Profligate yardage - gowns by Jacques Griffe, 1950-59

The photographs here are by Willy Maywald, Regina Relang, Richard Avedon, and others.

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Griffe demonstrating his design method using a miniature mannequin. Photograph by Georges Saad, 1949.

Jacques Griffe (29 November 1909, Conques-sur-Orbiel - 24 June 1996, Castelnaudary), French couturier and costume designer. He first served as an apprenticeship for a tailor in Carcassonne, beginning at the age of sixteen, before relocating to Toulouse where he worked for Mirra, a dressmaker who followed the Paris collections. After fulfilling his military service in 1936, he went to work as a cutter with Madeleine Vionnet in Paris. In the three years spent under her supervision and mentorship, he perfected his technical skills, eventually following the example of Vionnet in his use of a miniature mannequin to work out his design ideas, and becoming a master of draping and cutting, particularly known for his tour de force execution of complicated - shirring, pleating, tucking, etc. - fabric manipulation.

In 1941 - or 1942, depending on the source - he opened his own couture house on place Gaillon. He was later mobilized though, captured, and spent eighteen months in a Pomeranian prison camp. After the war, he relocated his couture house to 29, rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and then moved once again, in 1951, when he took over Edward Molyneux's salon at 5, rue Royale. During this period he also, like other couturiers, became known for his fragrances, with names like Enthusiasme, Griffonnage, Mistigri, Doodle, and Grilou. He closed his business in 1968 - or 1973, depending on the source - and retired to Villesiscle, near Carcassonne. When he died, at the age of eighty-four, he was buried nearby in Conques-sur-Orbiel, the place of his birth.

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For even more of his designs, including daywear and less "floofy" gowns, visit this Flickr album.

Gemütlich zu Hause - domestic scene, German School, circa 1775-80

 

The work of an unknown German artist, this genre scene was formerly attributed to the painter Johann Eleazar Zeissig, known as Schenau (1737 - 1806). 

The flooring consists of weave-patterned panels alternating with those in a parquet de Versailles pattern, the latter not set at the customary forty-five degree angle.

In the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Brothers meeting in two dimensions - the staircase group of Charles Willson Peale, 1795

The original title of the double portrait was "Whole Length–Portraits of Two of His Sons on a Staircase."

Charles Willson Peale (15 April 1741, Chester, Province of Maryland - 22 February 1827, Philadelphia) painted this illusionistic portrait of two of his sons as a dramatic display of his own artistic skills. But it was also meant to recognize the important roles the two young men played in the family's private museum, the setting the painting was originally created for.

Raphaelle Peale (17 February 17 1774, Annapolis - 4 March 1825, Philadelphia), an important still-life painter.

Titian Ramsay Peale I (1780, Philadelphia - 18 September 1798, New York?), an ornithologist, entomologist, and artist.

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While the scrap of paper is fairly indecipherable to a modern viewer, a visitor in 1795 would easily recognize it as an entrance ticket to Peale’s Museum.

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The painting was acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945.

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"The Artist in His Museum", Peale's self-portrait at the age of eighty-one, 1822. In the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

First opened in 1784, the holdings of Peale’s Philadelphia Museum grew quickly and, to accommodate its expansion, they moved to the American Philosophical Society - America’s first scientific society - in 1794. The museum's collection was focused on natural history specimens - the skeleton of a mastodon was a particularly popular attraction - and portraits of "worthy personages", but also included a live menagerie, as well as hosting scientific lectures, technical demonstrations, and musical entertainments in the museum’s lecture hall. Never receiving government funding, the museum still continued to garner prestige, eventually securing the loan of the former Pennsylvania State House - now known as Independence Hall - in 1802.

Always subject to financial crises and changing public tastes, the museum and its two small branches - in Baltimore and New York - struggled into the nineteenth century, But the family was forced to sell the collection in 1849. Sans the portraits, the museum's vast holdings were sold to and divided up by showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball, nearly all of it eventually dispersed or lost in a series of fires. 

In 1854, the paintings were then also sold off, the largest single buyer being the City of Philadelphia, which purchased a group of Philadelphia Museum portraits for display in Independence Hall. The paintings continue to hang there, together, as in Peale’s time.

Divorce court Joan - bidding farewell to Fairbanks Jr., Tone, and Terry

 

12 May 1933 - So long, "Young Doug."

STAR ENACTS TRYING ROLE IN COURT Screen's Personification of American Girl Testifies, Wins Divorce

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11April 1939 - Adiós, Franchot.

Miss Crawford seems a little more jolly than would seem appropriate considering the setting and the circumstances.

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25 April 1946 - See you later, Phil! Not.

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Inscribed: Helen, Happy Trip. Love (or "from"?), Joan Crawford. Dressed in her divorce court toilette, I have to say this seems a very odd picture to sign.

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"Divorce court Joan" - I admit that pretty much the only reason for this post was as an excuse to use that cheeky title.