Saloop

Further to Ticky: fine satirical fantasy (21 March 2015), I was ready to write off  "saloop" ... an old-fashioned beverage decocted from the root of the red-handed orchis. It comforted the waiters' stomachs because it was greasy and warm" as a Stella Gibbons invention. But no.

Green Man sighting

I rather like beer pump logos. They're an excellent little artform, and on occasion they completely transcend what they are - fairly throwaway advertising artwork - and become truly inspired miniatures. This is an example worth of Arcimboldo.

Beer pump artwork

Beer pump labels are a fine little genre of miniature artwork. I was struck by a couple this week:

Firstly, there was Tolchards "Devon Coast" (a pleasant hoppy beer made by Red Rock Brewery of Bishopsteignton). With its ocean vista, and foreground shed and path disappearing down into a cove, it's a nice example of a picture that fits Jay Appleton's "prospect-refuge theory": the claim that human aesthetic experience of landscape is based on perceptions that are evolved for survival (e.g. places to hide, escape routes, places with a clear view).. See the previous posts Landscapes in mind and Prospect and refuge in a beer glass.

And then there's the depiction of Lord Nelson on the label for St Austell's "Admiral's Ale".

detail from St Austell Admiral's Ale label

This deserves credit as a very sharp caricature of the classic Lemuel "Francis" Abbott portrait (currently hanging in the Terracotta Room of number 10 Downing Street).

As in other depictions, the red sash is borrowed from a different portrait by William Beechey. See previously: Nelson gets a facelift.

- Ray

Nelson gets a facelift

New sign

Old sign #2

Old sign #1

I can be a little unobservant at times. Because it's so high above street level, I hadn't taken a close look at the new sign for The Nelson (formerly the Lord Nelson Inn) in Topsham; and nor had I noticed that the old ones are in the courtyard behind.

It's interesting to compare influences and styles. The old sign #1 is a rather stylised but realistic portrait. The old sign #2 is brilliantly naff as a piece of naive art in the style of many pub signs. The new sign, reflecting the formal name change to The Nelson, is a very polished photorealistic depiction (anecdotally, I gather it was done by a Dutch graphics firm). Googling a little finds that ...

Old sign #1 / 1800 Heinrich Füger portrait (detail)

... the old sign #1 (above) is closely based on Heinrich Füger's 1800 portrait, currently in the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth.

Old sign #2 / Beechey portrait (detail)

The old sign #2 (above) looks to have based the uniform on one of the William Beechey portraits, with the face similar to that of the Heinrich Füger.

New sign / 1799 Abbott portrait (detail)

The new sign (above) is modelled on the 1799 Lemuel Francis Abbott portrait (see Wikipedia), which is in the Terracotta Room at 10 Downing Street. It slightly embellishes Nelson's uniform with the red sash from the Beechey depictions. In my view it makes Nelson look rather bland and neotonous, but I still think it's extremely well done as a very nice sign that modifies an original image to the point where it's neither a straight copy nor a too obvious adaptation.

- Ray

Betty Stogs

Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog, in an article about the largely forgotten Cornish folklorist William Bottrell - see William Bottrell and the Strangest Funeral Procession in the World - just quoted a wonderful uncredited obituary imagining a funeral cortège for Bottrell consisting of a throng of characters and entities (most of whom/which I'd never heard of) from Cornish folklore.

One not there, who ought to be, is Betty Stogs. The earliest account I can find of her is in Robert Hunt's 1865 Popular romances of the west of England; or, The drolls, traditions, and superstitions of old Cornwall (here's a 1908 reprint in the Internet Archive: ID popularromanceso00huntuoft). It's an extremely interesting book.

The story Betty Stogs and Jan the Mounster, which has a bit of a social engineering subtext, tells of Betty, a scruffy, lazy woman given to "courseying" (wandering house-to-house to gossip); in the version collected by Hunt, she allegedly lived near Towednack. She never darns her stockings, but just lets them sag to hide the worn heels. She finds an equally scruffy partner, Jan the Mounster (i.e. monster) who gets her pregnant but refuses to marry her until her father comes up with a dowry. They don't get on because Betty has in addition got a gin habit, can't cook, and tries to wash his watch in dirty dishwater. She's extremely neglectful to her baby, which gets as dirty as its parents. But at a year old, he disappears. After a search, he's found in a thicket, on a bed of moss, wrapped in clean clothing and sprinkled with flowers, spick and span from having been cleansed in the morning dew. The fairies had planned to take him as a changeling, but had taken so long to clean him up that dawn had broken, and they had to leave him behind. Betty and Jan are chastened by the experience, and mend their ways (or at least somewhat). Here's the story, starting page 103, or you can read the 1865 edition at Google Books.

Betty Stogs beer pump logo

Beer drinkers will recognise Betty from her incarnation as Skinner's Brewery's' "Queen of Cornish Beer"; their flagship beer is named after her. I didn't realise until Googling her name last week that she was based on a folklore character. Skinner's  has adopted her in both her original scruffy incarnation with wrinkled socks, and in her cleaned-up version in which she has become something of a force of nature, represented by the brewery at festivals and charity fundraisers in true mumming / folk custom fashion as a burly man - former Cornish-style wrestling champion Fred Thomas - in drag.

Skinner's promotional poster

I especially like the style of the new promotional poster by by Nick Berringer and Stuart Thorn, "intended to emphasise the ale’s origins as Betty remains devoutly Cornish while exploring the big wide world", in which the now-slightly-genteel Betty goes to a posh restaurant, but still has beer and a giant Cornish pasty. They promise more. See the Skinner's events page for details.

