Spring/Summer 2009

SPRING/SUMMER 2009
Connecting with the
Legacy of Sam Maloof
HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE
THE HUNTINGTON REVIVES THE RANCH
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
The Huntington Library, Art Collections,
and Botanical Gardens
FROM THE EDITOR
TAKING MEASURE
SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON
STEVEN S. KOBLIK
President
GEORGE ABDO
Vice President for Advancement
JAMES P. FOLSOM
Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens
KATHY HACKER
Executive Assistant to the President
SUSAN LAFFERTY
Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education
SUZY MOSER
Assistant Vice President for Advancement
JOHN MURDOCH
Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections
ROBERT C. RITCHIE
W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research
LAURIE SOWD
Associate Vice President for Operations
ALISON D. SOWDEN
Vice President for Financial Affairs
SUSAN TURNER-LOWE
Vice President for Communications
DAVID S. ZEIDBERG
Avery Director of the Library
MAGAZINE STAFF
Editor
MATT STEVENS
Designer
LORI ANN ACHZET
Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by
the Office of Communications. It strives to connect
readers more firmly with the rich intellectual life of
The Huntington, capturing in news and features the
work of researchers, educators, curators, and others
across a range of disciplines.
INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS:
Matt Stevens, Editor
Huntington Frontiers
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
huntingtonfrontiers@huntington.org
W
ITH THE REOPENING OF THE VIRGINIA STEELE SCOTT
Galleries of American Art in May,The Huntington has
combined two buildings—the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery
and the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery—into one
expanded space for displaying its growing collection.Visitors who choose to view
the works chronologically might end their visit by walking through the doorway
of a large room and seeing Sam Maloof ’s Double Music Stand and Musician’s
Chair (1972) and the monumental Free Floating Clouds (1980) by Sam Francis.
The massive canvas by Francis—a recent acquisition measuring 10 by 21
feet—takes up a fair amount of space in a transformed venue for American art
that is more than double its previous size.The scale of Maloof ’s furniture seems
to take advantage of the new surroundings; the woodworker made the stand with
two racks at the request of his client, a violist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic
who wanted to accommodate a second musician. Even the chair comes with
plenty of leg and elbow room.
While there is more than enough open space to view the massive Francis
painting unobstructed, curators Jessica Todd Smith, Kevin Murphy, and Harold
Nelson—along with exhibition designer Stephen Saitas—invite visitors to
allow more than one work to occupy their lines of vision as they walk through
the galleries.
Sam Maloof was mindful of the connections between seemingly disparate
works.The woodworker, who died May 21 at the age of 93, was a passionate
collector of all kinds of art in various media—ceramics, glass, paintings, sculpture,
and folk and tribal art.Writer Joyce Lovelace (page 12) met with Maloof in
January when he was still busy at work, reminiscing about past projects and his
friendships with clients and fellow artists.With his loan of the music stand and
chair, along with some works that he collected over the years, Maloof shared a
legacy that celebrates the sense of community that can be found in making and
enjoying art. Maloof ’s double music stand—functional for a solo performance
or duet—serves to remind viewers of the woodworker’s individual mastery of
his craft and the collaborative spirit that infused it.
MATT STEVENS
Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography provided
by The Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services.
Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc.
City of Industry, Calif.
© 2009 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and
Botanical Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction
or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without
permission of the publisher is prohibited.
Opposite page, upper left: Karl Benjamin (b. 1925), Number 4, 1968, oil on canvas, gift of Donald M.
Treiman, in memory of his mother, Joyce Treiman. Right: Detail from a crate label for Cactus Brand Oranges,
Highland Fruit Growers Association, printed by Western Lithographic Co., 1916. Bottom: Detail from
Thomas M’keevor, A Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, During the Summer of 1812 (London, 1819).
[
Contents
VOLUME 5, ISSUE 1
SPRING/SUMMER 2009
12
NORTHERN EXPOSURE 7
Henry Hudson’s first journey to the North Pole
By Peter C. Mancall
MAKING CONNECTIONS 12
The craftsmanship of Sam Maloof lends something
special to the Scott Galleries of American Art
By Joyce Lovelace
BACK TO THE FUTURE 18
Reviving a working ranch at
The Huntington
By Matt Stevens
7
18
D E PA R T M E N T S
ON REFLECTION: History as obsession
By William Deverell 2
FRESH TAKE: Waterford Wedgwood in the red
By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell 5
IN PRINT: Recommended reading 24
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
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]
Fueled by Obsession
BALANCING THE ROLES OF FATHER AND HISTORIAN
by William Deverell
A
T HOME ONE AFTERNOON, I ASKED MY
eight-year-old daughter to cut out a large circle,
paper-doll style, and she obliged. It’s the kind
of art project she likes to do.When Helen held
up her craftwork, I caught my breath.At 14 inches in diameter, the circle was the size of the mouth of the well that
Kathy Fiscus fell into 60 years ago. It’s one thing to know
the dimensions; it’s something else entirely to see them
before your eyes.
Perhaps you know the story. Late one spring afternoon
in 1949, three-year-old Kathy was playing with her sister
and two cousins in the field adjacent to her family’s home
in San Marino. All of a sudden, the older children noticed
that Kathy had disappeared.They quickly realized that she
had tumbled down an old well that lay hidden in the weeds.
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Spring/Summer 2009
Over the next 48 hours that well and that beautiful little
girl in a pink dress would become known across the nation
and the world.
I’m obsessed with the Kathy Fiscus story. On more than
one occasion, I’ve strapped my son John onto the back of
my bicycle and ridden over to San Marino High School. It’s
there, beneath the western end of the football field, where
the well once snaked down hundreds of feet into the earth.
When I drive my car along the backstreets of San Marino
north of Huntington Drive—Robles, Santa Anita,Winston—
I think of Kathy Fiscus.When I look at my children, I think
of Kathy Fiscus.
Obsession works to the historian’s advantage. It fuels
research.A few years ago I started exploring the story, poring
over newspaper clippings, land deeds, and irrigation maps
[ ON REFLECTION ]
that showed wells peppered all over the San Gabriel Valley.
I visited water companies, and I talked to people who knew
a great deal about wells. I found out that a work crew
employed by Henry Huntington’s Land and Improvement
Co. dug the ill-fated well way back in 1904, probably to
draw water out of the robust Raymond Aquifer to water
nearby citrus trees.The well, and the land it watered, were
later sold.The well eventually fell into disuse, and a wooden
cap was placed atop it. But that cap had been knocked loose
by a plow or a mower not long before Kathy’s terrifying
plunge on April 8, 1949.
Mere facts seem woefully inadequate when woven with
the compelling narrative of the event.When rescuers arrived
at the scene, Kathy’s faint cries could be heard deep in the
well. Her mother and her aunt called down to her. “Can
you hear me, Kathy?” “Are you standing up, Kathy?” “Are
you lying down, Kathy?”
ing to help, labored alongside heavy machinery in the feverish rescue attempt. Fireman uncoiled an air hose down the
well in hopes of supplying Kathy with oxygen.Water seeped
again and again into the rescue shafts and had to be pumped
out.The shafts threatened to cave in more than once, as
workers fought against big boulders and the sandy, wet soil
of San Marino. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of people
streamed to the site, some just because they were curious,
Kathy Fiscus with her older sister, Barbara, in a family photograph the year
before her death. The rescue scene (opposite) on April 9, 1949, the day after
Kathy fell into a well in San Marino. Both photos courtesy of Rick Castberg.
