Spring/Summer 2009
Transcription
Spring/Summer 2009
SPRING/SUMMER 2009 Connecting with the Legacy of Sam Maloof HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE THE HUNTINGTON REVIVES THE RANCH The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens FROM THE EDITOR TAKING MEASURE SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON STEVEN S. KOBLIK President GEORGE ABDO Vice President for Advancement JAMES P. FOLSOM Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens KATHY HACKER Executive Assistant to the President SUSAN LAFFERTY Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education SUZY MOSER Assistant Vice President for Advancement JOHN MURDOCH Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections ROBERT C. RITCHIE W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research LAURIE SOWD Associate Vice President for Operations ALISON D. SOWDEN Vice President for Financial Affairs SUSAN TURNER-LOWE Vice President for Communications DAVID S. ZEIDBERG Avery Director of the Library MAGAZINE STAFF Editor MATT STEVENS Designer LORI ANN ACHZET Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by the Office of Communications. It strives to connect readers more firmly with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington, capturing in news and features the work of researchers, educators, curators, and others across a range of disciplines. INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS: Matt Stevens, Editor Huntington Frontiers 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108 [email protected] W ITH THE REOPENING OF THE VIRGINIA STEELE SCOTT Galleries of American Art in May,The Huntington has combined two buildings—the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery and the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery—into one expanded space for displaying its growing collection.Visitors who choose to view the works chronologically might end their visit by walking through the doorway of a large room and seeing Sam Maloof ’s Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair (1972) and the monumental Free Floating Clouds (1980) by Sam Francis. The massive canvas by Francis—a recent acquisition measuring 10 by 21 feet—takes up a fair amount of space in a transformed venue for American art that is more than double its previous size.The scale of Maloof ’s furniture seems to take advantage of the new surroundings; the woodworker made the stand with two racks at the request of his client, a violist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic who wanted to accommodate a second musician. Even the chair comes with plenty of leg and elbow room. While there is more than enough open space to view the massive Francis painting unobstructed, curators Jessica Todd Smith, Kevin Murphy, and Harold Nelson—along with exhibition designer Stephen Saitas—invite visitors to allow more than one work to occupy their lines of vision as they walk through the galleries. Sam Maloof was mindful of the connections between seemingly disparate works.The woodworker, who died May 21 at the age of 93, was a passionate collector of all kinds of art in various media—ceramics, glass, paintings, sculpture, and folk and tribal art.Writer Joyce Lovelace (page 12) met with Maloof in January when he was still busy at work, reminiscing about past projects and his friendships with clients and fellow artists.With his loan of the music stand and chair, along with some works that he collected over the years, Maloof shared a legacy that celebrates the sense of community that can be found in making and enjoying art. Maloof ’s double music stand—functional for a solo performance or duet—serves to remind viewers of the woodworker’s individual mastery of his craft and the collaborative spirit that infused it. MATT STEVENS Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography provided by The Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services. Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc. City of Industry, Calif. © 2009 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without permission of the publisher is prohibited. Opposite page, upper left: Karl Benjamin (b. 1925), Number 4, 1968, oil on canvas, gift of Donald M. Treiman, in memory of his mother, Joyce Treiman. Right: Detail from a crate label for Cactus Brand Oranges, Highland Fruit Growers Association, printed by Western Lithographic Co., 1916. Bottom: Detail from Thomas M’keevor, A Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, During the Summer of 1812 (London, 1819). [ Contents VOLUME 5, ISSUE 1 SPRING/SUMMER 2009 12 NORTHERN EXPOSURE 7 Henry Hudson’s first journey to the North Pole By Peter C. Mancall MAKING CONNECTIONS 12 The craftsmanship of Sam Maloof lends something special to the Scott Galleries of American Art By Joyce Lovelace BACK TO THE FUTURE 18 Reviving a working ranch at The Huntington By Matt Stevens 7 18 D E PA R T M E N T S ON REFLECTION: History as obsession By William Deverell 2 FRESH TAKE: Waterford Wedgwood in the red By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell 5 IN PRINT: Recommended reading 24 HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 1 ] Fueled by Obsession BALANCING THE ROLES OF FATHER AND HISTORIAN by William Deverell A T HOME ONE AFTERNOON, I ASKED MY eight-year-old daughter to cut out a large circle, paper-doll style, and she obliged. It’s the kind of art project she likes to do.When Helen held up her craftwork, I caught my breath.At 14 inches in diameter, the circle was the size of the mouth of the well that Kathy Fiscus fell into 60 years ago. It’s one thing to know the dimensions; it’s something else entirely to see them before your eyes. Perhaps you know the story. Late one spring afternoon in 1949, three-year-old Kathy was playing with her sister and two cousins in the field adjacent to her family’s home in San Marino. All of a sudden, the older children noticed that Kathy had disappeared.They quickly realized that she had tumbled down an old well that lay hidden in the weeds. 2 Spring/Summer 2009 Over the next 48 hours that well and that beautiful little girl in a pink dress would become known across the nation and the world. I’m obsessed with the Kathy Fiscus story. On more than one occasion, I’ve strapped my son John onto the back of my bicycle and ridden over to San Marino High School. It’s there, beneath the western end of the football field, where the well once snaked down hundreds of feet into the earth. When I drive my car along the backstreets of San Marino north of Huntington Drive—Robles, Santa Anita,Winston— I think of Kathy Fiscus.When I look at my children, I think of Kathy Fiscus. Obsession works to the historian’s advantage. It fuels research.A few years ago I started exploring the story, poring over newspaper clippings, land deeds, and irrigation maps [ ON REFLECTION ] that showed wells peppered all over the San Gabriel Valley. I visited water companies, and I talked to people who knew a great deal about wells. I found out that a work crew employed by Henry Huntington’s Land and Improvement Co. dug the ill-fated well way back in 1904, probably to draw water out of the robust Raymond Aquifer to water nearby citrus trees.The well, and the land it watered, were later sold.The well eventually fell into disuse, and a wooden cap was placed atop it. But that cap had been knocked loose by a plow or a mower not long before Kathy’s terrifying plunge on April 8, 1949. Mere facts seem woefully inadequate when woven with the compelling narrative of the event.When rescuers arrived at the scene, Kathy’s faint cries could be heard deep in the well. Her mother and her aunt called down to her. “Can you hear me, Kathy?” “Are you standing up, Kathy?” “Are you lying down, Kathy?” ing to help, labored alongside heavy machinery in the feverish rescue attempt. Fireman uncoiled an air hose down the well in hopes of supplying Kathy with oxygen.Water seeped again and again into the rescue shafts and had to be pumped out.The shafts threatened to cave in more than once, as workers fought against big boulders and the sandy, wet soil of San Marino. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of people streamed to the site, some just because they were curious, Kathy Fiscus with her older sister, Barbara, in a family photograph the year before her death. The rescue scene (opposite) on April 9, 1949, the day after Kathy fell into a well in San Marino. Both photos courtesy of Rick Castberg. