The Little Lady with the Art Cart

In celebration of the 2016 Smithsonian Folklife Festival opening today on the National Mall, we are publishing this piece by summer 2015 intern Erin Enos. Erin recently graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a Masters in Library Science with a focus in Archives and Records Management.

Lily Spandorf at the 1995 Festival of American Folklife. Photo by Smithsonian Photographer. Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

For about thirty summers, she made her entrance onto Washington D.C.’s National Mall and went about her typical painting routine.  Squeak-squeak-squeak went her easel cart as she dragged it behind her.  The heat of the District's summer would beat down her as she walked.  She brought all the art supplies she needed in her efficiently packed cart: her pens, her ink, her charcoal, her cardboard "easel," and most importantly, her detailed and meticulous artful eye.  The tiny woman would find a lovely spot under a big shady tree and would get out her sketch pad of paper, pick up her black ink pen, and start to draw. Her name was Lily Spandorf, and with every line and wash of color carefully drawn and painted onto paper, she illuminated the world of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (formerly the Festival of American Folklife) as she saw it.

Astou Adje braids a young woman's hair during the 1990 Senegal program at the Festival of American Folklife. Lily Spandorf drawings, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution. 

My name is Erin Enos and I am a 2^nd year graduate student at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  This past summer, I had the pleasure of working with the artworks of the incredibly talented Lily Spandorf in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH).  When I first arrived at the Smithsonian on my first day, I did not know who Lily Spandorf was. That all changed one day when archivists Cecilia Peterson, Greg Adams, and I carefully laid out Lily’s artwork on an office table.  What we saw was incredible.  Laid out before us was a plethora of drawings Lily had done during her visits to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.  On numerous sheets of paper were sketches of men and women happily dancing in traditional dress from all over the world, musical bands playing guitars and banjos for on-looking crowds, and even simple scenes of Festival visitors enjoying wedges of watermelon. As a summer intern, it was my job to help to re-house, process, and describe Lily’s 750 pieces of art.

As I worked on processing the artwork, I also learned a little more about Lily herself.  She was born in Austria in 1914 and as she grew into a young lady, it was clear that she had real talent for art--an honors graduate of the Vienna Academy of Arts, she left Austria in 1938 to continue her art education at London’s St. Martin’s School of Art. She moved to Washington D.C.'s Dupont Circle neighborhood where she created  a huge body of work that included countless paintings and drawings of streetscapes from around the city; she intentionally sought out and painted many older buildings slated for demolition. Her work captured moments in time in her adopted city, where she spent the rest of her life until her passing in 2000.

Puppeteers put on puppet show for three children, date unknown. Lily Spandorf drawings, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Lily worked in a distinctive style.  Her mode of drawing was mostly in black ink, sometimes with splashes of watercolor and acrylic paint. My favorite piece of hers is a scene of two puppeteers putting on a small show for two or three children.  I love the detail that Lily put into the design of one the puppeteers' dress, the clothing and strings of the marionettes, and the playfulness and smiles of the laughing children’s faces.  If there were two words to describe her work, I would describe the art as “delightfully magical”.  It really is.

Valdur Tilk, woodworker from Elena, Estonia, at the 1998 Baltic Nations program. Lily Spandorf drawings, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

By the time my internship was over, it was amazing to me how fast the time went!  Working with Lily’s art was a pleasure and I truly wished for more time to work on the project. Although I was sad to leave the project, it made me very proud to know that I played a part in preserving Lily’s beautiful Festival art and the legacy that she left behind.  Fortunately, her collection is now accessible to the public online. It was the first digital collection released by the CFCH.  My wish is that others will enjoy and appreciate her talent and artwork as much as I did.  

Erin Enos
Intern
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections

Ice Cream! Come and get your Ice Cream.

We have been having some interesting weather of late here in the D.C. region. D.C. can be a very hot and humid place in the summer, but that doesn’t stop tourists from visiting this city or from buying ice cream that will inevitably melt down their fingers in the heat. How did hot countries and countries at the height of summer ever get ice cream without the benefit of modern day freezers?

