Another after effect of mega-fires like London’s was Fire Insurance, and it was these Insurance companies that actually formed the first private fire brigades to protect their client’s properties. The naming of streets in London at this point was haphazard at best, and private homes were not numbered,  so as a means for the Insurance Brigades to distinguish their properties, each company adopted a distinctive emblem, and began attaching it, in the form of brightly colored metal plates, to the sides of their policy holder’s buildings. These were called “Fire Marks” and their use was widespread for about two hundred and fifty years all across Europe, in Russia, and eventually the U.S.

Practical and utilitarian as they were, they also happened to be pretty damned gorgeous. See below for a sampling and links to some sites where you can see more.

Most of the marks pictured above originated at Roy Addis’Firemarks.co.uk and Dmitry Nikulin’s Old Russian Fire marks pages. Both of which are chock full of beautiful pieces. If you have any interest in Fire marks I’d recommend these sites as your first stops. Believe me when I say what I’ve shown here is only the tip of the iceberg. All but the last of the extra-large images are taken from Clarence P. Hornung’s Treasury of American Design (incredible book!) published in 1950.

A couple of other destinations to see more are: Vicasa, Firemarks.net, Hammerdown,  Erie Insurance, and Iicfiremark.

To read more in depth info on their history I recommend The Fire Mark Circle’s history pages. Also American Fire Marks, A Good Story.

Hope you enjoyed.

It does not surprise Dave in the least to find no one standing there, what with the ventriloquism school next door. That sort of thing happens all the time, especially in the can, where at least once a month he has to re-hinge a stall door, after some shit-faced guerilla kicks it down thinking he’s being propositioned with dirty knock-knock jokes. Seeing no one Dave just stands there, doing what all fictional bartenders in empty bars do- cleaning a cocktail glass with a dirty rag, staring into space.

From the floor Yorick’s skull stares up at him wondering whether he’s dimwitted. It is one of the most impatient and judgmental skulls of a dead jester you are likely to come across. Death has a way of diminishing the excellence of one’s fancy and dimming the flashes of one’s merriment it seems.

The skull looks at Dave’s faded Megadeth t-shirt which reads “Youthanasia” below an image of a cloaked skeleton holding a baby, and manages, without a tongue, to “tut.” Yorick’s skull is now officially irritated. Whether at the shirt, with its artless wordplay and stereotypical depiction of skeleton as death-bringer, or simply at being ignored while thirsty… again, it’s hard to say.

Shifting its eyeless gaze from the t-shirt back to Dave’s blank face, Yorick’s skull decides Dave is almost certainly a simpleton (standing there as he is endlessly wiping the edge of a glass) and tries again, this time less jovially, to get the simpleton’s attention. “God’s Teeth man! Fasten thine belly cheat and pour my bouse.”

Dave is able to better pinpoint the voice’s location this time and leans over the bar. There is Yorick’s skull, half-grinning up at him, three teeth to the wind.

Dave’s not nearly as put-off by seeing a human skull at the base of his barstool as you might expect, what with the magician school only just upstairs. He actually laughs. “Ha! Good one guys.”

More than once a magician’s prop has materialized off its mark and in the bar. Once he lifted an overturned bowl of pretzels to reveal a cotton-tailed bunny and its attendant pile of turds. Another time he turned on the tap only to find himself pulling from the nozzle an impossibly long handkerchief.

He assumes the skull staring up at him is just another flubbed trick by an amateur magician with navigational problems. Until Yorick’s impatient skull begins talking again that is.

“Carl, thine is a bousing ken is it not?”

Dave does not even think to answer (which is not to say that he even understood the question) but just looks down at Yorick’s skull, blankly, the amusement fading from the corners of his eyes.

“By the Rood!! Are thou beef-witted? Shake thine ears! Mine is a thirst!” (If the bone-dome had even a thimble-full of blood, and a patch of skin for it to rush to, it’d be red with annoyance, of this you can be sure.)

Looking at that skull, hearing those words issuing from somewhere inside the dry, cracked cavity, a none too pleasant thought occurs to Dave: “This is not right.” He thinks, “A voice in the john? Sure. A cascade of playing cards from my shirt-sleeves, of course. But a voice AND a magician’s prop together? No. No no no.” 

