Mention historical Japanese painting to a westerner and certain images involuntarily leap to mind- Hokusai’s great wave, an idyllic nature scene, an elegant Geisha, a sparrow perched on an inky branch… even Tales of the Genji or an explicit bit of Shunga perhaps. I imagine one thing which does not readily spring to mind is H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks, with its demons and leaping flames and pestilence and writhing souls. After all, that’s our thing! Isn’t it?

Well, yes and no.

There are “hell scrolls” to take into account.⊕ These are narrative scrolls which depict a Buddhist conception of hell, specifically that of Chinese Buddhism of the 1st century AD, which was itself heavily influenced by the “Hindu concept of a many-leveled hell of punishment between lifetimes.”

These scrolls are darker and more gruesome than what we generally equate with Japanese painting. They depict the suffering of sinners who have fallen into one of the six realms⊕ to which a person is consigned after death as a result of his or her deeds during this life.

Quote: It depicts murderers, thieves, adulterers, and so forth, who have fallen into the Hell of Cloud, Fire, and Mist. The naked men and women are in agony as they burn in an enormous fire. The writhing flames are vividly and effectively rendered with concise lines and black and vermilion tones. The painting probably caused its viewers to shudder with fear and foreboding, encouraging them to embrace the desire to be born into the Pure Land.

They are cautionary, in the same way Western images of hell are, and though the depiction of flayed bodies, blood, tortures, leaping flames and demons (not to mentioned the tiered structure which our Dante helped popularize) would seem a perfect parallel, this Buddhist hell is actually quite different.⊕ Foremost among these differences is the fact that Buddhist hell is temporary. More of a purgatory really, where one works off their karmic debt, before easin’ on down the road. For those with hot pokers shoved up their asses, this is an essential difference you can be sure. In as much I think it’s safe to say “the one true hell” still belongs to the west.

Fear not.

In any case here are a few details from two hell scrolls in the collection of the National Museum of Japan which I thought you might enjoy a gander at, surprisingly un-serene as they are.

All images from:
Hell Scroll 1 and Hell Scroll 2

For similarly grotesque scrolls see:
The Extermination of Evil Scroll
The Diseases and Deformities Scroll
The Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts

For more info on Buddist hell see:
Hell of the Chinese Afterlife
Mechanisms of Violent Retribution in Chinese Hell Narratives (pdf)
Japanese Buddhist Statuary A to Z Photo Dictionary 
khandro.net Hells

Related, and of interest, check out:
Hell Bank Notes
Hell Money

Hope you enjoyed.

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The Polynesians, scattered as they were over 1,000 islands across the central and southern Pacific Ocean, were master navigators who tracked their way over a huge expanses of ocean without any of the complex mechanical aids we associate with sea fairing. They didn’t have the astrolabe or the sextant, the compass or the chronometer. They did however have aids of a sort, which though seemingly humble, were in fact the repositories of an extremely complex kind of knowledge. Called Rebbelibs, Medos. and Mattangs, today we call them simply “Stick Charts.”

There are three kinds of stick charts.

The “MATTANG” or “WAPPEPE” is a small, square shaped chart which shows wave patterns around a single island or atoll and was used for teaching purposes only.

The “REBBELIB” is a general wave navigational chart mapping an entire chain, showing the relationships between the islands and the major ocean swells.

The “MEDO” covers only a few islands and is useful for specific voyages.

The charts were made by men from thin strips of coconut frond midribs or pandanus root. They were then bound together with coconut sennit in geometric patterns depicting sea currents around the low lying atolls. Small money cowrie shells or coral pebbles indicated islands and curved sticks represent wave patterns.

They were not carried on a voyage and the adult navigator gauged the wave patterns represented in the Stick Charts entirely by his sense of touch. “He would crouch in the bow of his canoe and literally feel every motion of the vessel.” As with ripples in a pond they “concentrated on refraction of swells as they came in contact with undersea slopes of islands and the bending of swells around islands as they interacted with swells coming from opposite directions.”

