The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum

I visited the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum during a short visit I made to Baltimore in June 2006, which was the only time I have ever been to the United States. It was the last day of my stay in the city, the conference I had attended was over, and I had time to kill before leaving for the airport and an evening flight home. Railways have always been a keen interest of mine, and the museum was an obvious place to go.

As it was only about a mile from my hotel it was within easy walking distance, so it was a surprise to find that the only entrance appeared to be from the car park. Don’t you Americans ever walk anywhere? I had to dodge under the barrier to find the front door! Having found my way in, it was good to be welcomed personally and given a one-to-one introduction by an elderly lady who was as clearly enthusiastic about historical railways as I am.

She explained the history of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, of which the museum complex represented the eastern terminus. It was interesting to learn that this site is of major importance in the history of railroads in the United States, as the B&O can lay claim to being the nation’s first passenger railroad, the first section having opened in 1830. As I live very close to one of Great Britain’s oldest railway lines, which opened in 1832, I felt a certain affinity!

The 40-acre museum site is important not only for its exhibits of locomotives, rolling stock and other pieces of machinery, but for the buildings in which they are housed. Pride of place goes to the magnificent Roundhouse, which encloses a space of more than an acre and rises to a height of 125 feet. When completed in 1884, it was the world’s largest circular industrial building. In February 2003, the building was severely damaged, along with some of the exhibits, when the weight of accumulated snow caused the roof to cave in. However, the building was restored and re-opened in November 2004.

Inside the Roundhouse a number of smaller historic locomotives are on display, and steps allow you to walk into the cabs (of some of the exhibits) to see where the engine drivers worked. Among the exhibits is “Atlantic”, a locomotive built for the B&O in 1832; this has a vertical boiler and two vertical cylinders, its pushrod action earning it the nickname of “Grasshopper”. Other exhibits include locomotives that were damaged in the 2003 roof collapse.

The larger locomotives are housed either in the open air or in other parts of the Mt Clare Shops complex. Standing at ground level beside these monsters of the rails is a humbling experience, seeing that the driving wheels of some of them are more than six feet in diameter. The collection includes one of only two surviving “Allegheny” class locos, a 2-6-6-6 giant (built for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad) that weighs more than 775,000 pounds and, with its tender, is 125 long. This was the most powerful steam locomotive ever built, capable of hauling loads of 5,000 tons at 45mph, or 100,000 tons at 15mph.

Knowledgeable guides describe the locos and answer your questions. The guide on the tour I joined had once worked as an engine driver, which was hard to imagine, seeing how small he was alongside these iron beasts!

However, it would be a mistake to think that the B&O Railroad Museum is all about steam locos. This is a museum that has something for most people. During the Spring/Summer months you can take a short train ride along the one-and-a-half mile length of track that is still in place, although not by steam traction. There is a splendid open-air model railway and indoor exhibits of scale models and other railway bits and pieces. There are also film shows, activities and rides for the kids, and events at various times throughout the year.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, which was well worth the price of admission. Although it is now several years since my trip to Baltimore, the visit is still very fresh in my memory. Should I ever find myself there again, the B&O Railroad Museum will certainly be high on my list of places to go.

© John Welford

At sixes and sevens

If a situation is “at sixes and sevens” it is generally held to be in a state of confusion in which nobody is quite sure what to do next. The phrase might also be used to describe the bedroom of the average teenager. People who disagree with each other can also be at sixes and sevens when there appears to be no easy reconciliation of their dispute – they might also be described as “at loggerheads”.

But where does this unusual expression come from? Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests that the most likely explanation is that it has to with gambling with dice, probably because the most common totals when two dice are thrown are six and seven.

However, there is a far more colourful account of the phrase’s origin, which has to do with the medieval livery companies of the City of London. These were the craft guilds that acted like combinations of professional associations and early trade unions. They set the standards for their trades, only admitting to their ranks people who demonstrated an acceptable level of skill and who had practised their craft for a certain period of time. The guilds took great pride in their professional status and developed ceremonial uniforms (“liveries”) that they wore on special occasions, such as the procession that marked the inauguration of a new Lord Mayor.

