Keepers of Tradition

A nice crowd gathered recently to watch and hear Harold A. Burnham talk about the tradition of using half hull models as design tools from Harold A. Burnham at the National Heritage Museum. He explained the process of sketching the model out on a block of wood, which is made of lifts. These lifts come apart and represent sections of the hull. “The shape of the model is the shape of the boat.”

Once chiseled and sanded to perfection, the lifts are taken apart and used to express a three-dimensional shape on a two-dimensional piece of paper. These lines are eventually scaled up to size on the moulding loft floor. Harold notes, “If you are an accomplished boat designer or have the experience  studying these lines, you can read the lines plan and know what the lines are saying.” (Sort of like a composer reading a score and hearing the piece of music in her head.) He goes on to say, “But the alternative is to just hold up a block of wood and say, “This is what it looks like.”

“What we’ve developed here is a series of points for the widths at the correct height. Then by connecting the dots, in a fair line, you can see the shape of the model. If you scale that up full scale, that shape is what you use to make the moulds to build the frames for the boat. Basically, we do what I just did when we’re lofting the boat, we do that full scale on what they call a mould loft floor. That’s how you use the half model.”

Photos by Maggie Holtzberg

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This soft sculpture was made by Jeanne Fallier, whose nimble fingers have produced hundreds of magnificent hooked rugs and soft sculptures. Happy Thanksgiving!

Photo by Jason Dowdle

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Ever wonder how shipwrights with little or no drafting skills designed large sailing vessels, like the one pictured above? A key tool was the half-hull model and it is still used today. It’s basically a model that, once perfected, can be taken apart and used to draw full-scale lines on the lofting floor.

Come hear wooden boat builder Harold A. Burnham explain this tradition which developed in Essex shipyards over 200 years ago.  Burnham will be giving an artist demonstration Saturday November 22 from 1:00 ;.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the National Heritage Museum. (Free event)

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Ever since hearing Grupo Canela at the National Heritage Museum on October 4th and learning that they perform each weekend at their family restaurant in Westfield, I wanted to go. This past Friday, four of us drove out from Boston. We arrived around 5:30 and decided to walk around downtown before going into the restaurant. With its wide streets and empty storefronts scattered in amongst the businesses, Westfield has the feel of a town that has seen some hard economic times.

Upon entering the restaurant, I introduce myself to a young woman behind the counter who turns out to be Alexa Santiago, the oldest daughter of the Santiago family. Welcoming and astonishingly cheery, she ends up doing the lion’s share of waiting tables and serving on this evening. She takes peoples orders like she is hosting a family meal. If someone asks for the restroom, she tells them, “You have to go through the kitchen, just like you’re at home.”  Alexa introduces me to Carmen Santiago, Ismael’s wife.

Born and raised in Corozal, Puerto Rico, Carmen and Ismael grew up and went to school together. Soon after graduating high school in 1967, they left Puerto Rico for Hartford, Connecticut in order to find work. After a few years, the Santiagos moved to Holyoke and eventually settled in Westfield. They have been running the restaurant in its current location since 1999. Like many immigrants, they had every intention of going home but with six children and seven grandchildren, they have built a life here.  “We thought we’d go back home,” Carmen says, “but the family grows.”

The restaurant’s décor is festive and full of intriguing artifacts - like a Puerto Rican version of Cracker Barrel. Colored glass lanterns and hanging coconuts, guitars, congas, and cuatros, maps of Puerto Rico, vintage beer signs, knick-knacks and figurines, and framed photos of Puerto Rican baseball players. Like many of the storefronts along Elm Street, this one has a pressed tin ceiling. There are only ten tables.  A few diners appear to be regulars. Some sit, others do take-out, including a local policeman on his beat.

The kitchen is visible from the dining room and the sounds and smells of cooking are enticing. Ismael has just taken a pork roast out of the oven, its fatty skin crisped to a golden brown. He lifts lids on giant skillets to reveal yellow rice and chicken fricassee. Ismael nods toward the later and inhales, “Ahh . . .that’s like dying and going to Heaven.”

By 6:45pm, Ismael is anxious to start playing. Beatriz grabs a microphone.  Josúe is out back somewhere, so a customer from the audience steps up to play bongos. By the next number, Josúe arrives and takes up the congas. They play from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. and then take a break. Listen to a live recording here.

This is the place to see this music. The food and music are inextricably linked. Everyone has a role - singing, playing percussion, taking orders, singing, preparing and serving food. The youngest of six, Marcos, is in his early twenties. He sings close harmony with his sister Beatriz, lovingly throws his arms around his mother’s neck, and helps out in the kitchen. Here you see him using a mortar and pestle to crush garlic, lime, and cooked plantain, which is served with a cold seafood salad. I ask Carmen about recipes - Beatriz answers, “They are more of our country, than just our family.”

Santiago’s Family Restaurant is located at 34 Franklin Street in Westfield, Massachusetts. The live music is only on Friday and Saturday evenings. Phone: 413.562.0210

Photographs by Maggie Holtzberg

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It is heartening news to learn that Bill Ivey has been appointed to lead the Obama transition team with responsibility for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Ivey has had a distinguished career as a folklorist. He currently directs the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, and has served as director of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. He is past president of the American Folklore Society, and chair of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 to 2001.

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A native of Puerto Rico, Ismael Santiago has been living in western Massachusetts for nearly 30 years. For the past 12 of them, he has led Grupo Canela, a family band which plays jibaro music. This style of folk music — a blend of Spanish, West African, and Taino influences, first developed in the rural, mountainous interior of Puerto Rico. Grupo Canela also plays salsa. Ismael and his family run Santiago’s Family Restaurant in Westfield, Massachusetts, which offers authentic Puerto Rican food. On Friday and Saturday evenings, members of the nine-piece group come out of the kitchen, play a couple of pieces, and then go back in to continue cooking and serving. After a certain point, they all come out to play again, until late into the night.