Dwight Eisenhower eating an ice cream bar.  AC0451-0000037.tif
Good Humor Ice Cream Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Well, ice cream and “ice cream trucks” actually has a long history. It is believed that ice cream originated in China starting with rice being mixed with milk and then stuck in the snow to freeze. Later the upper classes sent servants into the mountains to get snow so that fruit and juices could be added, creating an early form of sorbet. Of course, the working class could not afford such indulgences.

In the late 17th century, was one of the first places in Europe to serve ice cream to the general public was Café Procope in Paris, but it was still for the upper echelon and not a wide spread treat. Several early American Presidents loved ice cream, including George Washington, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson who created his own vanilla ice cream recipe . At this point, ice cream was more common, but it was still reserved for special occasions.

Good Humor Vendor with Pushcart. Neg. No. 92-11719.
Good Humor Ice Cream Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. 

Ice cream treats received some assistance from Carol von Linde, who invented industrial refrigeration in the 1870s. This invention along with many from the industrial Revolution made it much easier to produce, transport, and store ice cream and many other perishable items. Soon new and different flavors followed including the invention of ice cream soda.

“Won't You Have an Ice Cream Soda with Me” Sheet Music. Catalog No. 1982.0745.04.
National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center. 

It was through the cafes of Paris that King Nasser uddin Shah, of Iran, first learned about ice cream, but it was his successor, Mozaffar uddin Shah, who brought bastani, or ice cream to Iran. Akbar Mashdi (Akbar Mashahdi Malayeri) was the first Iranian to vend ice creams. He was famous in Iran and was known as far afield in places such as Los Angeles and Paris. Mashdi was born in a remote village in 1868 and worked many different jobs before selling ice cream. One of his earlier jobs was transporting tea and sugar to northern cities and bringing back firewood to Tehran. Mashdi became friends with Mohammad Rish, who had ties with Mozaffar uddin Shah’s courtiers. This is how Mashdi became familiar with the tasty treat that is ice cream.

People at Maydan-I Mashq's ice cream cart in Tehran. FSA A.4 2.12.Sm.01.
Myron Bement Smith Collection: Antoin Sevruguin Photographs. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. Gift of Katherine Dennis Smith, 1973-1985. 

When Reza Shah came to power Reza Khan, Mohammad Rish, and Mashdi seized the moment to found the first ice cream shop in Iran. Rish only stayed in the ice cream business for two years, but Mashdi would sell ice cream for the rest of his life. Due to a lack of modern refrigeration, Mashdi worked a lot in the wintertime and in the mountains near Tehran. People, including, Mashdi had to use natural refrigeration. To preserve ice cream during the hot summer months, they would dig very deep holes. Everyone from commoners to courtiers purchased ice creams from Mashdi.

Lara Amrod, Archivist
Freer | Sackler Archives


References
History of Ice Cream (Bastani) in Iran by Ahmad Jalali Farahani, June 2004
The History of Ice Cream by Emily Upton June 16, 2013

The Story of the "Labat: A Creole Legacy" Quilt

Chance meetings can result in amazing things. In 2000, Artist Lori K. Gordon and 102-year-old Celestine Labat met at a Hancock County Historical Society luncheon where Labat was the featured speaker. Gordon writes of their meeting:

Completely captivated by the grace, composure and presence of Ms. Celestine Labat, I went home and immediately began making phone calls in order to arrange an introduction. Later that week, I made what was to be the first of many visits to her family home.

With Labat’s permission, Gordon began sketching and drawing her, then recording memories of Labat’s childhood and long life. The transcripts of Celestine Labat’s interviews are remarkable in their exquisite detail. Stories she told, along with pictures of her, her family, and community, became the art quilt titled Labat: A Creole Legacy. Measuring 7.5” x 9.5”, the quilt is composed of hundreds of photographs and lines of text transferred onto cloth squares, which are hand-sewn to a backing cloth. Lori Gordon’s art quilt was exhibited locally and in 2004 was donated to the Anacostia Community Museum along with the project records.