A fascinating aspect of the charts is that they varied so much in form and interpretation that they were “readable” only by the specific navigators who constructed them. Evidently the knowledge contained in each was a closely guarded secret.

Wikipedia says: “The stick charts are a significant contribution to the history of cartography because they represent a system of mapping ocean swells, which was never before accomplished. They also use different materials than is common in other parts of the world. They are an indication that ancient maps may have looked very different, and encoded different features from the earth, than the maps we use today.”

Use of stick charts and navigation by swells apparently came to demise after World War II, when travel between islands by canoe halted. They continue to be made in Polynesia, though very few people are able to use them as navigation aids. They are made and sold instead as tourist souvenirs.

For much more info see the following (images and text were adapted from these):

Wikipedia entry.
Reading Patterns in the Waves.
Ethnomathics Digital Library.
Digital Micronesia.
Micronesian Stick Charts.
Mariner’s Museum.
The Leek-Green Sea.
Stick Charts.
Visit Marshall Islands.com
THe British Museum.
The Met.
World Weather, Climate, and Society Projects.
And Lastly I’d like to recommend the following for some interesting context-
Varieties of Unreligious Experience.

Hope you enjoyed.

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“There were only occasional cigarette wrappers or paper towel like toilet paper with no pencils or ink available for communication. You could manufacture ink out of brick dust and sundry such elements and use bamboo slivers for pens. The only sure way of communicating thusly was to drop a note in an emptied toilet bucket, float a note out on your manure, hide a note at a wash trough, or scratch a message on the bottom of a rice bowl. But you had to contact the guy first to tell him all this. The preferred, most secure and most reliable method was to tap on the walls or floor pad in a rhythmic code known to us as the Tap Code.”

TALK TO ME! or The Origins of the Prison Tap Code.

History of Poison. Poisoning in Ancient Times. Poisoning in the Middle Ages. Poisons in the Renaisance. Poisoning in the 16th, 17th and 18th Century. Poisoning in the Victorian Times. Poisoning in the 20th Century. Don’t Chew the Wallpaper: A History of Poison. A Brief History of Poison. Folklore Poisons. List of Poisonings. A Brief History of Poisoning. The Elements of Murder. The Fine Art of Poisoning.

The one conclusive argument that has at all times discouraged people from drinking a poison is not that it kills but rather that it tastes bad. -Nietzsche.

What is the Most Deadly Poison in the World? A Poison Tree. Illustrated Index of Poisionous Plants. Poisonous Plants Database. Poison Apple. Wild Inedible and Poisonous Mushrooms. Mushroom Poisoning. Poisonous Plants, Animals, and Arthropods. Poison Harpooned Cone Snail. Poison in a Cone. Poison Frogs. Poison Dart Frogs. Poison Powder. Poison Cups. Drink Me. Poison Jewelry. Poison Arrow. Arnesic in the Eye. Antique Poison Bottles. Collecting Poison Bottles. Antique Poison labels. Mr. Yuk. About Mr. Yuk. And Finally…

...He advised me not to worry about lice. “You’ll soon get used to ‘em, not feel ‘em biting at all. All you have to do is ‘boil up’ once in a while”—that is, take off your clothes and boil them, a piece at a time, to kill the vermin. These and other personal chores the well-groomed tramp more or less regularly performs, were usually attended to during stop-overs in camps and jungles. It was here I learned to shave with the aid of a broken bit of whiskey glass. The toughest method of shaving I ever saw, though, was when one old veteran of the road rubbed another’s face with the rough side of half a brick!

-Harry Kemp (footnote to history, tramp poet, author, dune shack dweller, village bohemian, home wrecker⊕, hanger on to giants⊕, and purportedly a “lecherous and lazy man who committed as many wrongful acts as a man can safely commit”) from the the Federal Writers’ Project American Life Histories.