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of people streamed to the site, some just because they were curious, others to keep silent vigil as the work continued. Rescuers determined that Kathy had fallen 90 feet. Given that tiny opening at the well’s mouth, getting her out was going to be extraordinarily difficult. Rescue efforts proceeded along two paths: one laborious, the other more or less just strange.While machinery and men dug two possible rescue holes adjacent to the well, experts proposed, contemplated, and abandoned other strategies. Maybe a giant suction device could pull her up. Maybe the well could slowly be filled with water—or sand—and Kathy would somehow magically float to the surface. Or perhaps a dwarf, a jockey from Santa Anita, or a circus thin man could be lowered head first in order to reach Kathy nine stories below. Those schemes weren’t going to work. Nor was Kathy able to loop around herself the slip-knotted ropes lowered down to her. She would have to be dug out from where she was trapped. For 48 hours, well over a hundred men, almost all of them volunteers who had shown up at the site wantHUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 3 [ ON REFLECTION ] others to keep silent vigil as the work continued.Television— newfangled and just starting to exercise a hold on popular imagination—caught most of the drama, as two local TV stations more or less invented remote live broadcasting right there adjacent to the well. In the end, it was all for naught.When rescuers finally tunneled their way over to the well and cut a window into it, Kathy was dead. She probably died not long after falling in. Some claimed that she had drowned, but the official cause of death was suffocation: wedged into the tight well casing, she’d simply lost consciousness and died. Deep down in the rescue shaft, one of the rescue workers dressed Kathy in a romper suit “onesie” and wrapped her body in a blanket for the slow ascent to the top. I know it’s the father in me that explains part of my obsession with this unbearably sad event. I’ve known about Kathy Fiscus for a long time; you can’t study California history without eventually encountering the event. But it wasn’t until several years ago, when Helen was three and I figured out how close the well was to our house—and to The Huntington—that the drama began to exert its powerful hold on me. To be sure, my obsession is also scholarly. My training taught me that there’s much to learn from events of disaster or tragedy. Societies, communities, and families alike are peeled back by stress, and scholars can see human behavior and motives laid more bare than usual.Why, I wonder, in The empty swing in the Fiscus yard, photographed by Leigh Wiener, 1949. Courtesy of Devik Wiener. the face of other equally tragic events, did this episode grab hold of the local, regional, national, and even international imagination? What can the Kathy Fiscus story tell us about Southern California—or the San Gabriel Valley or San Marino—in the immediate postwar era? What can I learn about the event by painstakingly piecing together its details, chronology, and the intricacies of the many lives and personalities involved? I know it’s the father in me that explains part of my obsession with this unbearably sad event. In my attempt to answer these questions I have also grappled with the age-old question all historians must confront: When do you let go of the research and get down to the business of writing? Now several years into it, my research has extended to oral interviews. I recently sat down with the son of the late photographer Leigh Wiener, the man who, as an 18-year-old, shot what I think is the most indelible image of the era: Kathy’s empty swing hanging from a tree in the Fiscus yard. A few months back I met with one of the rescue workers; Clyde Harp helped me interpret the event from his own participation in it. It was Clyde who cut into the pipe that had trapped Kathy. And scholar Rick Castberg, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii, a man perhaps as obsessed with the event as I am, sent me his research notes, tapes of oral interviews, and additional photographs from the scene; his generosity and collegiality seem to be his way of passing his obsession on to me. I’ve also given talks on the Fiscus event to a few scholarly or other groups. Not long ago, a close friend asked about my fixation on Kathy Fiscus. I tried to explain that this was a passing interest, and he’d have nothing of it. “You’re going to have to write a book about it,” he told me. He probably is right. Maybe this obsession becomes a book. But that’s likely to close one chapter, and only one chapter, of the hold this event has on me. Book or not, I doubt I’ll ever shake it. William Deverell is professor of history, University of Southern California, and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. In March, he delivered the 2009 Haynes Foundation Lecture at The Huntington: “Little Girl Lost:The Kathy Fiscus Tragedy.”Visit www.huntington.org and enter the keyword “Fiscus” to listen to a podcast of the talk. 4 Spring/Summer 2009 [ FRESH TAKE ] Thrown for a Loop A RESILIENT POTTERY COMPANY FACES TRYING TIMES by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell T his past winter,Waterford Wedgwood found itself teetering on the edge of bankruptcy like a ceramic vase poised to topple from its shelf. A mainstay of bridal registries, the distinctive earthenware is equally at home in museums around the world, including The Huntington. Now owned by an Irish firm, the once-venerable pottery manufactory was founded by Englishman Josiah Wedgwood in 1759. As the company struggles for survival, visitors to The Huntington can appreciate what a great loss its demise would be.A look at the firm’s history reveals that the current crisis is just the most recent of several that Wedgwood has overcome in its 250 years. The story of Wedgwood is one of the great personal and professional triumphs of the 18th century. Born in 1730 into a family of potters, Josiah Wedgwood started working at the age of nine as a thrower, a craftsman who shaped pottery on a potter’s wheel. Smallpox weakened his right leg, ending his career as a thrower, for he could no longer operate the pedal of the wheel. Instead,Wedgwood took up modeling, devising new forms so innovative and appealing that many of them still are produced today. In 1759, he opened his own factory near his Staffordshire hometown, Stoke-on-Trent. Wedgwood married traditional craftsmanship with progressive business practices and contemporary design. He employed leading artists, including the sculptor John Flaxman, whose Shield of Achilles is in the Huntington collection, along with his Wedgwood vase depicting Ulysses at the table of Circe. As sturdy as they were beautiful, Wedgwood products made high-quality earthenware available to the middle classes. As the company struggles for survival, visitors to The Huntington can appreciate what a great loss its demise would be. Today,Wedgwood is virtually synonymous with Jasperware, an unglazed vitreous stoneware produced from barium sulphate. It is usually pale blue, with separately molded white reliefs in the neoclassical style. Jasperware’s distinctiveness and popularity meant that it was frequently copied.The Huntington collection includes a French chest of drawers decorated with blue and white imitation Wedgwood plaques made by the Sèvres porcelain manufactory in the early 1790s. The London showroom of Wedgwood and Byerley, as the firm was known from 1790 to 1810. From Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, etc. London: R. Ackermann, 1809–28. Vol. 1. [ FRESH TAKE ] While Jasperware continues to be quite popular and still is produced by Wedgwood, the pieces in The Huntington’s collection are rare 18th-century examples. “The quality of the early pieces is certainly superior in terms of the rendering of fine details,” says Curator of European Art Catherine Hess. “They were innovative in terms of design as well as technique.” Wedgwood’s black basalt wares, introduced in 1768, were made from a reddish-brown clay that developed a finegrained, matte black surface when fired.The material tapped into the popular passion for all things classical by imitating ancient Greek pottery, and was sometimes even painted with classical friezes in red. Along with the Jasperware,The Huntington’s black basalt pieces capture the “nostalgia for antiquity that you see throughout the galleries, often developed on the Grand Tour,” the extended continental vacation young Englishmen took to complete their educations, Hess says. “The blue and white is evocative of ancient cameos, and the black basalt pieces are decorated with ancient motifs like ram’s heads and acanthus leaves.”The Wedgwood pieces also provide a fascinating British counterpoint to The Huntington’s extensive holdings of French Sèvres porcelain vases and useful wares, Hess adds. After Josiah’s death in 1795, the family firm struggled. At London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, it became obvious that Wedgwood had fallen behind its competitors in both taste and quality. Minton, a rival company, dominated the exhibition with its majolica, a new type of earthenware in brilliant colors and whimsical shapes inspired by the maiolica ceramics of 15th- and 16thcentury Italy and France. In a bid to boost sales,Wedgwood quickly added majolica to its product line. When the Huntington Art Gallery reopened last year, visitors got their first glimpse of several newly acquired pieces of Wedgwood majolica from the Kadison family’s gift of some 50 choice pieces from the Wedgwood collection that Carita and Stuart Kadison assembled Gifts from the Kadison Family Trust include two majolica items: a jardinière with its pedestal (left) and a quatrefoil cachepot. Both are tin-glazed earthenware manufactured in the late 19th century by Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, Ltd., in Stoke-onTrent, England. 