You see it just so happens that the Ventriloquists and the Magicians are bitter rivals, a more theatrical version of the Crips and Bloods, decked out in sequins and velvet rather than blue and red bandanas. Each year the new class of students clashes, weaponizing their tawdry little stage miracles, and turning them on one another. There had already been a severe charlie-horse and a spate of fraudulent pizza orders attributed to this year’s feud. Point is there was no way the two would cooperate to materialize a talking skull.

Something was “rotten in Denmark,” as they say, and Dave was finally catching a whiff. He grabs hold of the closest whisky bottle, holding it by its neck, arm half-cocked, like a top-shelf glass hammer.

Misinterpreting this defensive reflex as affirmation that the dimwit has finally grasped his request for a drink, Yorick’s skull wobbles back and forth to gather some momentum, then digs a tooth into the wooden bar-side.

Dave is startled to see the skull move and feels a shot of panic as he watches the first tooth dig into the wood-grain, but his condition deteriorates rapidly into a state of good old-fashioned pants-shitting terror when understanding dawns. By digging one canine in, pivoting, then digging the other canine in, the skull is climbing the bar. 

Seeing this Dave ceases to think and ceases to breathe, frozen by the awful improbability of it. A skull is shimmying its way up the bar-side toward him like a giant beetle with a sclerite of browning bone. What can you say? Dave is predictably petrified. He forgets his name, forgets his bottle bludgeon, forgets to wet himself, and forgets to run. He just watches the scull’s ascent like a deer…  looking over a sheer cliff… er… caught in the glare of a rock climber’s helmet-lamp.

Upon finally reaching the top of the bar, Yorick’s skull is disgusted to find there is no drink awaiting him there. It angles itself directly toward Dave’s frozen, grimmacing face and croaks, “Od rat it! Fie upon the vessel then, thou recreant geck! Pour that bouse into mine eye socket directly!”

And, well, that was that. The skull’s angry demand to have whiskey poured directly into its eye socket was just too much, it was the straw that broke the bartender’s back, and alas, poor Dave fainted, falling over backward, bottle still in hand, like a tobacco store indian in a hurricane; the contents of the smashed bottle soaking his own eye sockets instead.

Exasperated, its nonexistent gorge threatening to rim its nonexistent throat at the spectacle of the dimwit passed out amidst the drink (which ought to be swishing between its teeth right now!) Yorick’s skull curses under its lungless breath and shimmies its way back down the bar-side. The night is young and death is long, so out the door it rolls to search elsewhere for some much needed fuel- Infinite jest begets a damn near infinite thirst after all.

First, from the accompanying essay by Geoffrey Bensusan:

“Hella Basu’s calligraphy shows itself apt, varied and assured; its fitness for purpose unquestionable, its deployment as one might say most inventive, the execution impeccable; it has a lineage clearly honorable but not trad and while accessible, as communication should be, it remains exciting.”

Also (speaking well before the computer typography boom):

“It is the prized consistency of machine-made lettering that generates the demand for contrasting forms, inventions not provided for on transfer sheets. For in the hands of the skilled designer-lettering-artist-calligrapher the alphabet is almost as flexible and expressive a medium as illustration itself in evoking a mood, creating a feeling, reinforcing a fact.”

Aside from her birth date and place (Germany) the only other info I found was a single quote purported to be from Hella:

“In making any object, the philosophy behind its creation is ‘art,’ the planning is ‘design,’ and its execution is ‘craft.’”

Hope you enjoyed.

This, however, is not a history lesson, and the particulars of each of these items does not interest me as such. What I’m interested in here is rather a result of their intersection, a confluence of forces, which though set in motion way back in the 1870’s, is as near to we moderns as the ground beneath our feet or the sky above our cities. I’m speaking, of course, about Ground Stars.   

Let me explain.