Æsthetic Friend: “Yes, This room is rather nice, All but the window, with these large blank panes of plate glass! I should like to see some sort of pattern on them—Little squares or lozenges or arabesques…”

Philistine: “Well, but those lovely cherry blossoms, and the lake, and the distant mountains, and the beautiful sunsets, and the purple clouds—isn’t that pattern enough?”

(Taken from Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102. June 4, 1892. which, along with many other volumes, can be found on Gutenberg, listed for your ease here.)

Quote, “The obvious is so commonplace that when waved in front of our noses we often don’t give it a moment’s thought or even realize it’s there. We take certain objects so for granted that we probably never stop to ask ourselves how they first figured in the life of man. This is the case with scissors: do they date back one century, two centuries or twenty? Our stainless steel kitchen scissors were probably bought from a market stall around the corner, but when did the first scissors come into the world? Attempting to track down the name of a crackpot inventor would certainly be of no avail; as in many similar cases, scissors were not invented in a flash of creative genius, but rather evolved, step by step, alongside many other tools destined to cut, separate and pierce, undergoing modifications of design, material and decoration from the first, primitive examples — or at least from the first examples revealed by archeology and literature — to the scissors of today.” - From Scissors by Massimiliano Mandel.

See below for a sampling of these evolving objects and further quotes from Mr Mandel’s beautiful (though it would seem, out of print) book.

Iron scissors. Eastern Mediterranean, 14th Century.

2nd century A.D. Trabzon, northeastern Turkey.

Household Scissors. Italy, about 1550.

Persian Tailoring Scissors. 17th Century.

Tang Dynasty (618-907), 7th to 9th Century.

The first mention of (modern) scissors dates back to the Romanesque period, in the statutes of the craft guild for scissor-makers, one of the many associations of artisans founded in that period. The love of pure, unadorned construction that characterizes Romanesque architecture is reflected in the predilection for simple scissor design, with no decorative elements to distinguish them from previous examples. Only at the end of the Romanesque period, between the Xl and XII century, can one begin to notice greater attention being paid to the shape and quality of scissors, partly due to the development of relations with Eastern countries bordering the Mediterranean. Indeed, as the art of calligraphy spread throughout the Islamic world and scissors with concave blades used to cut sheets of paper became a necessary part of the calligrapher’s equipment, more refined models began to appear with thin, streamlined blades, engraved or damascened.

Candle-Trimmers. Italy, 16th Century.

Medieval Scissors.

Tinsmith’s Shears. Spain, 17th Century.

Viticulture Scissors. Italy, 19th Century.

Areca Nut Scissors. India, 18th Century.

If certain implements, such as knives and swords, axes and tongs, bear witness to the development of masculine taste and inventiveness while rarely attaining the status of works of art, scissors, on the contrary, are a more delicate testimony to the development of feminine taste and also to the attention paid to the style and sensitivity of the fairer sex by men. Indeed, a potential suitor sending a “love-box” to a lady of rank in the XIV century would be sure to include a pair of scissors in a leather sheath, an accessory of Muslim origin. It was in this century that scissors began to acquire their typically feminine connotations which, aside from certain examples specially designed for particularly demanding jobs, they have retained throughout their history.

Sugar-loaf Scissors. Brussels and Munich, 17th Century.

Shears / Detachable Blades. Italy, 1890.

Neoclassical era Italy or France, about 1820.

Decorated Steel Fretwork. England, 1875.

Calligrapher’s Scissors. Turkey, 18th Century.

Scissors gradually came to be appreciated for their aesthetic appeal, although the available space for decoration is slight compared to other hand-made objects, being difficult if not impossible to sculpt, emboss, embellish or paint. Rather, a black metallic alloy called niello was used to decorate the far end of the blades and a fretwork design was frequently applied around the rings of the handles. In this way a high degree of aesthetic pleasure was derived from these objects, which also enjoyed a relatively wide distribution. Unlike other objects such as arms, shields and so on, which once made into objects of art become too fragile for common use and are therefore only used as objects to put on display during parades and ceremonies, beautiful scissors also managed to be useful and so the taste for decoration became part of everyday life.

