Good morning!
I bet you're looking at the title of this post like whaaa.... but seriously, that's what I dug up this weekend. Let's cut straight to it, and you look!
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I was at an estate sale in Sylvan Park which had looked ultra-promising on the Estatesales.net website...one of my favorite sale companies (Dogwood), in a known-for-older-folks neighborhood, in a completely-packed-with-stuff house, on half-off Saturday. Theoretically, it should have been great, but in spite of the sheer mass of stuff in the home itself and a garage, as well as the age of the stuff, I just couldn't find anything that jumped out at me as "wow". That is, until I found this photo hanging on the wall:
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The text, in case you can't read the smudged typeface, reads: "In loving remembrance of our dear daughter, RUTH LEIGH/Died Oct. 23, 1929/Age 34 Years/A precious one from us is gone/A voice we loved is still/ A place is vacant in our house/That never can be filled." Yeeks! I've seen memorial photographs in handsome frames and lithographed settings before, but only on online galleries from people who collect mourning-related ephemera. I thought, "Ah, that's too creepy, Lisa," and hung it back on the wall....then picked it back up from its nail, and carried it around the sale. Estate sale shopping 101: It is far easier to carry even an awkward object you're uncertain about buying around the sale than to watch someone buy it out from under you right when you realize you actually want it.
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The text, in case you can't read the smudged typeface, reads: "In loving remembrance of our dear daughter, RUTH LEIGH/Died Oct. 23, 1929/Age 34 Years/A precious one from us is gone/A voice we loved is still/ A place is vacant in our house/That never can be filled." Yeeks! I've seen memorial photographs in handsome frames and lithographed settings before, but only on online galleries from people who collect mourning-related ephemera. I thought, "Ah, that's too creepy, Lisa," and hung it back on the wall....then picked it back up from its nail, and carried it around the sale. Estate sale shopping 101: It is far easier to carry even an awkward object you're uncertain about buying around the sale than to watch someone buy it out from under you right when you realize you actually want it.
As said, I carried it around the weirdly carpeted, 1940's house for a minute, set it down to try on some hats (you know they were too small), tried to leave it in the hallway, but ended up going back to get it and a knit black shawl as my only two picks from the house. I almost bought a large, curved glass 1900's photo of a baby (a lot like the spooky ones from this post, but not spooky at all) for $20, but passed. The mourning photo was marked $25, so I got it for $12.50. Ghosts included, I'm sure.
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Being the weirdo that I am, I'm more than a little interested in the far left field of bordering-on-macabre/actually-macabre antiques and collectibles. Taxidermied fox? Sign me up! Souvenir cards of skeletons dressed up like poker players? Yeah, sure! Post-mortem memorial stuff on the Thanatos Archive? I shouldn't look, but I can't look away! Something about people a hundred years ago not being freaked out at all being posed next to a recently deceased relative is mesmerizing to me. "We don't have any pictures of him! We'll forget what he looked like!" the living subjects seem to argue, and yet...do you want to remember your deceased loved one quite like that? I will say I freaked myself out too badly when I ordered this book through Interlibrary Loan, on the strength of a recommendation from some other "if you like this" Amazon list. It's a compilation of Victorian medical school students and their "hilarious" posed photographs with dissected cadavers. WHAT IS SEEN CANNOT BE UNSEEN. I digress.
What is it about this stuff that makes it so fascinating, and yet so secretly embarrassing to want to collect? I feel like someone's elderly aunt might come to my house some day and go "What do you want with that?" and I have noooo good response. Am I a ghoul? Would you have bought the picture?
I tried to look up more information about the woman in the picture, but without a last name, I had trouble locating any. While I was going through the genealogical info on our library's website, though, I found this spreadsheet of the names of all the interred at Nashville City Cemetery. The columns include age, sex, race, cause of death and any other information about the deceased. "Pleurisy in the head", "Intemperance", and "Insanity" are all listed under that cause of death column so far, and I've only looked through the first thirty or so entries! More of exactly what I was talking about...the strange-but-interesting-but-kind-of-guilty-thrill of historically macabre stuff.
So! What did you find this weekend? Do you have any strange/slightly dark collectibles or family heirlooms in your menagerie? What do you think of the graphics and the photo of the passed-on woman in the frame? Let's talk!
That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow (with something cheerier!). Til then!