The twelve livery companies were keen to preserve their “pecking order” in terms of which trade was deemed to take precedence over the others. Top of the tree were the Mercers, or general merchants, and twelfth in line were the Clothworkers.

However, in the middle were the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners. These companies had both received their royal charters within a few days of each other in 1327 and both claimed to be number six, with the other being number seven. The dispute ran for more than 150 years, and may have been the inspiration for a line in Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” (c. 1386) that runs “… set the world on six and sevene, / And if thou deye a martyr, go to hevene”.

Eventually the two companies decided to accept the judgment of the Lord Mayor and aldermen, so the matter was presented to Sir Robert Billesden, who was Lord Mayor in 1484. He came up with a compromise solution that sounds typically English, especially as it involved the consumption of food and drink.

The judgment was that there should be two dinners, held annually, at which the master and wardens of one company would entertain the other. Having made friends with each other by eating and drinking together, they would not object if they took it in turns to be number six. Sir Robert decreed that, in the first year, this would be the Skinners, but the Merchant Taylors would precede them in the following year.

This arrangement, with the Merchant Taylors and Skinners taking turn to precede each other, has continued ever since, thus the two companies are always “at sixes and sevens”.

It is one of those explanations that one would dearly like to be true, even if it is not.

© John Welford 

Non-lethal uses of arsenic

Arsenic is a metalloid element (chemical symbol As, atomic number 33) that has long been known to be poisonous to humans. In its compound form as arsenic trioxide (AS[2]O[3]) it has traditionally been a favourite weapon of murderers because it is tasteless and odourless and the symptoms of arsenic poisoning are very similar to those of natural diseases such as cholera and food poisoning. A famous case in the 19^th century was that of Mary Ann Cotton who committed at least twenty murders, including those of eight of her own children, before anyone suspected that the deaths were not due to natural causes.

It was also not difficult for people to get hold of arsenic compounds because they had uses that had nothing to do with killing people, or at least not intentionally. Most people have a degree of tolerance to arsenic, although this varies between individuals, and it is unusual among toxic substances in that small amounts will be expelled from the body and leave no trace. It has therefore been used in the past in ways that are relatively safe but, for obvious reasons, such uses are not recommended today!

In small amounts, arsenic trioxide has a stimulant effect, and it has been used as such since antiquity in various medical preparations. Practitioners in ancient India and China used it in their remedies, as did a late 18^th century medical man by the name of Dr Fowler. His “Fowler’s Solution” was a tonic that contained arsenic trioxide and it presumably had a beneficial effect because it was used throughout the 19^th century. The problem with it was that people who noticed a slight improvement in their condition would be tempted to take more of it in the belief that you can’t have too much of a good thing. Unfortunately, in the case of arsenic, you can! Many cases of self-poisoning were probably attributable to this cause, and it is possible that Charles Darwin was one of the victims of Fowler’s Solution, although he did manage to live to the age of 73 despite his frequent use of it.

Another “peaceful” use of arsenic was in paint and pigments. An 18^th century German chemist named Carl Wilhelm Scheele developed a pigment called “Scheele’s Green” which used the compound copper arsenite (CuHAsO[3]). This proved to be highly popular in a wide variety of applications including artists’ paints, cotton dye, wallpaper colouring, and even food dye in sweets. The latter usage must have made countless numbers of children ill with stomach disorders, and possibly led to early deaths.

Although the above usages are listed as being “non-lethal” it is quite possible that one very prominent person was unwittingly killed by Scheele’s Green. This was Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), who died in exile on the Atlantic island of St Helena. When a post-mortem analysis was made of a strand of his hair it was found to contain an unusually high concentration of arsenic, which led to suspicions that that he had been murdered.

However, Napoleon’s bedroom was papered with green wallpaper that had been coloured with Scheele’s Green, as was common in many homes across Europe at that time. The problem was that, although arsenic poisoning was not normally a hazard of having green wallpaper, there were conditions under which it could give off arsine gas (AsH[3]) which would then be breathed in by anyone sleeping in the room. Just such conditions existed on the windy, cold and rain-swept island of St Helena. The pervading damp would have encouraged fungal growths on the wallpaper which in turn would have set in a train a metabolic process leading to the production of arsine gas.