6 Spring/Summer 2009 over many years. A colossal red and gold jardinière (a kind of ornamental flower pot) on a matching pedestal dominates the galleries of 19th-century British art. A plate in the shape of a flounder, a strawberry dish ornamented with strawberry leaves, and a vase resembling an ear of corn are just a few examples of the imaginative majolica designs Wedgwood produced. In 1860, the firm hired the French painter Émile Aubert Lessore, a student of Ingres, who had worked for France’s Sèvres porcelain manufactory before moving to England, where he was briefly employed by Minton. At Wedgwood, Lessore was free to experiment with new glazes, forms, and techniques; he was even allowed to sign his pieces, a first for a Wedgwood artist. Lessore’s painting—characterized by loose, visible brushwork—raised ceramics to the status of fine art, reviving Wedgwood’s fortunes and reputation. The Huntington has two creamware plates designed by Lessore, one shaped like a shell and one decorated with scenes from Aesop’s Fables. Wedgwood continued to expand its range of majolica to capitalize on the emerging market for art pottery, which reflected contemporary art movements like Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau. Around 1879, the firm introduced a new line of majolica wares marketed under the name Argenta. These pieces had a light ground color with modeled, naturalistic motifs inspired by Japanese art, highlighted with vivid glazes.The Kadison gifts include an Argenta ware trefoil tray from the late 19th century. Thanks to its readiness to adapt to changing tastes and clients,Wedgwood continued to thrive throughout the 20th century, remaining in the hands of the founder’s descendants until 1986. In recent years, the company has followed its founder’s example by enlisting the talents of a new generation of leading artists and designers, including Martha Stewart, Jasper Conrad, and Vera Wang.Time will tell if the company’s tradition of resilience and reinvention will sustain it through the current economic downturn. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell was the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Curatorial Fellow in French Art at The Huntington from 2003 to 2007. She is currently a research scholar at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST JOURNEY TO THE NORTH POLE By Peter C. Mancall In Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic (Basic Books, 2009), historian Peter C. Mancall chronicles the demise of the famed 17th-century British explorer. In this excerpt from the new book, Mancall describes Hudson’s first attempt to chart a new path to the East Indies. L ike the needle of a compass, Henry Hudson was always attracted to the north. In 1607, he led a mission that he hoped would take him from England over the top of the world and past the pole toward East Asia. It would be the first of four voyages that would make him one of the most intrepid and important explorers of his age. His name would eventually attach to the sites he explored: the Hudson River, Hudson Strait, and Hudson Bay. Like all European explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries, Hudson knew that fame and immense riches would accrue to the one who found a new and quick route to East Asia and the southwest Pacific. For almost a century, the English had sought a shortcut.The English East India Company, organized only a few years earlier, had already begun sailing vessels home from the Spice Islands laden with pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. But they had to follow the long course from India around Africa before arriving in London—a journey through thousands of miles of open HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 7 seas that put them at risk of assault by Barbary pirates who had the unfortunate habit of taking English sailors captive and selling them as slaves. Hudson realized that a northern passage—despite the risks every sailor confronted in the Arctic—could cut the time substantially, and thereby increase profits by reducing the costs of any venture. Little is known about Hudson before his first attempt to navigate northward to Asia.The date and place of his birth remain uncertain, as does his family background.Yet while few documents reveal much about Hudson’s private life, he left detailed narratives of his early journeys of 1607 (written with the assistance of a crewman named John Playse) and 1608. Robert Juet, his mate, wrote an account of their 1609 voyage to the mid-Atlantic coast of North America.Those narratives fell into the hands of the younger Richard Hakluyt, editor of the widely influential Principal Navigations,Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (published in three volumes in London from 1598 to 1600). Hakluyt was always eager to promote overseas exploration and commerce but did not publish Hudson’s reports, preferring instead to pass them to Samuel Purchas,the Anglican priest who acquired many of Hakluyt’s manuscripts and published them in 1625 in an enormous four-volume work titled Purchas his Pilgrimes. (The original editions of the books by Hakluyt and Purchas are in The Huntington’s extraordinary collection of early modern English books.) Hudson was not a particularly elegant writer, and Juet possessed minimal talents. But 400 years later, their reports and a small number of other surviving documents still transport the reader to the often brutal seascape of the North Atlantic in the opening years of the 17th century. O n April 19, 1607, Hudson led a party of 11 men to St. Ethelburga’s Church on Bishopsgate Street in London, where they joined the congregation for communion, probably seeking divine protection from the unknown menaces they might encounter. Hudson’s son John, who was then 14, joined the party for communion.Within days, he would become the crew’s youngest member. His father was grooming him for a life of sailing long distances, braving nature at some of its fiercest points. Four days later, Hudson guided the Hopewell down theThames.The captain’s plan was simple: he would lead the ship due north, across the pole, and would soon arrive in East Asia.The scheme was audacious but appealing—or at least it was to the 10 men who attended the service and joined Hudson for the mission, and presumably it was to those who provided financing for the expedition. Hudson’s report fits into the longstanding tradition among European explorers of providing firsthand accounts of travels and of places they discovered—a literary practice that even 8 Spring/Summer 2009 predated the printing of Columbus’ first narrative in 1493. These observers recognized that Europeans craved direct observations. This desire for eyewitness testimony fueled a continent-wide publishing trend to label new accounts as “true” reports, to differentiate them from the fables spun by earlier writers such as the 14th-century English fabulist Sir John Mandeville, who filled the account of his purported travel with reports of monsters he claimed he saw. For Hudson, the desire to describe places had a special urgency: he wanted to let others know if it was possible to survive in northern territories rife with ice-strewn bays and beset by fierce storms.The nature of Hudson’s report changed Earlier explorers had tried and failed to sail