What is it about this stuff that makes it so fascinating, and yet so secretly embarrassing to want to collect? I feel like someone's elderly aunt might come to my house some day and go "What do you want with that?" and I have noooo good response. Am I a ghoul? Would you have bought the picture?
I tried to look up more information about the woman in the picture, but without a last name, I had trouble locating any. While I was going through the genealogical info on our library's website, though, I found this spreadsheet of the names of all the interred at Nashville City Cemetery. The columns include age, sex, race, cause of death and any other information about the deceased. "Pleurisy in the head", "Intemperance", and "Insanity" are all listed under that cause of death column so far, and I've only looked through the first thirty or so entries! More of exactly what I was talking about...the strange-but-interesting-but-kind-of-guilty-thrill of historically macabre stuff.
So! What did you find this weekend? Do you have any strange/slightly dark collectibles or family heirlooms in your menagerie? What do you think of the graphics and the photo of the passed-on woman in the frame? Let's talk!
That's all for today, but I'll be back tomorrow (with something cheerier!). Til then!
That's absolutely beautiful. I could tell that the estate sale would be a good one from those photos. I think that the creepiest thing that I ever owned was this huge box of letters that were exchanged between an inmate and his friends on the outside. Nothing as old as your piece there but in the 90's. I bought it off of eBay of all places. Just reading them made me feel really intrusive - especially since they were talking about really personal stuff and so many of them were written by him and never actually mailed. They just had the saddest feeling and they made me sad too. I ended up selling them to someone else on eBay. They felt like they brought some bad energy into my life that I needed to let go.
ReplyDeleteMan, prison letters...I wonder how they came into the ebay sellers hands. So weird! That's the exact feeling I was talking about, though, when you have buyer's remorse not because the item isn't unique or kind of amazing, but because you just have this weird dread/guilt/bad vibe associated with it. Luckily, I like this piece the more I look at it (the muted colors, the poem at the end, the woman's coquettish little automat snap as "how she is remembered"), but it could have easily gone the other way where I'm like 'Can't live with it...can't get rid of it...'
DeleteScott Michaels would be proud! Honestly, it's beautifully framed and I would have done exactly what you have...tried to find out what happened that took such a pretty life away at 34. You always hear that the dead are grateful (see what I did there?) to be remembered and on that sentiment, you have certainly honoured her memory by pulling her back from oblivion. I was hoping there would be "See Inside!" pictures on the book you recommended on Amazon - lol, looks interesting to say the least. Also - HAPPY WEDDING WEEK!!!
ReplyDeleteHaha, you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about, Tamra! I forgot you were a fello "death hag"...that macabre stuff is fascinating, I can't keep away from it! Also, you DO NOT want to see inside that book, man-- I gave it to Matthew when I got home from the library with no prologue about its contents and he was like "WHAT! HOW?! WHAT?!" But like me, MORBID CURIOSITY took the reins and he ended up flipping through the whole book.
DeleteThanks for the well wishes! I'm in the home stretch! This time next week, I'll be a "Mrs."!
I love reading about your finds, you are so sweet and dear... you gave this poor young soul life again, just by carrying her close to your heart at the sale,if ever so briefly,if you let her go of her now to some one else that is ok, she still lives on... I loved the piece would I keep it, ??? no, but I would have bought it too..
ReplyDeletegood find, good post.... take care cc
Thanks so much! I really do treasure all the people-I-don't-know in frames and portraiture around my house. As I was just telling Eartha, the more I look at this one, the more I like it. And it is sweet to think of her poor heartbroken parents making up this memorial and hanging in their home...people would call you ghoulish for doing something like that today, but it was just a nice way to honor her memory and keep her in their thoughts.
DeleteI think buying these items can be interpreted as rather sweet. I've never seen anything like this one! It looks like a DIY customization of a mass-produced memorial (what?) product! Amaze. I'd have bought it, too.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I agree with you on the customized piece-- can you imagine putting one of these together on the kitchen table? And what aisle do you find them in at the store? So strange, but beautiful, too.
DeleteBuyer's remorse-Good for you that you held on to it! I absolutely love it! Such detail & a very beautiful girl. She's someones sister, daughter, friend maybe even a young mother-how intriguing. Good luck in solving this mystery-keep me posted.
ReplyDeletei love it! i'm green with envy over here. i love the creepy and weird stuff best, and i don't know if one single relative that has come to my house has had a positive thing to say. haha. oh well!
ReplyDelete