Tulane Homecoming 2018

SEAA had special Tulane Homecoming hours this past Saturday for our current exhibit, "The Laurel Valley Plantation Photographs of Philip M. Denman." Visitors included Hortensia Calvo, Director of the Latin American Library at Tulane, accompanied by Penny and James Morrill. Penny is a leading scholar of artist William Spratling, and has written extensively about him and his involvement in the Taxco silver renaissance in Mexico. Spratling also taught drawing in the Tulane School of Architecture in the 1920s. We gave them a tour of the Laurel Valley exhibit, and also showed them beautiful gouache, ink wash, and watercolor drawings done by Tulane architecture students in the 1920s and 1930s, including, at left, this ink and watercolor on illustration board proposal for a plot plan for Tulane University from 1932 by New Orleans architects Moise H. Goldstein and Nathaniel Cortlandt Curtis, Sr., and drawn by Tulane students Samuel Wilson, Jr. and Earl Mathes.

We also welcomed Roland and Frances Bourgeois and family. Mr. and Mrs. Bourgeois own the property next to Laurel Valley Plantation in Thibodaux, Louisiana, and came into New Orleans for the chance to see Philip Denman's beautiful images covering nearly 40 years of history of the largest extant sugar plantation in Louisiana and, in its day, one of the largest in the southern United States. Mr. Bourgeois regaled us with wonderful stories of life growing up on a Louisiana plantation.

Bibliography and Research Methods class visit

We welcomed Tulane English Professor Melissa Bailes' Bibligraphy and Records Methods class to SEAA last week to learn about our holdings, and how we might be able to help in her students' research projects. We brought out items from our Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Company records to give the class an idea of information a single collection might contain (and because it was Halloween). We focused on presentation renderings used to show clients proposals by the Weiblen company for tombs, plaster scale models of classical tombs made by the Lachin family of New Orleans, Weiblen's stone sample box, which includes granite from Weiblen's quarries at Stone Mountain, Georgia (Albert Weiblen's brother George helped carve the Confederate bas relief on the mountain's side), art glass samples, decorative bronze reliefs, bronze color samples for tomb doors made by the Gorham Company in New York from 1910, photos of Weiblen stone carvers, masons, and builders from 1931, and the only known surviving enamel sign used to mark newly erected Weiblen tombs from the 19teens.

Ink wash rendering for prospective tomb, unidentified client/location. 1923.

Watercolor rendering for Salvatore D'Antoni tomb, Metairie Cemetery, New Orleans,
Ca. 1920s. Stanley R. Poole, architect for the Weiblen Company.

Color samples for bronze doors, 1910, Gorham Company, New York.