Month: February 2021

Wintertime

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

…and I’m still “snowed under” with research and writing.

So here’s another seasonal image from 19th-century America’s favorite printmakers, Currier and Ives:

Currier & Ives. Snowed Up: Ruffed Grouse in Winter. , ca. 1867. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001706217/ (cropped and edited for better color). Click to open larger image in a new window.

It’s a covey of ruffed grouse, sheltering under snow-covered firs. A scene like this would have been familiar to Peter Turck and his growing family in New York’s Hudson River valley, young Jonathan M. Clark in Vermont or Lower Canada, and the settlers in Mequon and points farther north and west.

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Snow!

/ Clark House Historian Reed Perkins. / 1 Comment

We got some snow in southeast Wisconsin over the weekend, and I’ve spent good parts of the past two days shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. (And then—of course—shoveling the driveway a second time after the city plow finally came through.) Of course, snow was a feature of Jonathan and Mary Clark’s time, too:

Currier & Ives. (1853) The road, winter / O. Knirsch, lith. United States, 1853. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/93511164/ (lightly retouched for color balance). Click to open larger image in new window.

We don’t know if the Clarks owned a sleigh while they lived in Mequon. I suspect they probably did, though their sleigh—and their clothing—may not have been quite as posh as those in this Currier & Ives lithograph from 1853.

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