Bob, Beatles, and the Boomers
Tempus Fugit
Oh, that subtle phrase repeated on tombstones, sundials, and lackluster over-60 birthday cards. Like an indirect threat, this adage carries more admonition than admiration, offering all the enjoyment of a mosquito in your ear. Youth scoffs. Never trust anyone over thirty, they cry, ignoring their inevitable fate. Older people smirk at their naiveté, or is their twisted countenance a diversion from reality - time for them has evaporated. You can't go home again writes Thomas Wolfe, and no one ever does, until the final spade of dirt. But tucked into the earth's cycles are man's cycles, repeated, as reliable as the passage of the sun, the seasons of the year, the hands of a clock. Each of us shares this path, the philosophical journey. Dates may change, trappings may vary, but the journeys are equally as treacherous. This Saturday we revisit three separate time periods through objects and the people who created them. Lifestyles, achievements, all shared human experiences are evident, despite polar opposite worlds. Here we rediscover our common thread of humanity weaving this strange and scary tapestry we call life.
Gott Segen Eich
Lancaster County, 1832. A farm community built upon the Bible. Stable, strong, consistent, wedding anniversaries aplenty in the fifty-plus year range. Rock of Ages. Despite outside influences, the community survives. What better item representing this world than a grandfather clock. Not simply a timepiece or heirloom, it is an icon. The tall clock illustrated to the right is the work of Lancaster County native Anthony Wayne Baldwin, born in 1783 at Strasburg. As an apprentice, he worked under Joseph Bowman of New Holland. In 1810 he opened his own shop in Lampeter and there, with his wife Maria, produced many timepieces including fifteen children. Tall clocks fitted him well. He stood 6 feet 11 1/2 inches. Maria was short, able to walk under his outstretched arm. Like the families around them, he and Maria were resourceful, productive, passing their ethics onto their children. The Baldwins were supported by their family, their community, and God. Today, they still reside in Lancaster, now at the New Providence Mennonite Church graveyard, side-by-side, in balance for eternity.
A man and his times.
Anthony Wayne Baldwin, Lampeter Square, Lancaster County, Pa 1832
The Divine Sarah
Illegitimate. Indifferent. Insolent. Insatiable. Invigorating. Intelligent. Such was Sarah Bernhardt, the nineteenth century French stage actress. Her career spanned from stage to silent movies and across many continents. The proof of her fame is her name, still recognizable to us today. But life began in a hard way. The daughter of a courtesan and an unknown father, she was shuffled away to boarding school, a ship without a harbor. At the urging from one of her mother's lovers, she was enrolled in a Parisian theatrical school, showing few signs of promise, caught in a teenage wallflower zone. Ever so slowly, she gained momentum and, along with it, stage confidence. In the warmth of the footlights, she found her home. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, theater devotees queued for blocks just for a glimpse of her. And she reciprocated, gaining fame and notoriety worldwide. Sarah did have her lovers and quirks, which only enhanced her mystique. She acquired a coffin for her bed, claiming it helped her prepare for her tragic roles. To be or not to be. Truer words were never uttered.
Sarah Bernhardt 1905/06 Final American Tour poster, 7' 7" T. Sarah reappeared again in America in 1910 and 1913. The Mississippi Queen and the Orient Express both suffered the same fate, delaying the inevitable, that final good bye.
Star of the East
During the same era, there was another woman wowing Eastern Europe. Bertha Kalich sang so beautifully opportunity never knocked, it rapped rather loudly. She had her problems though, actually jealous enemies. In 1894, a rumor reached her warning of an assassination plot. Through her network she was offered a sponsorship in New York City. Her safe arrival in America was timely. It was the exact moment a new movement was sweeping the nation - Yiddish Theater. Bertha seamlessly transformed from music to drama, winning crowds wherever she performed. In time she even starred in Hamlet, rivaling Sarah Bernhardt's title role. Competitors? Hardly. Together, these actresses advanced Yiddish Theater into a recognized and respectable entertainment venue.
Bertha Kalich (1874-1939). Stage & screen star born in the Ukraine. During her career, she played 125 roles, speaking and singing in seven languages.
Celeb Extraordinaire
Sarah and Bertha earned a spot in a world so difficult, it is hard to comprehend today how incredible their success was yesterday. Both embraced the Bohemian lifestyle, living out of suitcases, running between engagements, detached from the mainstream. Such were the artists who comprised this world. Sarah slept with many; Bertha remained true to her wedding vows. But both expressed Bohemianism in an accentuated and deliberate way. Their behavior foreshadowed the twentieth century entertainer. Here we discover the celebrity, living in a world of images, not reality. Perceived persona. Now the twenty-first century has supercharged them. Welcome the Celeb Extraordinaire. An in-your-face personality the public worships 24/7, endorsed by an omnipresent electronic circus. Publicity stunts veiled as news stories. Tabloids revealing the deep dark secrets. This is the age of celebrity refinement. It is difficult to believe this caste is related to their forebearers, but within life's human tapestry, the rules remain fixed.
