Bock Beer: Getting Our Goat One More Time

My post last year about this time celebrated bock beer. The origins of bock beer are quite fuzzy. Apparently back in medieval days German monasteries would brew a strong beer for sustenance during their Lenten fasts. A prevailing myth during my boyhood was that bock was a bottom fermenting lager that was created when breweries cleaned out their vats during a Spring cleaning. That apparently was a myth. Whatever its origins, bock beer has traditionally been advertised with goats, as noted last year.

The earlier post featured pre-prohibition images of the goat. This one begins in that era and then shows the goat images as they have evolved to our own day. The first image shows a German beer maid riding a goat. The Hell Gate Brewery was established by George Ehret, a German immigrant, in 1866. By 1900 he had increased production to 601,000 barrels a year and his became a major East Coast Brewery. When Ehret died in 1927 his estate was estimated at $40 million.

Because the goat was also identified with sexuality, bock ads frequently show Billy cavorting with a female, usually fully clothed but sometime, as shown here, in a state of undress. In this case the goat seems more surprised and alarmed by being grasped by the auburn-headed beauty.

A happier goat is the focus of a 1908 Narragansett Bock ad as it appeared in the Pawtucket R.I. Evening Times. The legend written on his side says, “Who wouldn’t be a goat?,” especially with a beer stein in hand. This brewery was founded in 1888 and at one time, the grounds of the Narragansett Brewing Company reportedly included a barn, a stable, a blacksmith, seventy-five horses, forty-five wagons, gas-powered trucks, electric trucks, twenty-five refrigerated train cars and its own ice plant. No mention of a goat pen.

The Clausen-Flanagan name was appended to a New York City brewery located at 262 10th Avenue and 450 26th Street from 1908 to 1915. Founded in 1860, the brewery had had a number of earlier company designations, including James Flanagan & F. Wallace Columbian Brewery (1874-1881) and Flanagan, Nay & Co. (1888-1908). The plant closed with Prohibition.

The next ad for bock beer shows a goat with a slightly crazed look in its eyes. It appears to be chewing a plant, presumably hops, but given the goat’s demeanor, it might be hashish.
The Cassville Brewery goat, by contrast, has a distinctly hung over look. Furnace Branch Creek Hollow in Wisconsin, so named because of the lead smelting operation it once contained, was the site of the Cassville Brewery. For many years Cassville boasted of its fine bottled beer and produced numerous cases for sale throughout the area. Today it's the labels and bottles that are hunted for and prized by collectors. The brewery ceased operation in 1938 and the buildings were later demolished.

One of my favorite bock goats was the product of the the Pabst Brewing Company of Milwaukee. The logo above the goat indicates that this is a pre-Prohibition framed sign. It would have been provided by the brewery, probably on a seasonal basis, for the walls of saloons featuring its beer,

Moving beyond the Prohibition era, the next goat image is from Germany where such animals regularly were decorated for Spring festivals. This one comes rolling in on a barrel from Lowen-Brau Brewery of Munich. The goat looks less than happy about its situation. A happier goat is the lip-licking goat. Unlike most of the herd, this one is just a kid amidst “the old goats.” The Acme Brewery of San Francisco was erected after the earthquake of 1906, as a branch of Leopold Schmidt's Olympia Brewing Co. The aftermath of the quake left the city with few operating breweries, and as a result a $1,000,000 order was placed with Schmidt's Bellingham Bay Brewery (and probably a like order with Olympia) for beer to be shipped to the city. Acme went out of business in 1954.

Another modern version of the traditional goat is from on the Columbus Brewing Company, one of the first brew pubs in Ohio. Founded in 1988, it is located adjacent to German Village in the historic Brewery District. Its goat has gone cubist and “tres moderne.”

There they are: Ten more bock goats, dating from the early 1900s to the late 1980s. These are just a few of the thousands of different depiction's of the beer-drinking ungulates that have been featured worldwide for centuries.

Celebrating the Clapsaddle Irish

In commemorating St. Patrick’s Day for the past two years, this blog has been devoted to 19th Century racist images of the Irish (March 2010) and to the gradual changes in their depiction that occurred from the 19th into the 20th Century (March 2011). This year the focus is on one woman, not Irish, who did more than anyone to provide a dignified and salutary image to Americans of the Irish heritage. She also can be credited with popularizing the St. Patrick's Day greeting card. Her name was an unusual one: Ellen Hattie Clapsaddle.