- Ray

A Chartreuse mystery

I love the way the Internet often brings to the surface dimly-remembered things. I remember from around 1970 coveting a very pretty book about optics in the school library. I can remember nothing about it except that it had interesting colour plates, and a reference to unusual colour properties of Green Chartreuse liqueur.

Google finally traced it: Colours and how we see them (Hamilton Hartridge, Bell & Sons, London, 1949). There are some scans at Chris Mullen's The Visual Telling of Stories website (which has a wealth of material on colour, and more) and one of the plates - shown above - illustrates the Chartreuse as red in the bottle, green in the glass. The actual book - a write-up of Hartridge's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 1946-47 - looks readily findable, but I was more interested in having traced the detail I remembered, which refers to this optical phenomenon called dichroism (a material having different colours under different lighting conditions):

This change of colour with thickness of solution is known as the 'Chartreuse Effect', because it was first noticed in connection with the famous liqueur which was manufactured by the Carthusian monks. When in the flagon the liqueur is a deep ruby red; when poured out into the glass it is a brilliant emerald green. Nothing could be better than to actually use the liqueur itself for demonstration purposes, but this may not be easy.

It easn't easy, and is actually a bit of a mystery, because I'm familiar with Chartreuse liqueur (you can readily find images online) and I've never seen any sign of it displaying this red-green dichroic effect. It's green in both the bottle and glass.

Nor do there appear to be any references to this "Chartreuse effect" except in Hartridge and a handful of later optics books - such as Frederick W Clulow's 1972 Colour: its principles and their applications - that I'd bet money just recycled the factoid from Hartridge. Have the Carthusians changed the recipe since he wrote about it? Was he simply mistaken? Or could he even have invented the observation? I raise this option becase his 1976 obituary in the British Journal of Opthalmology mentions his work as:

"Director of the Vision Research Unit ... set up to give Hartridge a chance to test the polychromatic theory of colour vision which he had promulgated with few real experiments but many publications ... From this point of view, the venture was a predictable disaster"

So, can anyone shed any light on this claimed property of Chartreuse?

So we know what we're talking about, here's a household example: a Fairy detergent liquitab, whose content shows a very nice dichroism, from green by transmitted light, changing to deep blue by reflected light.

A more celebrated example is the Lycurgus Cup, a late Roman glass goblet which, due to the presence of colloidal gold and silver, is olive-green when viewed under normal circumstances by reflected light, but wine-red by transmitted light. See The Lycurgus Cup - A Roman Nanotechnology (Freestone, Meeks, Sax and Higgitt, Gold Bulletin, 4, 4, London, World Gold Council, 2007).

Lycurgus Cup - images from Wikipedia

Addendum, 7th Oct 2013. A few days back, the quiz and general knowledge programme QI mentioned this effect. It featured an experiment, credited to Dr Alice Bowen, showing the creation of a cocktail comprising equal parts of the liqueur Blue Curaçao, clear cranberry juice, and lemonade. It displayed a strong red-blue dichroism. This'll probably be online soon.

- Ray

The Zestful Gollopers

click to enlarge

In a couple of posts I've mentioned in passing the Ancient Order of Froth Blowers (A.O.F.B.). If you missed them, this was a humorous charitable organisation found by one Alf Temple in 1924 to raise money for children's charities in gratitude for life-saving surgery by Sir Alfred Downing Fripp, who became a leading light in the society's management until his death in 1931, when A.O.F.B. came to an end through various factors, personal and financial.

A.O.F.B. was essentially a drinking club whose chapters ("vats") met in pubs nationwide, with weird rituals and hierarchies; it collected charitable donations through membership fees, merchandise, and various forfeits (such as failing to wear membership cufflinks). Its motto was "Lubrication in Moderation" and part of its description was:

"A sociable and law abiding fraternity of absorptive Britons who sedately consume and quietly enjoy with commendable regularity and frequention the truly British malted beverage as did their forbears and as Britons ever will, and be damned to all pussyfoot hornswogglers from overseas and including low brows, teetotalers and MPs and not excluding nosey parkers, mock religious busy bodies and suburban fool hens all of which are structurally solid bone from the chin up".
- Wikipedia quote from the AOFB handbook

Then, as now, the promotion of drinking attracted criticism, and it may well have not been a terrifically healthy pursuit. But it must have a significant source of bonhomie in an era still reeling from World War One.

This repeat post is because I just got a flyer about the 130-page book The Zestful Gollopers (The Amazing Story of Bert Temple, Sir Alfred Fripp & Ye Ancient Order of Froth Blowers) by David L. Woodhead and Ian Brown.

The full story of Ye Ancient Order of Froth Blowers from its inception in 1924 when it had its first two members, Bert Temple and Sir Alfred Fripp, to 1931 when both men were dead - but 688,000 people had joined their charitable Order and over £100,000 had been collected for all 'Wee Waifs'. It describes its rapid growth in 1926-7, its fight with the Temperance Movement and the reasons for its sudden decline.

The book - a definitive account of the A.O.F.B. - is the fruit of considerable research by David and others into this largely forgotten organisation. For background and photos, see Ian Brown's Friends of the Froth Blowers (" a site dedicated to the memory and preservation of the A.O.F.B.").

The Zestful Gollopers is available for £6.49 + p&p from eBay (you can also get it via Blurb.com at various prices depending on format).

- Ray