We coaxed members of Grupo Canela to not only come out of the kitchen, but onto the stage at the National Heritage Museum earlier last month. Their set was a big hit at the concert we held in conjunction with our ongoing exhibition, Keepers of Tradition: Art and Folk Heritage in Massachusetts. Listen to a taste of Grupo Canela here (5MB) playing “Son de la Loma.”

Next on the docket is a trip out to Santiago’s Family Restaurant to hear and taste this cultural experience in its locale.

Have a comment? Send me an email maggie.holtzberg@state.ma.us

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When most people hear the word “typecast,” they probably think of acting. But in fact, type was (and is still) cast in metal for use in printing. This centuries-old technology is alive and well at Firefly Press in Brighton, Massachusetts thanks to printer John Kristensen. Clients that come to Firefly Press are fans of traditional craft.  John explains, “They like the look of letterpress printing, which is not only the bite into the paper, but also the typographic sensibility that comes from using actual metal type rather than plastic printing plates.”

At Firefly, the majority of type used in printing is generated using Monotype and Linotype typecasters — wondrous, complicated, mechanical devices perfected in the late 1880s. Once the industry standard, they have been largely replaced by computer typesetting — also known as “cold type.” In “hot lead” typesetting, molten lead is formed into individual or lines of type on these machines.  Below we see Jesse Marsolais working at the keyboard of a Linotype. Near the bottom left, you can see the “lines” of metal type that the machine has cast.

In a letterpress shop like this one, the design of a printed piece develops through the maniputaion of physical materials. John elucidates why working with tangible letterforms can be so gratifying, “. . . it is just that it is so satisfying to do. It is so direct, it is so hands on, it is so immediate. You learn so much and you communicate so much through your fingers: the wisdom of hands.”

Firefly has earned the reputation of printing finely designed work that is always appropriate for its purpose — broadsides, business cards, certificates, stationery, and what John calls special occasion printing. By this he means printing that is celebratory and purposeful – like announcing the birth of a child or thanking the people who have just given millions of dollars to your museum.

In addition to being a talented printer, John is a wonderful speaker. He will be giving a lecture (free & open to the public) next March. For a link to that event, visit the American Printing History Association.

Have a comment? Send me an email: maggie.holtzberg@state.ma.us

Photos by Maggie Holtzberg

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Last week we headed out to Worcester County to meet Joseph Johns, a.k.a. Cayoni, a Muscogee Indian who is reputed to be the last practicing, (if not last surviving) traditional Muscogee Creek woodcarver in the United States today. Here you see him holding one of his carvings — a green corn mask which is used in the Muscogee Green Corn Ceremony.  Johns explains that the festival is usually held around the first of June because the corn is beginning to ripen.

“[The greencorn masks] are carried in your hand and rested on your shoulder. See? And you kind of dance in a procession of people. It’s a very festive time of year because the fires are all extinguised in the village — every fire goes out. They pour water on them.  And they start the festival. No fire is lit until it’s over. And all things are forgiven.”

Though Joseph Johns has lived in Massachusetts for nearly 60 years, he was raised on an island in Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. It was there he learned traditional carving from his grandfather, Tahoma.  It is important to Johns that you know his Indian name, “Cayoni” which means bad weather. On the night  he was born, a freak storm brought high winds and snow — an unusual weather pattern for southeast Georgia.

Below is a traditional woodcarving Johns created around thirty years ago.  Made of cypress wood with elkhorn eyes, the carving symbolizes the trials of the Trail of Tears.

“When the army removed the people from the Okefenokee Swamp [forcing them to march] to Oklahoma, they were told there would be buffalo, antelope, all kinds of animals out there for them to eat when they got there. That was during the Trail of Tears March. When the people got to Oklahoma, the only thing out there was a few poor jack rabbits and an antelope or two, and no buffalo. So the people wound up eating their horses and their dogs and their cats, and every damn thing that had followed them out there to Oklahoma. And somebody created this design; instead of it having the buffalo horns come up, they turned down because it was a sad occasion and they had been lied to . . . it’s an old design.”

As if being the last in a line of Muscogee woodcarvers isn’t rare enough, Johns also has a singular military history. When he was only fifteen years old, the navy came around looking to recruit Muscogee men to serve in World War II.  Johns’ exceptional marksmanship was too good for the Navy to pass up. A career military man and Native Veteran, Johns went on to serve in the Normandy Invasion and Korean War, and did two tours in Vietnam, before retiring from the military. He then spent six years in the Delta Force. As if that weren’t enough, he survived being bitten by a venomous snake (which blinded him for four days) and he chain smokes. Clearly, a man with nine lives.

Now enjoying his retirement, Joseph Johns and his wife live in bucolic New Salem, Massachusetts.

Have a comment? Send me an email: maggie.holtzberg@state.ma.us

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Gneal Widett has been making handcarved signs since 1975. He just let me know that the third generation Gary Drug sign is “swinging in the breeze” so I went to take a peak. The gold leaf work is done by Gneal’s wife Janet Lomartire. Store employee Eileen Fitzpatrick has been working at Gary Drug since 1976 — she says Gneal’s craftmanship and independent business [in an age of chains] are the same idea as their business, which was established in 1939. “We’ve known Gneal since his business was across the street.” Widett has since moved his shop from Charles Street, but an impressive number of his handwrought signs grace this Beacon Hill street.

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