The proliferation of electric light, typified by our big cities, has created a phenomena called Skyglow. Essentially Skyglow is simply Rayleigh scattering of artificial light, which is to say its the same atmospheric effect which makes the natural light of the daytime sky seem blue, only in this case diffusing and redirecting the light of our cities back down at us. The ultimate effect for we urban earthlings is, lamentably, a starless (though not bible-black) sky.

In the relative-dead of a New York City night, looking up (and in this city to see a patch of sky you need to look damn near straight up) is an effort with precious little reward. You can count yourself lucky to see the lights of a passing plane, or the underbelly of a helicopter, because even the brightest stars are washed out and absent. Forget about connecting the dots in your minds eye and seeing a giant scorpion, or bull, or lion. There are no dots. 

As I’ve said here before this strikes me as a real shame. Especially in a city such as New York where where all manner of dreamer, goofball, curbside philosopher, and artistic-minded lout have chosen to congregate. We are effectively as divorced from our universe as we are from the suburbs and geographical armpits most of us fled from. We are people who could use the sense of natural scale a few trillion super-massive nuclear reactions in the sky would provide. We need something bigger, more crowded, and more charged with energetic possibility than ourselves. 

Which brings me to Concrete and Chewing Gum.

While electric light was proliferating and radiating outward to blot our stars concrete and chewing gum were quietly spreading throughout the city as well, exhibiting their own unexpected side effect. It seems concrete and chewing gum have a natural attraction to one another. They stick together and stay together. Whether it is love or just a physical thing I can not say but their century old union offers us a solution, of sorts, to our star poverty.

When a piece of spit-out gum takes the gravity-assisted leap to the ground it gets rolled over, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted, and stepped on, and compacted. We sometimes curse at getting its sticky guts on our shoes, but more often than not we don’t even notice. Over time what was once a chicle-based, flavor infused, treat becomes nothing so much as a single dark point in the firmament of sidewalk. Now multiply this by millions, perhaps billions, and I think you’ll see where I’m going. 

A century of this process has provided us with something huge and ambiguous we can call our own; if not a moody sparkling light by which to worship our lovers and unsheathe our knives, an endlessly shifting menagerie of single points all the same, between which we might string the iconography of our hopes and fears.

Think of it! Anti-Stars: small points of light-absorbing darkness dotting a reflective silica-mixed concrete field. Billions of DNA enriched points, all of indeterminate, time-lost origin, waiting only for the connecting lines which would infuse them with meaning; waiting always at perigee to feel the press of human imagination upon them rather than simply that of our boot heels. Look below your feet at any time while walking the 301 square miles of the city and it’s likely you trod upon a constellation, just waiting to be recognized and named. 

In short what electric light hath denied concrete and chewing gum hath supplied. Ground Stars, Urban Constellations, a galaxy worth for our interpretation, in which we can do what we love best- see ourselves reflected.

“Sounds all very well in theory” I can hear you mustache-twirlers harumphing, “but does it work in practice? What might such replacement constellations look like?”

I’m glad you asked. I have taken it upon myself to explore this embryonic field of research a bit. Trips into the field have yielded some promising observations which I’m all too happy to share with you.

Below you will find a small cataloging of my findings thus far. I will name, describe, and illustrate the 10 Urban Constellations I’ve identified, and will even offer some slight illumination on each in the form of related quotations. What being born above these signs, or what their position in relation to your own may portend for you, your character, or your future, I will leave to the “geologers,” “odologers,” “topologers,” “despuologers,” or “humusologers” who will surely follow.

Behold!

Status Somnus (The Standing Sleep)

You see them, standing in the road, nodding, body never quite toppling, never quite standing straight. It’s like slapstick and tragedy mixed. You wonder, “Where can he/she be right now that’s so compelling it overrides the innate need to stave off death? Are they on a planet without cars? Are they floating weightless through space? Are they balancing on a pile of white spaghetti? What are they seeing?” You wonder, but are not curious enough to prick the skin and stand asleep in the road yourself.

Mercator Pudor (The Shame Trader)

You spot them from a block away, if you’re lucky. The fresh-faced guilt-trippers. Their questions like a slap. “Do you care about the environment?” “Do you have a second for gay rights?” “You don’t support animal cruelty do you?” “The children’s ribs are showing!” You look at them and despise them for trading in guilt. They ask every loaded question but the honest one you hear in your head instantly.

