2011 was a year of wandering. And I’ve had wandering years before, but I don’t think I’ve ever spent such a short time period traipsing around to so many different places. So 2011 feels like a sort of patchwork to me—a crazy quilt of skies and horizons and cities and experiences.
This winter I’m wrapping myself in that quilt, and dreaming ahead to the patches I’ll get to piece together in 2012.
Happy New Year.
It’s hard to ignore the news of protests occupying the attention of cities around the world—of the many and diverse thousands of people unified under one simple, yet infinitely faceted mantra. As members of the, well, vast majority of folks without any real political or financial clout in the world, Jessica and I can get behind their message—but that’s not so much the point. What really amazes us is that with a little tenacity and strength in numbers, the powerless can suddenly become very powerful, indeed.
It made us think of a woman who, despite having a famous sibling, would have disappeared into obscurity but for the simple act of picking up a pen.
My power was allways small tho my will is good. —Jane Mecom
Jane’s eminent brother, on the other hand, had a little more faith:
Energy and persistence conquer all things. —Benjamin Franklin
Jane had both energy and persistence in spades, although we marvel at how she managed it, with twelve kids, a family business and a house perpetually full of boarders to occupy her attention. Yet of Benjamin’s sixteen siblings, Jane is the only one whose story has survived the 200+ years since her death—all because she committed her thoughts to paper. So in honor of Ben and Jane’s relationship, and in solidarity with those who find the strength to speak up, we present our first dual Dead Feminist broadside, Signed, Sealed, Soapbox.
Since this is also our first print that features a male Dead Feminist (nope, you don’t have to be a woman to be a feminist), we thought it deserved a little something extra. So we set it up like a conversation—or in this case, a written correspondence. Besides, there was just so much historical ground to cover—even condensing the information to a blog post is a challenge, let alone plucking two sentences from a lifetime of dialogue. (If you haven’t already guessed, this post is a long one. Grab a cuppa if you dare to settle in!)
Buried in the stacks of our excellent public library, I uncovered an obscure tome: The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom by Carl van Doren. The book chronicles their entire surviving correspondence—98 letters in all, printed in full. I was a little worried that the writing style of the day would make even skimming for quotes a chore—but in truth, I couldn’t put it down. It was like peering into the lives of any two ordinary people who happened to care for each other very much. There’s humor, and worried advice, and gossip, and gentle sarcasm, and the occasional scolding (usually on Jane’s part) when one or the other let too much time pass between letters. Most of all, there’s love—it’s there on every page. After all of that, we couldn’t just limit the broadside to a couple of one-liners. So the quotes are accompanied by excerpts from their actual letters, each calligraphed as closely as possible to Ben and Jane’s actual handwriting. Even the spelling errors and colonial-era grammar are intact; we figured it was better not to mess with history.
Jane’s excerpted letter:
I have wrote & spelt this very badly but as it is to Won who I am sure will make all Reasonable allowances for me and will not let any won Els see it I shall venter to send it & subscrib my Self yr Ever affectionat Sister, Jane Mecom.
Ben’s reply:
Is there not a little Affectation in your Apology for the Incorrectness of your Writing? Perhaps it is rather fishing for Commendation. You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women. Believe me ever Your loving Brother, B. Franklin.
There are few Founding Fathers more famous than Ben Franklin, but Jane was somewhat of a mystery. What we do know is that she had a very different life than her illustrious brother. Thanks to the simple fact of having been born female, her youth was spent having babies rather than obtaining an education. Her life was marked with misfortune, poverty and the deaths of nearly everyone she loved. Yet through it all she craved knowledge, and read everything she could get her hands on. She was a skilled craftsperson, making the famed Franklin Crown Soap and teaching the trade to others. And she followed her brother’s career with pride—and he supported her in return, both financially and emotionally.
On my epic road trip with the Tailor this summer (about which I still owe you serious bloggage), our path took us through both Boston and Philadelphia—ye olde stomping grounds for Doctor Franklin. I had the library book of letters with me on the trip (thank goodness for online renewals), so their words lent an interesting depth to my wanderings.
In Philadelphia, I visited Ben’s print shop and post office, and, well, geeked out a little bit.
It was my first trip to Philly, but even without prior knowledge of the place,
Edit: not actually Ben. This is William Penn. Shows how much I know. Still, from 500 feet below, that haircut looks awfully Franklin-like.
it didn’t take long to discover that Ben is everywhere.
But Boston is a hometown of sorts, so it was there that I did the most digging.
