Oct

Manship’s Memorable Memorial Medal

As the Assistant Registrar for Cranbrook Educational Community, it is my job to keep track of the objects in the collections of the Art Museum and the Cultural Properties across the campus. Though not trained as a Museum Registrar, George Booth had a similar goal: he fastidiously kept his many collections and cultural properties around his home and the various school buildings inventoried or appraised.

The inventory, “Cranbrook Museum Art collection: 400 thru,” led me to a wonderful collection of coins and medals. Some were ancient, some were more contemporary, but one in particular stood out: a memorial medal for soldiers who died during the First World War. What was the story behind this medal? Since none of the Booth children died during the war, I wondered why George Booth would have one of these medals in his collection.

During World War I, many prominent Americans spoke out against the war in Europe, including Henry Ford and Reverend Samuel Marquis (who in 1927 became the first rector of Christ Church Cranbrook). As the editor of The Detroit News, George Booth oversaw “the leading newspaper in the country to give open and courageous expression to criticism.” The News editorial staff had “sincerity of purpose and courage to voice temporarily unpopular principles.” The United States entered the war in 1917 but The Detroit News continued its criticism. That criticism, however, was focused on governments and policies, not at the soldiers who put their lives on the line.

Indeed, Booth was very supportive of the fighting men who went off to war and of the families of those who did not return. He, architect Albert Kahn, and Clyde Burroughs (Director of the Detroit Museum of Art) established the Welcome Home Committee of Detroit – similar committees were formed in other major U.S. cities. The committee made sure all soldiers who returned from the front received the thanks of the nation and distributed rings and certificates of service to them upon their return.

The Committee’s recognition did not end with the men who returned. It also distributed the memorial medal to the families of the war dead from Detroit. This medal, designed by sculptor Paul Manship and forged by Medallic Art Company in New York, was given as “a token of sympathy and gratitude to the nearest kin of those who gave their lives in the country’s service” during the Great War.

Detroit Soldiers Memorial Medal, 1919 (obverse). Image Courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum.

The front of the medal bears a winged female figure representing Victory striding forward while holding a sword wrapped in a palm leaf (sword of war and palm of peace) with a radiant sun in the background. The text around Victory reads, “VIXIT VIVIT VIVET” [lived, lives, will live].

Detroit Soldiers Memorial Medal, 1919 (reverse). Image Courtesy of Cranbrook Art Museum.

The back of the medal reads, “Presented by the City of Detroit 1919.” At center is a scroll inscribed, “In Memory Of One Who Died in the Cause of Freedom and Humanity.” Above, an eagle holding a laurel wreath is perched atop the end of a cannon and ball.

The Burton Historical Collection at the Detroit Public Library has a great image of a large crowd at Campus Martius for a memorial service to honor WWI soldiers. I suspect that one of the men on the dais is George G. Booth, there to honor the Detroit war dead and their families.

For more on George Booth and his opinions on the war in Europe, see the George Gough Booth Papers and for more on Manship’s work at Cranbrook, check out Cranbrook Archives Digital Collections and Cranbrook Art Museum.

– Leslie S. Mio, Assistant Registrar

6 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

collections/Cranbrook Art Museum

Albert Kahn/Author: Leslie Mio/Burton Historical Collection/Campus Martius/Cranbrook Art Museum/Detroit/Detroit Soldiers Memorial Medal/George Booth/Henry Ford/Medallic Art Company/Paul Manship/Samuel Simpson Marquis/The Detroit News/World War I

Jan

Opulence and Splendor

In the spring of 1927, Cranbrook founders George Gough and Ellen Scripps Booth traveled to Egypt. In addition to visiting Cairo and having their photograph taken after an hour long camelback ride, the Booths visited the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Tutankhamun (King Tut).

Letter from Cairo, Mar 1927.

In a letter to his son Henry, Booth describes in detail the opulent beauty of the tomb: “When in Luxor we went to the Valley of the Kings and saw the tomb – that is we saw one room where the King lay. He is there still in one of the gold coffins – the mummy had over it a gold mask covering head and shoulders and many jeweled ribbons of gold covering the joints of the mummy cloth. Thimbles on each finger and toe… this lay inside a gorgeous solid gold coffin inlaid with stones. This was all in the finest carved sarcophagus and that inside a splendid wooden shrine – and this inside of a beautifully decorated room.”

Replica created by Egyptian artisans and purchased by George Booth in 1927. The original chair is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Photograph courtesy of Cranbrook Institute of Science.

The Booths also visited the Egyptian Museum while in Cairo. Booth writes that although there is still a great deal in the actual tomb, he is in awe of the exhibition’s craftsmanship and value. He was particularly interested in a chair that at the time was believed to be the State Chair of Queen Taia, wife of King Amenhotep III (grandfather of Tutankhamun). Booth writes to Henry, “I would cheerfully give $10,000 for the throne – which is an ordinary sized chair, but beautifully wrought.”

