Mary Anning's Icthyosaur

London blogging:

Essay 2 of 10 on
ten artifacts 

that I saw 

while on vacation

in London 

in summer 2015.

Drawing by Everard Home for the Royal Society depicting the
Icthyosaurus skull found by Mary and Joseph Anning in 1811.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Mary Anning (1799-1847).
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

There aren’t many testaments to the achievements of 19th century women in the British Museum.  In those days, the British Royal Society and its offshoots acted as gatekeepers for recognizing scientific achievement, with their memberships strictly closed to women and lower-class riff-raff.  Science and exploration were activities reserved for gentlemen.

So who let Mary Anning in?

In gender-suppressing, class-conscious early 19th century England, Mary Anning forced her way into the museums and science books by sheer genius of observation.  Better-educated men trolled the countryside for fossils, but lower-class, under-educated Mary ran circles around them.  She was so good they eventually had to take notice.

The Mary Anning display case
at the British Museum.

While preparing for our London vacation, a friend had advised me to check out the rather drably titled Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum.  It’s where the museum displays many of the original collections gathered during its early years, imposingly displayed in the King’s Library (which really WAS home to the King’s Library, being George III’s collection donated to the British Museum by George IV).  Row after row of display cases stand as silent testimony to England’s greatest scientists and explorers when the Empire was at its peak.

I settled in to pay my respects at the Mary Anning display case.  Raised in a poor family that earned a little extra cash each summer by selling fossils to tourists visiting Lyme Regis, Mary was just 12 years old when she and her brother Joseph made their first great discovery—a remarkably intact fossilized icthyosaur skeleton from the long-ago Jurassic world.  At a time when would-be amateur geologists and paleontologists were scouring England for prize specimens, Mary Anning nurtured a talent for finding the very finest pieces.  Although lacking formal education, she intuitively grasped the biology of the strange animals that she discovered along the limestone and shale cliffs that lined the Lyme Regis coast.

The Blue Lias cliffs at Lyme Regis where Mary Anning
made her great discoveries.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On long-time loan from the Natural History Museum, London, the little sampling of icthyosaur bones in the British Museum display cabinet came from a later 1821 discovery, when Anning was slowly gaining a reputation for being uncommonly knowledgeable and talented.  As the label in the display cabinet describes:  “Her knowledge and expertise were sought by the most important geologists of the day.”

Mary Anning tribute at the
Natural History Museum, London.

Several days later at the Natural History Museum, I enjoyed seeing fossils associated with prominent and respected Victorian scientists such as Gideon Mantell, William Buckland, and Sir Richard Owen, but their antique fossil discoveries didn’t thrill me a tenth as much as stumbling upon more Mary Anning tributes, including a complete Plesiosaurus skeleton discovered by Anning when she was 25.

If, as Martin Luther King Jr. observed, the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice, then Mary Anning is now justly receiving her due in 21st century British museums.

History vindicates.  Mary Anning rules.

The Mary Anning plaque at the Natural History Museum, London,
with one of her discoveries: a Rhomaleosaurus.
Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Remarkable Creatures
by Tracy Chevalier.

After we returned home and shared pictures of our trip on Facebook, a friend of my wife’s inquired if we knew about Remarkable Creatures, a recent novel by Tracy Chevalier, best-selling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring.  Well, I’ve been reading about Mary Anning all my life, starting with my earliest dinosaur picture books, so I couldn’t resist.  Remarkable Creatures is a fine addition to the Mary Anning legend and a fitting tribute to one of the 19th century’s most remarkable pioneers, who fearlessly ventured back into time along the rocky ledges of her little tourist town.

© 2015 Lee Price

1812 and the Fairmount Water Works

1811-1815 Blogging, Part 5 of 5
Fairmount Water Works

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I relax by considering possibilities for future series.  I spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1811-1815. 

So here’s my fourth 1811-1815 series possibility:  21 essays on the Fairmount Water Works in Philadelphia.

The Fairmount Water Works in December 1984.
U.S. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Designed by Frederick Graff, the Fairmount Water Works was instantly acclaimed for both its state-of-the-art engineering and for its aesthetic beauty.  The engineering supplied clean water to the entire city through a giant new reservoir built on the top of Faire Mount, a hill directly behind the Water Works.  In order to create the inviting and attractive appearance of the Water Works, Graff proposed a Classical Revival exterior that created an oasis of Arcadian beauty amid the growing industrial city.  Tourists flocked to it.

Recently restored to feature an interpretive center and restaurant, the Fairmount Water Works are still a beautiful Philadelphia attraction… with one caveat.  Originally, the Water Works was designed to be the visual centerpiece of this section of the Schuylkill River.  However, with the construction of the enormous Philadelphia Museum of Art in the 1920s, the perfectly proportioned yet much smaller Fairmount Water Works was dwarfed.  To get the appropriate 19th century image, view the Water Works from across the Schuylkill River and mentally photoshop out the colossal museum towering above it.  If you squint just right, you’ll get a glimpse of Arcadia on the banks of the Schuylkill.