And it turned out that digging was necessary. With so many Revolutionary War heroes to honor there, the Franklin family’s presence is far more subtle. And Jane? Well, she’s almost nowhere to be found.
Almost.
This plaque is all that’s left of the house where Jane spent all her life.
It was knocked down to make room for a memorial to this guy. The plaque does mention her briefly, but not by name. Another hazard of being female in the eighteenth century, I suppose.
But Jane did live through the Revolutionary war—in fact, as a resident of the North End, her home was right in the thick of it. In 1775 she fled the British-occupied city and took refuge with friends near Providence, Rhode Island. There, Ben came to rescue her. He took her to Philadelphia, where she spent a year with him before returning to a liberated Boston. While that year was full of turmoil and uncertainty for the citizens of the newly declared United States, 1776 was quite possibly the best year of Jane’s life. For the first time in ages, she could bask in her beloved brother’s company—and he made time for her despite being busy with other things—and as the honored guest she was largely free from work and family duty.
As far as I can tell, it was also the last time she ever laid eyes on him. And even that was a rare treat—between Ben’s high-profile career and the then-formidable distance between Boston and Philadelphia, it was impossible for them to visit one another more than a handful of times in their entire lives. And since it would have taken weeks for a letter to cross five states, and months to traverse the ocean to reach Ben in France, it’s a wonder they remained as close as they did all their lives. Lends a whole new meaning to “snail mail,” doesn’t it?
Signed, Sealed, Soapbox is illustrated with the sweeping curves of ornate penmanship and the detailed linework of colonial engravings. A faux-bois forest of branches and flowers resembles the printed toile fabrics of the day. The swoops and swirls of the calligraphy rest in stately Wedgwood blue (complimented by a telltale vase at the bottom!), while Ben and Jane’s correspondence occupies a buttery yellow letter edged like a vintage postage stamp.
And though there is no surviving likeness of Jane Mecom, she deserves so much more than the portrait of a Jane Doe. Instead, she is made in the image of The Comtesse d’Haussonville by French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.
Ben was the best big brother Jane could have asked for. So in honor of his positive influence, we’ll be donating a portion of our proceeds to the Puget Sound chapter of Big Brothers, Big Sisters—an organization dedicated to providing children facing adversity with mentor relationships that change their lives for the better, forever.
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Signed, Sealed, Soapbox: No. 14 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 176
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches
Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, on archival, 100% rag (cotton) paper. Each piece is numbered and signed by both artists.
Colophon reads:
Jane (Franklin) Mecom (1712 – 1794) was born in Boston’s North End, the youngest daughter of a soap maker. Married at fifteen, she had no formal education but was a voracious reader of books supplied by her brother. She ran a boarding house and made soap to support her ailing husband, her elderly parents and her twelve children. She outlived all but one of them. Her “Book of Ages” chronicles the deaths of these loved ones, but what little we know of Jane herself can be traced to a lifetime of correspondence with her beloved brother.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) attended school for just two years before becoming a printer’s apprentice at age twelve, but was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale and Oxford. He founded the first lending library in America, reformed the colonial postal system and became the first U.S. Postmaster General. He espoused the values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit and tolerance, and opposed authoritarianism in both religion and politics.
Despite the differences in their education and circumstances, Benjamin largely treated his sister as an equal, and penned more letters to her than any other person in his life. He sent his writings and political essays to get Jane’s opinion, and notable figures of the day visited her to pay their respects out of deference to the famous Franklin. Benjamin provided decades of financial support for Jane and her children, and upon his death bequeathed her a comfortable living — as well as public trusts to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia to fund mortgages, school scholarships and eventually establish the Franklin Institute of Technology.
Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring, 100% occupied with Benjamin’s wise words — and deeds — as he signed the Declaration of Independence: “Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Price: $35
Available now in our new Dead Feminists shop!
We’re hiding a whole bunch of new things up our sleeves—to be revealed as soon as we can. But we’re going to take a little bit of time to make sure we do them right. So we’re taking February off—the next Dead Feminist broadside will be released in May 2012. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for other surprises!
One of the things I used to do with Bampa is visit the colonial graveyards tucked away in every corner of New England. On this trip I only had time to visit a couple, so I picked my two favorites: the Old York Burial Ground in York, Maine;
and the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.