Lori K. Gordon
Visual artist Lori K. Gordon (1958- ) grew up in eastern South Dakota and moved to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where she met Celestine Labat. Her art reflects her engagement with social issues and her environment. Gordon’s work includes sculpture, collage, and painting, and has been collected worldwide. She is also the founder and president of Six Degrees Consortium, a nonprofit organization created to "enable the creation and dissemination of works of art that are socially relevant, timely, build bridges across cultures and that address the issues faced by humans in an ever-shrinking world." Gordon’s work can be found on her blog, where she has more information about the Labat Project.

The Life and Community of Celestine Labat
Celestine Vivian “Teenie” Labat (1898-2002), whose life provided material for the quilt, was born and raised in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, a Gulf Coast town with a large Creole community, both white and African American. Her family was of African, white, and Choctaw heritage. The family traced their name back to her grandfather, Joseph Labat I, who arrived in Convent, Louisiana, from Martinique. Celestine was the fifth of her parents’ thirteen children, two of whom died in infancy.


Labat grew up in a world without cars – automobiles did not arrive in the area until “the late teens or early twenties.” Labat’s deeply Catholic community celebrated holidays like Immaculate Conception Day (December 8th) and Assumption Day (August 15th), and did not celebrate the 4th of July or sing the national anthem. Her parent’s generation spoke French fluently; Labat’s generation was encouraged not to speak French, but used an English with many French and French-derived words for everyday things. Her family’s diet included the fish, crabs, oysters, and ducks that her father and brother caught and brought back for the family.

Detail from "Labat:  A Creole Legacy" by Bay St. Louis, Mississippi artist Lori K. Gordon.

Labat: A Creole Legacy

Project records, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Lori K. Gordon.

Celestine Labat’s education would have been limited to eighth grade due to racial discrimination, but she moved to Indianapolis and did domestic work in order to support herself while she finished high school. Her oldest sister Inez, who later became a school principal, supported the other Labat children in attaining the highest level of education they desired. Their education enabled them to meet several famous black leaders in education and civil rights. Labat recalls James Weldon Johnson coming to dinner, and a memory of staying a night in Mary McCleod Bethune’s house.

After graduation, she returned to Mississippi and became a secondary school teacher. She moved to Washington, DC, during WWII and received a bachelor’s degree in science from Howard University. She moved to San Antonio, Texas, then Los Angeles, California, where she got her master’s degree in education at the University of Southern California. She again returned to Mississippi and taught at St. Augustine Seminary for twenty years before retiring at age 72.

In her reminiscences, Labat talks frankly about the ways that racism affected her community, from the segregated seating of her local church, to losing homes to predatory white officials, to the unprosecuted murder of a family friend by a white man. Describing her sister Inez’ experience, Labat says:

 She had to ride in the colored coaches and in the backs of the buses. She was a schoolteacher and   very classy and she resented segregation. She resented it most in the Catholic Church; she didn’t want to go to St. Rose, she didn’t want segregation in the church so she kept going to Our Lady of the Gulf. We were born there, we made our first communion there. We were educated in the Catholic schools through the sixth grade, all of us, but there was some repugnance on her. We resented the segregation in the church too.

Labat did feel that significant social progress had been made on racism. Gordon spoke to her before she died, and recounts that

[Labat] felt a deep satisfaction that the color of a person’s skin no longer meant what it had for many of the years of her life. She said that as a young person, she never would have dreamed of seeing the day when she would have so many friends of all races.

Celestine Labat’s generosity in sharing her story turned a chance meeting with Gordon into a partnership to create a unique piece of art. “Labat: A Creole Legacy” is a window into one accomplished woman’s life, and into the proud history of a Gulf Coast Creole community.

Katie Seitz, Volunteer 2016
Anacostia Community Museum Archives