Clapsaddle was born as the Civil War was ending in 1865 in the small farming community of South Columbia, Herkimer County, New York, the child of Dennis and Harriet Clapsaddle. She shown here in her graduation picture from the Richfield Academy in Richfield Springs, New York. The little girl who looks out at us is shy and fragile. Her juvenile signature bears little resemblance to the “Ellen Clapsaddle” that she added to her art work. She subsequently went to college at the Cooper-Union in New York City and was one of its first women graduates.

Ellen was drawn to art from an early age. Until she was in her early 20’s she painted local farmhouses, homes and portraits in watercolor. She also decorated china plates and did worked for a Utica publishing company. During this time she sent two of her postcard designs to a New York City publisher who immediately liked her artwork and contracted with her for more. Her cards became an instant success.

During her lifetime Ellen Clapsaddle created more than 4,000 images of children and published some three million postcards and greetings containing children. She is credited with putting the first smile and rosy red cheeks on Kris Kringle and beginning his transition to modern day Santa Claus. Just as important for the purposes of this post, she pioneered in the creation of the St. Patrick’s Day card. In so doing, she was making giant strides in improving the image of the Irish in America.

In the past Irish-American children frequently had been portrayed as ill-clothed, dirty and ruffians. Clapsaddle, as shown here, dressed them as little gentlemen and ladies with top hats and bonnets. A particular favorite image of mine are the Irish children floating along on a large green balloon and the salutation, “Top of the morning to you.” She repeated the little gentleman and lady themes on a number of St. Patrick’s Day postcards. Occasionally, and brilliantly, she sometimes strayed from romantic views to give us the portraits of four Irish kids just being kids -- still an endearing picture. Ellen never married and, sadly, had no children of her own.

Clapsaddle also had the ability to paint beautiful women and make them Irish, as shown in the next two postcards. Earlier artists and cartoonists often had pictured mature Irish women as overweight hags or slatterns. Her depiction's help to change all that, as did the increasing economic well-being of the American-Irish population. Her depiction of the older Irish men also was respectful, too often depicted earlier as bomb-throwing thugs. The gentleman shown here with pipe and hat is well groomed, gentlemanly and obviously benign.

The final postcard included here demonstrates Clapsaddle’s continuing ability to paint landscapes, in this case of Ireland. I can find no reference to indicate that she ever visited the Auld Sod, even though she made frequent trips to Europe. The Germans had perfected a four-color printing process that was far ahead of that in the U.S. and she traveled there frequently to supervise the printing of her cards.

Her last trip to Europe proved her undoing. She was in Germany working with an engraving company when World War One broke out and she was unable to return to the United States. The strain of being held in wartime Germany told on both her physical and mental health. After the war she was found wandering the streets of a German town, with no money, hungry and confused.

Brought back to the United States through the generosity of a former employer, she was admitted to the Peabody Home for the elderly and destitute in New York City where she died in 1932, one day short of her 69th birthday. She is buried next to her parents in Lawnview Cemetery. Her grave marker simply reads, “ELLEN.”

The last, and only second known, picture of her is shown here. Compare it to the graduation photo. The eyes that look at us now are injured and sad. For a woman who has given so much joy and pleasure to millions through her artistry, there was only bleakness and despair. Ellen Clappsaddle did not deserve her fate.

Certainly the products of her talented hand have fared better than she did; her cards are avidly collected and preserved by thousands of adherents. Those of us who boast of Irish descent should raise a glass on March 17th to the memory of a woman named Clapsaddle who as much as anyone changed the image of the Irish in America while helping making St. Patrick’s Day a national celebration.

Ways of Seeing: "His Master's Voice"

Few advertising images were more recognizable during the 20th Century than the picture of a small dog sitting in front of a vintage record player, called a Victrola. It was entitled “His Master’s Voice.” As has been noted with such familiar merchandising icons, the tendency over time is to parody them widely. So it has been with “His Master’s Voice.”

Some parts of the story behind the image are well known. The dog was a stray found in Bristol, England, in 1884. He was named “Nipper,” because of his tendency to bite unwary visitors on the backs of their legs. Nipper was adopted by a British artist named Francis Barraud, shown here, who noticed the dog curious about his gramophone, apparently trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.