It would take a full 21 essays to begin to cover the science, architecture, and history of the Fairmount Water Works, one of Philadelphia’s most enduring institutions.  I’d even be following in the footsteps of Charles Dickens, who was mightily impressed by the Water Works during his 1842 visit to Philadelphia:  “The Water-Works, which are on a height near the city, are no less ornamental than useful, being tastefully laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best and neatest order.”

Fairmount Water Works, 1860-1910, from the Robert N. Dennis
Collection of Stereoscopic Views at the New York Public Library.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

This is the last of my official 1811-1815 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).

Next year(s) up on the random year(s) generator:  1401-1425.  But you’ll need to be patient.  Our tour of the early 15th century must wait at least a month because I’m planning something special for 21 Essays in September.  More about that tomorrow…

© 2012 Lee Price

1811-1815 and the Austen Novels

1811-1815 blogging, part 4 of 5

Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I relax by considering possibilities for future series.  I spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1811-1815. 

So here’s my fourth 1811-1815 series possibility:  21 essays on the Bennets, Dashwoods, and Woodhouses, along with their relatives, neighbors, friends, and foils.

First edition of
Sense and Sensibility.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

During this brief period of 1811 to 1815, Jane Austen enjoyed the publication of most of her greatest works:  Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma.  This was the age of Austen.  Or maybe we’re still in the age of Austen—I imagine it was easier to ignore her in 1815 than it is to ignore her omnipresence today in the age of the Masterpiece Theater mini-series and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

“Jane Austen is worth reading all through—even her fragments are remarkable,” the American critic Edmund Wilson wrote to Vladimir Nabokov.  And it was through Nabokov that I learned that it was okay for boys to read Jane Austen.  In his Lectures on Literature, Nabokov walks his students through Mansfield Park, pointing them toward the precision details of her artistry.  While I was born too late to attend a Nabokov lecture, he still served as a literary mentor of mine and I’ll always appreciate that he led me to Austen.

For a 21 essays series, I could do a gallery of 21 characters brought to life by Austen.  They might include:  Elinor Dashwood, Marianne Dashwood, Fanny Dashwood, John Willoughby, Lucy Steele, Colonel Brandon, Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Bennet, Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Darcy, Lydia Bennet, Charles Bingley, Caroline Bingley, George Wickham, William Collins, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Emma Woodhouse, George Knightley, Frank Churchill, Harriet Smith, and Henry Woodhouse.*  These characters should constitute a very impressive gallery of human behavior, circa 1800 (and today as well).

* Note:  You may notice that I’ve left out Mansfield Park from the character gallery above.  Unfortunately, Mansfield Park was the first Austen novel that I read and it just didn’t click with me.  Since then, I’ve loved everything else so I know that I need to return to it.  But until I do, I’m sticking with the three Austen novels from 1811-1815 that I genuinely treasure.

The Bennet family at home.  A Pride and Prejudiceillustration by Hugh Thomson,
circa 1894.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Tomorrow, I’ll propose the last of these 1811-1815 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1811-1815 places, books, poems, songs, paintings, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

1811-1815 and Goya's Disasters of War

1811-1815 blogging, part 3 of 5

The Disasters of War

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I relax by considering possibilities for future series.  I spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1811-1815. 

So here’s my third 1811-1815 series possibility:  21 essays on The Disasters of War.

The Disasters of War, plate 15:  "And It Can't Be Helped"
by Francisco Goya.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Thirty-five years after the death of the great Spanish painter Francisco Goya, his series of aquatint prints called The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra) were published in 1863.  Goya had worked on these 82 prints between 1810 and 1820.  During those years, he was in his sixties and largely out of favor with the court where he had once enjoyed star status.  A serious illness had left him deaf.  His wife died in 1812.  And he observed his country being torn apart by war.

The Disasters of War are a cry of outrage at man’s inhumanity to man.  They are unflinching in their portrayals of war’s horror and ugliness.  There are no heroes.  The bodies of victims are mangled and dismembered.  Their killers are ordinary-looking people casually resorting to sadistic violence.  The very lack of sentimentality within the prints is what makes them such a powerful and pessimistic anti-war statement.

It’s difficult to imagine the amount of work that Goya must have expended on a work that he must have known was unpublishable.  Perhaps it was an artistic obsession that he knew he simply had to work through.  Or possibly he recorded these scenes for posterity—in the hope that someday people would see his depictions of atrocities and say, “Never again.”  The prints are available now for our meditation and they remain as sadly relevant as they were in Goya’s day.