As mentioned above, arsenic is associated in the public mind with its use as a deliberate poison, with its wielders going back many centuries and probably including Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia in the 15^th/16^th centuries. However, the introduction of reliable tests for arsenic poisoning in the late 19^th century made it less popular as a murder weapon and, by the time that Joseph Kesselring was writing his famous play “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1939), it was the stuff of black comedy rather than terror to potential victims.

Arsenic’s non-lethal uses are now confined to strictly controlled industrial processes, and even these are being phased out wherever possible. Arsenic is no longer used, for example, in pesticides, but certain timber treatments do make use of it. Such uses can pose problem when it comes to the disposal of products in which arsenic has been used, but it is generally held that the amounts in question are very low. It should also be remembered that arsenic is a naturally occurring substance and it is impossible to avoid coming into contact with it entirely.

© John Welford

April fools

Newspapers and TV companies have a long history of trying to fool their readers/viewers with stories published on 1st April (All Fools' Day) that sound plausible but - on closer inspection - turn out to be spoofs! Here are a few examples:

Low-flying penguins

In 2008 a BBC Natural History unit, which had been filming in the Antarctic, announced that they had seen penguins flying – which was clearly a world first given that penguins are well known to be flightless.

Of course, being a film unit, they had to produce the evidence, which they duly did. It was a brilliant piece of creativity by the special effects department, but it still managed to fool an awful lot of people!

We’re moving the Tower

In 1986 “Le Parisien” announced that the Eiffel Tower, which was originally designed to be a temporary structure, was at last going to be dismantled. It would, however, be re-assembled elsewhere – as the main attraction at the new Euro Disney theme park!

Marathon man

In 1981 the Daily Mail called on its readers to look out for a Japanese entrant in the London Marathon, the first of which had been run three days previously. They reported that he had misunderstood the instructions and thought that he had to run for 26 days, not 26 miles, and was still out there somewhere.

It was quite a clever prank on the part of the Mail, given the true stories about Japanese soldiers who did not believe that World War II had ended and hid out in the jungles of south-east Asia for years after 1945. Could a lone runner still be plodding the streets of London long after everyone else had stopped? History does not relate how many Asian-looking joggers were accosted by Daily Mail readers in the days following this story!

Ring that (sponsored) bell!

In 1996 the Taco Bell fast-food company announced that they had bought the Liberty Bell, which would henceforth be known as the Taco Liberty Bell. Not unnaturally, many irate Americans contacted the White House to complain at this commercialisation of a national symbol. The Press Secretary then told them that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold, and would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

© John Welford

Victorian Gothic furniture

The term “Victorian Gothic” is a bit misleading, in that the gothic period in art, architecture, design and literature began several decades before Queen Victoria came to the throne of Great Britain in 1837 and had run its course long before her death in 1901. Indeed, the Great Exhibition of 1851 contained very few examples of gothic style among the many hundreds of pieces on display, because the style was by then largely on its way out. It is therefore necessary to look at the development of furniture design from around 1800 in order to understand it fully.

The fashion for all things gothic, although it had been lurking in the background for some time (for example, Thomas Chippendale used gothic motifs in some of his designs in the mid-18^th century), took off when England’s emerging middle class sought to spend their new-found wealth on design that was noticeably “English”.  An important reason for this was that Britain was at war with Napoleonic France until 1815 and there was a conscious desire not to copy French design, whether Classical or Rococo.

The trend was to look backwards in time to the medieval period, when English armies were defeating French ones at Agincourt and elsewhere, and massive cathedrals were being built at places such as Salisbury and York in a distinctively gothic style. Despite the fact that these buildings were inspired by similar creations across Europe, especially in France, these were thought by many to be quintessentially English and thus to be the style to emulate in the early 19^th century.

In terms of furniture design, a considerable amount of imagination was applied in the drive to go back in time, given that hardly any pieces of genuine medieval furniture had survived, and those that had done so were noticeably simple in form and style, and a long way from some of the extraordinary pieces that appeared during the pre-Victorian and Victorian eras.

