Contents
Page One:
Celebrating the Alaska Centennial with Pyrography from the Gold Rush
Page Two:
Tom Schulz: In the Spirit of Alaska Today
Mystery Corner: Researching a Rare Pyro Work on Velvet
Announcing Two New Websites
- Denise Needham
- Jordan Tierney
Vern Robinson Asks for Our Help
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Alaska |
As announced in the last issue of WOM, The University of Alaska Museum, located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is hosting until March 24, 2002, a special exhibition entitled:
Burned Into Memory: Images of Alaska through Historic Pyrography
The pieces displayed, according to Dawn Biddison, Guest Curator of this
exhibit, " ... show the depth and diversity of the Museum's
collections and the Rasmuson Library archives as well as the support of
Fairbanks residents."
"Pyrography has a long history as a decorative technique outside
the United States and became a popular hobby in America in the early
1900s with the availability of pyrographic kits and materials. Alaskans
adapted the technique ... [to burn] images onto moose hide and birch
bark. They used pyrography to decorate personal and household items,
create vacation mementos, illustrate Alaskan scenes, commemorate events,
and honor organizations.
Fairbanks residents have made and displayed pyrography in [their] homes
and around the community since the turn of the last century."
The University
of Alaska Museum, has as its mission the acquisition and
conservation of biological, geological, and cultural collections related
to Alaska and the Circumpolar North, making it a singular and valuable
public resource.
Two architectural teams--from Alaska and Minnesota--joined forces to
design a bold modern building to house the Museum's ever expanding
collection, research, and cultural events. Follow the web link here and
on their website to see the design models and read about their concept
for the new building, which is bound to be a tourist attraction itself.
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Husky Guarding the Gold |
Gold was found in Alaska in 1896. The Klondike Gold Rush started in
1897 when a million dollars worth of gold from there docked in Seattle
(in the State of Washington in the northwest corner of the 48 contiguous
United States).
In 1900, Wyatt Earp and many others were heading for the Klondike when
the cold weather set in. They had to postpone their journey and
wintered in Rampart. By spring, word reached them there that gold had
been discovered in Nome, so he and many of the other people changed
course and set out for Nome in the spring instead. He settled there and
eventually ran a saloon.
In 1902, gold was found in Fairbanks, and a rush started there in 1903.
The last big strike was in 1910, in Iditarod (now famous for the annual
dog sled race), northwest of Fairbanks, between Fairbanks and Nome.
Thousands lived in Iditarod. A bank opened there in 1910, which shut
down in 1927. Today, there is no building whatsoever in Iditarod. Most
of the Gold Rush towns are ghost towns now.
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Display Case |
"Alaskana" collector Candy
Waugaman is one of the principal lenders for the University of
Alaska Museum Fairbanks exhibit, not to mention for most of the
background material in this article.
Phoenix to Fairbanks. Candy's expertise in things Alaska came
about as a result of a trip to the 49th State some 33 years ago at the
recommendation of her brother who had a wonderful experience working
there summers. Candy traveled from Phoenix to Alaska to stay for a
month and she never looked back. Her friend who accompanied her on that
trip so long ago left within the planned month, but Candy says,
"I'm here for the duration. Fairbanks is the only town left in
America where, when it's -30 degrees, it's against the law not to pick
up a hitchhiker. Sort of like that feeling!"
"Fairbanks (unlike Phoenix and your town)," Candy says,
"also has the widest
temperature range in the WORLD, from 70 below [zero Fahrenheit] to 98
above, so you see everything here. Spring and fall are beautiful, but
too short, summer is perfect, and then there's winter!"
Starting the collection. Candy says that she has always been a
collector of everything; however, her husband of 24+ years has limited
her collecting to Alaskana. Notwithstanding, she has managed admirably
and owns some 70,000 items of Alaska memorabilia. She owns a dozen
moosehides including one of the two displayed on this page. She has
found many on e-bay. She owns one very special one that wasn't included
in the museum exhibit--a wallhanging with four sides of fringe that had
hung in the town of Dawson. Included in the pyrographed picture are
real gold nuggets glued on the moosehide.
Of the 70,000 items, the bulk of the collection consists of 22,000
postcards and 25,000 photographs. With some exceptions, Candy's
collection is almost all housed in their spacious home. She gave one of
her moosehides to the Anchorage Museum. (Because Anchorage was a
railroad town, never a mining town, that area lacks most of the Gold
Rush items found in some of the other towns there.) Other pieces are on
loan to restaurants, the city museum, and the University of Alaska
Fairbanks Museum.
As this article goes to press, Candy just returned to Fairbanks from
Anchorage where she chairs the Alaska Historical Society.
Many of Candy's items from the museum exhibit can be seen also in the E-Museum Alaska Salon
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Nome Souvenir |
Excerpts from exhibit notes explain Reclamation Art this way: "The
two 'Reclamation' scene wall hangings [one below and another in the E-Museum]
depict a moose in the foreground of an abandoned camp--log cabin, cache,
well--reclaimed by nature. [Also exhibited is a] cigar band table
[that] has pyroengraved floral decoration on the legs and [again] a
panel with a "Reclamation" scene. ...
Man's relationship to nature and environmental issues were important in
the past and are still important today."
Candy Waugaman elaborated saying that Reclamation Art came to be an
Alaskan tradition. Reclamation pieces almost uniformly exhibited the
traditional elements mentioned above of a moose coming upon the scene of
an abandoned camp with mining or trapping equipment left behind, the
cache, and a deteriorated log cabin. The miner's or trapper's cache
was a specially designed container placed outside to store their food
and keep it safe from animals.
"Artists made these Reclamation pieces the most," Candy
explained, "for the simple reason that they were the most popular
with customers."
Although it has some elements in common with the Reclamation
pieces, note that the joyous fringed wallhanging at the top (entitled
"Alaska") is distinguished from the Reclamation pieces in that
the camp, first of all, does not appear abandoned or deteriorated. It
is instead a piece of memorabilia, adorned with symbols and even two
indigenous totem poles that are typical of southeast Alaska outside of
the Gold Rush region.
Other than their art work, very little is known about the most prominent
artists of the Gold Rush pyrographs.
William Betzeler. An accompanying poster at the exhibit has the
following to say about this artist who rendered the Reclamation piece below:
"According to his January 10, 1942 obituary in the
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner,
"Moose Bill" Betzeler,
was a sign painter by occupation and known throughout
the North for his moose hide works,
particularly reclamation scenes."
Max Kollm. left Dawson for Fairbanks in 1909.
Lawrence Thimme. left Dawson for Fairbanks in 1905.
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Reclamation |
Reclamation Art and its popularity seem the most striking aspect of this
exhibit. It is very revealing that people back at the beginning of the
twentieth century, who, by our standards today had essentially no
technology, could be concerned with their own invasion of nature. We
view their art work today while peering back in time to see them as one
with nature, adapting to that harsh environment in a way such that their
presence there seems almost imperceptible.
Before the terminology of "environmental issues" was in vogue,
and before massive invasive technologies like oil wells and oil spills
were a reality, that people would be in such admiration of the Alaskan
wilderness in all its magnificence and be concerned that it might
somehow be destroyed and lost forever, seems remarkable.
How fortunate for us that some of them thought to burn into
memory both the look and the sentiment of the moment.
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2002, Kathleen M. Garvey Menéndez, all rights reserved.
