SAVING Art

Looking at the Sepia Saturday prompt this week I spent a lot of time looking at the paint drying on the inside of my eyelids. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I could't think of anything that I had that would work. So I started perusing my drive in hopes I'd find something which would keep me from dragging out the heavy duty boxes of my collection. And then I saw it, an image from a post I did in 2009. It was meant to be because just as the ladies are rescuing art in the Sepia Saturday post so was I when I bought this photo.

So now, imagine everything getting wavy for a moment while we step back in time to January 29, 2009. You can add the Hollywood time traveling music if your imagination is up to it, something like wooooooo woooooooo.

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Last summer I was wandering through my local flea market when I spotted this vintage photograph. I was immediately drawn to it, asked the price, and was told 3 dollars. Okay, first thing you need to know is I'm cheap. Very cheap. I put the photo back down and told the woman I'd have to think about it. I wandered around unable to concentrate on anything else I was seeing. Three dollars. I was stupid to not grab it. But then I kept thinking where will I hang it? It measures 12" x 14". Not huge, but just not sure what to do with it. Obviously I went back and said "I'll take it!" Had a bit of a scare because the woman had hidden it behind a stack of cheezy paintings and I immediately was mentally hitting myself upside my head thinking "FOOL! It was only 3 bucks!" She'd hidden it for me so nobody else would buy it. Nice lady. Anyway, enough about how I found this and a little bit about the photo.

The photographer was Mervyn D. Silberstein and this hand tinted photo has a date of 1914 beneath his name.

Mr. Silberstein was born in 1885 in San Francisco. However, he was raised in Healdsburg, California, north of San Francisco in Sonoma County. His father owned a dry goods store. While attending college in Healdsburg he took up photography. He was already a cartoonist and a writer for a local paper, the Sotoyome Sun. Eventually he opened his own photography store where he sold supplies and did photography work for the local community.

In around 1909 the Silberstein family moved back to San Francisco. Mervyn got a job at an advertising agency where he did graphic design, then called commercial art. He is responsible for the FTD Mercury symbol used by the florist industry.

He was fascinated by Chinatown and it is here that he took this photo. His work around Chinatown, mostly photographing children, covered this part of San Francisco following the great earthquake of 1906. He took mostly snapshots, though some photos were posed with costumes.

His photos were marketed as both postcards and, as he called them, Chinee-Graphs which were sold in wooden frames like shown surrounding the photo above. The frame on mine is original though missing the top piece seen in the brochure below. He claims that his work had been shown in art galleries around the country. I do have one review written by C. S. James, Critic Picture Department of the high end SF department store S. & G. Gumps stating, "...Mr. Silberstein's pictures...belong to an entriely higher class, being worthy of being classed both in photography and painting as art works."

Mr. Silberstein died in 1956.

Currently the Healdsburg Museum is the repository of much of Mr. Silbersteins work, including his cameras. They can be reached at P.O Box 952, Healdsburg, CA, 95448. Phone number is 707.431.3325.

That three dollars was worth every penny because looking at this smiling "grandfather" with the child always makes me smile. I get drawn in wondering about the people, if their relatives are still alive living in the SF/Bay Area. I wish there was more information online about Mr. Silberstein.
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Sadly, since I first did this post the first page that shows up doing a search of Silberstein is my original post. Come on folks, I should never be listed as an authority for anything. Somewhere out there is someone who can add information about Mr. Silberstein beyond the slivers of history I found.

Oh, and I did find another photo showing the child and grandfather which belongs to the California Historical Society. It's not nearly as nice as the image I have.

And you can see more of Silberstein's work at the following links:  Worthpoint; Healdsburg Museum, here, here, here, and here.

and photos of Silberstein here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And so in the past I saved an old photo and that old post saved my butt for this week's Sepia Saturday.
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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.

Team Stool STANDING

I doubt Team Stool Standing will ever become an Olympic event, but you never know. The world keeps getting weirder each day so I'm almost ready for just about anything. Eventually we all have to step outside our comfort zone.



When you're a caregiver for an elderly person you spend a lot of time worrying about them. And when they get sick with a bad cold you worry even more. And then when you see them coughing and sneezing and touching everything in sight you start to worry about yourself. You know there's no hope, you're going to get sick. And so that is how my life has played out lately. Tissues sticking out of my nostrils, mouth breathing, and eyes that wouldn't stop itching. Fortunately it has now mostly passed, but the downtime did give me time to spend wandering around online looking at vintage snapshots that I would never buy.

I've talked about my theory in the past that Kodak cameras set women free to express themselves in ways they'd never before been able to do. Being silly and having fun with no concern about what society thought was acceptable and often shows up in old snapshots. There were good genuine laughs to be had and shared. Today making pouty faces and taking selfies are the norm. Appearing self-absorbed seems to be a goal. So I wonder about the future poor soul fifty years from now wanting to collect "vintage" snapshots and faced with one selfie after another. I leave that worry to the future. Of course, a good portion of those photos will only be saved as digital files so there's a good possibility that many of them won't survive. Imagine a world free of Kardashian photos. Makes me smile.

But there is one thing I did notice the past few weeks which is that if you go in search of vintage photos you'll find the majority of them feature woman as the subject. I don't know why I never noticed this before. Shots of men are most often in uniforms or business suits. Occasionally you find them in casual clothes having a good laugh; of course the sellers immediately label them "gay" in hopes of taping into that market when they're actually just buddies having fun. Was it the actual fear that taking photos of playing around as friends would label them as homosexual so they stayed away from it? Women always interact differently than men so for them being both physically and emotionally close comes through as just girls being girls, no sexual connotation given.