through the frozen north, among them Martin Frobisher, who made three attempts between 1576 and 1578 under commission from Queen Elizabeth I. This map by Gerardus Mercator, one of the most famous mapmakers in 16th-century Europe, illustrates cartographers’ belief that there existed an ice-free sea surrounding the North Pole, which meant it should be possible for explorers to find a sea route from the Atlantic into the Pacific. From Gerardus Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (1595). Previous page: From Sir John Ross, A Voyage of Discovery (1819). his report on a daily basis. Certain themes appeared time and again. He always noted remarkable events on board, like the time on July 13 when the ship reached a latitude of 80º 23’ N and happened upon a pod of whales. One of the men thought it was an ideal opportunity to fish. But a whale grabbed the line instead and might have sunk the ship had not the cord apparently broken.The crew found the vessel in waters more than 100 fathoms deep, which led them to believe they were in a sound, not a bay.As they looked inland they saw valleys and swamps filled with snow, even though, Hudson wrote, “we found it hot.”They were in the midst of the Arctic summer, yet they could never get far from the ice or the fear of being driven onto a rocky, icy coastline. The captain’s plan was simple: he would lead the ship due north, across the pole, and would soon arrive in East Asia. about four months into the journey.The early section had reflected Playse’s voice, though it is impossible to separate Hudson’s observations from his assistant’s. But the latter part came from Hudson himself, and the phrasing changed, at least in some places, to include the first-person voice. “I steered away North ten leagues,” Hudson wrote on July 11, a sign that he was both in command of the journey and of its account. By then he would have been more and more concerned about the pace of his voyage, with its outcome increasingly in doubt. Every hour brought new opportunities to observe a region never before described by an English traveler. Aware of the importance of keeping a record of his journey, Hudson filled As the Hopewell lay at anchor, four of the men went on shore.They returned with a pair of walrus tusks still embedded in a jaw, and reported that they had seen deer (perhaps caribou), whale bones, the tracks of bear and other creatures, “Rote-geese,” and driftwood.They also found a freshwater stream, which quenched their thirsts after hiking in the summer heat.The ship remained in the area, and the next day Hudson estimated that the land stretched north to 81º. He was fairly certain of his location since he explained that he had confirmed the ship’s whereabouts with his cross-staff, a common navigation device used to identify a ship’s location in relation to the heavens. His crew saw more seals than at any other point on their journey.As it turned out, this moment marked one of Hudson’s first notable achievements on this voyage. No European would reach this latitude again for another two centuries. But that accomplishment meant little to a man who had sailed north hoping to find the quickest way to the spice markets. Hudson’s notes would show the English the possibilities for venturing into the Arctic during the summer. His observations would have real value to others who might HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 9 Abraham Ortelius’ depiction of Iceland in 1595 prominently displayed the volcano at Hecla—which became a landmark for Europeans sailing in the region— as well as various kinds of sea monsters roaming the island’s seas. From Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1595). want to fish or hunt seals or walrus.Yet this was little consolation to him. He had fitted out the Hopewell for a journey across the pole, not a scientific expedition. But he learned Hudson’s notes would show the English the possibilities for venturing into the Arctic during the summer. something important, too. An open polar sea—long theorized by European scientists—might exist, but the route they tried did not lead to it: they had moved north as far as the season safely allowed. Hudson felt he had no choice but to turn around and head for home.They steered a course back toward Cherie’s Island (also known as Bear Island). On Aug. 15, they docked at the Faro Islands, off the coast of Scotland. Two weeks later, on the first of September, they sailed up the Thames and landed at Tilberie Hope. Four and a half months had elapsed since Hudson had taken communion at St. Ethelberga’s Church and asked God to protect his crew and provide success to his mission. He 1 0 Spring/Summer 2009 had led the small crew of the Hopewell farther north than any English sailor had ventured before. Hudson did not reach the pole, turning back well before his trajectory could prove itself to be a route leading to the East Indies. But he had lost no men, he had charted territory rich in seals, whales, and birds, and he had described remote and potentially resourcerich lands in greater depth than any European had before him. The whales and seals would have excited those who heard his report; their presence opened the possibility of a new profitable business. Promoters of English expansion would have welcomed Hudson’s careful recording of latitudes, depths, and distances, which all contributed to the growing stock of English knowledge about the North Atlantic.That was an achievement that would later benefit the realm’s other sailors and explorers, especially when the report appeared in print in 1625. On a more personal level, the expedition had one other benefit: Hudson had proven that he was up to whatever challenges he might face in the North Atlantic. Peter C. Mancall is professor of history and anthropology, University of Southern California, and director of the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute. From the book Fatal Journey:The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson by Peter C. Mancall. Excerpted by arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2009. R E A D I N G B E T W E E N T H E L AT I T U D E S Hudson carefully tracked his movement north, noting his ship’s latitude along the way In May 1607, Capt. John Smith and a contingent of would-be colonists established a settlement they called Jamestown along a river (which they named the James) that flowed into Chesapeake Bay. Their efforts have attracted extraordinary attention from scholars eager to understand the origins of English America. That same month Henry Hudson and the small crew of the Hopewell left England bound for East Asia via the Spice Islands. Hudson and his crew cleared the port on May 1. For the next three weeks, the ship sailed northward, but apparently nothing notable occured since the next entry in his journal was dated the 26th, when the crew reached 60º 12’ N, at a point six leagues (18 miles) east of the “Isles of Shotland” (presumably modernday Shetland). Ever the explorer, Hudson took a sounding and reported that the ship was in 64 fathoms and that the sea floor there was “blacke, ozie, sandie, with some yellow shels.” Such comments, which appeared frequently in accounts of the captain’s journeys, reveal that Hudson, like other mariners, understood that the success of any voyage depended on knowing what lay beneath them, especially since the color of the water provided direct clues to potential unseen risks. By June 8 they reached 65º 27’ N, the latitude of Iceland. Three days later, they crossed the Arctic Circle and reached 67º 30’ N. Hudson reported that the crew spotted a pod of six or seven whales, which caused the ship no problems. They soon faced gale-force winds that continued the next day. By the time night fell on the 12th, a dense fog had besieged the ship. That night Hudson reported that land lay ahead of the ship, as well as ice. The fog had not lifted, so the crew steered toward the north in hopes of avoiding catastrophic collision with ice or shoreline. They managed to avoid crashing into the nearby rocks, but the bitter winds froze their sails and shrouds (the rope rigging that held the sails to the mast). The skies cleared by eight in the morning, giving them a view of the island they had narrowly avoided. They beheld what Hudson called “a very high Land, most part covered with Clay, with much Ice lying about it.” A whale swam near the shore and birds flocked to it. Following the pattern of other European explorers, Hudson and his mates named the places they encountered that did not yet exist on their map. They called the headland “Young’s