A Sense of Place

Jarrett Zeman, MDAH Museum Division cataloger, brings us this post in an ongoing series about his work on the IMLS project to catalog, photograph, and create digital object records for MDAH’s Museum Division artifacts.

Eudora Welty displayed some of her most beloved possessions in her bedroom.  On a mantelpiece along the north wall, Welty hung three crayon drawings: two women walking along the seashore, two people walking by a waterfall, and a series of seaside cliffs.

The drawings were made by Irish artist, poet, and literary critic George Russell, known professionally as A. E.  When Welty studied writing at the University of Wisconsin, she fell in love with Russell’s work.  His son, Diarmuid, later became Welty’s agent and sent her the drawings as a gift.

When Welty received the drawings, she was overcome with gratitude.  On December 12, 1941, she sent Diarmuid a thank you letter:

I do really believe I love them enough for you to have parted with them.  It is wonderful to have these very ones & to see that they are instant & fragmentary & still partake wholly of the same beauty — & to see all filled with a radiance & mystery from the same source.

With her typical literary flourish, Welty also described the day she received the drawings in the same letter:

It was a day that anyone might have got a present: it was like a spell, silver to look at, rain in every breath of the atmosphere, on every leaf & blade of grass…today the drops are falling softly, the birds are singing clearly, & even in my room upstairs I can hear the thrashers walking around under their roof of the magnolia-fuscata branches, thinking the world is green.

With this special gift, Russell made Welty’s world a little greener, too.

Jarrett Zeman, MDAH Museum Division cataloger, brings us this post in an ongoing series about his work on the IMLS project to catalog, photograph, and create digital object records for MDAH’s Museum Division artifacts.

Artifact research is sometimes similar to detective work, especially when researching artifacts at the Eudora Welty House.When museum staff want to learn more about how Welty acquired an artifact, or why she chose to display it, a better answer can be found by carefully piecing together the artifact’s history.

Recently, MDAH staff investigated this sugar bowl, which sits inside a cabinet in her breakfast nook. The bowl features a pink transferware pattern of a Victorian couple looking through a telescope, with a castle in the background. At first glance, the bowl looks like a nineteenth century object, seemingly out of place among Welty’s modern plates and glasses.

The first step to understanding the bowl’s history required a highly technical maneuver, we turned it over. The bottoms of many housewares contain a maker’s mark indicating the manufacturer and location of production. The maker is Royal Staffordshire Pottery of London, England, founded in 1795. Upon further research, we discovered that the bowl is a 1940s reproduction of a nineteenth century piece.

Who is Jenny Lind referenced in the maker’s mark? Known as “The Swedish Nightingale,” Lind was an opera singer and one of P. T. Barnum’s early success stories. Lind toured the United States from 1850 to 1852, including a trip to Natchez where she performed her soaring soprano to sold out audiences. Lind proved so popular, audiences in many cities could only acquire tickets by auction.

She quickly became one of America’s earliest celebrities, sparking off what the press called “Lind Mania.” Her image adorned several consumer products, including candy wrappers, handkerchiefs, and snuffboxes, while her name graced decorative arts from mirrors and chairs to plates and sugar bowls.

Either Welty or her mother, Chestina, purchased an entire place setting in the Jenny Lind style. Welty may not have known the story of Lind or the bowl’s nineteenth century connection, but this artifact reflects her taste in European housewares and decorative arts, on display throughout her home.

Jarrett Zeman, MDAH Museum Division cataloger, brings us this post in an ongoing series about his work on the IMLS project to catalog, photograph, and create digital object records for MDAH’s Museum Division artifacts.

What do Eudora Welty, Alfred Hitchcock, and the Muppets all have in common?  They all received the Raven Award from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA). Resembling the titular bird from Edgar Allen Poe’s famous work, the prize honors “outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of [literature]” and recognizes everything from TV shows and Broadway musicals, to museums and mystery bookstores. In 1985, Welty won the Raven Award for Reader of the Year.

In 1985, Welty won the Raven Award for Reader of the Year. Welty’s desk in the boy’s bedroom displays a small sample of her mystery collection, by authors as diverse as Agatha Christie, Margaret Thurman, and Ross Macdonald. Welty spoke frequently of her passion for whodunits, and this caught the attention of the MWA.

Of the numerous honors Welty won in the course of her career, the Raven Award was one of the few she displayed inside her home. Indeed, Welty kept her most prestigious award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, inside a cardboard box in the closet. Other major honors such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, and the American Book Award also remained unseen by Welty’s many house guests. Welty chose to symbolize her career not with fancy diplomas or shiny medallions, but with a six-inch porcelain bird.