Hundreds, and probably
thousands, of people streamed
to the site, some just because
they were curious, others to
keep silent vigil as the work
continued.
Rescuers determined that Kathy had fallen 90 feet. Given
that tiny opening at the well’s mouth, getting her out was
going to be extraordinarily difficult. Rescue efforts proceeded along two paths: one laborious, the other more or
less just strange.While machinery and men dug two possible rescue holes adjacent to the well, experts proposed,
contemplated, and abandoned other strategies. Maybe a
giant suction device could pull her up. Maybe the well
could slowly be filled with water—or sand—and Kathy
would somehow magically float to the surface. Or perhaps
a dwarf, a jockey from Santa Anita, or a circus thin man
could be lowered head first in order to reach Kathy nine
stories below.
Those schemes weren’t going to work. Nor was Kathy
able to loop around herself the slip-knotted ropes lowered
down to her. She would have to be dug out from where she
was trapped. For 48 hours, well over a hundred men, almost
all of them volunteers who had shown up at the site wantHUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
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[ ON REFLECTION ]
others to keep silent vigil as the work continued.Television—
newfangled and just starting to exercise a hold on popular
imagination—caught most of the drama, as two local TV
stations more or less invented remote live broadcasting right
there adjacent to the well.
In the end, it was all for naught.When rescuers finally
tunneled their way over to the well and cut a window into
it, Kathy was dead. She probably died not long after falling
in. Some claimed that she had drowned, but the official
cause of death was suffocation: wedged into the tight well
casing, she’d simply lost consciousness and died. Deep down
in the rescue shaft, one of the rescue workers dressed Kathy
in a romper suit “onesie” and wrapped her body in a blanket
for the slow ascent to the top.
I know it’s the father in me that explains part of my
obsession with this unbearably sad event. I’ve known about
Kathy Fiscus for a long time; you can’t study California
history without eventually encountering the event. But it
wasn’t until several years ago, when Helen was three and I
figured out how close the well was to our house—and to
The Huntington—that the drama began to exert its powerful hold on me.
To be sure, my obsession is also scholarly. My training
taught me that there’s much to learn from events of disaster
or tragedy. Societies, communities, and families alike are
peeled back by stress, and scholars can see human behavior
and motives laid more bare than usual.Why, I wonder, in
The empty swing in the Fiscus yard, photographed by Leigh Wiener, 1949.
Courtesy of Devik Wiener.
the face of other equally tragic events, did this episode grab
hold of the local, regional, national, and even international
imagination? What can the Kathy Fiscus story tell us about
Southern California—or the San Gabriel Valley or San
Marino—in the immediate postwar era? What can I learn
about the event by painstakingly piecing together its details,
chronology, and the intricacies of the many lives and personalities involved?
I know it’s the father in me that
explains part of my obsession
with this unbearably sad event.
In my attempt to answer these questions I have also grappled with the age-old question all historians must confront:
When do you let go of the research and get down to the
business of writing? Now several years into it, my research
has extended to oral interviews. I recently sat down with the
son of the late photographer Leigh Wiener, the man who,
as an 18-year-old, shot what I think is the most indelible
image of the era: Kathy’s empty swing hanging from a tree
in the Fiscus yard. A few months back I met with one of
the rescue workers; Clyde Harp helped me interpret the
event from his own participation in it. It was Clyde who cut
into the pipe that had trapped Kathy. And scholar Rick
Castberg, a political science professor at the University of
Hawaii, a man perhaps as obsessed with the event as I am,
sent me his research notes, tapes of oral interviews, and
additional photographs from the scene; his generosity and
collegiality seem to be his way of passing his obsession on
to me. I’ve also given talks on the Fiscus event to a few
scholarly or other groups.
Not long ago, a close friend asked about my fixation on
Kathy Fiscus. I tried to explain that this was a passing interest, and he’d have nothing of it. “You’re going to have to
write a book about it,” he told me.
He probably is right. Maybe this obsession becomes a
book. But that’s likely to close one chapter, and only one
chapter, of the hold this event has on me. Book or not, I
doubt I’ll ever shake it. William Deverell is professor of history, University of Southern
California, and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on
California and the West. In March, he delivered the 2009 Haynes
Foundation Lecture at The Huntington: “Little Girl Lost:The
Kathy Fiscus Tragedy.”Visit www.huntington.org and enter the
keyword “Fiscus” to listen to a podcast of the talk.
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Spring/Summer 2009
[ FRESH TAKE ]
Thrown for a Loop
A RESILIENT POTTERY COMPANY FACES
TRYING TIMES
by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
T
his past winter,Waterford Wedgwood found
itself teetering on the edge of bankruptcy like
a ceramic vase poised to topple from its shelf.
A mainstay of bridal registries, the distinctive
earthenware is equally at home in museums around the
world, including The Huntington. Now owned by an Irish
firm, the once-venerable pottery manufactory was founded
by Englishman Josiah Wedgwood in 1759. As the company
struggles for survival, visitors to The Huntington can appreciate what a great loss its demise would be.A look at the firm’s
history reveals that the current crisis is just the most recent
of several that Wedgwood has overcome in its 250 years.
The story of Wedgwood is one of the great personal and
professional triumphs of the 18th century. Born in 1730 into
a family of potters, Josiah Wedgwood started working at the
age of nine as a thrower, a craftsman who shaped pottery on
a potter’s wheel. Smallpox weakened his right leg, ending
his career as a thrower, for he could no longer operate the
pedal of the wheel. Instead,Wedgwood took up modeling,
devising new forms so innovative and appealing that many
of them still are produced today. In 1759, he opened his own
factory near his Staffordshire hometown, Stoke-on-Trent.
Wedgwood married traditional craftsmanship with
progressive business practices and contemporary design.
He employed leading artists, including the sculptor John
Flaxman, whose Shield of Achilles is in the Huntington
collection, along with his Wedgwood vase depicting Ulysses
at the table of Circe. As sturdy as they were beautiful,
Wedgwood products made high-quality earthenware
available to the middle classes.
As the company struggles
for survival, visitors to The
Huntington can appreciate
what a great loss its demise
would be.
Today,Wedgwood is virtually synonymous with
Jasperware, an unglazed vitreous stoneware produced from
barium sulphate. It is usually pale blue, with separately
molded white reliefs in the neoclassical style. Jasperware’s
distinctiveness and popularity meant that it was frequently
copied.The Huntington collection includes a French chest
of drawers decorated with blue and white imitation
Wedgwood plaques made by the Sèvres porcelain manufactory in the early 1790s.
The London showroom of Wedgwood and Byerley, as the firm was known from 1790 to 1810. From Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, etc.
London: R. Ackermann, 1809–28. Vol. 1.
[ FRESH TAKE ]
While Jasperware continues to be quite popular and still
is produced by Wedgwood, the pieces in The Huntington’s
collection are rare 18th-century examples. “The quality of
the early pieces is certainly superior in terms of the rendering of fine details,” says Curator of European Art
Catherine Hess. “They were innovative in terms of design
as well as technique.”