Cape,” presumably after James Young, one of the men on board. Nearby rose a steep mountain, “round like a Castle,” as it was described by Hudson and his chronicler Playse (who helped the captain with the first part of the narrative), which the English named the Mount of God’s Mercy. Then it began to rain, continuing into the night and turning to snow the next day, as the ship ran closer to the island. On June 20, Hudson estimated that the Hopewell should be close to Newland (modern Svalbard), a cluster of islands barely known by Europeans at the time (and to this day among the most remote places on earth). The sun broke through the clouds for the first time in 18 days. “Wee saw many Birds with blacke backes, and white bellies in forme much like a Ducke,” Hudson wrote. “We saw also many pieces of Ice driving at the Sea.” But soon, not surprisingly, the fog settled in again, persisting until the morning of the 22nd. Hudson estimated that the ship was at 72º 38’ N when they sighted “a mayne high Land, nothing at all covered with snow.” On the northern side of this land mass rose tall mountains which, Hudson noted, were not snow-capped, a crucial marker of the climate. This land seemed to lie at 73º N, but he could gain no further purchase of it because ice jutted out near the shore, fog blocked their vision, and variable winds made sailing difficult and precarious. Hudson thought this route might lead into the rumored open sea, which would have sped his journey if it existed. But he could not be certain because he lacked an accurate map of the region. As he wrote in his report, the crew had found land that was not even marked on the navigational charts, called “cards,” that they had brought with them. Hudson’s men could not touch down on this remote land, but he thought it might still be a place worth knowing and certainly worth future exploration. The ship continued on toward the northeast, though the crew spotted ice frequently. The men had ventured into territory that, as far as they knew, had never been named by Europeans, and so they labeled this northern land Hold with Hope and noted that it lay at 73º N. Early 17th-century cartographers identified this location as a remote corner of northeast Greenland, perhaps near modern-day Kap Parry, not far south from the place known today as Hudson Land. –Peter C. Mancall European sailors managed to travel vast distances in the 16th and 17th centuries with only rudimentary navigational tools, including the widely used cross-staff. From John Davys’ The Seamans Secrets (1599). HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 11 MAKING CONNECTIONS The craftsmanship of Sam Maloof lends something special to the Scott Galleries of American Art 1 2 Spring/Summer 2009 N ot long ago, at a reception for the Los Angeles arts community held in the home of a collector in Santa Monica, guests entering the living room were greeted with a delightful sight: Sam Maloof, the most celebrated American woodworker of our time, sitting serenely in one of his own iconic rockers, chatting and taking in the scene. It was an unforgettable image of the master and his work, in his element— which is to say, among friends. HE WAS THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN DESIGNER-CRAFTSMAN, A CLASSIC CALIFORNIA MODERNIST AND BELOVED LOCAL FIGURE, ROOTED IN CENTURIES-OLD TRADITIONS, YET VIBRANTLY CONTEMPORARY. By Joyce Lovelace Maloof, who died on May 21 at the age of 93, had a stature in the world of fine craft and design that is hard to overstate. During his lifetime he was feted and filmed, the subject of scholarly books and major museum retrospectives, and honored with countless awards—a MacArthur Foundation“genius grant,” the American Craft Council Gold Medal, and designation as a Living Treasure of California, to name just a few. Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton all have owned his chairs. Beautiful wood, graceful lines, sculptural contours, peerless craftsmanship, and perfect function are the hallmarks of his furniture. But it was his generous spirit and extraordinary capacity for friendship—connecting each piece of work to the individuals who commissioned them— that gave his work its deeper shade of soul. A native Californian and self-taught woodworker, Maloof made custom furniture by hand for 60 years.Along the way he received countless offers to mass produce his designs, and turned down all of them.The personal relationships involved in each commission were, he always emphasized, his greatest inspiration and reward. One such example is now on view at The Huntington. For display in the dramatically expanded and reconfigured Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Maloof lent HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 13 Sam Maloof remained active well past his 90th birthday. Photos (above and on previous page) by Gene Sasse from the book Maloof Beyond 90, copyright 2008. his Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair, made of Brazilian rosewood in 1972.These handsome pieces tell the story of his deep and abiding friendship with the late Jan Hlinka, the principal violist with the Los Angeles Philhar-monic, who commissioned the work.The same spirit of fellowship and connection informed Maloof ’s own collecting. He was passionate about ceramics, glass, wood, and other art forms, interested in both the objects and their makers, many of whom he knew personally.The Huntington borrowed some of these pieces from him as well.The new installation highlights many of the relationships among works in a variety of media. Maloof reminisced in January about Hlinka’s initial visit to his studio.“One day he drove up and walked in and told me who he was. He was very outgoing.We hit it off, right off the bat.”The violist wanted a stand with two racks, far enough apart to accommodate two musicians, and in the middle, a little bowl where rosin and extra strings could be kept within easy reach. Maloof had done music stands before, though never a double one. Hlinka also asked for a practice chair that would provide good back support, with plenty of legroom 1 4 Spring/Summer 2009 and no armrests,“so that when he played he wouldn’t crack his elbow,” explained Maloof, who came up with a unique design based on a metal folding chair, with curved legs configured in a triangular fashion.Apart from how well it functioned, the chair was special in other ways. It was one of the first Maloof crafted entirely of wood (as opposed to their having upholstered seats), and a rare instance, for him, of a one-of-a-kind design. “I designed that chair just for Jan,” Maloof said, adding that the musician made him promise never to replicate it. “We became very, very good friends. Oh, he was just like a brother to me.We were about the same age. But he died too young, when he was only 74 years old.”After Hlinka’s death, his widow, recognizing the historical importance of the pieces, returned them to their maker. Thereafter the stand and chair remained at Maloof ’s home and studio in Alta Loma, today a nonprofit cultural center called the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts.A spectacular complex of unique buildings nestled in a lemon grove near the base of the San Gabriel mountains, the place is, like Maloof ’s work, a harmonious blend of humanity and nature, a testament to a life filled with love, friendship, and steadfast devotion to an artistic vision.The heart of the sixacre property is the rambling, rustic, two-story redwood house he designed and built in stages starting in the 1950s, where he and Alfreda, his wife of 52 years, raised their family and lived until her death in 1998. (Miraculously, in the early ’90s, the home was successfully moved from its original site a few miles away to make room for an extension of the Foothill Freeway.) Replete with his original handcrafted details and endless collections of art and craft objects, it is today listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is open to the public for tours. Adjoining it is the woodshop where, to the end, Maloof worked every day, in collaboration with a team of three assistants he affectionately called “the boys,” all of whom were with him for decades. Just down the hill is the newer house he shared with his second wife, Beverly, designer of magnificent water-wise gardens that have become an added attraction of the site (even she was an old friend and customer; Maloof first made a table for her in 1957).Also new are a public space for events (such as the scholarly symposium on craft the foundation recently presented in conjunction with the Getty