The features that were characteristically gothic were the same in terms of both architecture and furniture design. Chairs, beds, cabinets and buildings likewise sprouted pinnacles and arches, crockets (projecting carved leaf shapes), flower balls, clusters and carved figures. Beds were designed that looked like medieval tombs and couches were built with decoration that could have come straight from a 13^th century cathedral.

It should therefore come as no surprise that gothic furniture survived longer in ecclesiastical settings than in domestic ones. The novelty of living in what looked like a medieval monastery, with its dark oak or mahogany furniture in rooms dimly lit by narrow pointed windows, soon wore off. Indeed, very few houses were ever furnished entirely in gothic style, which was considered more suited to the “serious” rooms such as the hall and the library rather than the bedrooms and drawing room in which people wished to relax.

However, gothic church furnishings stayed in vogue for much longer, even into the 20^th century. A good place to see gothic furniture today is a typical church, be it Anglican or Nonconformist, that was built during the Victorian vogue for church building and which has not undergone subsequent modernisation.

The most significant designer of gothic furniture during the Victorian period was the last great exponent of this style, namely Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-52). His name will always be associated with the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, which were rebuilt, after a disastrous fire, between 1840 and 1865. Pugin worked alongside the architect Sir Charles Barry from 1844, although he did not live to see his work completed. Pugin was responsible for many of the internal elements of the Houses of Parliament, including the furnishings, and he embraced the gothic ethos in everything he did. Whereas many designers tended to start with a basic form and add gothic ornamentation as an afterthought, Pugin’s pieces were gothic through and through, which made them convincing. It is easy to apply gothic principles in a way that makes the finished result look cheap or even ridiculous, but Pugin’s pieces had an integrity which no other designers of his time could equal. Items such as the gilt throne from which the Queen opens Parliamentary sessions in the House of Lords are at the pinnacle of gothic design and are entirely correct in their setting.

Some of the best surviving gothic furniture was produced by unknown designers in provincial factories. This was often mass produced, but gothic decoration was applied sparingly to give the pieces a little bit of character. One can find, for example, kitchen cupboards with panels in the shape of arched church windows, or otherwise simple chairs with a gothic design on the back.

Everything that bears the label “gothic” has to do with fantasy in some shape or form, whether it be gothic novels such as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” or the follies built by Victorian landowners for no purpose other than to catch the eye. This is because the gothic ideal was based on an imaginary concept of a remote past. Good gothic architecture and design therefore appeals to the imagination, although the worst can rightly excite mockery and ridicule for being “over the top”.

A good place to see some excellent Victorian gothic furniture is Windsor Castle, the interiors of which were designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville for King George IV in the gothic style. Another place is, as mentioned above, the Houses of Parliament, and there are also some typical gothic pieces in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

© John Welford

Tiffany glass

Tiffany glass was the brainchild of Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) who was the son of Charles Louis Tiffany, who had already established himself as a jeweller and silversmith with the foundation of the New York firm of Tiffany and Young in 1837.

Louis Tiffany

Although Louis Tiffany could simply have followed in his father’s footsteps and earned a substantial fortune by so doing, he preferred to study art, becoming a painter of landscapes. He visited Paris in 1868-69 and subsequently toured Spain and North Africa, where he became fascinated by Moorish and Islamic art. He was also influenced by Oriental art, to which he was introduced by Samuel Bing, a dealer in Paris, and Edward Moore, who was a designer for Tiffany and Young.

Tiffany realised that he did not have the skill to succeed as a painter, and Moore persuaded him to turn his attention to applied art and interior decoration. In 1879 he formed a partnership with two colleagues to form “Louis C Tiffany and Associated Artists”, and soon acquired a reputation as a pre-eminent decorator. He was chosen to re-decorate part of the White House in 1882-83 and, for this purpose, created a large screen in opalescent glass. Unfortunately this was destroyed in 1904 by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Tiffany’s interest in glass

Tiffany became increasingly interested in the possibilities of glass and broke up the partnership in order to concentrate on this medium. He had collected a lot of glassware on his travels and was fascinated by the colouring and texture of ancient glass. The iridescence that he admired had largely been caused by the glass absorbing metallic oxides when buried in the ground, and the pitted surfaces resulted from natural decomposition. Tiffany wanted to find ways to reproduce these effects in new glass.