Wedgwood’s black basalt wares, introduced in 1768, were
made from a reddish-brown clay that developed a finegrained, matte black surface when fired.The material tapped
into the popular passion for all things classical by imitating
ancient Greek pottery, and was sometimes even painted
with classical friezes in red. Along with the Jasperware,The
Huntington’s black basalt pieces capture the “nostalgia for
antiquity that you see throughout the galleries, often developed on the Grand Tour,” the extended continental vacation
young Englishmen took to complete their educations, Hess
says. “The blue and white is evocative of ancient cameos,
and the black basalt pieces are decorated with ancient motifs
like ram’s heads and acanthus leaves.”The Wedgwood pieces
also provide a fascinating British counterpoint to The
Huntington’s extensive holdings of French Sèvres porcelain
vases and useful wares, Hess adds.
After Josiah’s death in 1795, the family firm struggled.
At London’s Great Exhibition of 1851, it became obvious
that Wedgwood had fallen behind its competitors in both
taste and quality. Minton, a rival company, dominated the
exhibition with its majolica, a new type of earthenware in
brilliant colors and whimsical shapes inspired by the maiolica
ceramics of 15th- and 16thcentury Italy and France. In a
bid to boost sales,Wedgwood
quickly added majolica to its
product line.
When the Huntington Art
Gallery reopened last year, visitors got their first glimpse of
several newly acquired pieces of
Wedgwood majolica from the
Kadison family’s gift of some
50 choice pieces from the
Wedgwood collection that Carita
and Stuart Kadison assembled
Gifts from the Kadison Family Trust include
two majolica items: a jardinière with its
pedestal (left) and a quatrefoil cachepot.
Both are tin-glazed earthenware manufactured in the late 19th century by Josiah
Wedgwood and Sons, Ltd., in Stoke-onTrent, England.
6
Spring/Summer 2009
over many years. A colossal red and gold jardinière (a kind
of ornamental flower pot) on a matching pedestal dominates the galleries of 19th-century British art. A plate in
the shape of a flounder, a strawberry dish ornamented
with strawberry leaves, and a vase resembling an ear of
corn are just a few examples of the imaginative majolica
designs Wedgwood produced.
In 1860, the firm hired the French painter Émile Aubert
Lessore, a student of Ingres, who had worked for France’s
Sèvres porcelain manufactory before moving to England,
where he was briefly employed by Minton. At Wedgwood,
Lessore was free to experiment with new glazes, forms, and
techniques; he was even allowed to sign his pieces, a first
for a Wedgwood artist. Lessore’s painting—characterized
by loose, visible brushwork—raised ceramics to the status
of fine art, reviving Wedgwood’s fortunes and reputation.
The Huntington has two creamware plates designed by
Lessore, one shaped like a shell and one decorated with
scenes from Aesop’s Fables.
Wedgwood continued to expand its range of majolica
to capitalize on the emerging market for art pottery, which
reflected contemporary art movements like Arts and Crafts
and Art Nouveau. Around 1879, the firm introduced a new
line of majolica wares marketed under the name Argenta.
These pieces had a light ground color with modeled, naturalistic motifs inspired by Japanese art, highlighted with
vivid glazes.The Kadison gifts include an Argenta ware
trefoil tray from the late 19th century.
Thanks to its readiness to adapt to changing tastes and
clients,Wedgwood continued to thrive throughout the 20th
century, remaining in the hands of the founder’s descendants
until 1986. In recent years, the company has followed its
founder’s example by enlisting the talents of a new generation of leading artists and designers, including Martha
Stewart, Jasper Conrad, and Vera Wang.Time will tell if the
company’s tradition of resilience and reinvention will sustain
it through the current economic downturn. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
was the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation Curatorial Fellow
in French Art at The
Huntington from 2003 to
2007. She is currently a research
scholar at the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art.
HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST
JOURNEY TO THE NORTH POLE
By Peter C. Mancall
In Fatal Journey: The Final Expedition of Henry Hudson—A Tale
of Mutiny and Murder in the Arctic
(Basic Books, 2009), historian
Peter C. Mancall chronicles the
demise of the famed 17th-century
British explorer. In this excerpt
from the new book, Mancall describes Hudson’s first attempt to
chart a new path to the East Indies.
L
ike the needle of a compass, Henry Hudson was always attracted to the
north. In 1607, he led a mission that he hoped would take him from
England over the top of the world and past the pole toward East Asia. It
would be the first of four voyages that would make him one of the most
intrepid and important explorers of his age. His name would eventually
attach to the sites he explored: the Hudson River, Hudson Strait, and Hudson Bay.
Like all European explorers of the 16th and 17th centuries, Hudson knew that
fame and immense riches would accrue to the one who found a new and quick route
to East Asia and the southwest Pacific. For almost a century, the English had sought
a shortcut.The English East India Company, organized only a few years earlier, had
already begun sailing vessels home from the Spice Islands laden with pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. But they had to follow the long course from India around
Africa before arriving in London—a journey through thousands of miles of open
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
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seas that put them at risk of assault by Barbary pirates who
had the unfortunate habit of taking English sailors captive
and selling them as slaves. Hudson realized that a northern
passage—despite the risks every sailor confronted in the
Arctic—could cut the time substantially, and thereby increase
profits by reducing the costs of any venture.
Little is known about Hudson before his first attempt to
navigate northward to Asia.The date and place of his birth
remain uncertain, as does his family background.Yet while
few documents reveal much about Hudson’s private life, he
left detailed narratives of his early journeys of 1607 (written
with the assistance of a crewman named John Playse) and
1608. Robert Juet, his mate, wrote an account of their 1609
voyage to the mid-Atlantic coast of North America.Those
narratives fell into the hands of the younger Richard Hakluyt,
editor of the widely influential Principal Navigations,Voyages,
Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation (published in
three volumes in London from 1598 to 1600). Hakluyt was
always eager to promote overseas exploration and commerce
but did not publish Hudson’s reports, preferring instead to
pass them to Samuel Purchas,the Anglican priest who acquired
many of Hakluyt’s manuscripts and published them in 1625
in an enormous four-volume work titled Purchas his Pilgrimes.
(The original editions of the books by Hakluyt and Purchas
are in The Huntington’s extraordinary collection of early
modern English books.) Hudson was not a particularly elegant writer, and Juet possessed minimal talents. But 400 years
later, their reports and a small number of other surviving documents still transport the reader to the often brutal seascape
of the North Atlantic in the opening years of the 17th century.
O
n April 19, 1607, Hudson led a party of
11 men to St. Ethelburga’s Church on
Bishopsgate Street in London, where they
joined the congregation for communion,
probably seeking divine protection from the
unknown menaces they might encounter. Hudson’s son John,
who was then 14, joined the party for communion.Within
days, he would become the crew’s youngest member. His father
was grooming him for a life of sailing long distances, braving
nature at some of its fiercest points. Four days later, Hudson
guided the Hopewell down theThames.The captain’s plan was
simple: he would lead the ship due north, across the pole, and
would soon arrive in East Asia.The scheme was audacious but
appealing—or at least it was to the 10 men who attended the
service and joined Hudson for the mission, and presumably
it was to those who provided financing for the expedition.
Hudson’s report fits into the longstanding tradition among
European explorers of providing firsthand accounts of travels
and of places they discovered—a literary practice that even
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Spring/Summer 2009
predated the printing of Columbus’ first narrative in 1493.
These observers recognized that Europeans craved direct
observations. This desire for eyewitness testimony fueled a
continent-wide publishing trend to label new accounts as
“true” reports, to differentiate them from the fables spun by
earlier writers such as the 14th-century English fabulist Sir
John Mandeville, who filled the account of his purported
travel with reports of monsters he claimed he saw.