So tell me what you think. Have women historically been the subject of snapshots more than men? I think in the future it will even out since men are just inclined to take selfies as women. And just think of all the genital shots in the future for all those unfortunate collectors. Perhaps they should be called taking a snapcrotch.

And now that I've read this back I think maybe I kept those tissues stuffed in my runny nose a bit too long and starved my brain of some necessary oxygen. But I'm still sticking with my theory. Women had more fun in front of cameras than men thanks to Kodak Brownies.
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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.

JANICE Always Got What She Wanted

I have no idea what this little girls name was. I've named her Janice because there was always a Janice and she looks like a Janice.

Oh to be able to have listened in when her parents had the discussion of her posing for a portrait and she insisted on wearing her cowgirl outfit and gun.

She looks so normal in the first four shots, but by the fifth she's starting to look a bit loco. By the sixth she knows she's won.

This little buckarette is my submission for Sepia Saturday this week. Just a silly child's portrait I shall call "A Portrait of Janice."

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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.

MAYTAG to the Rescue

I will never again complain when my very old—I mean OLD—Maytag gets a bit off-kilter and looks like it might jump out of the laundry room. Nope, no complaints from me.


Click on image to see it larger.

I have no idea where or when this was taken.
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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.

A Day in CLOVELLY 1983

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt is a small village in England, Clovelly. I visited Clovelly a long time ago. I went out of my way to find it after having seen photos in a UK brochure.

The year of my trip was approximately eighteen months after an auto accident on Hollywood Boulevard. I'd spent ten months in physical therapy and was in the midst of a lawsuit to try and receive compensation for my losses. I was also on the verge of going nuts. My stress level was as high as it could go and I needed to leave everything behind. Find a place where for a short time I could shake out the cobwebs and feel free of everything. Yeah, so…the trip sort of worked.

The three months before my trip I'd spent fighting walking pneumonia. By the time I got to England the worst of it had passed, but I still had a horrible sounding cough that would shake the rafters in many old English hotels. So the reality was that Clovelly was not the best choice for me being that no vehicles are allowed and it's a walk down a steep cobblestone street from the car park followed by an even more stressful walk back up the same cobblestone street to the welcoming front seat of my rental car.




The cat as I went downhill.



The night before venturing to Clovelly I'd stayed in Bude and had gone to a local bakery in the morning to buy a meat pie for a "picnic" in Clovelly. When I travel I'm cheap; otherwise I could never afford to travel.

So meat pie in my purse, camera in my hand, I began my descent into Clovelly. The going down was easy. No problems. No coughing or lungs heaving. I stopped into a shop to buy a 7-UP. I stupidly assumed 7-UP would be available in England. I was wrong. I always got sold some weird concoction that wasn't lemonade or 7-UP. Generally it was pretty dreadful, but it's what they had so I bought it. As I wandered around the shop, eyeing ice cream bars, the owner asked, "Are you here for the job?" I turned and looked at him wondering if he was actually talking to me. I'm figuring I look like a tourist. I reek of tourist. Apparently not. I looked like a local and he wanted to know if I wanted a job. I told him no and he said, "Pity." Now I'm not a person used to compliments, but I took that as one and it made me smile and walk a little straighter down the hill. (I was not walking straight coming back up.)




I got to the bottom of the hill and heard people having a grand time in the Red Lion Hotel, probably very nice meals. But that was not my destination. I was heading for the beach for my picnic. Ummmmm…this is the beach. Not what a girl from California is used to. But I settled down on the stones with my lunch and my can of soda. It took a bit of work to move the stones around just right so my soda would sit level enough to not spill. Everything was going along fine and dandy until a hornet decided it wanted my soda. Let's just say it looked like a mad comedy routine with me battling the hornet for possession of the soda. Some people leave their hearts in San Francisco. I left my soda in Clovelly.

It just screams picnic!










The same cat as I climbed uphill. She'd seen all of this before.





Having had enough of my picnic I headed uphill. It was a slow and very painful climb. I was leaning on posts, buildings, bushes…anything to keep me upright and moving uphill. Eventually I crash landed on a curb conveniently just outside the doctor's office. I was sitting there gasping for air when he came out with his black medical bag heading for an appointment. He was not expecting to find someone doing heavy breathing at his front door.

"Are you okay."

I could manage a nod and a wave of my hand.

"Are you sure?"

A smile, a wave, and a thumbs up. I think I probably got out "Yes, thank you" but I can't be sure.


The donkeys who kept whispering to each other and laughing at me.




And the nice lady who let the wild haired heavy breathing woman take her picture. Bless her.



Eventually I made it back to the car park and the rental car with the worst automatic transmission in the world. I sat for awhile just breathing before thinking, "Okay, now where?" In a little while I was back on the road to my next destination.

I'd like to say my health improved as the weeks passed, but the reality is a few days after visiting Clovelly I was staying with a friend at her digs in Oxford where I got a concussion on a low pitched ceiling. So the rest of my trip was cough two, moan two, and try to not die in any hotel rooms.

I'm late getting my post in this Saturday, but I finally found the slides and decided to share my story. It's rare I share anything from my life more than a few odd bits and pieces. This is just a slightly longer bit and piece.

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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.

Same Night at the STORK CLUB, 1951

Part two of a night at the Stork Club.

Jeanne drinking 

her first champagne 

cocktail—getting 

clobbered & later dancing in her 

stocking feet! 

Whoo hoo!

Click on images to see them larger.

A few years ago I did a post about a young lady who went to Jack Dempsey's restaurant in Manhattan. At the time I posted the following video of a Julie London song to go with the images. I'm hoping that young Jeanne did not experience the same fate.


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Tattered and Lost volumes 1 to 7 available at Amazon.