Today I came across such an interesting piece of ephemera that I had to know more about the person who created it, and more importantly to me, why they created it. The ephemeral piece is an advertisement for Valentine's Day cards made in 1883. The interesting individual is Louis Prang - the man credited with being the Father of the American Christmas Card. Prang was a German immigrant, but a naturalized US citizen. He started his own lithography business, was a writer and became a, if not the, king of chromatography in the late 1800s.
It all started for me with this image:
It's an unconscious mission of mine to find references and images of mixed, mulatto and biracial individuals in ephemera. I have this mission because I personally identify with those images based on my similar biracial background, and, I want to see and eventually show that biracial individuals are not some new trend or fad in our increasingly multicultural society. Biracials have been around for a very long time - which should shatter all notions of prejudice based upon "race."
Upon seeing this image, I immediately thought the woman was biracial because of her skintone and exotic looks and the idea of the umbrella or parasol perhaps denoting a sense of shade or protection from the competing cupids; of which one of them is of black or african descent.
I had to know why Prang, a German immigrant living in Boston, father of the American Christmas card and chromatography king would have created, or rather his business - L. Prang & Co. - created, such an engaging and taboo advertisement to sell his Valentine's Day cards.
Here are some key points that I found:
Prang had a keen awareness of the political environment of his time during the late 1800s. In 1860, one year before the Civil War, the Boston Germans, of which Prang was a member, went to Turner Hall to protest a new law barring naturalized citizens from voting for two years after they had received their citizenship. Prang urged people to support only that party which "...does not measure civil rights by place of birth, or human rights by color of skin." By 1865 the Civil War was over and Slavery was abolished. However, Xenophobia and Segregation were just getting started as legalized, public-supported systems of bigotry. Evidence of this discrimination can be seen in the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and European Restriction Act (1882) which limited, if not ceased, foreign immigration. The doctrine of segregation was passed as well with the Civil Rights Cases (1883) (the same year in which the advertisement was created) which declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Enter the first days of legalized Jim Crow Laws which were based on the color of one's skin -- which Prang and the other Boston Germs clearly did not agree with 20 years before. So it only seems fitting that Prang's inspiration for his advertisement for his Valentine's Day cards could have been an expression of disagreement with the new laws, doctrines and public sentiments of the time.
So what does all this mean to me in terms of artistic inspiration? Well, all I have are more questions: Is the woman saying she can have her pick of lovers on her own time; and therefore she is shielding herself against them, hence the umbrella/parasol reference, at the present moment? It seems that the one extremely happy white cupid in the center is holding back the eager-looking black cupid and another white cupid with his arms modestly crossed. Are the cupids in competition with one another? And on the notion of shielding or shading, as if from danger or displays of machismo or male competition, did Prang gather his inspiration from the tale of Cupid and Pysche in that the woman is simply too beautiful for her own safety? (which could be a stretch at foreshadowing the notion of the tragic mulatto myth.)
Whatever the reason, this is going to be one of my favorite pieces of ephemera from now on.
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