Les Bons Temps for a Baltimore Native

Posted on February 23, 2014 by almosthipguy

[Baltimore Or Less loves beautiful, talented people – they’re so unlike us, yet allow us to live vicariously through their exploits. Jenny Campbell is one of those peeps we love – and now the Baltimore Sun loves her as well. The Campbell Clan kilt is bursting with talent: Jenny’s brother Chris makes Tri-Brewing’s Swampus red ale and her sister-in-law Dawn Campbell makes award-winning films.] 

How Jenny Campbell became a New Orleans costumer

By Julie Scharper (Baltimore Sun, February 19, 2014)

Jenny Campbell flipped her wig after moving to New Orleans to become a costumer (Photo by Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun / February 2, 2012)

Jenny Campbell flipped her wig after moving to New Orleans to become a full-time costumer (Photo by Amy Davis, Baltimore Sun / February 2, 2012)

What is nearly as remarkable as Jenny Campbell’s costumes — the glittering swirls of ribbon and whirling snow globe headdresses — is the path that led to her second career as a costume maker.

The Baltimore native taught herself to make costumes a few years ago, creating extravagant outfits for parades, bar crawls and parties at the American Visionary Art Museum.

Now Campbell spends her days buried in silk and sequins at the Southern Costume Co. in New Orleans, designing, selecting feathers and fabrics, and sewing elaborate, gravity-defying outfits.

“I’m never, ever tired of it,” she said. “There’s so much to do down here.”

After work, Campbell, 49, turns her attention to creating her own costumes. She has founded her own krewe, or group of costumed Mardi Gras marchers, who will be participating in their first parade this week.

Continue reading “Les bon temps for a Baltimore native” at baltimoresun.com.

Baltimore's Bohdacious Jenny Campbell is now based in New Orleans, where she works for Southern Costume Co. (Photo courtesy Baltimore Sun)

Baltimore’s Bohdacious Jenny Campbell is now based in New Orleans, where she works for Southern Costume Co. (Photo courtesy Baltimore Sun)

Related Links:

Blaze Starr Painted Screens by Jenny Campbell (Baltimore Or Less)

Jenny Campbell Online: jennycampbellonline.blogspot.com

Jenny Campbell Painted Screens (Facebook)

Portfolio: Jenny Campbell (Smart Woman)

A Portrait of an Artist: Jenny Campbell (Vimeo)

Posted in Art, Baltimorons, Events, Festivals, Holidays, Kitsch, Roadside Attractions | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Edgar Allan Poe, Interior Design Critic

Posted on February 20, 2014 by atomictv

What scared the author of ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’? Bad design.

poe-room

A room furnished according to Poe’s “The Philosophy of Furniture” for a 1959 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (Image: Brooklyn Museum via Smithsonian magazine)

By Jimmy Stamp (Smithsonian.com, 2/19/2014)

In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Landor’s Cottage,” the author paints an idealized picture of his own New York Cottage. He describes the building in painstaking–some might even say excruciating–detail, but Poe also devotes a short paragraph to cottage’s furnishings:

“On the floor was an ingrain carpet, of excellent texture – a white ground, spotted with small circular green figures. At the windows were curtains of snowy white jaconet muslin: they were tolerably full, and hung decisively, perhaps rather formally, in sharp, parallel plaits to the floor – just to the floor. The walls were papered with a French paper of great delicacy – a silver ground, with a faint green cord running zig-zag throughout. Its expanse was relieved merely by three of Julien’s exquisite lithographs….One of these drawings was a scene of Oriental luxury, or rather voluptuousness; another was a ‘carnival piece,’ spirited beyond compare; the third was a Greek female head – a face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an expression so provokingly indeterminate, never before arrested my attention.”

This description doesn’t exactly match with the spartan furnishings that currently fill Poe’s cottage, nor is it likely that it corresponds with its decoration during Poe’s residency. However, it does line up exactly with Poe’s personal tastes and his very strong opinions on interior design, which he described in his authoritative, humorous, and confidently written piece of design criticism “The Philosophy of Furniture,” originally published in the May 1840 issue of Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine.

Continue reading at Smithsonian.com.

Posted in Baltimorons, Edgar Allan Poe | Leave a comment

Whimsical taxidermy catches on in Baltimore

Posted on February 19, 2014 by atomictv

bazaarhampden

By Julie Scharper (The Baltimore Sun, 2/19/2014)

This is not your dad’s stuffed deer head.