Tiffany was particularly keen to produce glass in which the colour and decoration were integral and not applied to the surface. He always wanted to produce shapes that were natural for glass and not imitations of objects in bronze or porcelain. He was not always interested in perfect symmetry, because he admired the irregularities found in ancient glass.

The items he produced proved to be highly popular, and the demand was such that he could not possibly have made them all himself, although he kept a close eye on everything that left his factory. There is therefore a division between the experimental pieces for which he was directly responsible and the more commercial items that were produced to satisfy the demands of the market. The modern collector needs to be aware of this fact and appreciate that Tiffany glass varies in quality, and therefore price, for this reason.

Variants of Tiffany glass

Tiffany used several methods to produce iridescent glass by adding a film of metallic oxide, the particular oxide determining the colour. For example, iron oxide gave a green colour, and manganese oxide produced glass that was violet. A very popular lustre was gold, sometimes formed by spraying a gold oxide on to the glass while it was soft on emerging from the furnace.

Decoration was added to iridescent glass by various methods. One involved the reheating of a small ball of glass many times (up to 20) with new pieces of glass being added each time. As the piece grew, so did the decoration added at the early stages. This method produced the characteristic “peacock feather” vases that are now highly prized.

Another technique was to decorate a vase while still soft, by adding coloured glass in flower patterns and rolling the new glass in until smooth, then encasing the whole in further glass, thus giving the finished piece an impression of depth. This technique was used for Tiffany’s “paperweight vases”.

“Cypriote” ware was glass with a crusted surface, intended to reproduce the corroded texture of ancient glass. The technique involved rolling the warm glass over a surface that was covered with pulverised glass crumbs. Cypriote ware was usually made from brown or blue opaque glass, and the pieces tended to be larger than other vase types.

Tiffany also produced “lava glass” with irregular decoration in gold lustre, agate ware (different colours run together then polished) and marbilized ware (colours blended to resemble marble).

Of particular interest are Tiffany’s lampshades, in the form of glass mosaics within a leaded framework. A very large number of these were produced, such that it would seem that nobody who could afford a Tiffany table lamp would dare to be seen without at least one in their house, preferably several. The quality varies considerably, but the best lampshades are beautifully constructed and incorporate subtle uses of colour.

Many Tiffany pieces are marked with the word “favrile”, and are sometimes referred to “Tiffany-Favrile”. The word is derived from the Old English word “fabrile” and simply means “hand made”.

Tiffany’s reputation

Louis Tiffany had pretensions to be an American William Morris, but whereas Morris sought to simplify and to make art and good design affordable, Tiffany was more interested in the luxurious and exotic. By seeking to reproduce forms found in Nature and the distant past he could be said to have been in tune with the principles of Art Nouveau, but he did not subscribe to any Art Nouveau dogma. He did, however, make a huge contribution to American craftsmanship and produced many pieces that, although only moderately functional, were highly decorative (this is art glass after all, not tableware!) and often exquisitely beautiful.

Good collections of Tiffany glass can be seen at the Bethnal Green Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Chrysler Art Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among others.

© John Welford

Shaker furniture

Shaker furniture derived from the beliefs and practices of a religious group that was never particularly numerous and which only had a relatively short lifespan as an active movement. However, the artefacts which its members produced, particularly their furniture, have had a lasting appeal. Indeed, they have influenced and inspired many later designers, especially those of a functional and minimalist turn of mind.

The origin of the Shakers, or “Shaking Quakers”, was in 18^th century England when a young Quaker woman, Ann Lee, founded a small sect of her own, the members of which emigrated to the Colonies in 1774. They set up a community at Watervliet, New York, where they could farm and practice their religion. Other communities were later established, although at their height, in around 1860, the Shakers only had some 6,000 members.

At the heart of Shaker belief was simplicity, austerity and hard work, with little room for frivolity and certainly none for luxury. Pleasures were few and far between, “letting go” being confined to the music and dancing of their religious celebrations, which is where the “Shaker” nickname originated. One pleasure they denied themselves was sexual intercourse, even in marriage, so families could only be formed by adoption. Many Shakers of later generations had been orphans who were adopted and brought up by members of the sect.

