Pittsburgh for me on Halloween!?

“Pittsburgh for me on Halloween.” WTF?! Could someone from Pittsburgh explain this to me? Why Pittsburgh? Why not Salem? Perhaps this is part of a series of cards, one for each city: “New York for me on Halloween”; “Boston for me on Halloween”; “Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, for me on Halloween”? Similarly mysterious is the artist: “Lewis.” I have no clues to her/his identity.

The date I can guess at as circa-, but post-, 1915: possibly as late as 1925. It is a cute image, and nice lettering on the front, but the back is the give-away: it is divided, very clearly, and the font is a roman serif. It is a no-nonsense arrangement. The lack of any swirling or elaborate rules and writing on the back suggests that it is post-Art Nouveau, or early Deco. The writing on the front seems early Deco to me (there is a hint of serif, but it is mostly strong uprights). And while our witch is in classic 1890s-style clothes, the colours are dull and the printing is a simple two-colour process, which we see early (pre-1905) and late (post-1915), but not often in the middle of the postcard boom. Since the back rules out an early card, I am guessing it is late: WWI-period or just after.

Which brings me to the image. As I said, the composition, clothes etc are all ca. 1890. There is a ruffle under the pointed hat, a corseted top, close-buttoned, with (I am guessing) mutton shoulders, but short sleeves; a long drop on the skirt, heavy stockings, and buckled shoes; and a cape! All, seemingly and appropriately, in black. And then there is the minions: the black cat (the witch’s familiar) on the broom and half a dozen bats: one far too close for our feline familiar’s comfort.

What is missing is any naturalistic detail, no landscape or city-scape, no clouds, sky or stars. The moon is also without detail, it is just a round disk. To me the whole thing looks like a logo, like the Salem-city logo, which appears on shirts and caps and coffee-cups. Perhaps there is an organization or sports club in Pittsburgh that uses a witch like this as it’s logo? If so, it might explain the caption!

Joan Crawford, A Modern Witch, 1927

Yes, the Joan Crawford, one of Hollywood’s most prominent movie stars and one of the highest paid women in the United States in the 20s; and yes 29 October 1927, when she was just 22. As Wikipedia explains, Crawford signed with MGM in 1925 (at 20), but she was frustrated by the parts offered to her, so she “began a campaign of self-publicity.” By the end of the 1920s she was known across the States. This is an example of Crawford’s, successful, “campaign of self-publicity.”

Here she appears on the cover of the Mid Week Pictorial 26:10 (week ending 29 October 1927), which was published by the New York Times Company, with this comprehensive caption:

A Modern Witch of Hallowe’en: She Uses a Parachute to Make a Forced Descent After Losing Her Grip on the Broom Which Witches Ride Through the Air. For the Witch of 1927 Is the Resourceful Joan Crawford, Metro-Goldwy-Mayer Movie Star, and She Knows Her Parachutes.

Did you miss any of that? Witches ride brooms through the air … resourceful Joan lost her grip … forced descent … knows her parachutes … Got it. I guess the caption is this long because it is all the explanation you get: there is no article inside. The image is just eye-candy, designed to encourage cashed-up and care-free Americans to reach into their pockets. (The Great Depression was a few years into the future. Think 2006.)

The modern Parachute was pretty new technology in 1927. According to Wikipedia (again): backpack style parachutes were developed in 1911, the German air service started using them in 1918; soft packing of parachutes started in 1924 and in 1927, several countries started experimenting with using parachutes to drop soldiers behind enemy lines.

I mention this because it is amazing how often images of witches pop up with some piece of new technology, like vacuum cleaners instead of brooms (here), in a 1923-image also captioned “A Modern Witch.”

As I have said before

This juxtaposition of “olde worlde” witches with new technology was particularly common in Swedish Easter Witch postcards, in fact it constituted an entire genre unto itself: brooms with propellors or rockets, witches flying in aeroplanes, or jets, racing trains and cars, using radios, re-fuelling in cloud-top petrol(?) stations, getting caught up in telegraph wires, or simply resting on their way to the sabbat by perching on top of the poles.

Not being a shrink, I can’t really explain why the juxtaposition of “olde worlde” witches with new world technology is so popular. No doubt it is mostly self-congratulatory: a not-very subtle pat on our own backs: “Gosh, aren’t we clever? Look at all the new-fangled things we have invented!”—with a touch of—”And weren’t they a pack of god-forsaken ignoramuses in the past! They believed in witches!” So, in as much as it is self-congratulatory, it is simultaneously poking fun at the belief in witches and witchcraft. Beyond that, who knows?

As for the twenty-two-year-old Ms Crawford, I hope you’ll agree that she is one of sexy witches. It is a shame my copy of the Mid Week Pictorial is so ratty, but how many people have seen it at all in the last eighty-three years? Not many I reckon. Which is a shame, because I think Ms Crawford, her familiar (the cat) and this mournful owl are all very cute.