For Hudson, the desire to describe places had a special
urgency: he wanted to let others know if it was possible to
survive in northern territories rife with ice-strewn bays and
beset by fierce storms.The nature of Hudson’s report changed
Earlier explorers had tried and failed to sail through the frozen north, among
them Martin Frobisher, who made three attempts between 1576 and 1578
under commission from Queen Elizabeth I. This map by Gerardus Mercator,
one of the most famous mapmakers in 16th-century Europe, illustrates cartographers’ belief that there existed an ice-free sea surrounding the North
Pole, which meant it should be possible for explorers to find a sea route from
the Atlantic into the Pacific. From Gerardus Mercator, Atlas sive Cosmographicae
Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabricati Figura (1595). Previous page:
From Sir John Ross, A Voyage of Discovery (1819).
his report on a daily basis. Certain themes appeared time and
again. He always noted remarkable events on board, like the
time on July 13 when the ship reached a latitude of 80º 23’ N
and happened upon a pod of whales. One of the men thought
it was an ideal opportunity to fish. But a whale grabbed the
line instead and might have sunk the ship had not the cord
apparently broken.The crew found the vessel in waters more
than 100 fathoms deep, which led them to believe they were
in a sound, not a bay.As they looked inland they saw valleys
and swamps filled with snow, even though, Hudson wrote,
“we found it hot.”They were in the midst of the Arctic summer, yet they could never get far from the ice or the fear of
being driven onto a rocky, icy coastline.
The captain’s plan was simple: he
would lead the ship due north,
across the pole, and would soon
arrive in East Asia.
about four months into the journey.The early section had
reflected Playse’s voice, though it is impossible to separate
Hudson’s observations from his assistant’s. But the latter part
came from Hudson himself, and the phrasing changed, at least
in some places, to include the first-person voice. “I steered
away North ten leagues,” Hudson wrote on July 11, a sign that
he was both in command of the journey and of its account. By
then he would have been more and more concerned about the
pace of his voyage, with its outcome increasingly in doubt.
Every hour brought new opportunities to observe a region
never before described by an English traveler. Aware of the
importance of keeping a record of his journey, Hudson filled
As the Hopewell lay at anchor, four of the men went on
shore.They returned with a pair of walrus tusks still embedded in a jaw, and reported that they had seen deer (perhaps
caribou), whale bones, the tracks of bear and other creatures,
“Rote-geese,” and driftwood.They also found a freshwater
stream, which quenched their thirsts after hiking in the summer heat.The ship remained in the area, and the next day
Hudson estimated that the land stretched north to 81º. He
was fairly certain of his location since he explained that he
had confirmed the ship’s whereabouts with his cross-staff, a
common navigation device used to identify a ship’s location
in relation to the heavens. His crew saw more seals than at any
other point on their journey.As it turned out, this moment
marked one of Hudson’s first notable achievements on this
voyage. No European would reach this latitude again for
another two centuries.
But that accomplishment meant little to a man who had
sailed north hoping to find the quickest way to the spice
markets. Hudson’s notes would show the English the possibilities for venturing into the Arctic during the summer.
His observations would have real value to others who might
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
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Abraham Ortelius’ depiction of Iceland in 1595 prominently displayed the volcano at Hecla—which became a landmark for Europeans sailing in the region—
as well as various kinds of sea monsters roaming the island’s seas. From Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1595).
want to fish or hunt seals or walrus.Yet this was little consolation to him. He had fitted out the Hopewell for a journey
across the pole, not a scientific expedition. But he learned
Hudson’s notes would show
the English the possibilities for
venturing into the Arctic during
the summer.
something important, too. An open polar sea—long theorized by European scientists—might exist, but the route
they tried did not lead to it: they had moved north as far as
the season safely allowed. Hudson felt he had no choice but
to turn around and head for home.They steered a course back
toward Cherie’s Island (also known as Bear Island). On
Aug. 15, they docked at the Faro Islands, off the coast of
Scotland. Two weeks later, on the first of September, they
sailed up the Thames and landed at Tilberie Hope.
Four and a half months had elapsed since Hudson had
taken communion at St. Ethelberga’s Church and asked God
to protect his crew and provide success to his mission. He
1 0 Spring/Summer 2009
had led the small crew of the Hopewell farther north than any
English sailor had ventured before. Hudson did not reach the
pole, turning back well before his trajectory could prove
itself to be a route leading to the East Indies. But he had lost
no men, he had charted territory rich in seals, whales, and
birds, and he had described remote and potentially resourcerich lands in greater depth than any European had before him.
The whales and seals would have excited those who heard
his report; their presence opened the possibility of a new
profitable business. Promoters of English expansion would
have welcomed Hudson’s careful recording of latitudes,
depths, and distances, which all contributed to the growing
stock of English knowledge about the North Atlantic.That
was an achievement that would later benefit the realm’s other
sailors and explorers, especially when the report appeared in
print in 1625. On a more personal level, the expedition had
one other benefit: Hudson had proven that he was up to
whatever challenges he might face in the North Atlantic. Peter C. Mancall is professor of history and anthropology, University
of Southern California, and director of the USC-Huntington Early
Modern Studies Institute. From the book Fatal Journey:The Final
Expedition of Henry Hudson by Peter C. Mancall. Excerpted by
arrangement with Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group.
Copyright 2009.
R E A D I N G B E T W E E N T H E L AT I T U D E S
Hudson carefully tracked his movement north, noting his ship’s latitude along the way
In May 1607, Capt. John Smith and a contingent of would-be
colonists established a settlement they called Jamestown along
a river (which they named the James) that flowed into Chesapeake
Bay. Their efforts have attracted extraordinary attention from
scholars eager to understand the origins of English America.
That same month Henry Hudson and the small crew of the
Hopewell left England bound for East Asia via the Spice Islands.
Hudson and his crew cleared the port on May 1. For the next
three weeks, the ship sailed northward, but apparently nothing
notable occured since the next entry in his journal was dated the
26th, when the crew reached 60º 12’ N, at a point six leagues
(18 miles) east of the “Isles of Shotland” (presumably modernday Shetland). Ever the explorer, Hudson took a sounding and
reported that the ship was in 64 fathoms and that the sea floor
there was “blacke, ozie, sandie, with some yellow shels.” Such
comments, which appeared frequently in accounts of the captain’s journeys, reveal that Hudson, like other mariners, understood that the success of any voyage depended on knowing
what lay beneath them, especially since the color of the water
provided direct clues to potential unseen risks.
By June 8 they reached 65º 27’ N, the latitude of Iceland.
Three days later, they crossed the Arctic Circle and reached
67º 30’ N. Hudson reported that the crew spotted a pod of six
or seven whales, which caused the ship no problems. They soon
faced gale-force winds that continued the next day. By the time
night fell on the 12th, a dense fog had besieged the ship.
That night Hudson reported that land lay ahead of the ship,
as well as ice. The fog had not lifted, so the crew steered toward
the north in hopes of avoiding catastrophic collision with ice or
shoreline. They managed to avoid crashing into the nearby rocks,
but the bitter winds froze their sails and shrouds (the rope rigging that held the sails to the mast). The skies cleared by eight
in the morning, giving them a view of the island they had narrowly avoided. They beheld what Hudson called “a very high
Land, most part covered with Clay, with much Ice lying about it.”
