Treasures in our Crawl Space

As many owners of older homes know, winter exposes the slightest gaps in walls, windows - everywhere. Older homes, in spite of their other obvious charms, often have more than their fair share of these.

That year we decided to do what we could to ensure the three- litre bottles of coke we stored in one of our kitchen cupboards would not freeze. This meant insulating the "walls" in the crawl space under both porches in our 1912 house.

These crawl spaces are only accessible through a small hole cut through the concrete via the basement. My husband Ted gallantly said my smaller stature (HA!) made me the perfect candidate to do the job. Barely wide enough for my hips to get through, I, with Ted pushing on the heels of my feet, managed to crawl through the opening and onto the dirt floor.

Flashlight in hand, I examined the space. Nothing of interest except spider webs, and a few old , but disappointingly empty, cardboard binders, their jackets stained with age. All of a sudden I noticed a package of some sort partially hidden in the dirt. To my delight it turned out to be a copy of Motor Magazine, the Nov - Dec 1937 issue. It appeared to be in very good condition and stuffed with about another two inches of loose paper.

To my amusement I realized that I had come upon a hidden stash of pornography from the 1920's and beyond!

Now, compared to today's idea of pornography, the images in this packet were definitely "tame".

I remember my own father telling me that young men in the 1930's were severely chastised if ever they were caught sneaking a glimpse of the lingerie section of the Eaton's or Sears catalogues. In most of the actual photographs (as opposed to sketches) in this pack, the models' private parts were airbrushed.

Many of the earlier, more riske photographs come from a British Magazine called the "Sunbathing and Health Magazine" - a magazine espousing the benefits of living the natural lifestyle of the nudists. The magazine includes a lot of information about the benefits of healthy eating and exercise, and it convinces the reader by showing nubile young bodies frolicking in the sun. Senior citizen nudists are conspicuously absent inside its pages.

Many of the other images were created by artists and this led me to do some research on two of the most prominently represented in the images.

One of the most famous artists of this style of images is Alberto Vargas, a Peruvian born immigrant to the United States. His career spanned over six decades. He started as the official painter for the Ziegfield Follies, and became very well known for his ability to capture the fresh beauty of the "All American" Girl. He worked for major movie studios and painted the stars in their glory.as calendars, advertisements

But the "Varga Girl," first introduced by Vargas in 1940, solidified his position as one of the most influential artists of our time. Varga Girls have graced thousands of magazine gatefolds, calendars, advertisements, and movie posters. According to a dedicated web site "During WW 11, servicemen adorned their aircraft, ships, and vehicles with the Varga Girl images copied from the pages and calendars of Esquire Magazine "

Another well known artist was George Petty. Petty was born in 1894 in Louisiana , the son of a photographer who moved his family to the potentially more prosperous Chicago around 1900. He spent a great deal of time in his father's photography studio where he mastered the airbrush, a tool invented around 1889 and used solely to retouch photographs (or their negatives).

George studied in Paris until 1916, then returned to Chicago . At the age of 18, he should have been prime fodder for the War, but shortly have Petty's return from Europe, his father died, leaving George the head of the family and so exempt from service.

His first published work was a stylish ice skater on the cover of the 1920 Marshall Field catalog . He began using the airbrush in his drawings, not a common medium at the time, but the results were stunning.

In the early Thirties, George opened his own studio and started to get more and more work that relied on pretty women. His daughter Marjorie Jule, born in 1919, was modeling for him and her body topped with an endless variety of faces would appear in many of these ads. With his command of the airbrush, a strong foundation in drawing, plenty of practice drawing lissome women, and a willing model, Petty had assembled the components of a meteoric career.

His cartoons (although he was not a cartoonist) appeared in seven of the first dozen issues of Esquire Magazine and were thinly disguised excuses for rendering the female body. The "airbrushed" clothing he clothed his models with did not leave much to the imagination but it made him a very popular artist at the time.

Some of the other images such as this colored print to the left are artistic as well as beautiful. The vast selection of photographic prints and sketches, from black and white to color identify this "treasure" as having been collected over many years.  It was then forgotten, languishing in the dust and cobwebs for more than 60 years!

Finding this kind of concrete connection to people who lived in our home in the past is one of the very special things about living in an old house. We have decided that this 'treasure" should be discovered by someone else some day and intend to return it to its original location - only this time there will be a note from us too.

 

Written by Johanne Yakula

 

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