Shaped like a stork carrying a baby. England.

Embroidery Scissors. The Romantic Age, France.

Cigar Cutters. Italy, 1915.

Egg Scissors. France, 1930.

Unknown. Housed at the Fairfield Museum.

It would seem that from the industrial revolution onward scissors returned for the most part to their previous state, as purely functional items. Most traces of decoration have been absent ever since, in favor of a clean-lined, stainless-steel functionality.

Unfortunately scissors seem to be one of those items for which there is very little said on the internet from an historical standpoint. Massimiliano Mandel’s book book then is a great resource. Most, but not all, of the images above were taken from it and it contains many more, including quite a few reproductions of the scissors’ first appearances in art and print. If you are a design buff be on the lookout for it.

Hope you enjoyed.

-

Note: to the best of my knowledge the scissors pictured above are housed in the following Collections-

The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Fairfield Museum in Bothwell, Ontario.
The Giuseppina Gioacchino Collection.
The Museum of Archeology in Konya Turkey.
The Museum of Decorative Arts, Paris.
The Anita Gatti Collection, Milan.
The GBZ Foundation for Paleontological Studies, Milan.

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Quote, “Some books are ahead of their time. Some books convey a message which threatens prevailing notions, and are therefore brushed away. Some books are mixtures of profound insights and garbled speculations. Hamlet’s Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (1969) partakes to varying degrees in all of the above. Hamlet’s Mill began a revolution in understanding the profound sources of ancient mythology. Although it tottered on the edge of oblivion for years, it has reemerged as the fundamental inspiration for many progressive researchers who find the precession of the equinoxes lurking within ancient creation myths around the world.” - From an intro to the complete online text of Hamlet’s Mill by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend. (Via.)

Chances are when you conjure in your mind’s eye an image of a “psychedelic” 60’s rock poster (whether for fun or because you’re an ex-hippie flashing back involuntarily to your blocked-out youth from within the soft leather comfort of your Mercedes) you are likely, without even realizing it, envisioning a Victor Moscoso.  It’s been said that Moscoso “was the first of the rock poster artists with academic training and experience.” He studied at the Cooper Union and at Yale (under Josef Albers) and it shows.  Moscoso’s own style is, at this late date, damn near synonymous with the form in the same way that you think “band-aid” when you envision of a little adhesive-backed bandage. Likewise though Robert Crumb went on to be the most famous underground artist of the era I guarantee when you think of Zap Comix you think of Moscoso’s dancing mr. peanut / mr. penis cover. I don’t think it’s overstating it to say Moscoso’s style was aped and absorbed by the culture to a such degree that it just seems to be a force of history in retrospect rather than the inspired work of a really talented designer.

To see and read more try: Fine Arts Museum SF, the Neon Rose series & Victor Moscoso at Wolfgang’s Vault, the Victor Moscoso poster gallery, more Neon Rose, the music machine, an interview at the Comic’s Journal, Liberatore: A portrait of the artist as a counterculture connoisseur, and 1960s Psychedelic Rock Concert Posters and the Broadening of American Spirituality.

Yes ladies, by all means, draw your shawl near to yourself and beware The Man With the Green Moustache! There is no telling where it, or he, has been! This image was taken from an extensive and beautiful collection of magazine covers stretching, mainly, from the 1890’s through the 1940’s. (Via / If you scroll down you’ll see the full menu.) It is presented by a site dedicated to Ellis Parker Butler, with each of the magazine covers representing an issue which contained his work. Unfortunately the story of the dreaded “green moustache” was penned by someone else, so we’ll most likely never know its wonders. The site offers a few Ellis-penned surrogates though in the form of some similarly mysterious sounding men like- The Man Who Did Not Go to Heaven on Tuesday, The Man Who Murdered a Fairy, The Man Who Was Someone Else, and The Man With the Glass Front in their reading room.