Exhibition poster, 1973.

As the original chair was not for sale, Booth commissioned a replica to be made for the Art Museum collection. The chair, of carved wood with relief decorations covered in gold leaf, was later determined to be the chair of Sitamun, an Egyptian princess (and thought by many scholars to be the mother of King Tutankhamun). The chair was lent to the Institute of Science for a 1973 exhibition titled, “Ancient Egypt and the Tomb of Tutankhamen”. In 1984 the chair was transferred from the Art Museum to the Institute of Science, where it still resides today.

– Gina Tecos, Archivist

Dec

The Name Game

From the beginning of Cranbrook’s history in 1904, place names at Cranbrook have evolved and changed. Once the Booths turned the original mill pond into a lake, they named it first Glassenbury Lake (after Glassenbury, England), then it was known as Cranbrook Lake for a very short time, and ultimately Kingswood Lake. The man-made Jonah Lake (or Lake Jonah as it is also known) was originally called Lake Manitou. Brookside School was originally called Bloomfield Hills School and Cranbrook School was Cranbrook School for Boys. Although Brookside School retains its name, since 1985 when the boys and girls schools merged, they are jointly known as Cranbrook Kingswood Schools.

Building names have also changed, often due to an alteration in use or sometimes because they were dedicated to an influential or long-time faculty member. The Garden House became the Cranbrook Pavilion and is now St. Dunstan’s Playhouse. The Cranbrook School academic building became Hoey Hall after former Headmaster Harry Hoey and what was originally called the “Arcade” is now known as the Peristyle at the Cranbrook Art Museum. Lyon House was first called Stonelea (after its owner Ralph Stone, a long-time friend of George Booth), then Belwood, then the Kyes House before being acquired by Cranbrook.

And even Cranbrook Educational Community is not our first name. In 1927, the Booths established The Cranbrook Foundation as the legal and financial entity that oversaw the then six institutions: Brookside School, Christ Church Cranbrook, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Cranbrook Institute of Science, Cranbrook School, and Kingswood School.

So, what is really in a name? How do we name our campus buildings and landmarks going forward and what legacy will we be imparting with them?

That said, I wish you all a Happy New Year! Or should I say Bonne année? Feliz Año Nuevo? Or maybe Xin nian kuai le?

(And thank you Stefanie Dlugosz-Acton for getting me thinking about names at Cranbrook!)

From the Virginia Kingswood Booth Vogel Papers.

– Leslie S. Edwards, Head Archivist

Dec

Photo Friday: Posters Tell a Story

The Cranbrook Archives exhibition, Designs of the Times: 100 Years of Posters at Cranbrook, opens this weekend. The exhibition documents events and performances that have enhanced and enriched the Cranbrook community for more than a century. The image below is just one of many that will be on display through March 20th, 2016.

Performing Arts poster, 1955

This poster, signed “M.W.” was designed by Michael Justin Wentworth (Cranbrook School ’56). In addition to designing posters, Wentworth was the art editor for both the Brook and the Crane, and designed the sets for the Ergasterion productions and the scenery for the bi-annual Operettas. He received his MA and MFA from University of Michigan, and his PhD from Harvard where he wrote his dissertation on the artist James Tissot, a lifelong interest.

The posters in the exhibition represent all areas of campus – we hope you come check it out!

– Gina Tecos, Archivist

7 years ago Short URL Comments

Archives/Exhibitions

Author: Gina Tecos/Christ Church Cranbrook/Cranbrook Academy of Art/Cranbrook Archives/Cranbrook Art Museum/Cranbrook Institute of Science/Cranbrook School/Ergasterion/Kingswood School/Michael Justin Wentworth/Photo Friday/Posters

Nov

Princess Di’s Dresses in the Archives?

At Cranbrook Archives, much of the work we do—processing manuscripts, arranging documents, scanning photographs—all have a rather similar procedure: repeat.

There is plenty of magnificence to be found in the mundane though. We don’t mind the monotonous details because it’s this repetitive process that wins us the occasional gem. Today, while going through Cranbrook’s historic exhibition brochures printed between the 1940s and 1990s, I came across an image of Princess Diana.

“Five Dresses from the Collection of Diana, Princess of Wales” was an exhibition held at the Cranbrook Art Museum from March 10-15, 1998. The royal dresses were premiered at Cranbrook before becoming part of a worldwide tour that traveled to Russia, Japan, Australia, and England through 1999. This selection from the Princess’s wardrobe was shown in conjunction with the “Art on the Edge of Fashion” exhibition held at Cranbrook at the same time.