Three years after Nipper died Barraud, working from memory, put the scene on canvas, completing it in 1899. The artist tried to exhibit the painting at the Royal Academy but was turned down. He had similar luck peddling it to British magazines. Barraud then went commercial, offering it to the Edison Bell Company. They also rejected it. Perhaps as a last resort, he visited a newly formed gramophone company with a photograph of the painting. The ownership liked it and offered to buy it if Barraud would substitute their machine for the Edison.

Barraud agreed, repainted it, and only a few months later the Berliner Company had patented the image in the United States for its gramophone. Eventually the trademark was passed on to the Victor Talking Machine Co., maker of the Victrola. That firm extended the trademark throughout Central and South America, Japan and the Far East. In the U.S. the Nipper logo appeared on the Victor machines, letterheads, record catalogs, record labels and all company literature. Even after Victor’s merger with RCA in 1929, “His Master’s Voice” persisted in company merchandising until well after World War II. It must be counted as one of the world’s most successful and lasting merchandising images.

Few could resist a parody on “His Master’s Voice,” including Walt Disney. His studio drew Pluto, always an engaging cartoon figure, eagerly listening to the gramophone. Political cartoonists also found it provided a handy image for depicting political figures taking orders from afar. The first cartoon shown here from 1941 is of Marshall Petain, the Nazi figurehead of Vichy, France, who had surrender much of his country to the Nazi regime in Germany, indicated by the swastikas on the phonograph. Lester Pearson was the prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1967. Here he is caricatured listening intently to the voice of the United States, at least in the view of the Canadian unions who sponsored the cartoon.

My favorite spoofs of the Nipper logo are connected to the whiskey trade. “Old Tucker
Whiskey” was a lead brand of the Brown-Foreman Company in the pre-Prohibition era. This Louisville, Kentucky, outfit was formed by George Brown and George Foreman in 1891 and has survived to the present day. It chose the image as the back of a pre-Prohibition celluloid pocket mirror. Note that the gramophone has been replaced by a whiskey jug and the horn by a funnel. The bulldog “Suspects His Master.”

The post card following has a similar motif, a dog -- this one looking a lot more like Nipper -- sits in front of a whiskey container, smelling a funnel. This is “His Master’s Vice,” a play on the slogan by the forces of Temperance. Another postcard in this genre depicts a puppy sitting in front of a funnel. The jug has disappeared but the canine still recognizes “His Master’s Breath.” The final example is a mini-jug with an underglaze illustration of a large dog sniffing a whiskey jug. Again the pooch is said to be smelling “His Master’s Breath.”

In gathering images for this article, I found at least a dozen or more parodies of the Nipper logo, some dating from early in the last Century, some more recently created. The proliferation is testimony to the permanence of the original Barraud image. The artist himself died at the age of 69 in August, 1924. He painted some 24 copies of his most famous work, all of which found a ready market. Perhaps in a unwise move, however, Barraud sold the reproduction rights to the Nipper image for 100 British pounds.

Blacks in Whiskey Advertising III

For the past two years, my contribution to February’s Black History Month has been to discuss the historical depiction of blacks in whiskey advertising. The 2010 post focussed on a series of images to show some progression over the years as views on civil rights evolved. Last year the post featured ads depicting black waiters serving whiskey. This year I have gathered another group of images from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several of them disturbing but nevertheless instructive.

The first is a sign that shows a black man walking down a road with a chicken under one arm and a watermelon under the other. We are expected to assume that he did not come by either honestly. He has spotted lying in the road, a bottle of Fern Glen Rye whiskey and looks at it with great interest. But he will have to lay down one or the other treasures in order to secure it. “I’se in a perdickermunt,” he says. The whiskey made by the Fern Glenn Distilling Co. of St. Louis, Missouri. The company appeared only a short time, 1916 and 1917, in local business directories, perhaps indicating ads like this did not work.

The stereotype watermelon appeared in another distiller’s ad, again involving a choice between the melon and a bottle of whiskey. The melon is held by a black woman wearing an apron; the whiskey by a bearded winking man. On the ground in front of them is a boy wearing a tattered hat who is clearly torn between one and the other. The caption is a strange one: “The Temptation of St. Anthony.” The medieval saint’s temptations were largely sexual in nature, rendering this caption ridiculous.

This image appeared on a number of signs, some like this one with a faux wood motif. It was the product of the Paul Jones Distillery. It was founded by a family who provided sons and their wealth to the Confederacy only to find after the war that their home was in ruins and they themselves were destitute. This may have been the reason for the persistent racism in Paul Jones advertising. Initially from Virginia the Jones family moved to Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1886 and eventually adopted the name, Frankfort Distillery. It was one of a favored few distilleries allowed to make medicinal whiskey during Prohibition and emerged into the Post-Pro era, where its advertising continued to demean blacks.