Best Wishes for Halloween, ca. 1910

This wonderful image, of a witch flying on a paintbrush, was published in Germany by “Gottschalk, Dreyfus & Davis, London, Munich, New York.” It is one of a series of Halloween postcards that was issued around 1910 in two different versions: one, a lovely, very fine lithographic sepia (“Series No. 2662″), the other in a colour tint with a gelatin finish (“Series No. 2693″).

If you look very closely you will see that these are not identical images, note—for instance—the eyes and the length of the wand. They are also printed using different processes, the lithograph giving a very fine, almost flawless, representation of pen and ink shading, the other using benday tints (larger or smaller dots of colour) to do the same thing.

It is tempting to assume that the sepia card was issued first, and that the publishers produced the colour card in the next season when they knew they were on a winner—but it is just as likely that the sepia and colour cards were issued at the same time at different prices. If you look here you will see that the colouring differs between issues of the colour cards, and possibly differed between cards in a single print-run! Which means you could really go crazy (and broke) collecting these cards, trying to get one with each variation of colouring.

Personally, I am quite happy with the two I have. Just look at this gorgeous witch!

And here are a few details: we have a crow, instead of a cat, as a familiar. And here again are a wonderful examples of witchy footwear.

And check out this Art Nouveau styling on the back of the card, or Jugendstil I should say, since it was almost certainly the product of a German artist, as well as the product of a German printer.

As for the composition: the witch is riding a paint-brush, suspended above crossed quills and an open book, accompanied by a crow. The witch holds a wand and a crescent moon and stars occupy the background.

No doubt, the book and crossed quills represent books and the literary imagination, while the paint brush represents art and the artistic imagination. So, I guess this beautiful witch is identified as the product of a literary and artistic imagination.

No doubt she is riding the paint brush rather than the quill because the artist behind this image was, well, an artist, not an author, and so the brush represents his brush …

And so, can I just say that the paintbrush is rather suggestively angled, and that the way the brush rises from between the crossed quills looks rather like something Freud would readily recognise as rising from between two (male) thighs.

And so, can I also say that the shaft is very impressive, that the witch seems very happy to be riding this particular artists’ paintbrush, that and that she has a firm grip on the, um, brush. Just saying.

Is this really SFW?

Sexy Witches on Historiclols.com

Again with the “I said I wouldn’t” but, when I found one of my very own sexy witch images on Historiclols.com (the one above), I thought I should share it with you so that you can all have a go at creating your own captions for it!

[Witch Academy, Class of 1886]

For those of you who don’t know it, Historiclols.com is a branch of that evergreen tree of humour, icanhascheezburger.com, which takes an endless variety of cat photos and applies captions in LOL-speak, creating Lolcats.

[The Girls of Gryffindor, 7th Year Class Photo, 1903]

Twenty-six Lolz have been made from my picture of nine young ladies dressed up as witches at an upper-class private boarding school, ca. 1890. You can see them all here. Most of the other Historiclols have much more amusing caption, so I am sure you can do better. Consider it a challenge!

[Hogwarts Class of 1843, Minerva McGonagall 5th from the Left]

BTW: You should feel free to re-use any of the images on this blog for your Historiclols, but please give credit where credit is due, and give the picture source as Red Witch (me) or Sexywitch.wordpress.com (here). The person who first nabbed the above image didn’t do this. But I have contacted icanhascheezburger.com and, rather than demanding that the image be pulled down (as I could have), I simply asked that they give a picture credit, which they have done.

Gibson Witch and Owl, ca. 1925

This is my fourth Gibson Halloween Tally Card, this one being much like the first one I did (this one), in that it is a reasonably simple image focussing just on the face our witch. In this case though we also have an owl illuminated by a full (orange) moon: very nice.

The composition is very similar to the Halloween diecut witch (below) that was produced by Dennison (see my post here).

Not only do both witches have an owl at their shoulder, sitting on a bare branch, illuminated by a full moon, but both witches have the ruffled collar, which I have argued before is a vestige of the clown outfit that was so similar to witchy outfits in the 1910s and into the very early 1920s. The Dennison witch is a bit prettier but …

I think this is the better owl though, the Dennison owl looks a little cross-eyed!

On the back, as you can see, we have the usual spaces to record ten rounds of scores, the name of the players, the table and couple numbers. And in writing at the bottom: “A Gibson Product Made in U.S.A.”

* * * * *

I have now done posts on eight tally cards from the 20s (see my page about tally cards here), which is where I will pause for now. Next week will mark the end of my fourth year blogging. I will try to find something appropriate to mark the occasion.