. Drawn by A.J. Davis, I do not have a date for it. It shows Harvard Hall and University Hall from Massachusetts Avenue. People are on horseback. There is no fence. Across Mass Ave. appears to be park-like lawn. Provenence unknown.

16. This is a more recent lithograph, by Mickie (not sure who Mickie is) and dated 1991, entitled The Lawyers Creed, showing a Hebraicized pattern surrounding quotations, in Hebrew and English, from Deutoronomy 16: 18-20, including the famous "Justice, Justice, shall thou pursue....". Another gift from my Aunt Loraine.

17. This is an original water color of the Old Court House in St. Louis, the same building that looks at me from my left. The artist is named Collins, and I believe that I got this when I graduated from college, but I don't remember exactly how. Whether I bought it, or if it was a gift, I just don't know. At any rate, it is a very nice painting, and I am not sure why I have it where I can't see it. I can't even see it when I am coming into the room, because the door from the family room pretty well blocks it. Maybe I should switch it with Napolean?

18. Finally, under the Court House, and therefore also usually blocked, is another map. This one is called "Rusia de Europa" and was made by Don Juan Lopez. Obviously, it a Spanish published map. It is extraordinarily detailed. It is not quite as large as the map of Poland, but equally hard to read. I cannot tell the date. I assume it is an early 19th century map, but just cannot tell. It does not contain all of Poland that was given to Russian through the partitians, but does have Vilna, for example. More research required once again. It is possible that it was published between the partitions, before the final one. But this would make it older than I thought it was.

This was sorta fun. Maybe I'll do "trinkets on the bookshelves in my study" next.