The book has nothing to say by way of introduction unfortunately so the following is from Talasnik’s own site:

Hope you enjoyed. If you did you might want to check out Talasnik’s sculpture as well.

For some more “Paper Architecture” see this previous post on the duo of Brodsky and Utkin.

“Do I support the Arts” you gleaming-toothed little twit of a solicitor? What exactly is it you want? To pry some of my hard-earned lucre from my wallet? What are you trying to get at with your seemingly guileless but culturally loaded opening salvo? It’s money right? Why not just get yourself a tin-can and a cardboard sign like any respectable beggar? Do a little dance at least. Sing for your non-profit’s supper.

Course, I didn’t say any of that. I like to at least pretend at civility when it comes to my fellow humans. Don’t want to rend the social fabric after all and send us tumbling backward into public defecation and cannibalism. What I said was simply:

“Yes.”

And it was true. I do.

“Wow, that’s great. May I ask how?” the twit responded in his carefully rehearsed solicitor’s version of familiar speech, betrayed, as it often is, by the inclusion of the the overly polite, or overly formal. These guys just can’t seem to nail realistic dialogue.

“Well, actually, it’s funny that you ask…” I began.

I often like to stop cold after a statement like “it’s funny that you ask.” The person your speaking with knows full well that something is to follow, that’s the whole point of an old chestnut like “it’s funny that you ask,” and they’ll generally wait patiently for the punch-line, allowing an unnaturally long pause in conversation. Seeing how long is the fun part. With solicitors an awkward pause in conversation is like a glimpse into the slavering maw of Death. In this case I managed a full 6 seconds before sensing an interjection, and continued.

“It’s funny that you ask because I only just left a doctor’s office who gave me some test results. Coincidentally they answer your question better than I ever could. I’ve got some pictures here taken with an electron microscope. Would you like to see them?”

Before letting him answer I produced the images and brandished them right up in front his oxy-cleaned pores.

They looked like this:

I saw a mixture of confusion and revulsion in his eyes. He looked instinctually to his identically dressed cohort who was, unfortunately for him, busy accosting someone else, and unable to offer cover fire.

“I’m not sure I understand. What are they?” he bleated.

“They are Art of course! Art seen at 1,000,000 times magnification. You asked whether I supported the Arts and as you can see clearly from these I do. Art is a parasite and we are embraced in a mutualist waltz of sorts.

Art has lodged itself in places throughout my body. Since childhood, when I was initially infected, it has spread everywhere. It’s in my bowels, my heart, and my brain. It nourishes itself on my insides and It floods me with chemicals. Had it not been for this infestation I might have gone into the sciences! But Art wouldn’t allow it. It influences my decisions. It’s disgusting little flagellum run over every inch of my guts. It’s eggs are buried in me. It takes everything it needs to survive from me.

In return it offers me occasional delusions of grandeur. It tricks my mind into perceiving some kind of purpose. It keeps me from putting a rifle in my mouth or in yours. It keeps me from building bombs in my basement. It keeps me from disemboweling people on the street. It offers me some kind of hope. You see? Art and I are engaged in a symbiotic relationship. I keep it alive, it keeps me relatively sane. Get it?”

“...”

“So yes, I support the Arts, bodily, as a host.”

“Well that’s not really what I was asking Sir.”

“I know. You want money. ‘Can ya’ spare a dime for a cultural institution that’s down on it’s luck?’ I understand. Well how about this, I’ll just keep the money and cut out the middle man. How’s that? Easier, don’t you think?”

I walked away from the shiny-toothed little shit-head then, happy to have given him a small taste straight from the teat which he harassed people on behalf of, and I could swear, as I eased on down the road, I heard him say to his coconspirator:

“God! I hate Artists.”

Note: The original microscopy images used to make up the “Art parasites” above were taken from here and here. Both very nice resources.

Consumers of 1800’s America were as disparate a group of peoples as one could imagine. They were an ad-man’s demographic nightmare. A focus group without a focus. They did not yet truly share a common language and certainly didn’t share a common culture. Simple commerce in this age before wholesale could be a challenging proposition.

Characterizing an “average” customer from a shop owner’s perspective in this melange would be an almost comical task, except for the single obvious trait which everyone shared: the inability to understand one another. Add to this the fact that most people were illiterate and you have the seeds of what would ultimately grow into a ubiquitous American sight: the cigar-store Indian.

“Visual trade signs” were essentially stand-ins for written signposts that might have been incomprehensible to potential customers, many of whom were immigrants or illiterate. Chiropodists (early-day podiatrists) displayed large white feet, teahouses had Chinamen to lure customers, pharmacies used an oversized mortar and pestle, Locksmiths featured large keys, pawnshops were known by three balls. The most popular, however, were the tobacconist’s cigar-store Indian. Tens of thousands of shop figures were carved in the United States and Canada in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

The origin of the wooden Indian dates back to England in 1617, when small wooden figures called “Virginie Men” were placed on countertops to represent tobacco companies. The “Indian” likeness became synonymous with tobacco products for a century after.