A whale swam near the shore and birds flocked to it. Following
the pattern of other European explorers, Hudson and his mates
named the places they encountered that did not yet exist on
their map. They called the headland “Young’s Cape,” presumably after James Young, one of the men on board. Nearby rose
a steep mountain, “round like a Castle,” as it was described by
Hudson and his chronicler Playse (who helped the captain with
the first part of the narrative), which the English named the
Mount of God’s Mercy. Then it began to rain, continuing into the
night and turning to snow the next day, as the ship ran closer
to the island.
On June 20, Hudson estimated that the Hopewell should
be close to Newland (modern Svalbard), a cluster of islands
barely known by Europeans at the time (and to this day among
the most remote places on earth). The sun broke through the
clouds for the first time in 18 days. “Wee saw many Birds with
blacke backes, and white bellies in forme much like a Ducke,”
Hudson wrote. “We saw also many pieces of Ice driving at the
Sea.” But soon, not surprisingly, the fog settled in again, persisting until the morning of the 22nd. Hudson estimated that the
ship was at 72º 38’ N when they sighted “a mayne high Land,
nothing at all covered with snow.” On the northern side of this
land mass rose tall mountains which, Hudson noted, were not
snow-capped, a crucial marker of the climate. This land seemed
to lie at 73º N, but he could gain no further purchase of it because
ice jutted out near the shore, fog blocked their vision, and variable
winds made sailing difficult and precarious. Hudson thought this
route might lead into the rumored open sea, which would have
sped his journey if it existed. But he could not be certain because
he lacked an accurate map of the region. As he wrote in his
report, the crew had found land that was not even marked on
the navigational charts, called “cards,” that they had brought
with them. Hudson’s men could not touch down on this remote
land, but he thought it might still be a place worth knowing
and certainly worth future exploration. The ship continued on
toward the northeast, though the crew spotted ice frequently. The
men had ventured into territory that, as far as they knew, had
never been named by Europeans, and so they labeled this
northern land Hold with Hope and noted that it lay at
73º N. Early 17th-century cartographers identified
this location as a remote corner of northeast
Greenland, perhaps near modern-day Kap
Parry, not far south from the place known
today as Hudson Land.
–Peter C. Mancall
European sailors
managed to travel vast
distances in the 16th and
17th centuries with only
rudimentary navigational tools,
including the widely used cross-staff.
From John Davys’ The Seamans
Secrets (1599).
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
11
MAKING CONNECTIONS
The craftsmanship of Sam Maloof lends something special
to the Scott Galleries of American Art
1 2 Spring/Summer 2009
N
ot long ago, at a reception for the Los Angeles arts
community held in the home of a collector in Santa Monica,
guests entering the living room were greeted with a delightful sight: Sam Maloof, the most celebrated American woodworker of our time, sitting serenely in one of his own iconic
rockers, chatting and taking in the scene. It was an unforgettable image of the master and his work, in his element—
which is to say, among friends.
HE WAS THE QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN
DESIGNER-CRAFTSMAN, A CLASSIC
CALIFORNIA MODERNIST AND BELOVED
LOCAL FIGURE, ROOTED IN CENTURIES-OLD
TRADITIONS, YET VIBRANTLY CONTEMPORARY.
By Joyce Lovelace
Maloof, who died on May 21 at the age of 93, had a stature
in the world of fine craft and design that is hard to overstate.
During his lifetime he was feted and filmed, the subject of
scholarly books and major museum retrospectives, and honored with countless awards—a MacArthur Foundation“genius
grant,” the American Craft Council Gold Medal, and designation as a Living Treasure of California, to name just a few.
Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton
all have owned his chairs. Beautiful wood, graceful lines, sculptural contours, peerless craftsmanship, and perfect function are
the hallmarks of his furniture. But it was his generous spirit
and extraordinary capacity for friendship—connecting each
piece of work to the individuals who commissioned them—
that gave his work its deeper shade of soul.
A native Californian and self-taught woodworker, Maloof
made custom furniture by hand for 60 years.Along the way
he received countless offers to mass produce his designs, and
turned down all of them.The personal relationships involved
in each commission were, he always emphasized, his greatest
inspiration and reward. One such example is now on view at
The Huntington.
For display in the dramatically expanded and reconfigured
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Maloof lent
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
13
Sam Maloof remained active well past his 90th birthday. Photos (above and on previous page) by Gene Sasse from the book Maloof Beyond 90, copyright 2008.
his Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair, made of Brazilian
rosewood in 1972.These handsome pieces tell the story of his
deep and abiding friendship with the late Jan Hlinka, the
principal violist with the Los Angeles Philhar-monic, who
commissioned the work.The same spirit of fellowship and
connection informed Maloof ’s own collecting. He was passionate about ceramics, glass, wood, and other art forms,
interested in both the objects and their makers, many of
whom he knew personally.The Huntington borrowed some
of these pieces from him as well.The new installation highlights many of the relationships among works in a variety
of media.
Maloof reminisced in January about Hlinka’s initial visit
to his studio.“One day he drove up and walked in and told me
who he was. He was very outgoing.We hit it off, right off the
bat.”The violist wanted a stand with two racks, far enough
apart to accommodate two musicians, and in the middle, a little bowl where rosin and extra strings could be kept within
easy reach. Maloof had done music stands before, though
never a double one. Hlinka also asked for a practice chair that
would provide good back support, with plenty of legroom
1 4 Spring/Summer 2009
and no armrests,“so that when he played he wouldn’t crack
his elbow,” explained Maloof, who came up with a unique
design based on a metal folding chair, with curved legs configured in a triangular fashion.Apart from how well it functioned, the chair was special in other ways. It was one of the
first Maloof crafted entirely of wood (as opposed to their
having upholstered seats), and a rare instance, for him, of a
one-of-a-kind design.
“I designed that chair just for Jan,” Maloof said, adding
that the musician made him promise never to replicate it.
“We became very, very good friends. Oh, he was just like a
brother to me.We were about the same age. But he died too
young, when he was only 74 years old.”After Hlinka’s death,
his widow, recognizing the historical importance of the pieces,
returned them to their maker.
Thereafter the stand and chair remained at Maloof ’s home
and studio in Alta Loma, today a nonprofit cultural center
called the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and
Crafts.A spectacular complex of unique buildings nestled in
a lemon grove near the base of the San Gabriel mountains, the
place is, like Maloof ’s work, a harmonious blend of humanity
and nature, a testament to a life filled with love, friendship, and
steadfast devotion to an artistic vision.The heart of the sixacre property is the rambling, rustic, two-story redwood house
he designed and built in stages starting in the 1950s, where he
and Alfreda, his wife of 52 years, raised their family and lived
until her death in 1998. (Miraculously, in the early ’90s, the
home was successfully moved from its original site a few
miles away to make room for an extension of the Foothill
Freeway.) Replete with his original handcrafted details and
endless collections of art and craft objects, it is today listed
on the National Register of Historic Places and is open to
the public for tours. Adjoining it is the woodshop where,
to the end, Maloof worked every day, in collaboration with
a team of three assistants he affectionately called “the boys,”
all of whom were with him for decades. Just down the hill
is the newer house he shared with his second wife, Beverly,
designer of magnificent water-wise gardens that have become
an added attraction of the site (even she was an old friend and
customer; Maloof first made a table for her in 1957).Also new
are a public space for events (such as the scholarly symposium
on craft the foundation recently presented in conjunction
with the Getty Research Institute) and a gallery to showcase
the work of young and emerging talent in the field, which
Maloof avidly followed and collected.
