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Rare & Vintage: Auction of French Fairground Art

Posted in Amusement Game, art, Artifacts, tagged ball toss figure, fairground art, shooting gallery target on September 28, 2011| 6 Comments »

Ring toss figures, circa 1935. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

I used to work a Pitch Till U Win, but it didn’t have the character of the hand-carved and painted ring toss pictured above. Featuring caricatures of a gendarme, sailor, artistocrat and grouchy old lady, the game is equipped with a mechanical device that makes the legs of the figures come to life in an eccentric dance. With a pre-sale estimate of 12000-15000 euros ($16,257-$20,321), this antique game is beyond my budget, but it’s fun to window shop. The ring toss is part of a magnificent collection of fairground art, including rare carousel figures, decorative items and games on the block at the Paris auction house Cornette de Saint-Cyr. Collected, researched and restored over a 40-year period, the Fabienne and François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art will be sold in three sessions on September 28 and 29.

Ball toss game with Prussian soldier, circa 1910. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

As a carny kid who grew up working the Pitch Till U Win, Slot Roll Down and Bumper Joint, which have since disappeared from the American midway, I have an abiding interest in vintage carnival games. In the early 1980s, an elite group of dealers began exhibiting primitive carnival wheels, ball-toss figures and shooting gallery targets at the fall antiques show in New York. Viewing these exhibits, I felt pleased and proud that these midway games created by unknown artisans had been transformed into much-admired folk objects. The high prices shocked my frugal mother, who first went on the road during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, successful concessionaires were adept at building their own games, freely borrowing ideas from the fellow down the midway and the catalogs of supply houses catering to the carnival trade. My mother, who grew up speaking French, would have appreciated these hand-crafted French fairground games.

Shooting gallery target, car travels along roller coaster track, early 20th century. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

In regard to the history of his fairground art collection, François Marchal writes at length in an essay in the auction catalog. I dusted off my high school French and attempted a translation with the help of Google: “Apart from some oral testimony, the sources of information were very rare. If the history of the carnival was known, the objects, rides, games and decorations seemed to have escaped any investigation. In a way this was our good fortune. A promising field of exploration was thus offered to us. In the years after World War II, bulky outdated equipment was no longer of interest to anyone. This accelerated the dismantling of lavish rides inherited from the Belle Epoque.”

“The most amazing games invented for taking a break and enjoying oneself were abandoned and left to rot in squalid sheds,” Marchal recalls. “We were able to collect numerous pieces for next to nothing. It is true that these pieces were often faded and decrepit, sometimes ruined. So we gradually learned to restore them, Fabienne working more on the structure and me on the polychromy.”

Porte de tir à surprise, Au Beau Tambour des Zouaves. Cornette de Saint-Cyr Auction of Fabienne & François Marchal Collection of European Carousel and Fairground Art

Rare & Vintage: Souvenir of Frank Bostock’s Coney Island

Posted in Artifacts, history, tagged Bostock Arena, Coney Island, Dreamland, first traveling carnival, Frank Bostock, paper ephemera on March 22, 2011| 3 Comments »

Die Cut Tag from Coney Island's Bostock Arena in Dreamland circa 1904. Courtesy of eBay Seller monsonantiques

We’ve been too busy to blog the past few days, much less browse on eBay. Luckily we found out about the auction of this century-old souvenir of Coney Island’s Bostock Arena via the blog ephemera. The circa 1904 tag depicts famed animal trainer and menagerist Frank C Bostock, whose show was a featured attraction at Coney Island’s Dreamland Park. The reverse side of the tag trumpets the 25-cent show as “Positively the Most Wonderful Wild Animal Exhibition in the World” and notes that “All Bostock’s Patrons Enter Dreamland Free.”

Seller monsonantiques has this rare item up for bid on eBay, where four bidders are vying for it in an auction that ends on Wednesday, March 23rd. The high bid is currently over $150, but that’s peanuts. We’ve seen tickets and advertising tags for Coney’s early rides and attractions sell for several hundred dollars. Good luck to everyone who plans to jump in!

Bostock was a third-generation showman who came to New York from his native England in 1893. He and his partners the Ferari Brothers first set up their carnival on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and then moved to Coney Island. The show featured animal acts, sideshow curiosities, concession games, and such early amusement rides as an English gondola and a carousel.