Research Institute) and a gallery to showcase the work of young and emerging talent in the field, which Maloof avidly followed and collected. In 2008, three Huntington curators—Jessica Todd Smith, Kevin Murphy, and Harold Nelson—made the half-hour drive from San Marino to Alta Loma for a tour of the landmark residence and a visit with Maloof. Under the direction of Smith, who isVirginia Steele Scott Curator of American Art at The Huntington, they were in the midst of organizing the sweeping survey of American art that would inaugurate the newly expanded Scott Galleries. “The collection had grown to a point where we could create a historical context for works of art through the dynamic grouping of objects,” said Smith.The curators envisioned the 15 galleries as a series of thoughtful juxtapositions of paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts that would showcase the scope and strength of The Huntington’s treasures and present a narrative of American art from the colonial period to the mid-20th century. Where appropriate, works would be borrowed from other institutional and private collections, both to complement The Huntington’s holdings in key areas and, in some cases, to reach out and shed new light on seldom-seen pieces (such as examples from an outstanding but rarely displayed BEAUTIFUL WOOD, GRACEFUL LINES, SCULPTURAL CONTOURS, PEERLESS CRAFTSMANSHIP, AND PERFECT FUNCTION ARE THE HALLMARKS OF HIS FURNITURE. group of 18th-century American glass belonging to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Maloof was not yet represented in The Huntington’s collection, but would make a fine addition to the Scott installation, the curators agreed. He was, after all, the quintessential American designer-craftsman, a classic California modernist and beloved local figure, rooted in centuriesold traditions, yet vibrantly contemporary, and actively engaged in supporting the development of his field. When they saw the Hlinka music stand and chair on display at the house, they experienced a collective “Eureka!” moment.“It seemed the perfect way to represent him in the installation,” recalled Nelson, guest curator of decorative arts for the project and an authority on contemporary studio craft.“What struck me first was just their beauty—that elegant, luscious form.And then knowing a bit about the history.They so epitomized what Sam was about.What the craft community is about, in a way.” The open, creative environment of Southern California provided fertile ground for the studio craft movement that flourished in the years following World War II, as artists explored new expressive possibilities in the making of objects by hand. There was (and remains to this day) a strong collegial spirit among craft artists, a pride and joy in sharing ideas and information. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, many of the leaders in the field lived in and around Los Angeles and regularly socialized, mixing freely with painters, sculptors, architects, and photographers as well. Naturally, they often ended up owning each others’ work. As The Huntington’s curators wandered through room after room filled with splendid pieces the Maloofs had acquired over the years— by the now-famous potters, woodworkers, glassblowers, metalsmiths, and weavers who made up their circle—a bigger picture took shape. And so, a year later, Maloof ’s music stand and chair remain among friends (figuratively speaking) at The Huntington, in a large room devoted to mid-20th-century art within the Scott Galleries. Entering the space, one’s eye goes immediately to an enormous abstract painting by the Los Angeles artist Sam Francis, a recent acquisition.The Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair are nearby, and above them hangs a small, colorful, geometric painting by Karl Benjamin of Claremont, from the permanent collection. A wall case contains a group of early and important works by California craft masters on loan from the Maloof Foundation: ceramics by Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Harrison McIntosh, Laura Andreson, and Paul Soldner; a turned wood bowl by Bob Stocksdale; and a glass plate by Glen Lukens (along with two Lukens ceramic vessels from The Huntington’s holdings). Completing that group is a stunning early Peter Voulkos vase on loan from the collector Frank Lloyd. Another case holds hand-wrought functional wares by Allan Adler,“silversmith to the stars,” also from the Huntington trove.To be sure, there are artists represented in the gallery from other parts of the country—Helen Frankenthaler, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, and Robert Motherwell among them—but the sense of California camaraderie is strong. “THERE ARE INTERESTING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE DIAGONALS IN THE MALOOF MUSIC STAND AND KARL BENJAMIN’S PAINTING ABOVE IT.” “It’s a manifestation of connection among people—in Sam’s case, the artist and the musician who commissioned the piece—but even more than that, the community of artists and craftsmen in Southern California who all were aware of one another’s work,” observed Nelson. For years a group of Claremont artists, including Maloof, Harrison McIntosh, and Karl Benjamin, would get together on Wednesdays for breakfast or lunch.“When you go into Karl Benjamin’s house, you see ceramics by all of these people,” Nelson said. “You see Maloof furniture. It represents and embodies their friendship and association.You come to understand how compatible their thinking was, and how much they were influenced by one another.” Nelson even sees a sort of visual affinity at The new installation of the Scott Galleries of American Art highlights relationships among paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts. Above, Maloof’s music stand is displayed with a painting by Karl play among the Californians in the modern Benjamin (b. 1925): Number 4, 1968, oil on canvas, gift of Donald M. Treiman, in memory of his gallery: there is a materiality to the thick pigmother, Joyce Treiman. Also on view (opposite) are an art pottery bowl (earthenware with crackle ment of the Francis canvas that reverberates in glaze), ca. late 1940s, by Glen Lukens (1887–1967), Huntington Art Collections; and a vase the ceramics in a “gutsy, physical, visceral” way, (stoneware with glazes), 1954, by Peter Voulkos (1924–2002), collection of Frank Lloyd. Photos by John Sullivan. and a rhythmic flow to the painting’s underlying grid structure “that some of the lines of resonate at The Huntington in objects from the past: in furSam’s furniture pick up,” he noted.“And there are interesting niture by Greene and Greene, Gustav Stickley, and Frank connections between the diagonals in the Maloof music stand Lloyd Wright; in glass by Tiffany and Steuben; in Arts and and Karl Benjamin’s painting above it. Even when you look Crafts pottery; in silver by Gorham and Pasadena’s own at the Allan Adler silver, the sleek, flowing lines of those Clemens Friedell. forms perfectly echo the beautiful curvilinear lines of the “It’s always interesting to connect disparate moments, to Maloof pieces.” find the continuous threads and strands that interweave and As thoroughly modern as they are, and as richly as they make a full fabric,” Nelson said of the Scott installation, evoke their own time and place, the work of Maloof and which is designed to invite just that kind of contemplation. other contemporary designer-craftsmen belongs to a long The enduring, shared legacy of Sam Maloof, his peers, and tradition of decorative arts that dates back to the founding of his predecessors is on radiant display, telling a richly texthe nation. In 18th-century American furniture, for example, tured story of American life. a strength of The Huntington’s collection, one sees the practice of commissioning work, just as Maloof made pieces for specific patrons. Even his longtime team of craftsmen echoes old traditions of apprenticeship.The same ideals of fine handwork and integrity of design that serve as the foundation Joyce Lovelace is a contributing editor to American Craft magazine. for today’s best and most innovative work in craft media HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 17 1 8 Spring/Summer 2009 reviving a working ranch at the huntington W by matt stevens hen Henry Huntington bought the San Marino Ranch in 1903, he acquired a commercial orchard of fruit trees and acres of California oaks.The property then stretched well beyond the current configuration of the botanical gardens and eventually included more than 600 acres.Within a few years, he established one