In 2008, three Huntington curators—Jessica Todd Smith,
Kevin Murphy, and Harold Nelson—made the half-hour
drive from San Marino to Alta Loma for a tour of the landmark residence and a visit with Maloof. Under the direction
of Smith, who isVirginia Steele Scott Curator of American
Art at The Huntington, they were in the midst of organizing
the sweeping survey of American art that would inaugurate
the newly expanded Scott Galleries. “The collection had
grown to a point where we could create a historical context
for works of art through the dynamic grouping of objects,”
said Smith.The curators envisioned the 15 galleries as a series
of thoughtful juxtapositions of paintings, sculpture, and
decorative arts that would showcase the scope and strength
of The Huntington’s treasures and present a narrative of
American art from the colonial period to the mid-20th century. Where appropriate, works would be borrowed from
other institutional and private collections, both to complement The Huntington’s holdings in key areas and, in some
cases, to reach out and shed new light on seldom-seen pieces
(such as examples from an outstanding but rarely displayed
BEAUTIFUL WOOD, GRACEFUL LINES, SCULPTURAL CONTOURS,
PEERLESS CRAFTSMANSHIP, AND PERFECT FUNCTION ARE THE
HALLMARKS OF HIS FURNITURE.
group of 18th-century American glass belonging to the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art). Maloof was not yet represented in The Huntington’s collection, but would make a fine addition to the Scott installation, the curators
agreed. He was, after all, the quintessential American designer-craftsman, a
classic California modernist and beloved local figure, rooted in centuriesold traditions, yet vibrantly contemporary, and actively engaged in
supporting the development of his field.
When they saw the Hlinka music stand and chair on display at the
house, they experienced a collective “Eureka!” moment.“It seemed the
perfect way to represent him in the installation,” recalled Nelson, guest
curator of decorative arts for the project and an authority on contemporary studio craft.“What struck me first was just their beauty—that elegant,
luscious form.And then knowing a bit about the history.They so epitomized
what Sam was about.What the craft community is about, in a way.”
The open, creative environment of Southern California provided fertile
ground for the studio craft movement that flourished in the years following World
War II, as artists explored new expressive possibilities in the making of objects by hand.
There was (and remains to this day) a strong collegial spirit among craft artists, a pride
and joy in sharing ideas and information. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, many of the
leaders in the field lived in and around Los Angeles and regularly socialized, mixing
freely with painters, sculptors, architects, and photographers as well. Naturally, they often
ended up owning each others’ work. As The Huntington’s curators wandered through
room after room filled with splendid pieces the Maloofs had acquired over the years—
by the now-famous potters, woodworkers, glassblowers, metalsmiths, and weavers
who made up their circle—a bigger picture took shape.
And so, a year later, Maloof ’s music stand and chair remain
among friends (figuratively speaking) at The Huntington, in a large
room devoted to mid-20th-century art within the Scott Galleries.
Entering the space, one’s eye goes immediately to an enormous
abstract painting by the Los Angeles artist Sam Francis, a
recent acquisition.The Double Music Stand and Musician’s
Chair are nearby, and above them hangs a small, colorful,
geometric painting by Karl Benjamin of Claremont,
from the permanent collection. A wall case contains
a group of early and important works by California
craft masters on loan from the Maloof Foundation:
ceramics by Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Harrison
McIntosh, Laura Andreson, and Paul Soldner; a
turned wood bowl by Bob Stocksdale; and a glass
plate by Glen Lukens (along with two Lukens
ceramic vessels from The Huntington’s holdings).
Completing that group is a stunning early Peter
Voulkos vase on loan from the collector Frank Lloyd.
Another case holds hand-wrought functional wares
by Allan Adler,“silversmith to the stars,” also from the
Huntington trove.To be sure, there are artists represented
in the gallery from other parts of the country—Helen
Frankenthaler, Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, and Robert
Motherwell among them—but the sense of California camaraderie is strong.
“THERE ARE INTERESTING
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE
DIAGONALS IN THE MALOOF
MUSIC STAND AND KARL
BENJAMIN’S PAINTING ABOVE IT.”
“It’s a manifestation of connection among
people—in Sam’s case, the artist and the musician who commissioned the piece—but even
more than that, the community of artists and
craftsmen in Southern California who all were
aware of one another’s work,” observed Nelson.
For years a group of Claremont artists, including Maloof, Harrison McIntosh, and Karl
Benjamin, would get together on Wednesdays
for breakfast or lunch.“When you go into Karl
Benjamin’s house, you see ceramics by all of
these people,” Nelson said. “You see Maloof
furniture. It represents and embodies their
friendship and association.You come to understand how compatible their thinking was, and
how much they were influenced by one another.” Nelson even sees a sort of visual affinity at
The new installation of the Scott Galleries of American Art highlights relationships among paintings,
sculpture, and decorative arts. Above, Maloof’s music stand is displayed with a painting by Karl
play among the Californians in the modern
Benjamin (b. 1925): Number 4, 1968, oil on canvas, gift of Donald M. Treiman, in memory of his
gallery: there is a materiality to the thick pigmother, Joyce Treiman. Also on view (opposite) are an art pottery bowl (earthenware with crackle
ment of the Francis canvas that reverberates in
glaze), ca. late 1940s, by Glen Lukens (1887–1967), Huntington Art Collections; and a vase
the ceramics in a “gutsy, physical, visceral” way,
(stoneware with glazes), 1954, by Peter Voulkos (1924–2002), collection of Frank Lloyd. Photos
by John Sullivan.
and a rhythmic flow to the painting’s underlying grid structure “that some of the lines of
resonate at The Huntington in objects from the past: in furSam’s furniture pick up,” he noted.“And there are interesting
niture by Greene and Greene, Gustav Stickley, and Frank
connections between the diagonals in the Maloof music stand
Lloyd Wright; in glass by Tiffany and Steuben; in Arts and
and Karl Benjamin’s painting above it. Even when you look
Crafts pottery; in silver by Gorham and Pasadena’s own
at the Allan Adler silver, the sleek, flowing lines of those
Clemens Friedell.
forms perfectly echo the beautiful curvilinear lines of the
“It’s always interesting to connect disparate moments, to
Maloof pieces.”
find the continuous threads and strands that interweave and
As thoroughly modern as they are, and as richly as they
make a full fabric,” Nelson said of the Scott installation,
evoke their own time and place, the work of Maloof and
which is designed to invite just that kind of contemplation.
other contemporary designer-craftsmen belongs to a long
The enduring, shared legacy of Sam Maloof, his peers, and
tradition of decorative arts that dates back to the founding of
his predecessors is on radiant display, telling a richly texthe nation. In 18th-century American furniture, for example,
tured story of American life. a strength of The Huntington’s collection, one sees the practice of commissioning work, just as Maloof made pieces for
specific patrons. Even his longtime team of craftsmen echoes
old traditions of apprenticeship.The same ideals of fine handwork and integrity of design that serve as the foundation
Joyce Lovelace is a contributing editor to American Craft magazine.
for today’s best and most innovative work in craft media
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
17
1 8 Spring/Summer 2009
reviving a
working ranch
at the huntington
W
by matt stevens
hen Henry Huntington bought
the San Marino Ranch in 1903,
he acquired a commercial orchard
of fruit trees and acres of California oaks.The
property then stretched well beyond the current configuration of the botanical gardens and
eventually included more than 600 acres.Within
a few years, he established one of the earliest
commercial avocado orchards in California,
wanting his working ranch to be self-sustaining
and profitable.