The next ad, for Prosperity Whiskey, was the product of the Bernheim Distillery of Louisville, Kentucky, an organization better known for its I.W. Harper Brand. The Bernheims, emigrated from Germany with little money but created one of the most successful whiskey enterprises in American history. The photographic image of a Negro wedding shown on this saloon sign is profoundly offensive even by the standards of that earlier time. Although accounted philanthropists, the Bernheims apparently were not above patently racist advertising. The next ad, showing a ragged black boy dancing to his own accompaniment is also from Bernheim. It advertises “Old Continental” whiskey. Cards like this were printed with a local saloon carrying the whiskey printed on the bottom.

The next card shows a black boy kissing a black girl with the caption: “Honey duz you love me as much as my Pa duz ‘Old Prentice Whisky?’” In the background a voice from a cabin says, “Whar dem chillun.” This brand was the product of J.T.S. Brown & Sons of Louisville
in business from 1871 to 1919. These were blenders of whiskey featuring several brands and drawing their liquor from a range of Kentucky distillery warehouses.

The Louis Petzold Company of Baltimore produced a trade card with a murky message. It shows a white youth poking his head from a globe of the Western Hemisphere while in the background a group of blacks is picking a vast field of cotton. In the foreground a side-wheeler steamship moves by. The whiskey is “Dixie” and it product said to be “for medicinal use.” Petzold, a German immigrant, is said to have started a liquor business in 1862, although his initial directory listing is 1870. The firm disappeared from listings in 1898.

Unfortunately the torn label on this “Old Mose” flask prevents identifying the merchant behind the brand. The organization also issued a shot glass advertising Old Mose but did not include other information. The next trade card shows another dancing black. This time it advertises both a whiskey (Old Crow) and a saloon (Hayes at the White House). This was a Boston-based drinking establishment that sold customers a beer for a nickel and a shot of whiskey for a dime.

The sum impression of these pre-Prohibition images is their perpetuation of racial stereotypes, their distortion of black physical features, their attribution of fractured English, and their feeble attempts at humor. As a antidote to these images, I include here a 1966 Old Taylor Bourbon ad that celebrates as an American hero, Benjamin Banneker (1731-12806), a free African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author and farmer. The ad celebrates in particular his role in surveying the boundaries of the District of Columbia.

Harvey F. Crawford and His Shoes Under Glass

For reasons I have yet to fathom, certain businesses commonly provided glass paperweights to advertise their products or services. Among them were funeral homes, steamship lines and distillers. But perhaps the most frequently seen are from shoe companies. The epitome of this phenomenon was the Crawford Shoe Company.

This observation sends us to a hard luck but persistent and far-sighted entrepreneur named Harvey F. Crawford. Born in Maine, about 1881 Crawford emigrated to Brockton, Mass., as a young man where he was determined to succeed in the shoe business. His picture shows him with a shock of black hair, a large walrus mustache, and piercing dark eyes.

He created his first shoe manufacturing company with $25. It soon failed. Undeterred Crawford began again. This time his factory burned down. He started over yet a third time, but in 1886 was forced to declare bankruptcy when a local bank failed taking his cash reserves with it.

In 1887, with a deep-pockets new partner funding the enterprise, Crawford launched a fourth shoe company with an outlandish retailing idea. He would open proprietary shoe stores in good locations in large Eastern cities to merchandise the products of his Brockton factory. He also would sell cheap (shoes for $3.50 and $5.00) and advertise heavily in popular magazines of the day. Said a 1902 biography of Crawford: Many of his friends tried to dissuade him from what they deemed certain failure.”

As it turned out, Harvey was the Sam Walton of his day. Over a period of 15 years he opened stores in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Haven, and Washington. Their success allowed Crawford to open a second shoe factory in New York City. Within a decade he could boast 30 outlets in major Eastern cities.

Another of Harvey’s inspirations was an emphasis on customer giveaways. He favored paperweights. Shown here are an array of weights from a number of Crawford’s outlets in major cities. They demonstrate an array of vintage shoe styles. Several added color to the image.