I’m quite a bit obsessed with these places; beyond my usual souvenir sketches and snapshots, these cemeteries keep popping in and out of my body of work. This is an excerpt from an artist book I made seven years ago. That’s not snow—it’s shot with infrared film. I used a lens filter that blocked nearly all of the visible spectrum, so that the film was exposed mostly by ambient infrared radiation. The effect is that inanimate objects like stones read as deepest black,
and living things turn to bright white.
Despite the near-constant crowds (in Boston, at least) and the challenge they present to photographing, each is an oasis, a tranquil island within the bustling town or city.
That’s not what draws me to them, though. Nor is it the haphazard scatter of wonky stones,
nor the romance of crumbling ruins.
(infrared film again)
It’s the art of it all. You can probably guess what my headstone might look like one day, because I’m completely fascinated with the design, the illustration, the typography displayed on colonial headstones. The “Death’s Head” or winged skull motif seems to be the most common,
with many variations within the theme—
Quadruple grave, dated 1666-1671, of children who lived only “dayes” or months apiece
from refined,
grave for a member of the Goose family, founders of the Mother Goose tradition
to folksy,
to somewhat disturbingly lifelike deathlike.
Another popular design is the “Winged Cherub,” which seems to be a more idealized alternative to the bones-n’-feathers motif.
The carvers seemed to take even more artistic license with this theme; I lost count of all the different angel designs.
Skulls and cherubs aside, just as fun for the modern visitor is the engraved text. Typophiles will love all the script faces and lettering conventions (my favorite, below, is a mention of “November” set with “br” as superscript above a larger “Nov”),
but I’m partial to the language—the poetic phrasings, the archaic spellings. Some excerpts, verbatim:
• “Here lyes interred ye body of Mrs. Hannah Sweet, confort of Mr. Joseph Sweet, who died Nov’br ye 15th 1761 in ye 74th year of her age.”
• “On His unfailing promises rely / and all the horrors of the Grave defy”
• “… Jotham Bush of Shrewƒbury, who departed this life with the Small-Pox”
• “In memory of Mrs. Elizabeth Hurd, amiable & virtuous confort of John Hurd, Esq.”
• “Farervell Vain World, I have Enough of thee / and now I’m Careles what thou Say’st of me”
My little artist book has developed an unexpected conceptual element. I created the images by first coating the paper with liquid emulsion, then processing them in a darkroom with the usual chemicals. By doing that, I was veering away from the traditional darkroom process, and adding some interesting variables, risks and imperfections into the mix. Most noticeably, the fixer reacted a little oddly with the emulsion/paper—a fact that irked me greatly at the time.
Over the years, however, the splotches have darkened, creating the illusion of old age and mirroring the weathering, decay and moss growth of the graves themselves.
So despite my perfectionist nature and my usual complex over making everything as archival as possible—I like the book so much better this way.
After all, it’s all the same in four hundred years anyway, isn’t it?
At the end of a whirlwind trip that still hadn’t quite sunk in, I wanted a long, solo walk to clear my head before my flight home. So I got on the 8:57 Downeaster from Dovah …
(wishing there was time to stop in beloved Haverhill on the way)
… to Beantown. With only four hours to spend in town, and a muggy heat index of 100, I stuck to a small radius of old haunts.
After first gaping in stunned shock at the neatly-landscaped evidence that the Big Dig was finally finished,
I took a stroll through my favorite neighborhood, the North End.
Listen, my children, and you shul heeya
Uh the midnight ride of Pawl Reveeya,
Awn the eighteenth of Aprul, in Seventy-Five;
Hahdly a may’n is now alive
Who remembas that famous day un’ yeeya
I tipped my imaginary hat to my Yankee heritage,
and went in search of lunch at a place I knew of nearby that makes a mean lobsta roll.
Connecticut-style, with clarified butta (even if it is a bit of a faux pas this close to Maine), natch.
Then I headed downtown to take up my well-trodden loop.
First I stopped in to visit some old friends,
including Mista Reveeya himself.
Then I trudged past the Statehouse …
… to Beacon Hill, where it was entirely too hot to draw.
(Though you can see where the inspiration for doodles past comes from.)
Next on my circuit was the Public Gahden, where the willows wept,
and both swans and non-swans took to the water to cool off.
By then there was just enough time to walk through the Common to the T,
and then it was back on the train again, off to catch my flight. I love the Blue Line because it doesn’t stop at “AIRPORT,” and because it’s my favorite metaphor for Boston. I don’t mind the traffic, or the grime, or the expense, or the often-lousy weather—because at the end of all of that is Wonderland.