Sepulcretum Umbellae (The Umbrella Graveyard)

The wind howls, the sun is gone, the rain hammers your brow. You turn a corner and see it. Mangled, torn, broken, abandoned. It’s a graveyard and you know it, even with your head down and your eyes half-blinded in the storm. You shiver to spite yourself.

Dissaepio Indocilis (The Rude Barrier)

The sidewalk so wonderfully wide. Room enough for street gangs to dance their grudges away. And yet here he/she comes. Straddling one edge, dog straddling the other. Between is a leash, strung taut across the entire walking width. You look at the leash and you yearn to tear it apart with your hands and stuff in his or her mouth, yelling, “Choke! Choke you self-involved misborn ass!” They must know you hate them, but they come ever closer. “So it’s a game of chicken is it?”

Porthmeus Odiosus (The Hateful Ferryman)

You see it’s yellow flank flashing in the traffic. The light is on. You are about to be scooped up! You imagine the seats cradling your tired ass. You raise your hand, perhaps whistle through your teeth, or call out, “Taxi!” But the ferryman rejects you and rolls right by. “Why?” you wonder. “WHY!?” You swear, you doubt, you raise your fists to a deaf God, “Bastard!” Then shuffle on.

Belua Cloaca (The Sewer Monster)

And what is under there anyway? Is it a filth-encrusted albino playground? Is it a dark orgy of disease and blindness held over the sewage-soaked bones of our forefathers? Are the stories true? Is it all alligators, and giant rats, and mole men? Walk a little faster and avoiding the wobbly grates.

Mendicus Beneficiarius (The Privileged Beggar)

Young and sound of body. You look at them and their sign, scrawled with pleas for beer-money or bus fare. You look at their clothes, their accessories, their hair. You make a snap judgement and far off, on some tax sheltered-island, their trust funds accrue interest.

Aquatoris Indifferentis (The Indifferent Water-Carrier)

It’s 8 AM. Foot-traffic rush-hour on a weekday morning. No one smiles because making it to your destination is painful enough. Another day of wage slavery is beginning and no one’s exactly thrilled. Everyone knows this. You know it, the old lady you just elbowed knows it, and so does the guy with the fucking hose. He sees you coming. He does not care. The water flows like your own shin-level Potomac.

Cumulus Arcanus (The Mysterious Pile)

It is waiting around damn near every corner. It is horrid and putrid smelling and the color is indescribable. Flesh colored crayons melted over spinach linguini and scabs. It is nebulous and gut wrenching and even the thought of it’s origin makes your skin crawl. It’s a pile and you must not look at it too closely!

Hostis Dementis (The Demented Stranger)

He approaches. Perhaps you smell him before you see him. Perhaps his madness digs into your ear. It’s one of that most feared tribes, the demented ones. What will he do with his grill fork? What’s that poking out of the hole in his clothes? Is something moving in his bag? Nothing frightens the rational, time-obsessed, grid-walking, metropolitan mind like the demented ones staggering toward you.

There you have it my friends. I hope I’ve inspired you to connect the dots, or brought even a sliver of relief to your poor, addled, star-starved mind.

If you identify any urban constellations of your own feel free to pass them along. The adventure continues.

With that I return. Not with a trumpet and throaty throng but quietly, as though by moonlight, avoiding the squeaky step.

“Is that you? (groggily) What time is it?”

“Go back to sleep honey.”

I’ve sprung the trap and survived, and escaped, and so here I am. Home again. The trap is obvious, and in plain sight, but I am forgetful. Each time I look at it I see the glint on the teeth but not the teeth themselves. The glint is bright and shiny and I am a dim, dumb animal.  Probability, or Nature, or Destiny, or whatever you’ve labeled the comically inadequate mason jar in which you hold this concept- things take their course.

What can I say?