of the earliest commercial avocado orchards in California, wanting his working ranch to be self-sustaining and profitable. Aerial photographs taken over the ensuing decades show the gradual attrition of profitable crops as Huntington expanded residential development in San Marino with acres from his ranch and prepared his remaining estate to become a public garden. With the urging of grounds superintendent William Hertrich, Huntington created the Desert Garden,Japanese Garden, and Rose Garden. Today, only eight acres of orange trees survive, just north of the Botanical Center.Visitors to the gardens rarely see the orchard unless they seek out Henry and Arabella’s mausoleum, which overlooks the small grove. Few other signs linger from the once-massive enterprise, save for a small group of mature orange trees in a neighboring front yard in San Marino that likely had formed part of Huntington’s massive grid 100 years ago. A new project at The Huntington draws inspiration from the institution’s agricultural heritage while also making stronger connections with gardeners throughout Southern California. HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 19 Called “The Ranch,” it will include spaces to demonstrate various urban gardening techniques. The educational site, located to the northwest of the Botanical Center, will not be accessible to daily visitors, but a broad range of programs will provide ample opportunity for enthusiasts to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. “We’ll be demonstrating a myriad of growing approaches,” says coordinator Scott Kleinrock,“from techniques for urban farmers who are growing for farmers’ markets and restaurants to those more relevant to home gardeners who grow in backyards or even on balconies.” The 15-acre site includes the surviving orange grove, a “food forest,” and a half-acre zone that will feature demonstration spaces for container gardening and pruning workshops.A group of mature oak trees occupies the lower western ridge, providing a natural canopy for a small outdoor amphitheater. Kleinrock has spent the winter and spring adapting his design for the space.The master’s student in landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona has worked on a number of community garden projects, including transforming neglected or vacant lots into thriving urban gardens. It’s fitting that part of the Ranch used to be a parking lot for crews Scott Kleinrock (above), coordinator of the Ranch project, standing in The Huntington’s orange grove. Henry Huntington bought the property, known as San Marino Ranch, in 1903 from J. De Barth Shorb, whose house was illustrated (left) in John Albert Wilson’s History of Los Angeles County, California, 1880. Huntington began constructing his new residence in 1909 within view of rows of fruit trees (right). Previous page: “Los Angeles County To-day,” from a Chamber of Commerce promotional brochure, 1929. 2 0 Spring/Summer 2009 A new project at The Huntington draws inspiration from the institution’s agricultural heritage while also making stronger connections with gardeners throughout Southern California. working on the Chinese garden. Before coming to The Huntington in December, Kleinrock co-designed a half-acre community garden at the Tri-City Mental Health Center in Pomona.As in that project, Kleinrock wants participants to be part of the process of creating a working urban garden and teaching space. Classes and workshops will begin later in the year. The Huntington is no stranger to the symbiotic relationship between gardens and educational opportunities. With more than a dozen thematic gardens—including the new Chinese garden, Liu FangYuan—the institution has been the site of conferences and classes on such topics as succulents, roses, and bonsai. In 2005, the opening of The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science completed a new Botanical Center that also included the Bing Children’s Garden and classrooms, offices, teaching labs, and a nursery. And yet The Huntington’s agricultural heritage had retreated into the background. HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 21 “Part of Mr. Huntington’s legacy had been left behind,” says Jim Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens. In the last decade or so Folsom has taken some gradual steps to acknowledge that history: planting several dozen citrus trees at the top of a hill in the Subtropical Garden; inviting the California Avocado Growers to plant a heritage orchard adjacent to the orange grove; and bringing in nearly 80 trees from the South Central Farm, an urban garden in Los Angeles that was closed down abruptly in 2006 amid a fair amount of controversy. Farmlab, an initiative of the Annenberg Foundation, rescued the trees from the site—loquat, banana, peach, and apricot among them— and brought them to The Huntington in boxes.At the same 2 2 Spring/Summer 2009 time, the Foundation made a $1.1 million grant to supportThe Huntingon’s effort to rediscover its agricultural heritage. “It was Farmlab’s gift of those trees and the Annenberg Foundation’s stunning generosity that helped us to pick up that piece of our past that we had long neglected,” says Folsom. In accepting the trees, Folsom saw an opportunity to revitalize his vision of a working ranch, but with a particularly contemporary emphasis, tapping into a wider movement that includes projects like Michelle Obama’s new victory garden yet still harkening back to Henry Huntington’s own kitchen garden circa 1907, complete with edible mushrooms. While Folsom will retain the wide rows of orange groves on the eastern side of the Ranch, he has planted the trees from the South Central Farm on the upper western slope in the far less rigid layout of an evolving edible landscape. While many gardeners still give in to the temptation to plant distinct rows of lettuce, carrots, and radishes, Kleinrock likes to encourage them to think outside their raised beds. Edible landscapes include plenty of nonedible plants that do important work in a garden. Underneath some of the new fruit trees, Kleinrock is planting comfrey, which sports large, fleshy leaves that are rich in nutrients. By trimming and mulching the leaves, a gardener can improve the fertility of the soil. Note to aspiring gardeners: Be sure to use the Bocking 14 cultivar, a sterile variety of comfrey that won’t overtake an area like a weed.Another ground cover, common yarrow, with its white flowers, can keep the area beneath a tree attractive. The plant attracts aphid-eating ladybugs and wasps and can either take irrigation or withstand drought. Kleinrock has also brought in goumi—a fruit-bearing shrub that helps fix the nitrogen in the soil, serving multiple functions in the edible landscape. The 15-acre site includes the surviving orange grove, a “food forest,” and a half-acre zone that will feature demonstration spaces for container gardening and pruning workshops. In the education and demonstration spaces of the Ranch, the trees will be ripe for pruning—literally.A site for backyard orcharding will include young varieties of trees—stone fruits, citrus, figs, pomegranates, persimmons, and fruit-bearing mulberries. With aggressive pruning, says Kleinrock, gardeners can control the size of their trees, allowing them to harvest and prune as needed without a ladder. Smaller trees can yield more fresh fruit in the longer run than the larger counterparts, as easy access keeps gardeners from losing fruit that rots at the top of larger trees.The smaller size also means three or four trees can be planted in place of a larger one. With some planning, a gardener can plant multiple varieties of the same type of fruit in one hole, bearing fruit at varying points in a season. Folks with even less free space can take workshops on container gardening; self-watering containers—with reservoirs that saturate plants as needed rather than flooding them—might give new gardeners the confidence they need to grow some of their own fruits and vegetables. When Kleinrock has conducted backyard orcharding workshops at other community gardens, he has relished seeing the confidence grow as people learn to trust their pruning instincts. In the end, he says, it’s not always about the food. “The produce is almost secondary to the community that can be built around transforming a neglected space.” The trees from the South Central Farm—no longer in boxes—now form part of a developing food forest along the western side of the Ranch. One specific focus of Ranch research is integrating trees into food production. Food forestry is a technique