The Disasters of War, plate 3:  "The Same Thing,"
by Francisco Goya.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Over the next two days, I’ll be proposing some more 1811-1815 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1811-1815 places, books, poems, songs, paintings, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

1811-1815 and Pennsylvania German Redware

1811-1815 blogging, part 2 of 5

Pennsylvania German Redware

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I relax by considering possibilities for future series.  I spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1811-1815. 

So here’s my second 1811-1815 series possibility:  21 essays on Pennsylvania German redware.

Dish made by Thomas Vickers and Son, West Whiteland
Township, Pennsylvania, c. 1805-1822.  Redware,
lead glaze, slip decoration.  Diameter:  7 1/16 inches.
From the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Pennsylvania German redware is beautiful.  German immigrants brought their pottery-making know-how with them when they crossed the Atlantic, and they found good clay here to continue to refine their craftsmanship.  They would frequently decorate it with slips (white liquid clay) or scratch designs through the glazing, a technique called sgraffitto.  The dominant color was red, the secondary color was yellow, and greens and other colors could be used for additional decoration.

Most of the redware was utilitarian.  The clay made handsome plates—often the plain ones are as ruggedly striking in appearance as the more ornately designed ones.  In addition, redware was used for beakers, bottles, pitchers, platters, pie plates, jars, and flower pots.  In a more relaxed vein, it made delightful children’s toys.

This period of 1811 to 1815 was a high point for Pennsylvania’s redware potters.  The best surviving pieces show an art that’s reached a high level of craftsmanship but hasn’t settled into either routine designs or baroque experimentation.  Nowadays, fine pieces of antique redware can fetch high prices at auction.  It’s come into vogue.  And modern potters continue to practice the craft, now using glazes without the original lead formula that you find on the old pieces (don’t eat off the antiques!).

My favorite collections of Pennsylvania German redware are on permanent exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Mercer Museum (Doylestown, PA).  I’m thinking that for a 21 Essays series I could simply pick out 21 favorite items from one of these collections and write an essay apiece.  It’s time to give these anonymous craftsmen their due.

Beaker:  Made in Montgomery
County, PA.  Artist/maker:
Unknown.  1800-1820.
From the collection of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Over the next three days, I’ll be proposing some more 1811-1815 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1811-1815 places, books, poems, songs, paintings, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price

1812 and the Academy of Natural Sciences

1812 blogging, part 1 of 5

Academy of Natural Sciences

In these long breaks between the signature 21 Essays series, I relax by considering possibilities for future series.  I spin the roulette wheel to pick a year (or set of years) and then brainstorm on some potential essay topics.  This time the wheel spins, gradually slows, then clicks to a stop, pointing at:  1811-1815. 

So here’s my first 1812 series possibility:  21 essays on the Academy of Natural Sciences.

From 1912:  The Academy of Natural Sciences on its 100th birthday.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Founded in 1812, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia turned 200 this year.  Now renamed the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, this is a year of celebration for the venerable institution and they’ve fittingly rolled out a special exhibit and a marvelous book of wonders (see picture below).

Long before I moved to the Philadelphia area and visited the Academy for the first time, I read all about the Academy of Natural Sciences in my dinosaur books.  In my young mind, the Academy was a sacred place—the home of Joseph Leidy who identified America’s first dinosaur fossils, the exhibit hall of the first mounted dinosaur skeleton, and a learned society that claimed titans like Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Richard Owen, Georges Cuvier, Edward Drinker Cope, and Thomas Henry Huxley among its members.  (And those are just the fossil/evolution guys—I’m leaving out John James Audubon, William Bartram, Thomas Say, Alexander Wilson, John Edwards Holbrook, Thomas Nuttall, John Cassin etc. etc. etc. who trail blazed in other natural science arenas.)

I’m happy to have enjoyed many associations with the Academy during the past couple of decades.  My son served as a volunteer there for six years, I have friends among the staff, and my place of business has worked on the conservation treatment of some of their most remarkable collections.  But despite my familiarity with the Academy, it remains a privilege to walk through their doors.  It’s still sacred space to me.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking down on their anniversary year…  If I’m going to get my act together and celebrate their 200th anniversary in the appropriate year, I’ve only got four months left to do it!  Maybe in November…  And if not in November, maybe they’ll understand a belated happy birthday card sometime early next year—an appreciation crammed with 21 essays on one of the world’s greatest science institutions.

Published this year, A Glorious Enterprise:
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia
and the Making of American Science
by Robert McCracken Peck and
Patricia Tyson Stroud.

Over the next four days, I’ll be proposing some more 1811-1815 ideas (with no promises that I’ll necessarily be getting to any of them…).  But I’m wide open to other suggestions.  Any ideas for 1811-1815 places, books, poems, songs, paintings, or other cultural artifacts that might inspire a good 21 Essays series?

© 2012 Lee Price