After the Indian became recognized as the standard smoke-shop symbol, certain tobacconists sought to distinguish themselves by using other types of figures. Turks and sultans (for turkish tobacco), Punch figures (which survived into the modern age on rolling papers), Scottish Highlanders (for snuff), baseball players, and “racetrack touts or dandies” with jeering faces dressed in houndstooth coats and top hats.

In America the vast majority of the sculptures were created by shipcarvers trained in traditional Anglo-American woodcarving techniques. In the 1820’s steam ships brought about the decline of sailing ships and these shipcarvers had to find new avenues on which to ply their trade.

The carvers themselves coined the phrase “the image business” to characterize the wide range of shop figures that they were eventually called upon to create. And they were very successful. By mid-century, the phenomenon had reached the dimensions of a fad, with the figures becoming an essential part of any shopkeepers’ operations.

Most of these artisans worked out of the east coast and may never have actually even seen an American Indian. As such they are often characterized as “looking like white men in native garb.” Shaped by nineteenth-century Anglo-American values, they also reflected the tenor of the times, including racial and gender stereotyping and an embryonic popular culture. The cigar-store Indian typified what is now commonly considered the birth of modern advertising techniques in America.

Although some figures were made of cast metal, the great majority were carved from wood. The preferred material for the statues was white pine, usually three to seven-foot sections of masts purchased at spar yards in the maritime district. The carvers’ tools were axes, mallets, and chisels. Industrialization, which was well under way by this time, never made much headway into the craft of “trade figure” carving, and so surviving statues represent an interesting blend of folk, fine, and popular art of the time.

For a variety of reasons, including over supply, changing tastes, and new modes of advertising, the production of new figures virtually ceased by 1900. They were increasingly seen as old-fashioned symbols of an era that was rapidly passing away.

As a result of the 1910 urban-sidewalk-obstruction laws countless Indian statues were sold from the commercial streets and slowly disappeared. During the depression most wooden cigar-store Indians were broken down and burned as firewood.

Of the tens of thousands once carved it is thought that now only a tiny fraction of original trade figures survive. A fact which the people whose likenesses these statues stereotyped are none too broken up about I’m sure.

I find it interesting that this visual mode of salesmanship, which is one of the earliest tropes of advertising, was created to draw in illiterates by employing obvious stereotypes and the most simplistic symbolic language… Looking at the lion’s share of advertising today I can’t help but wonder whether it has really changed that much, in form or ultimate function. Just a thought.

This post incorporated information from the following sources which you should look to for more in-depth information on the subject:

The Image Business, Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America. By Ralph Sessions.

Cigar Store Indian History and the Origin of Tobacco Shops.

The Museum of American Folk Art page on the subject.

Cigar Store Figures.

Also see:

Peace Party for an American Indian viewpoint.

Sidewalk Sculptures. Cigar-Store Indians Served as High-Profile Advertising Tools for Tobacconists. By Nancy Wolfson. Which points us toward Mark Goldman’s collection.

And this page which focuses on one of the most famous and well documented of all surviving 19th century American cigar-store Indians.

Most of the images in this post were scanned from The Book of Pipes and Tobacco by Carl Ehwa Jr. Published in 1974 by random house.

Hope you enjoyed.

To me they look, more than anything else, like overhead shots of failed civilizations, or possibly the images now returned on a daily basis from the surfaces of distant moons and planets. Me Likey.

One final note: Discovering Droste today had extra punch for me, though not because of the sculpture pictured above. While looking for more info on him I came across his photography, which he evidently began dabbling in latter in his career. Take a look at these images and then take a look at these (especially those toward the bottom of the page) and it shouldn’t be hard to tell why.

Every so often I come across an artist who I’ve never heard of and am humbled to see (what I feel to be) my own aesthetic in evidence elsewhere, created long before I ever touched a camera or brush. In the case of Droste’s photographs I can see immediately what he was after. How many times have I stood by the edge of the lake in Central Park trying to capture the same kind of thing? Fascinating; for me anyway.

Hope you enjoyed. If anyone out there has further info on Droste please let me know.

From the very brief front matter of the book, in Einsel’s own words:

I think they are pretty beautiful. Just exactly of their time stylistically. But then I may be reacting to them because they kind of remind me of the metal piggy-bank my mother always had around… a rotund bald man with a black mustache sitting in a chair. When you put a coin in his hand he’s deposit it in his jacket pocket… might even have tipped his hat. I’d gladly offer up more of Einsel’s work, but as I said earlier, does not seem to be much on the old internet. Hope you enjoyed.