After decades of being relegated to man caves and hunting lodges, taxidermy is hip.

Three television shows delve into the art of preserving animals, and its practitioners, who are, as you might imagine, a quirky lot. There are national taxidermy competitions and conferences and even a Brooklyn museum devoted to the art.

At Bazaar, a Hampden curiosity shop that opened last year, taxidermied ducklings that died soon after pecking through their shells, jars with preserved fox and coyote heads and even a rare albino raccoon are on display. The shop can’t keep up with the demand for the taxidermy workshops it started hosting last month.

Continue reading at The Baltimore Sun’s bthesite.


Bazaar co-owner Greg Hatem shows examples of different styles of taxidermy in his store. (Stephen Pimpo/BaltSun Video)

Posted in 2010s, Art, Hampden, Kitsch, Roadside Attractions, Shopping | Leave a comment

The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904

Posted on February 7, 2014 by atomictv

Baltimore’s Great Fire Created As Well As Destroyed

Tour on Great Fire’s anniversary draws crowd

By Jay Hancock (The Baltimore Sun, 2/6/2011)

One hundred seven years after Harry met Martha at the edge of hell, two people who resulted from their encounter wanted to see the spot and imagine the flames — both thermal and romantic.

On Sunday Mary Maguire and her daughter, Colleen Phebus, walked and bused across 70 downtown blocks that were annihilated in the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904.

Maguire’s grandparents met during the conflagration, she said. There’s a terrific family story about how Harry Gessner saved Martha Skelton from distress — it was her hat that was the problem.

“And then a year later she married him,” said Maguire, who joined a fire anniversary tour along with about 40 others on a brilliant, warmish-for-February day.

Tour leader and Baltimore historian Wayne Schaumburg probably hadn’t heard that particular fire story. But he recounted dozens of others as he again re-created the two winter days that wiped out Baltimore’s central business district.

Continue reading “Baltimore’s Great Fire Created As Well As Destroyed” at The Baltimore Sun.

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baltfirepratt

Souvenir of the Baltimore fire, February 7th, 8th and 9th, 1904, as seen through a camera.

Photographs taken by Jack Hement (John C. Hemment) of Baltimore in the aftermath of the fire of 1904. This souvenir booklet includes a narrative that provides an overview of the events of the fire and a map that shows the areas of the city devastated by the fire .

View the souvenir booklet: The Baltimore Fire Through a Camera (Enoch Pratt Free Library)

View another souvenir booklet: Realistic Photos of the Baltimore Fire (Enoch Pratt Free Library)

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Baltimore Sun Photo Gallery: 1904 Baltimore City Fire

Click to view The Sun’s  “1904 Baltimore City Fire” Photo Gallery

BmoreFire1904

Click to view the Baltimore Sun’s “Retro Baltimore” gallery of Great Baltimore Fire photos

‘Great fire’ of 1904 took several lives

Guardsmen, firefighters and other residents ended up dying from exposure in the chilly aftermath of the destructive blaze

By Jacques Kelly (The Baltimore Sun, 2/4/2011)

On a couple of long walks this week, I encountered some classic Baltimore Fire weather. This is a condition with rapid changes of wind and falling mercury. Heavy winds fanned the fire of Feb. 7 and 8, 1904, then a cold snap descended and added to the human misery.

Those volatile February winds overwhelmed the city’s ability to deal with the fire. The blaze jumped from downtown building to building, fanned by those changeable gusts. It was only through the assistance of many other fire companies, including those in New York, Washington and Philadelphia, that the flames were held in check at the Jones Falls.

I stood at the corner of Park and Lexington a few days ago and looked at the vacant land where the old Castleberg’s store stood. At the time of the fire, it was called J.W. Putts “Glass Palace” store, a fancy-wares emporium that offered china and other household items. The store exploded and shot glass everywhere.

Continue reading “‘Great fire’ of 1904 took several lives” at The Baltimore Sun.

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Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 Interactive Exhibit

Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Project

Click image to enter interactive exhibit

Follow the “footprints” of the Fire online. This interactive exhibit shows how the fire spread and includes photographs, film footage and paintings. Digital content contributed by the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Fire Museum of Maryland, Maryland Historical Society, Library of Congress and the Baltimore County Public Library.

Posted in "The Block", 1900s | Tagged | Leave a comment