You turn your head sometimes, as if hearing a coo or whisper, and looking toward the window, expecting to see some winged thing perched on your windowsill, you see instead your own reflection. You see your life and it startles you more than any winged thing would. It is not what you expected to see, but worse it’s not even what you’d expect a life to look like. Its proportions are all wrong, its color off, its shape odd; In truth it looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before. It looks foreign, and in as much, frightening. But it is your life still, and it’s as if in this unexpected moment you were glimpsing it for the first time.

Of course this is all Balderdash, or Poppycock, or Bullshit, or whatever you’ve labeled your most treasured mason jar- you’ve seen this ugly thing before.

I’m forgetful, as I’ve already mentioned. When I momentarily see past the well-tooled facade, past the fortification of amusements and distractions, over and beyond the ramparts of routine, I get spooked.

More often than not I react to this reoccurring revelation in a predictable way. I cycle through my mason jars, popping their lids in quick succession- Confusion, Annoyance, Anger, Regret, Longing, Sadness. Their smells waft through my rooms, swirling, blending into complex and potent combinations. What began as merely disturbing, through my panic, becomes overwhelming. Like the dim, dumb animal I am I seek a dark place, hidden from predatory eyes, where I can gather myself and think.

Q: “Ever wondered what turns straight-forward drama into melodrama?”

A: “It’s the attempt at spreading a small portion of honest pain over every banal nook and cranny of the proceedings, creating a thin smear, rather than letting it lay, as a thick dollop, just where it naturally landed. That and the bad metaphors of course!”

So where was I?

Oh yes, In my forgetfulness I’d sprung the trap.

There is an incorrect assumption I repeatedly make, which is that through sheer force of will, given enough time and space, I can understand, dismantle, and rebuild existence into something which more resembles the existence of my imagination. Because of this I abandon things in an attempt to carve out that space and create that time. I stop, turn off, take a step back, begin analyzing and over-analyzing. Like a cat with a ball of yarn I smack at my existence with my thumb-less paws and claws and unravel it, only to find finally that my ball is gone, I’m tangled in the yarn, and there is nothing at the center. This is folly but it’s not the trap I speak of, not really.

At the center of life is a terror, a mystery, a question, a void. It is huge, and it has a gravitational pull of sorts, and were you to face it and stare into it every day you would not be able to function. We build a barricade against it with whatever materials we can scrounge because were we faced with it continuously we would not be able to attain even the most paltry scrap of contentment. That’s what Happiness, or Peace, or whatever you label your half-full mason jar really is- moments of distraction strung successfully together. If you can string those moments together for an entire lifetime you are a genius, a giant, a lucky son of a bitch.

So the trap is simply this: forgetting the void. When you do that you are apt to start misinterpreting your own defenses against it as something holding you in rather than something keeping it out. Happiness is being successfully distracted from the void, by projects, jobs, entertainments, passions, dreams… the trap is forgetting the void exists.

I’ve spent many an hour in my life scrutinizing my defenses, becoming dissatisfied with their materials, and tearing them down, only to see the void rather than greener grass, and be reminded why I’d built them in the first place. I’ve spent many an hour rebuilding my defenses from the wreckage of older ones. A real time waster let me tell you.

So the lesson, which my forgetfulness forces me to re-learn continually, is this: defenses need only be judged by a single criteria- their effectiveness. No matter what they look like, no matter from what materials they are cobbled, no matter whether they are the shape and proportions you imagined them to be when you were a mere emotional zygote, they need only work. If they do, leave them alone and keep on keepin’ on.

With that I return. As a cobbler returns to his shop on a grey monday morning.

(The bell on the door jingles. In you step.)

“Hi there. What can I do for you?”

-

Related: Dissatisfaction, Dexterity Puzzle of the Mind.

First, just a few words from the chapter 1 of the book.

Quote, “The picture frame has existed for as long as pictures have been moveable. Any moveable painting required a frame to protect it. Even a fixed painting set in panelling needed some sort of framework. The idea of a framing device is older than the picture frame, however, and many early wall paintings and frescoes were given a containing painted or architectural framework.

