While I am a little bit of a late-comer to Sepia Saturday, it’s pretty impressive that they’ve had 250 Saturdays of prompts! Joining in on the fun has been great for me – it keeps me actively blogging and actively working on the thousands of photos in the collection. I’m not kidding, thousands. I really need to get together a post on the entirety of the big trunk one of these days because it’s SUCH a gem, but that’s something for another post. Today I’ve decided to explore hand-coloring to fit in with the theme.
But wait! That’s not a hand-colored photo? What gives?! I’ve never quite seen anything like this before, so I wanted to share it. The boys in the photo appear to be
Alfred Herbert Powis and
Earl William Powis, Sr dated probably at about 1900 judging on the apparent ages of the two boys. They don’t look terribly amused, and the older boy, Alfred, is shooting daggers at someone just to camera right. They’re set up to roll those hoops with sticks which was a
popular kids game over the course of many centuries. On the back of the photo are specific orders for reprints including instructions for hand coloring! I’ve modified the color/contrast to make the back easier to read, but as far as I can tell, it goes like this,
Nov 6.
Mrs. Alfred Powis
Blaine City, PA
Bust of both 20×16. Hair both golden light. Eyes blush gray. Very fair complexion. Cheeks pink. White waists. Little boys coat blue, largest boy coat gray trimmed with brown. Don’t have largest boys looking down much and make face angle & light.
It’s probably not a perfect transcription of the very faded pencil on the back, and the initials at the bottom “WH” don’t match the photographer. Instead of a photographic reprint, perhaps their mother was having painted or artistic renderings done from the photo. I never have found the reproductions made from this photo, but it’s neat to be able to see what the colors of their jackets were in the written record.
Here’s the hand-colred image! This is of my grandmother, Norma Innocenti probably when she was about 15, so around 1936. The colors used seem to be blue, pink, and green – pretty simple, but I’m sure it was an expense when times were difficult, to have an image reprinted and hand-colored. There are so few photos of my grandmother when she was young since that side of the family wasn’t big into pictures. Check out those shoes with the striped socks and printed dress! I love it! None of the other photos from this side of the family are colored in like this, so the photo is rather unique. I’m told that there were never photos hanging on the wall or anywhere in the house while my grandmother was growing up. It just wasn’t something they did. Compare that to the family for the boys above that comes with thousands of photos, and my collection is REALLY lopsided. However, that means that the few photos we do have from my grandmother’s family are extra special.
Meal 20. Meal TWENTY. Thanks to the husband’s big interest in One Local Summer and his culinary creativity, we’ve pushed well past the goal of 14 meals and made it to twenty meals with still more planned. He’s back home again and decided to work up a meal he remembers fondly from his childhood. His mom was regularly cooking for a table set for 10 or more people, so recipes that were cost effective and served lots of people at once were the standard. This is called Hutspot, a Dutch meal consisting of mashed carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and topped with bacon. It actually dates back to the 1500s in Holland and was no doubt a part of Doug’s paternal family that came over from Holland in the 1950s. History and dinner! I’ll admit that it’s kind of bland (that’s the point though) but the bacon on top is a nice touch and the use of root vegetables means you could’ve likely made this most of the winter as well when fresh vegetables were scarce (pre-electricity). Perfect time of year to introduce this into our One Local Summer set of meals. On to the ingredients!