For his Washington, D.C. retail outlet Harvey abandoned the shoe motif to issue paperweights depicting the Washington monument and the G.A.R.. Encampment of 1892 in the Nation’s Capitol. A thriving veterans organization of former Northern soldiers and sailors, the G.A.R. was a highly potent political force during the post-Çivil War era. A feature of its national conventions were commemorative medals sold to participants. Crawford replicated one on a paperweight.

Among the dignitaries attending the 1892 encampment was Rutherford B. Hayes, a former president of the United States (1877-1881) and a Union army officer during the Civil War. From Hayes we have a narrative of what happen in Washington during the G.A.R. national event. Hayes marched shoulder to shoulder with the rank and file as the “great parade” of veterans surged down Pennsylvania Avenue to great crowd applause. “Nothing of the sort could have been better than the demonstration on Fifteenth Street -- Treasury on one side, Riggs House on the other....It was enough to stir the blood of the coldest and the oldest,” Hayes recorded in his daily journal. He did not mention parading by Crawford’s shoe store at 9th and Pennsylvania.

Crawford’s prosperity did not last long. Creative but not particularly good at managing a business, after 1902 he was forced to sell out to other interests. The company eventually was owned by Charles A. Eaton, who raised prices and tried for a classier shoe image by featuring a huntsman with his dog.

As for Crawford, after retiring from the shoe business he was associated with the Crawford Manufacturing Co., making the Crawford rigid steel shoe shank. He also patented inventions in shoe manufacturing and appliances and was recognized widely in Brockton as a leader in local business development. After a long illness, Crawford died in his Brockton home, age 70.

Part of Harvey Crawford’s legacy is a wealth of glass paperweights to remind us of the footwear styles of yesteryear. The weights also memorialize the creativity of a entrepreneur who declined to let three failures at retailing shoes deter him from a fourth, spectacularly successful, enterprise.

Pantin Paperweights: Snakes in the Glass

My fascination with snakes and other reptiles in ceramic also translates into glass, in this case glass paperweights. The most famous and rare of these were produced in France in the middle of the 19th Century by a company generally known as “Pantin.” According to sources fewer than 20 of these snake, salamander and worm paperweights are known. From a range of Internet sources I have gathered eight Pantin weights to show here.

Little is known about the Pantin factory and what information is available often is partial and even conflicting. One account goes like this: The Cristallerie de Pantin was founded by E. S. Monot at LaVillette, France, in 1850. It moved to Pantin, near Paris, in 1855. The company manufactured glass tubes and other chemical glass, crystal drinking vessels, and chandeliers. None of the weights Pantin produced were signed or dated. Evidence of Pantin paperweight making is in printed materials from the Paris Universal Exposition of 1878. American delegate Charles Colne described the snakes, lizards, fruits, and millefiori that amazed him in their skilled craftsmanship. The company continued until 1915, when it merged with Legras & Cie to form Verreries et Cristalleries de St. Denis et Pantin.

The artists who produced these weight overcame the risks involved in representing delicate and detailed animals in molten crystal, while preserving the fine quality of the lampworking. Frequently the bodies were wheel-cut to simulate scales. The legs and other details were added. It is suggested that one reason salamanders are a frequent Pantin motif is that they were thought to be able to survive fire unharmed. As such, it is said, they were long revered by glassmakers.

In 2010, A Pantin weight sold for $65,370, more than double its estimate. Shown here, it is just over 4 inches in diameter and shows a yellowish orange spotted black salamander clambering across green leaves with red and white flowers, all set on an opaque white ground mottled with moss and buff-coloured sand. Beautiful, indeed, but a pricey piece of glass.

The red salamander weight that follows is another prize. It was part of the Henry Melville Fuller collection of paperweights given to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire in 1999. Said Mr. Fuller: "One of my favorite weights from this period was made by Pantin, a factory near Paris. The paperweight is somewhat unusual...lizards and snakes being a favorite subject of the Pantin artists. But these weights are very scarce, for the factory was only in business for a short time."

Most known Pantin weights can be found in museum collections. The next item, featuring a green snake, is from the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. In 1978 that institution brought together 13 examples in a special exhibit, believed to be the largest assemblage ever made of Pantin weights. The Chicago Art Institute has in its collection a Pantin weight that features three silkworms on a mulberry leaf. I am uncertain of the provenance of the last four weights shown here.

For $65,000, one of these Pantin weights might be purchased to be held in the hand. As the next best thing, this post offers up this array of eight for viewing, each offering its own “eye candy.” And they are presented here free of charge.