Harry Leith-Ross. The New Hope painters, a Bohemian Band of Brothers, also created outside the mainstream.
Bob, Beatles, and the Boomers
Something amazing happened in the 1960's. A post WWII generation emerged and revolutionized the status quo. Free Love. Turn on, Tune in, Drop out. Ban the Bomb. Stop the War. Burn the Bras. Pyres filled the night sky as an aggressive youth overwhelmed the old, challenged everything and everyone, vowing to change the world. Times they are a-changin, sang Mr. Dylan. Successive seismic waves steamrolled across the military, college campuses, even family dinner tables. Hippies reigned and hipsters feigned. 1967. The Summer of Love witnessed more than flowers in your hair. Across the pond, several creative artists were seeding a garden of their own. All you need is love.
Harry Bertoia Diamond chairs, by Knoll.
Mies Van Der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, & Harry were men who thought beyond the status quo, the well-spring of innovation.
The Whiter Shade of Pale
Australian born artist Michael Sharp arrived in London in 1966, after just beating an obscenity conviction for his artwork Down Under. Soon after unsettling in, he walked into a small club and sat down with several musicians, showing them a poem he had written and asking them if they could write a melody for it. One boy agreed and several days later, he appeared at Michael's apartment with a 45 record under his arm. Thought this sounded good, he said. The musician was guitarist Eric Clapton; the song, Tales of Brave Ulysses, the B side to Clapton's soon-to-be fabulously famous A side Strange Brew. This collaboration led to Michael designing Eric's second album, Disraeli Gears. The rest is rock graphics history. The year was 1967. Here in England, Michael's graphics epitomized the Summer of Love, amid Day-Glo colors and swirling patterns. Rock pop culture was born.
Michael started receiving orders for more artwork. The underground club, Roundhouse U.F.O., hired him to design rock show posters. On September 22 & 29, 1967, Jeff Beck and Ten Years After, among many others, headlined the club, captured in the illustrated poster to your left. Roundhouse was short lived, surviving from December 1966 to October 1967. The owners could not adapt quickly enough for the encroaching rock revolution. This new culture steamrolled even their own who hesitated. June 1, 1967, saw the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club.
Michael Sharp's poster epitomized the New Age Rock 'n Roll generation.
I get by with a Little Help from my Friends
Mike McInnery, also a London artist, left his mark through his poster design for the Legalise Pot Rally held at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, July, 1967. Attended by approximately 5,000, there was an even greater outcome to this Allen Ginsburg led menagerie. Prior to the event, posters were hung throughout London and soon after disappeared. Again, more were hung, and they too vanished. Mike McInnery quickly realized these were not acts of theft, the posters were being collected intentionally, such were the amazing graphics. The commercial rock poster mania was born. They attained such popularity, they even found their way into album sleeves. The Legalise Pot Rally? It attracted mostly hippies who enjoyed weed already. Marijuana would not reach the middle class youth until two years later at Woodstock, after the Cartel had established territorial rights and distribution channels. Vietnam itself became the center of opiate production, flooding the United States with product. People all over the world shouting, end the war. The question in time remains, which war?
Legalise Pot Rally, London, July 16, 1967
The Summer of Love ushered in the world of marijuana.
And today, the Great Smoking War debate rages on,
city to city, state to state, country to country.
Puff, the magic dragon, lived by the sea...
And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
The dropout 1960's generation, the nineteenth century Bohemians, the Lost Generation in Paris, the Greatest Generation, even a farming community in Lancaster County are all part of this magnificent web we humans spin. Each generation defines itself, all within the context of the human framework. From our unique vantage point in Buckingham, we learn much from history and from our own experiences, helping to understand this complicated thing we call life. In 2015, we touched so many people, so many lives, so many objects from which our many stories grew. As the baby boomers age, slipping off the grid, Brown Bros. presses on, looking forward to new generations and all of the wonderful madness they promise. We are as curious as you about 2016, what it will uncover historically and personally. Join us and keep the journey alive.
Tempus Fugit, indeed.
Kinetico seven-man mechanical clock, by Gordon Bradt, engineer and inventor. Gordon founded Kinetico Studios in 1972.
Per audacia ad astra.
- Buckingham or Bust
- Tejada-Genie
- The Red Badge Of...
- Bob, Beatles, and the Boomers
- The Call of the Wild
- A Bicycle Built for Two
- Photo Finish
- Three Gables in a Glade
- Now I know my ABC's... Richboro Ephemera
- Hitting on All Sixes
- A Tail Gunner's Tale
- Take it from the Top
- Dreams Work
- A Night to Remember
- I Was There
- Land of the Setting Sun
- Ribbons in her Hair
- Unspoken Truth