Cranbrook Art Museum exhibition brochure, 1988. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

The five dresses were from the private collection of Ellen Louise Petho, a commercial interior designer who, incidentally, was the parent of a Kingswood School alumna. Susan Whitall’s press release in the Detroit News explained how the princess sold dozens of her dresses to benefit AIDs charities just months before her death in 1997. She wrote, “Petho scooped up the five frocks for what became, after Diana’s death, a bargain basement price—less than $100,000.”

The collection included a pleated pink silk tunic dinner dress that Diana wore at the Gala Evening for the English National Ballet and the long jade and black evening dress worn to a dinner at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto in 1986. Four of the five dresses were designed by Catherine Walker and the “piece de resistance,” designed by Bruce Oldfield, was the red dress the princess wore at the premiere of the motion picture “Hot Shots” in 1991.

The Archives are a trove of Cranbrook history. We love rediscovering the hidden materials—it’s what makes the repetition meaningful.

– Danae Dracht, Archives Assistant

7 years ago Short URL 1 Comment

Archives/Cranbrook Art Museum/Exhibitions

Bruce Oldfield/Catherine Walker/Cranbrook Archives/Cranbrook Art Museum/Detroit News/Diana Princess of Wales/dresses/Ellen Louise Petho/Exhibitions/Kingswood School/Princess Diana

Sep

Alphabet Soup

This morning I was looking for an image from our collection to relate to the Cranbrook Art Museum’s newest exhibition “Read Image, See Text” to post on our Facebook page. I would hazard a guess to say that most, if not all, archivists love books almost as much as historic documents. Though archives usually do not seek to collect books, and certainly are not lending libraries, books can often comprise part of a collection. So my search for a single image led me to think about the range of books we have in our collection.

The first was written by William O. Stevens, nearly 25 years before he became the first headmaster of Cranbrook School. After receiving his doctorate at Yale, Stevens taught English at the U.S. Naval Academy for 21 years. The book, which satirized early 20^th century Annapolis using twenty-six limericks and illustrations, became an instant success. Find out why it also became controversial.

William O. Stevens, An Annapolis Alphabet: Pictures and Limericks (Baltimore: The Lord Baltimore Press, 1906).

The first edition poetry book below illustrates beautiful text and the tooled binding of the times. It is inscribed: “Ellen W. Scripps, a Christmas present from her Father [James E. Scripps], Detroit 1879.” The editor of the compilation, Henry T. Coates joined the publishing firm of Davis & Porter in 1966; Davis retired the following year and the company became Porter & Coates which became famous for creating Home and Garden magazine and publishing the Horatio Alger Junior titles.

Henry T. Coates (ed.), The Children’s Book of Poetry: carefully selected from the works of the best and most popular writers for children. (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1879).

Gustaf Strengell, the father of Cranbrook’s textile designer Marianne Strengell, composed and designed this handwritten analysis of the Swedish poet’s writings as part of his graduate thesis. Franz Michael Franzén’s (1772-1847) work expressed the romantic conception of nature as both idyllic and divine, and was influential in the development of Finnish poetry.

Gustaf Strengell, Franzén. (Helsinki, unpublished, 1898)

For a really great blog post about related collections, see: Graphic Arts Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University.

– Leslie S. Edwards, Head Archivist

Aug

Can You Say Lobster Roll?

It feels as though summer is winding down and this week is the final session of Cranbrook Art Museum Summer Camp. We enjoyed a visit from students earlier in the week who were part of the “Costumes and Characters” session. While pulling materials to show the students, we came across this photo of Ralph Russell Calder (1894-1969), an architect and friend of Henry Scripps Booth. He is in a lobster costume made by Loja Saarinen for a “May Party” in 1926.

From the Henry Scripps and Carolyn Farr Booth Papers, Cranbrook Archives.

Calder, born in 1894, was a veteran of World War I and an accomplished musician. He graduated in 1923 from the University of Michigan College of Architecture (he and Henry were classmates). In 1924, he studied in England, France, and Italy as the winner of the George G. Booth Traveling Fellowship in Architecture.

A card from Ralph Calder & Associates, Inc. with a 1924 sketch by Ralph Calder during his travels in Europe on the Booth Traveling Fellowship.

In 1925, Calder worked for several months as part of U of M’s Near East Research Expedition in Tunisia. The research and objects obtained from this expedition are the basis of the collection at the Francis W. Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at U of M. Calder joined the Cranbrook Architectural Office in 1926 and remained there until staff was reduced due to the economic depression. In 1937, he joined the firm of William G. Malcomson and Maurice E. Hammond where he stayed until 1945, when he started his own firm, Ralph Calder and Associates, in Detroit.