The frame may have started out as a form of protection but its visual and symbolic purposes soon became equally important. Such purposes are not constant but vary with time and place. The frame separates the work of art from its surroundings and may help focus the viewer’s attention. At the same time it can actually unite a work with its surroundings by forming a transition or a link to other works or to the wider setting. The frame can become part of the setting itself when it is designed to fit into an architectural scheme. More obviously, the frame is usually intended to enhance a picture visually and, occasionally, iconographically. Sometimes the frame is used to draw attention to a work as an object of value or reverence; such a frame may not necessarily enhance it in visual terms, but can contribute to its symbolic significance. The frame marks out a picture as a picture, that is as an illusion rather than reality.” From The Art of the Picture Frame by Jacob Simon.

Since this post is about frames as art objects in their own right I’ve removed the paintings (so you can’t cheat.)

For more on the humble frame and its history see the following:

The Art of the Picture Frame web site at The National Gallery. Be sure, specifically, to check out the links listed under Special features.

A Brief History of The Frame.

Picture Framing Magazine’s article index, specifically the Special Supplements.

Hope you enjoyed.

The word “normal” when used in specific, direct relation to humanity does not have any real meaning unless it is as a marker of a mean value or an average. To think there is a quantity called “normal” which somehow exists outside of the quantity called “average” (in human terms) is obviously silly. And yet the connotations of the words “normal” and “average” are so different.

Everyone hopes they are “normal” to some degree, yet simultaneously everyone hopes to avoid being “average.” Isn’t that odd?

“Normal” is, in nearly all of its shades of usage, a positive quantity. Normality is understandable, reasonable, safe and reassuring.

When we seek to embrace a billionaire, or a “genius,” or a celebrity, we say “But I’ll tell you what, he’s really just a normal guy.” That is almost the highest compliment we can pay. The President of the United States? “Well, I like him, he seems like a normal guy.”

When we wish to distance ourselves from a once familiar murderer or rapist or otherwise ugly personage we say of him, “But he seemed so normal.” That is our alibi, “I lived next door to him, baby sat his children, and exchanged Christmas cookies with him because I thought he was normal.” Everyone can nod at that, and if murderer = bad, then it follows “normal” = good.

On the flip-side there is “average.” Averageness is rarely positive, defined, it seems, by only half of what it is not. Average is not exceptional, not remarkable, not gorgeous, not brilliant, not amazing. This is an adjective which seems to carry with it the limitations of its noun.

- How was the food at Chez Mullah? “Eh. Just average.”
- What did she look like? “uh… average.”
- How was your weekend?! “Average, didn’t do much.”
- “You are a C student and average students just don’t get into good schools!”

So though “normal” and “average” are, in essence, synonyms, in usage they are fairly distinct. Normal would seem to describe what is desirable, warm, and human about the collective “we.” While Average feels colder, more distant, and less comfortable. It would seem “normal” has done a better job transcending its mathematical roots where as “average” still has a strong whiff of the statistical.

When a human life hangs in the balance the choice is clear:

- Doctor how is my wife?! “Her vital signs are normal, she’s going to be OK.”

People’s vital signs are never “average.”

This disparity would seem to cast some doubt, somewhere, and if we accept that “average” feels more mathematical a quantity in common usage and “normal” feels more human a quantity… well, I would aim my suspicions toward “normal.” Math would seem to have the better track record when it comes to matters of precision and clarity.

So what’s with this word “normal” then? I propose the following:

The word “normal,” when used in relation to humanity, is the product of fear. I say this because “normal” seems most often used as a bulwark against it. It is “average” fortified. It is “average” gussied-up. It is “average” humanized. It is “average” pimped-out with comfy cushions. It is the cashmere of “average,” knit into a soft blankey we can hide under when faced with all those things which make us want to go pee-pee in our pants.

Do you disagree?

Last thing I’ll say is this: If you are one of the many people on Earth whose fondest wish is to “just be normal,” to simply attain that coveted, seemingly mythical state of normalcy, one of the… let’s say… awkward, the unpopular, the dissatisfied, the lonely, the self-hating, the confused, the depressed, the unhappy, let me assure you of something- your fear of not being “normal” affirms your averageness, and in as much, your normalcy. So hooray!