In 1930, Beatrice Tonnesen retired from her career in Chicago as a nationally known artist-photographer, and returned to live with her sister, Clara, in their childhood home in Winneconne, Wisconsin.  Nearly two decades later, Tonnesen re-emerged on the national scene as the creator of “Marsware”, ceramic art objects fashioned from coal clinkers, the residue dug from her home furnace!  Reportedly, she was fascinated by the unique shapes of the clinkers and conceived the idea of adding clay and paint to create flower pots, candle stick holders and even necklaces, all adorned with sculptures of  people and animals she imagined as Mars dwellers.  Her craft was considered unique enough that it was the subject of a 1949 film short titled “Unusual Occupations,” produced by Paramount Pictures and shown in theaters nationwide.Having never seen a piece of Marsware, or even a detailed photo of one, I was excited, recently, to be able to buy a series of five press photos, showing Tonnesen in 1946 with her curious Marsware creations.  The photos, shown in the slideshow at right are all stamped:Acme Newspictures, Inc.461 Eighth Ave. New York CityPlease Credit “Acme Photo”This picture is sold to you for your publication only and must not be loaned, syndicated or used for advertising purposes without written permission from us.The photos came complete with titles and captions which can be seen by rolling your cursor over each image.  Does anyone out there have any actual examples of Marsware?  At least now we know what they look like, should we run across one at a garage sale!Copyright 2012 Lois Emerson 

A striking photo, found two years ago by the Winneconne (WI) Historical Society, showed a beautiful young mother holding her naked baby. A handwritten note on the photo indicated it had been copyrighted in 1901 by Packer’s Tar Soap. The photo appears to have been taken in the same session as the more famous “Tonnesen Madonna” featured here in a post from Chicago Magazine’s 312 blog. Recently, I was fortunate to be able to purchase the finished Packer’s Tar Soap ad from an online gallery, and can now present the “before and after” versions of this beautiful ad in the slideshow at right. I’ve included images of another mother and child photo from my collection which appears to have been shot at the same time, and a photo from the Winneconne Collection which appears to feature the same woman without the child.

Additionally, as I was preparing this post for publication, two related events occurred: First, one of our site visitors, Chip McElroy submitted a photo of a woman in a distinctive woven wrap who reminded me of both the mother in the Packer’s Tar Soap Ad and “Muriel” shown in our post titled “How Tonnesen’s Fedora Became Thos. D. Murphy’s ‘Muriel’.” Next, I happened upon an online image of the original “Fedora” published in 1901 in “The Inland Printer”, v. 27, page 224, available on the Hathi-Trust website. Amazingly, “Fedora” was wearing the same distinctive wrap as the woman in Chip McElroy’s print! I’m including the McElroy image as the fifth image in the slideshow at right. Personally, I am convinced that the same model appears in all of the images. What do you think?

Slideshow images, L to R: Photo for Packer’s Tar Soap ad; the completed ad; related photo from my collection; related photo from the WHS collection; photo courtesy Chip McElroy.

Copyright 2012 Lois Emerson

In the period between roughly 1910 and 1925, print images of “pre-pinup” calendar girls were popular advertising items in America. Tame by today’s standards, or even the standards of a decade or two later, these photos were artfully composed using flowers and drapes, their styles and themes more romantic than sexual. Nonetheless, they were considered risque in their time. Beatrice Tonnesen was a prime provider of these beautiful photographs, which were displayed on calendars mailed on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to advertisers’ mostly-male clientele. Patrons of companies dealing in manufacturing components, farm implements, tools and, occasionally, savings banks, all perceived to be “men’s work,” were likely recipients.

The slideshow at right displays fifteen gorgeous pre-pinup calendar images created by Tonnesen, all but one published by the G-B Company of Joliet, IL. (I believe that would be the Gerlach Barklow Company, a major calendar publisher of the era.) The first eleven images show undated sample photos used by G-B’s sales staff when calling on advertisers. These images were part of a 12-month line of monthly mailing calendars titled “Our Old Sweethearts.” (The month of August is missing from my set.) All of these sample photos can be traced to Tonnesen. The last four images show examples of finished calendars produced between 1916 and 1920, also featuring prints that originated as photos by Tonnesen. It is interesting to note that the 1920 calendar, advertising The State Savings Bank of Ionia, Michigan, published by The Blanchard Co. of Aurora, IL, was probably used as a sample of a finished work. The information printed in the bottom left of the calendar identifies it as a “Class C (calendar) Mount,” part of a line or theme titled “Flower Girls.” For those interested in seeing other similar pre-pinups by Tonnesen, four color images published by the Thos. D. Murphy Co. in a 1919-20 series can be found in Album #1 of the Beatrice Tonnesen Catalog. (Click at the top right of this page.)

Copyright 2011 Lois Emerson

Beatrice Tonnesen’s touching images of family life seem to have been published everywhere in the early days of the twentieth century. We’ve found them in print ads, in newspaper art supplements, on calendars and those old cardboard “church” fans, as well as in fancy frames. Now we can add self-help books to the list of Tonnesen venues.

It must have been hard to be a woman in the early 1900’s, as the world emerged from the Victorian era. But, it seems, a wealth of professional advice was available on the nation’s bookshelves. I have a small collection of vintage “women’s books”, which I gathered because I enjoyed reading their now laughable advice to women on beauty, manners, courtship, marriage, hygiene, health, childcare, romance, sex and more. One of these is Ideal Womanhood, Guide to Mental and Physical Perfection, by S. Pancoast, MD, Copyright 1901 and 1905 by Thompson & Thomas.

In a work that veers between the romantic idealization of women’s lives and the scholarly presentation of the medical wisdom of the day, Tonnesen was, of course, a perfect choice to illustrate the former. And so, we have Tonnesen’s “Evening Story”- a tender photo of an ideal mother telling her ideal children a bedtime story- sharing a double-page spread with an illustration of an ovum arriving in the fallopian tube!
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Over the past several months, I’ve added three rare, diverse and unusual examples of Beatrice Tonnesen’s early work. Hundreds of examples of calendar art derived from her photos are still available to collectors, although her photographic contributions were seldom acknowledged in print. And relatively fewer signed examples of her illustrated or painted artwork are also still obtainable, with a little effort, in today’s vintage art market. But I’ve had considerably more difficulty finding examples of her early portrait work, her advertising photos and her original paintings. Recently, however, I’ve been lucky enough to obtain one of each, which I am happy to share in the accompanying slideshow. In order, from left to right, they are:

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