Aerial photographs taken over the ensuing
decades show the gradual attrition of profitable
crops as Huntington expanded residential
development in San Marino with acres from
his ranch and prepared his remaining estate
to become a public garden. With the urging
of grounds superintendent William Hertrich,
Huntington created the Desert Garden,Japanese
Garden, and Rose Garden. Today, only eight
acres of orange trees survive, just north of the
Botanical Center.Visitors to the gardens rarely
see the orchard unless they seek out Henry and
Arabella’s mausoleum, which overlooks the
small grove. Few other signs linger from the
once-massive enterprise, save for a small group
of mature orange trees in a neighboring front
yard in San Marino that likely had formed part
of Huntington’s massive grid 100 years ago.
A new project at The Huntington draws
inspiration from the institution’s agricultural
heritage while also making stronger connections
with gardeners throughout Southern California.
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
19
Called “The Ranch,” it will include spaces to demonstrate
various urban gardening techniques. The educational site,
located to the northwest of the Botanical Center, will not
be accessible to daily visitors, but a broad range of programs
will provide ample opportunity for enthusiasts to roll up their
sleeves and get their hands dirty.
“We’ll be demonstrating a myriad of growing approaches,”
says coordinator Scott Kleinrock,“from techniques for urban
farmers who are growing for farmers’ markets and restaurants
to those more relevant to home gardeners who grow in backyards or even on balconies.” The 15-acre site includes the
surviving orange grove, a “food forest,” and a half-acre zone
that will feature demonstration spaces for container gardening
and pruning workshops.A group of mature oak trees occupies
the lower western ridge, providing a natural canopy for a small
outdoor amphitheater.
Kleinrock has spent the winter and spring adapting his
design for the space.The master’s student in landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona has worked on a number of
community garden projects, including transforming neglected or vacant lots into thriving urban gardens. It’s fitting
that part of the Ranch used to be a parking lot for crews
Scott Kleinrock (above), coordinator of the Ranch project,
standing in The Huntington’s
orange grove. Henry Huntington
bought the property, known as
San Marino Ranch, in 1903 from
J. De Barth Shorb, whose house
was illustrated (left) in John Albert
Wilson’s History of Los Angeles
County, California, 1880.
Huntington began constructing
his new residence in 1909 within
view of rows of fruit trees (right).
Previous page: “Los Angeles
County To-day,” from a Chamber
of Commerce promotional
brochure, 1929.
2 0 Spring/Summer 2009
A new project at The Huntington draws inspiration from the
institution’s agricultural heritage while also making stronger
connections with gardeners throughout Southern California.
working on the Chinese garden. Before coming to The
Huntington in December, Kleinrock co-designed a half-acre
community garden at the Tri-City Mental Health Center in
Pomona.As in that project, Kleinrock wants participants to be
part of the process of creating a working urban garden and
teaching space. Classes and workshops will begin later in
the year.
The Huntington is no stranger to the symbiotic relationship between gardens and educational opportunities. With
more than a dozen thematic gardens—including the new
Chinese garden, Liu FangYuan—the institution has been the
site of conferences and classes on such topics as succulents,
roses, and bonsai. In 2005, the opening of The Rose Hills
Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science completed
a new Botanical Center that also included the Bing Children’s
Garden and classrooms, offices, teaching labs, and a nursery.
And yet The Huntington’s agricultural heritage had retreated
into the background.
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
21
“Part of Mr. Huntington’s legacy had been left behind,”
says Jim Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of
the Botanical Gardens. In the last decade or so Folsom has
taken some gradual steps to acknowledge that history: planting several dozen citrus trees at the top of a hill in the Subtropical Garden; inviting the California Avocado Growers to
plant a heritage orchard adjacent to the orange grove; and
bringing in nearly 80 trees from the South Central Farm, an
urban garden in Los Angeles that was closed down abruptly
in 2006 amid a fair amount of controversy. Farmlab, an initiative of the Annenberg Foundation, rescued the trees from
the site—loquat, banana, peach, and apricot among them—
and brought them to The Huntington in boxes.At the same
2 2 Spring/Summer 2009
time, the Foundation made a
$1.1 million grant to supportThe
Huntingon’s effort to rediscover
its agricultural heritage.
“It was Farmlab’s gift of
those trees and the Annenberg
Foundation’s stunning generosity that helped us to pick up that
piece of our past that we had
long neglected,” says Folsom. In
accepting the trees, Folsom saw
an opportunity to revitalize his
vision of a working ranch, but
with a particularly contemporary
emphasis, tapping into a wider
movement that includes projects
like Michelle Obama’s new victory garden yet still harkening
back to Henry Huntington’s own
kitchen garden circa 1907, complete with edible mushrooms.
While Folsom will retain the
wide rows of orange groves on
the eastern side of the Ranch,
he has planted the trees from
the South Central Farm on the
upper western slope in the far
less rigid layout of an evolving
edible landscape.
While many gardeners still
give in to the temptation to plant
distinct rows of lettuce, carrots,
and radishes, Kleinrock likes to
encourage them to think outside
their raised beds. Edible landscapes include plenty of nonedible plants that do important
work in a garden. Underneath some of the new fruit trees,
Kleinrock is planting comfrey, which sports large, fleshy
leaves that are rich in nutrients. By trimming and mulching
the leaves, a gardener can improve the fertility of the soil.
Note to aspiring gardeners: Be sure to use the Bocking 14
cultivar, a sterile variety of comfrey that won’t overtake an
area like a weed.Another ground cover, common yarrow, with
its white flowers, can keep the area beneath a tree attractive.
The plant attracts aphid-eating ladybugs and wasps and can
either take irrigation or withstand drought. Kleinrock has
also brought in goumi—a fruit-bearing shrub that helps fix
the nitrogen in the soil, serving multiple functions in the
edible landscape.
The 15-acre site includes the surviving orange grove, a “food
forest,” and a half-acre zone that will feature demonstration
spaces for container gardening and pruning workshops.
In the education and demonstration spaces of the Ranch,
the trees will be ripe for pruning—literally.A site for backyard orcharding will include young varieties of trees—stone
fruits, citrus, figs, pomegranates, persimmons, and fruit-bearing
mulberries. With aggressive pruning, says Kleinrock, gardeners can control the size of their trees, allowing them to
harvest and prune as needed without a ladder. Smaller trees
can yield more fresh fruit in the longer run than the larger
counterparts, as easy access keeps gardeners from losing fruit
that rots at the top of larger trees.The smaller size also means
three or four trees can be planted in place of a larger one.
With some planning, a gardener can plant multiple varieties
of the same type of fruit in one hole, bearing fruit at varying
points in a season. Folks with even less free space can take
workshops on container gardening; self-watering containers—with reservoirs that saturate plants as needed rather than
flooding them—might give new gardeners the confidence
they need to grow some of their own fruits and vegetables.
When Kleinrock has conducted backyard orcharding
workshops at other community gardens, he has relished seeing the confidence grow as people learn to trust their pruning instincts. In the end, he says, it’s not always about the
food. “The produce is almost secondary to the community
that can be built around transforming a neglected space.”