Shaker furniture reflects these beliefs not only in its pure functionality and lack of decoration but also in its excellent workmanship. “Mother Ann” had stated: “Do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live, and as you know you must die tomorrow”. This meant that, whether a Shaker was baking a loaf or making a chair, the result had to be as close to perfection as possible. This attention to quality is one reason why so much Shaker furniture has survived to the present day.

Another reason is that the relatively small number of Shaker craftsmen did not confine themselves to making pieces for the use of their own community. The items they made, particularly chairs, were not only well-made but, because they used only as much wood as was essential to the construction, cheap to make. Thousands were therefore sold outside the Shaker settlements, throughout much of the 19^th century.

Mother Ann’s stipulations virtually dictated the Shaker style: “Whatever is fashioned, let it be plain and simple, unembellished by any superfluities that add nothing to its goodness or durability.” This meant that carving, inlays and veneers were out, and turning (on a lathe) was only used for functional purposes. The items made were limited to what was actually needed in a home, namely chairs, tables, stands, beds, cupboards, chests and clocks. Shakers believed in cleanliness, so the furniture was made to be easily moved in order that rooms could be swept frequently.

The typical Shaker side chair was of a ladder-back design with three slats, these being flat at the base and rounded at the top, also slightly concave to fit the user’s back. A double set of box-stretchers on the legs provided structural soundness, and the seat was of woven rushes or tapes. The only concession to decoration was an acorn-shaped finial at the top of the rear uprights. One design of side chair enabled the back to be tipped backwards without the feet leaving the floor. Most chairs were made from maple, although birch, cherry and other woods were also used.

Despite the overall austerity of Shaker life, they were not ascetics and the craftsmen did seek to make their furniture comfortable, at least by the standards of the day. A notable item of Shaker construction was the rocking chair, five different types of which can be identified. Shaker designers were particularly inventive, and some rocking chairs were made with drawers incorporated in the arms so that elderly Shaker women could have their sewing things close at hand. Many rocking chairs were made for sale to outsiders, and can sometimes be found with the original label in place to indicate its size, these varying from “1” to “8” to suit the size of the buyer.

Chests were made with simple, moulded edges and turned wooden knobs, as brass (etc) handles would have been ostentatious.  However, wrought-iron was used for catches on cupboard doors and for hinges. There was no call for huge chests, such as the “highboy”, because Shakers were limited in what they were allowed to possess and thus each member only needed a few drawers and cupboards. Shaker chests are therefore typically either five feet high with four full-width and four half-width drawers, or three feet high with three full-width and two half-width drawers. Some chests were made with drop-leaf tops so that they could double as tables.

Shaker dining tables are less likely to be encountered because Shakers ate communally at one long table, with men and women eating at different sittings. As these tables, of a trestle type with a shoe foot and underbracing, were typically eight feet long, they are not particularly suited to modern homes. However, one example that has survived is twenty feet long!

Although tables are scarce survivals, small round and square-topped stands are encountered far more frequently. These were required furniture in Shaker homes, with the rules stating that “one or two stands should be provided for the occupants of every retiring-room”. Stands were adapted for use in workrooms, with drawers underneath the top, and as candlestands and washstands.

Shaker beds were always single beds; with sex being off the menu there was no call for doubles! The common width was three feet, and they had a simple headboard and footboard. They were provided with wooden castors so that they could be moved for cleaning purposes. A concession to comfort was made with the provision of lightweight slats that would “give” with the body and could be easily replaced if they broke.

Some excellent child’s cots have survived, these being on rockers so that an adoptive mother could settle a crying child while lying in bed.

Although Shaker life and culture is now only of historical interest, with a number of their homes and settlements having been preserved, pieces of their furniture still appear for sale from time to time and are likely to command good prices. More importantly, perhaps, several aspects of their design have been imitated by later designers and incorporated in modern lifestyles where simplicity and good workmanship, without sacrificing comfort, are valued.

© John Welford