Calder worked on the following buildings on the Cranbrook campus: the main academic building (Hoey Hall) at Cranbrook School, Thornlea, and Thornlea Studio. In addition, he was the architect for buildings at Michigan State University, Michigan Technological University, Hope College, Northern Michigan University, Hillsdale College, Wayne State University, Ferris State University, Western Michigan University, and Lake Superior State University. He enjoyed music as a hobby and was the organist and choirmaster for St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral in Detroit in the 1940s.

– Gina Tecos, Archivist

8 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Logical Design: Using Primary Sources

As summer camps are winding down, we wanted to share how campers used the collections in the Archives this week. Earlier in the week, my daughter, who is attending Cranbrook Art Museum’s camp session “Problem Solving by Design,” told me of the industrial design concepts they were learning. I immediately thought of the collection of Design Logic, Inc. Records that we have in the Archives, which contain beautiful color transparencies of 3D projects designed in the 1980s by David Gresham and Martin Thayer. (See Cheri Gay’s post.)

Studying the design drawings for the View Master and the Projector, Aug 2015.

The next morning, I spoke with Kanoa, the camp instructor and a 2015 grad of the Academy of Art, and he agreed the photos would be great to show the kids. We coupled them with a copy of the exhibition catalog Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse, which featured several prototypes by Design Logic, as well as by other designers, many of whom studied under Kathy and Michael McCoy here at Cranbrook in the 1980s. The following day, I took the kids to the Art Museum vault to actually look at some of the objects. Kanoa had them do several sketches from different angles, all the while talking about various design concepts. Then the following day of course I had to show them some of Gresham and Thayer’s own design drawings which are also a part of the collection in the Archives. The kids were able to view conceptual sketches through finished drawings that were then sent to the manufacturer.

Sketching objects in the Cranbrook Art Museum vault, Aug 2015.

All in all, I hope it was a great experience for the kids. It certainly was fun for me to be able to enrich their camp experience with primary source materials from Cranbrook Archives.

– Leslie S. Edwards, Head Archivist

8 years ago Short URL Comments

The Ramp of the Chinese Dog

For George Gough Booth, the vista from Cranbrook House to the Ramp of the Chinese Dog was a crucial one – he could see the Cranbrook Art Museum from his west wing office at Cranbrook House and the Chinese Dog guarding the entrance.

Though Cranbrook’s sculpture is commonly referred to as the “Chinese Dog”, the sculpture is actually a stone lion. In October 1940, George Booth purchased the lion from S. & G. Gump Co. in San Francisco and it is considered to be from the Wei Dynasty (386-557). A buyer for Gumps had acquired it in Beijing, China in 1938 where he was told that the lion came from the “Ta Fo Tze Temple in Chien Ting Fu Prefecture in Hopei.” Hebei (Hopei) Province is known for its stone and iron lions, and lion sculptures similar to the one at Cranbrook are still located at the entrance to the Ta Fo Tze Temple, now known as the Longxing Temple.

“Sacred Lion-Dog,” S. & G. Gump Co.’s showroom, San Francisco, ca 1940. Courtesy Cranbrook Art Museum.

During the Ming Dynasty, sacred guardian lions were placed in front of palaces, government buildings and temples as a symbol of bravery, power and good luck. In Western countries, the lions are often referred to as “Fu Dogs” as the word “fu” means Buddha or prosperity. George Booth placed another pair of Chinese stone lions at Cranbrook House, as well as several other stone lion sculptures around the grounds. In addition, he purchased two terracotta lions for the quadrangle at Cranbrook School, and numerous other objects with representations of lions in them including stained glass medallions, stone panels, and a gilt bronze lion sculpture by Carl Milles. As I write this, I am thinking that it would be an interesting project to research just what Booth’s interest or fascination (obsession?) with lions truly was.

One of two terracotta lions at Cranbrook School. Filmmaker Brad Mitzelfeld behind the camera, 1970. Harvey Croze, photographer. Courtesy Cranbrook Archives.

– Leslie S. Edwards, Head Archivist

8 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

The Golden Anniversary of Horizons-Upward Bound at Cranbrook

The Archives new exhibition, “50 Years Strong: The Evolution of HUB at Cranbrook,” opens this Saturday, April 25th, in the lower level of Cranbrook Art Museum. Horizons-Upward Bound, known as HUB, has its roots in a partnership with Cranbrook Schools that began in 1965. Over the past fifty years, HUB has evolved into a year-round program which prepares both boys and girls with limited financial opportunities to enter and succeed in post-secondary education.

Horizons-Upward Bound Theme Day, 1971. Photographer, Jack Kausch. Cranbrook Archives.

The exhibition sheds light on the history of the program and its continued affiliation with Cranbrook Schools and highlights key individuals and events that have helped make it the successful legacy it is today. Through news clippings, program invitations, brochures and newsletters, student publications, and historic photographs, the exhibition presents a chronological history of the multi-faceted academic enrichment program known as HUB.