The trees from the South Central Farm—no longer in
boxes—now form part of a developing food forest along the
western side of the Ranch. One specific focus of Ranch
research is integrating trees into food production. Food
forestry is a technique for growing
an edible garden in a self-sustaining
Scott Kleinrock plants comfrey beneath an apple tree. Many other varieties of fruit trees, including peach
(opposite), were rescued from the South Central Farm by Farmlab. They now form a food forest adjacent to the
ecosystem similar to what might
Ranch’s demonstration gardens. Photos by Lisa Blackburn.
be found in a natural forest. Such
a model is already well established
in tropical and temperate zones but
will require some experimentation
in Southern California’s Mediterranean climate.While impractical
for most commercial enterprises,
on a smaller scale a thriving food
forest could be a forager’s paradise.
“We’ll have to try different
edible and nonedible plants,” says
Kleinrock,“but that’s what makes
this a working ranch rather than
a display garden.” The program’s
participants will help tend the landscape that takes shape beneath the
shade of trees that had once formed
part of the urban garden at the
South Central Farm. Matt Stevens is editor of
Huntington Frontiers.
HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS
23
In Print
Postscript
A SAMPLING OF BOOKS BASED ON RESEARCH IN
THE COLLECTIONS
WHAT BLOOD WON’T TELL: A HISTORY OF RACE
ON TRIAL IN AMERICA
Ariela J. Gross
Harvard University Press, 2008
Over the past two centuries, individuals and
groups have fought to establish their whiteness
in order to lay claim to full citizenship in local courtrooms,
administrative and legislative hearings, and the U.S. Supreme
Court.These trials often have turned less on legal definitions
of race as percentages of blood or ancestry than on the way
people presented themselves to society and demonstrated
their moral and civic character. Gross’ book examines the
paradoxical and often circular relationship of race and the
perceived capacity for citizenship in American society.
SHADOWS AT DAWN: A BORDERLANDS
In 2004–05, Elaine
Showalter spent a year at
The Huntington as the
Avery Distinguished Fellow.
An article in Huntington
Frontiers (fall/winter 2005)
profiled her efforts to read
the forgotten novels of
American women writers
from 1650 through 2000.
She focused on the 19th
century, saying, “The Huntington’s holdings in
American literature pre-1900 are astonishing.”The
result of her efforts was published in February, A Jury
of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne
Bradstreet to Annie Proulx (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).
MASSACRE AND THE VIOLENCE OF HISTORY
Karl Jacoby
Penguin Press, 2008
On April 30, 1871, a combined party of
Americans, Mexicans, and Tohono O’odham
Indians murdered nearly 150 Apaches at a camp in the
Arizona borderlands.The Camp Grant Massacre generated
unparalleled national attention but has now largely faded
from memory. Jacoby traces the escalating conflicts, as
well as the alliances, that transpired among the groups
living in the borderlands over the course of several hundred
years, beginning with the 17th-century arrival of the first
Spanish missionaries.
JACK LONDON’S RACIAL LIVES
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
University of Georgia Press, 2009
Although Jack London promoted white superiority in his novels and nonfiction, he sharply
satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed
racial others—most often as protagonists—in his short fiction.
With new readings of The Call of the Wild and Martin Eden,
and many other works, such as the Pacific stories, Reesman
reveals that London employed many of the same literary
tropes of race used by African American writers of his
period: the slave narrative, double-consciousness, the tragic
mulatto, and ethnic diaspora.
2 4 Spring/Summer 2009
One better known author that
appears in Showalter’s book
is Mary Austin (1868–1934),
who is also the subject of a
new book by Susan Goodman
and Carl Dawson: Mary Austin
and the American West
(University of California Press,
2009).The spring/summer
2006 issue profiled the writing
team following the release of
their book William Dean Howells: A Writer’s Life
(University of California Press, 2005).
Ronald C.White Jr. also has
remained active since we
announced the publication
of The Eloquent President: A
Portrait of Lincoln Through His
Words (Random House, 2005).
This winter,White published
A. Lincoln: A Biography
(Random House, 2009) as the
country commemorated the
bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.
HORSE IN THE AMERICAN WEST
Deanne Stillman
Houghton Mifflin, 2008 (in paperback June 2009)
Two scholars received honors for books that appeared
in 2008. Jared Farmer, who
wrote about California’s
eucalyptus trees for the
spring/summer 2007 issue
of this magazine, won the
2009 Francis Parkman Prize
for On Zion’s Mount:
Mormons, Indians, and the
American Landscape.The
prize was awarded by the Society of American
Historians. Farmer was the Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellow with the Huntington-USC Institute on
California and the West for 2005–07.
Thomas G. Andrews garnered a prestigious Bancroft
prize for Killing for Coal:
America’s Deadliest Labor
War, a book described in
the fall/winter 2008 issue of
this magazine.The Bancroft
prize, three of which are
awarded annually by the
trustees of Columbia
University, goes to authors
of books of exceptional
merit in the fields of American history, biography,
and diplomacy.The two prize-winning books were
published by Harvard University Press.
ON THE WEB View the entire contents of back
issues of the magazine at http://www.huntington.org.
When Spanish conquistador Hernando
Cortés arrived in the New World in 1519,
he came with hundreds of men and 16
horses. His scribe, Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
carefully recorded the exploits of the expedition, noting also the names, colors, and
personality traits of most of
the horses. More than 400
years later, in 1923, Walter
Camp published his report on
the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Buried in his findings of the
famous last stand of 1876
are the names of the horses
that fell, including Dandy Jim,
Silverheels, and Custer’s own
horses, Vic and Dandy.
The history of the mustang in the American West,
says writer Deanne Stillman,
can’t be separated from
America’s history of violence. Her research began in earnest
in late 1998 when she read about a massacre of 34 horses
in the mountains outside Reno, Nev. Her concern for a
diminishing population of just 28,000 wild horses in the
West eventually led to a book, just released in paperback.
In it she traces the history of the mustang from its Ice Age
ancestor in North America and its reemergence with Cortés
through the frontier era of cattle drives and into the age of
Hollywood and its plight today. Stillman currently teaches
creative writing in the MFA program at the Palm Desert
Graduate Center of the University of California, Riverside.
For Stillman, the roll call of names from Cortés’ scribe
through 19th-century cavalry records is also an indication
of the strong bond that has long existed between riders and
their steeds. At The Huntington, Stillman discovered the
works of Charles Siringo, thanks to a tip from Peter Blodgett,
The Huntington’s H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of
Western American Manuscripts. In the book A Texas Cowboy,
or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony—
Taken from Real Life (1886), Siringo wrote heartbreakingly
about the brutality endured by working horses on cattle
drives of the frontier era. In her own book, Stillman has
attempted to capture two historical narratives that can’t
be separated—one of the mustang’s hardship in service
of a master prone to violence, the other of its genuine partnership with conquistadors, cowboys, Native Americans,
entertainers, and conservationists.
Above: The author with Bugz, a survivor of the 1998 massacre in
Reno, Nev. Photo by Betty Lee Kelly.
BACK FLAP
M U S TA N G : T H E S A G A O F T H E W I L D
THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY,
ART COLLECTIONS, AND BOTANICAL GARDENS
1151 Oxford Road
•
San Marino, CA 91108
www.huntington.org
On the Cover
Sam Maloof’s Double Music Stand and Musician’s Chair (1972) and the monumental Free Floating Clouds
(1980) by Sam Francis are two of the more than 500 works now on view in the newly expanded Virginia
Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, which reopened May 30. In this issue, we celebrate the legacy of
Maloof, who passed away on May 21 at the age of 93. The woodworker lent his music stand and chair
to The Huntington along with several other objects from his personal collection.
Photos by John Sullivan
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