for growing an edible garden in a self-sustaining Scott Kleinrock plants comfrey beneath an apple tree. Many other varieties of fruit trees, including peach (opposite), were rescued from the South Central Farm by Farmlab. They now form a food forest adjacent to the ecosystem similar to what might Ranch’s demonstration gardens. Photos by Lisa Blackburn. be found in a natural forest. Such a model is already well established in tropical and temperate zones but will require some experimentation in Southern California’s Mediterranean climate.While impractical for most commercial enterprises, on a smaller scale a thriving food forest could be a forager’s paradise. “We’ll have to try different edible and nonedible plants,” says Kleinrock,“but that’s what makes this a working ranch rather than a display garden.” The program’s participants will help tend the landscape that takes shape beneath the shade of trees that had once formed part of the urban garden at the South Central Farm. Matt Stevens is editor of Huntington Frontiers. HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 23 In Print Postscript A SAMPLING OF BOOKS BASED ON RESEARCH IN THE COLLECTIONS WHAT BLOOD WON’T TELL: A HISTORY OF RACE ON TRIAL IN AMERICA Ariela J. Gross Harvard University Press, 2008 Over the past two centuries, individuals and groups have fought to establish their whiteness in order to lay claim to full citizenship in local courtrooms, administrative and legislative hearings, and the U.S. Supreme Court.These trials often have turned less on legal definitions of race as percentages of blood or ancestry than on the way people presented themselves to society and demonstrated their moral and civic character. Gross’ book examines the paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the perceived capacity for citizenship in American society. SHADOWS AT DAWN: A BORDERLANDS In 2004–05, Elaine Showalter spent a year at The Huntington as the Avery Distinguished Fellow. An article in Huntington Frontiers (fall/winter 2005) profiled her efforts to read the forgotten novels of American women writers from 1650 through 2000. She focused on the 19th century, saying, “The Huntington’s holdings in American literature pre-1900 are astonishing.”The result of her efforts was published in February, A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). MASSACRE AND THE VIOLENCE OF HISTORY Karl Jacoby Penguin Press, 2008 On April 30, 1871, a combined party of Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O’odham Indians murdered nearly 150 Apaches at a camp in the Arizona borderlands.The Camp Grant Massacre generated unparalleled national attention but has now largely faded from memory. Jacoby traces the escalating conflicts, as well as the alliances, that transpired among the groups living in the borderlands over the course of several hundred years, beginning with the 17th-century arrival of the first Spanish missionaries. JACK LONDON’S RACIAL LIVES Jeanne Campbell Reesman University of Georgia Press, 2009 Although Jack London promoted white superiority in his novels and nonfiction, he sharply satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed racial others—most often as protagonists—in his short fiction. With new readings of The Call of the Wild and Martin Eden, and many other works, such as the Pacific stories, Reesman reveals that London employed many of the same literary tropes of race used by African American writers of his period: the slave narrative, double-consciousness, the tragic mulatto, and ethnic diaspora. 2 4 Spring/Summer 2009 One better known author that appears in Showalter’s book is Mary Austin (1868–1934), who is also the subject of a new book by Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson: Mary Austin and the American West (University of California Press, 2009).The spring/summer 2006 issue profiled the writing team following the release of their book William Dean Howells: A Writer’s Life (University of California Press, 2005). Ronald C.White Jr. also has remained active since we announced the publication of The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Words (Random House, 2005). This winter,White published A. Lincoln: A Biography (Random House, 2009) as the country commemorated the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth. HORSE IN THE AMERICAN WEST Deanne Stillman Houghton Mifflin, 2008 (in paperback June 2009) Two scholars received honors for books that appeared in 2008. Jared Farmer, who wrote about California’s eucalyptus trees for the spring/summer 2007 issue of this magazine, won the 2009 Francis Parkman Prize for On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape.The prize was awarded by the Society of American Historians. Farmer was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow with the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West for 2005–07. Thomas G. Andrews garnered a prestigious Bancroft prize for Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, a book described in the fall/winter 2008 issue of this magazine.The Bancroft prize, three of which are awarded annually by the trustees of Columbia University, goes to authors of books of exceptional merit in the fields of American history, biography, and diplomacy.The two prize-winning books were published by Harvard University Press. ON THE WEB View the entire contents of back issues of the magazine at http://www.huntington.org. When Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés arrived in the New World in 1519, he came with hundreds of men and 16 horses. His scribe, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, carefully recorded the exploits of the expedition, noting also the names, colors, and personality traits of most of the horses. More than 400 years later, in 1923, Walter Camp published his report on the Battle of Little Big Horn. Buried in his findings of the famous last stand of 1876 are the names of the horses that fell, including Dandy Jim, Silverheels, and Custer’s own horses, Vic and Dandy. The history of the mustang in the American West, says writer Deanne Stillman, can’t be separated from America’s history of violence. Her research began in earnest in late 1998 when she read about a massacre of 34 horses in the mountains outside Reno, Nev. Her concern for a diminishing population of just 28,000 wild horses in the West eventually led to a book, just released in paperback. In it she traces the history of the mustang from its Ice Age ancestor in North America and its reemergence with Cortés through the frontier era of cattle drives and into the age of Hollywood and its plight today. Stillman currently teaches creative writing in the MFA program at the Palm Desert Graduate Center of the University of California, Riverside. For Stillman, the roll call of names from Cortés’ scribe through 19th-century cavalry records is also an indication of the strong bond that has long existed between riders and their steeds. At The Huntington, Stillman discovered the works of Charles Siringo, thanks to a tip from Peter Blodgett, The Huntington’s H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western American Manuscripts. In the book A Texas Cowboy, or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony— Taken from Real Life (1886), Siringo wrote heartbreakingly about the brutality endured by working horses on cattle drives of the frontier era. In her own book, Stillman has attempted to capture two historical narratives that can’t be separated—one of the mustang’s hardship in service of a master prone to violence, the other of its genuine partnership with conquistadors, cowboys, Native Americans, entertainers, and conservationists. Above: The author with Bugz, a survivor of the 1998 massacre in Reno, Nev. Photo by Betty Lee Kelly. BACK FLAP M U S TA N G : T H E S A G A O F T H E W I L D THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY, ART COLLECTIONS, AND BOTANICAL GARDENS 1151 Oxford Road • San Marino, CA 91108 www.huntington.org On the Cover Sam Maloof’s Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair (1972) and the monumental Free Floating Clouds (1980) by Sam Francis are two of the more than 500 works now on view in the newly expanded Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, which reopened May 30. In this issue, we celebrate the legacy of Maloof, who passed away on May 21 at the age of 93. The woodworker lent his music stand and chair to The Huntington along with several other objects from his personal collection. Photos by John Sullivan Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Pasadena, CA Permit No. 949