JPK Huson 1863
Brev. Brig. Gen'l
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Location
- Central Pennsylvania
By buying a silk painting of females drooping over George Washington's tomb you, too, could participate in mourning this King among common men. Perhaps it's been erroneous of us picking on Victorians as our dark ancestors, seemingly obsessed by death and all that lay beyond those chilly portals. A kind of import from across the Pond, this indicator one's life had been visited by death ( and you better like it ) had been around before Victoria's parents were twinkles in her grandparents' eyes.
LoC has quite a few confusing images Id been ignoring. Their section containing wares one could order straight from the printer shows us a genesis in death merchandise. Once the province of those who could afford the trappings of woe via laboriously painted silk memorials of willows, tombstones, mourners and the ominous churchyard in the backyard, now lithographs made pre-ordering generic, fill in the blank memorials possible.
Fill-In-The-Blank seems so ruthless but in a time of war, well, it was just, plain business.
I'd like to point out. as dreary as our ancestors could be on the topic of death these memorials really are quite lovely. Seems a poignant way of reminding us who it is we've lost and whose presence is missing from our home in these days of having made death an antiseptic process. And prospect.
Read somewhere this practice had died out by the time of the Civil War- and untrue statement. If ever a market would flourish, between Victorian sentimentalism and mass death, it would be this.
Memorial for John, a soldier killed while fighting in the 18th OVI, Pinterest
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