According to the University of Sheffield’s National Fairground Archive, “The elaborate carved fronts of the wild animal shows Frank Bostock brought from England, some of them made by Burton-upon-Trent company Orton and Spooner, served as the prototype for wagon-mounted show fronts on American carnivals for the next half century.” Since the company toured New England in 1896, historians credit Bostock and his partners with introducing the traveling carnival concept to America. As a former carny kid, this aspect of Bostock’s career holds greater interest for me than his exploits as the best-known lion tamer of his day or his many narrow escapes from death.

If you’d like to read an engaging biographical essay, we recommend “Frank C. Bostock – The Animal King of Abney Park Cemetery.” Bostock died of the flu in England in 1912, more than a year after the fire that destroyed Coney Island’s Dreamland Park. His tomb at Stoke Newington in London is a magnificent marble lion.

UPDATE March 24, 2011:

The tag sold for $386.99 with the winning bid placed in the last few seconds of the auction!

Bostock Arena, Dreamland, Coney Island, N.Y. circa 1905. Library of Congress

Inexhaustible Cows & Bottomless Cups of Chocolate Milk

Posted in Artifacts, tagged chocolate milk, Coney Island, Inexhaustible Cow, Michigan State Fair, milk dispenser, Samuel Robb on March 9, 2011| 4 Comments »

Cow, Coney Island from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views. New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs

When I worked the Crazy Ball at the Michigan State Fair, instead of taking daily draws to eat, I lived on bottomless cups of chocolate milk. It cost only a quarter and if you saved your cup, the workers in the dairy barn would gladly pour unlimited refills from the stainless steel dispenser. I got hoarse yelling “Hey it’s Crazy Ball Fun Time, You Pick the Colors, the Crazy Ball Picks the Winners” and acquired a taste for Michigan’s chocolate milk. When I got back to New York, I looked in vain for a brand that was as delicious.

Inexhaustible Cow at Feltmans. Photo © Charles Denson Archive

Sadly, Michigan’s fair, the oldest state fair in the nation, ended in 2009 due to state budget cuts and its bottomless cup of milk is no more. The 25-cent tradition is now as much a part of history as Coney Island’s Inexhaustible Cow, a 19th century attraction which dispensed milk in its booth in Culver Plaza. I first glimpsed Coney’s cow in a photo in Charles Denson’s book Coney Island Lost and Found: “Pure ice cold milk, 5 cents.” Another photo from the Denson archive shows another milk dispensing cow at Feltman’s Restaurant. The home of the hot dog was also the home of an Inexhaustible Cow!

One of the Coney Island cows has apparently survived and is being offered for sale. Greg Kramer, a Pennsylvania dealer of Americana, is selling the cow (milk not included) for $78,000. It is marked down from its original asking price of $145,000. The cow was brought to our attention when Nashville House & Home Magazine tweeted from last month’s Music Valley Antiques Show “saw a vintage lifesize cow milk dispenser once used at Coney Island. It’s a steal. Very shabby, rustic looking wood. …”

Coney Island Cow attributed to Samuel Robb, New York City. Circa 1881. Photo courtesy of Greg K Kramer & Co. Americana

Kramer told ATZ that he ID’d the cow in an 1881 drawing which appears in Frederick Fried’s book Artists in Wood. Fried attributes the cow to Samuel Robb, a wood carver known for his cigar store Indians and circus carvings. His shop was located at 195 Canal Street. Fried writes, “The cow was a larger than life size wooden cow with a hollow interior into which was placed cans of milk on ice. Spigots fitted into the wooden udder and poured milk for a nickel a glass.” Kramer’s cow still has its spigots as well as “a third coat of paint, restoration to feet and horns, one original eye and normal expected weathering.”

In 1893, an article in the New York Times lamented the loss of Bauer’s Hotel after a fire: “And you also conjure up the days and nights when you used to drink milk at the booth where the big Aldernay cow stood as ‘patiently’ while the pretty milkmaids filled your glass to the brim. There is an absence, too, of the booth where you could get a glass of champagne, of uncertain vintage, but reputed to be from France, at 10 cents a glass.” Other writers slyly suggest that Coney Island’s Inexhaustible Cow would dispense milk to children and lager to adults.