Wisconsin Journal

Number 19

31 January 1998



We definitely hit upon a mild winter in Wisconsin. The average

low temperature this time of year is 7 or 8 degrees, but it may

not even get down to freezing tonight. However, there's still

a plenty of snow and ice on the ground. The alley behind the garage

didn't get plowed after the last major snowfall, and turned into

a great sheet of ice, about 7-8" thick. Passing cars wore a groove

down to the pavement in it, which makes getting in and out of

the garage dicey. Kaye has all-wheel drive on her car, and can

usually muscle through. My Volvo has the weight in front and the

drive wheels in back, so I've gotten stuck a couple of times. Before

it warmed up last week, we had a great crop of icicles growing

from the gutters on all sides of the house. During the coldest part

of the month (-10 with -25 windchill) we learned from Sarah that snot

freezes at that temperature, and Luke informed us that your nostrils can

freeze together if you're not careful how you wipe your nose.



The lakes have frozen, finally. It was the 5th or 6th latest date

over the past century. Ice fisherman have appeared on some of them,

along with their ice augers (looking like a brace and bit from a

Three Stooges' movie) and small tents and shanties. Kaye and I

walked out on Lake Mendota the other day. It was a sunny day and the

wind was dead calm. It felt more like a Utah salt flat than a frozen

lake.



Our touring has slowed down here, because of the snow, and because

some places shut down for a while after the holidays. Of course, there

was the Superbowl to anticipate (and then mourn). Packer icons assumed

gargantuan proportions. A couple guys in Sun Prarie built a helmet out

of snow about 12-14 feet tall and colored it green and yellow. They

said they planned to watch the game in it. The "cheese artist" from

Kraft created a replica of the Vince Lombardi trophy out of a 600 lb.

block of cheddar in honor of the game. (He noted that cheddar is the

best carving cheese. He has a point. Most Velveeta sculpture is no

longer with us.) Kaye noted new kinds of Packer chow showing up in the

grocery stores the week before the big game: tubs of green and yellow

jello, green and yellow mints, green and yellow cakes and cupcakes, plus

Superbowl paper plates and green and yellow carnations, in order to

set the perfect table. Beyond that, all the stores had mounds of junk

food. On Superbowl Sunday, about a third of the congregation at church

was wearing packer coats and sweatshirts. Even the the ministers were

wearing green and gold stoles, though they claimed it was for Epiphany.



There's a great exhibit on at the university art museum currently. It's

called "Bridge: An Illusion in Clay" by Taiwanese artist Ah-Leon.

He spent three years sculpting a full-size model of a derelict footbridge

out of clay, based on recollections from his childhood. From more than

a few feet a way, the planks and pilings are indistinguishable from

wood, complete with rot, weathering, knot holes and nails. The boards

have the appropriate sag, and he has even modeled the chunks of rotten

wood that have fallen to the ground. Off to the side there are some

spare planks you can handle. Some look like early experiments with

texturing and surface treatment, but one looks just like those on

the bridge. Kaye remarked that she expected to get splinters while

running her hands over it. I remember reading about the work in

Smithsonian magazine. The article notes that the artist never saw the

work completely assembled before it was first exhibited at the Sackler

gallery. (It's probably 30-40 feet long.)



I haven't included my business trips in these reports, because there

hasn't been much out of the ordinary on them. However, I just got

back from giving a seminar at Penn, where Peter Buneman was kind enough

to take me up to Doylestown to see the constructions and collections

of Henry Mercer. Mercer was a Doylestown native who lived from the

middle of the 19th century until 1930. When he was 14, a rich aunt

took him to Europe, and he became fascinated with castles. Other

interests included tilemaking and collecting tools that illustrated

technology from before the Industrial Revolution. He attended Harvard

and got a law degree, but when the aunt died and left him the bulk

of her estate, he decided to construct some castles of his own.



Peter and I first visited Mercer's home, called Fonthill, which he

built between 1908 and 1912, working by hand with 8-10 workers and

one horse. Mercer designed the house himself, and built it almost

entirely of that wonder material, concrete. Concrete floors, concrete

walls, concrete ceilings, concrete fireplaces, concrete steps, concete

roof, concrete bookshelves. Almost all the ceilings, and most of the

walls have tiles embedded, some of his own design, and some that he

collected from around the world. The risers of all the stairways

(32 of them) have tiles, often of letters that spell out sayings

in English or Latin. There are 44 rooms in it, of which we probably

saw about half. Lots of bends and turns, odd angles and half-stairways.

At one point I was sure we should have crossed our own path already,

but found out we had actually worked our way up to the fourth level,

so were passing over rooms where we had been before. There is one

section of his "castle" that is actually an old stone farmhouse that

stood on the land when he purchased it. He just built around it and

added a new roof. (Concerete of course.) His mansion is

basically as he left it, with 900 prints on display, and samples

of everything else he collected over a lifetime: books, pots,

Babylonian tablets, old tools, weapons and a skull.



Most of the larger rooms had vaulted ceilings. The construction process

he used is interesting. When it came time to do a ceiling on a room,

the workmen would build a tempory platform near the top of the walls.

They would mound up dirt and rubble in the rough shape of the ceiling,

then cover that over with a layer of sand, which would then be smoothed

to the desired shape of the vaulting. Then tiles would be placed

face-down in the sand, protruding slightly, and the concrete

would be poured over that. When it had cured, the dirt, sand and

scaffolding were removed. In one place, you can see the (intentional)

handprints of some of workmen who helped him. (His dog, Rollo,

accidently added paw prints to one of the stairways. He left them

in, and added the same touch in the museum he built.) In the lower rooms,

the arches are often asymmetric and the tiles spaced out. In the

upper rooms, which were done later, the ceilings have more pleasing

shapes and the tiling is more extensive. Since the tour we were on

consisted of Peter, the guide and me, we got to see a room that isn't

on the standard tour. It's ceiling is almost completely covered

with tiles, depicting ancient Mexico City. (Mercer was quite interested

in the early exploration and settlement of the Americas.)



Also on the grounds are a garage (concrete) with meeting rooms (concrete)

above, a well house (concrete), and the Moravian Pottery and Tileworks

(concrete). The tileworks operates today making reproductions of

Mercer's tile designs, which you can see in the gift shop.



We then headed into town to see the Mercer Museum, which he built

(out of concrete) to house his collections. It's a cavernous building,

with an interior atrium extending through the top 5 of its 6 stories.

The museum proper is unheated--it was 42 degrees the day we visited.

The lack of heat is supposedly good for the collection, as heat would

tend to dry the air and damage some of the items. The bulk of the

collection is tools and materials used in pre-Industrial Revolution

trades, such as tinsmithing, basket weaving, millinery, hat making,

baking, blacksmithing, fishing, clockmaking, shellworking (making

items of tortiseshell) and hornsmithing (flattening and shaping cows'

horn into things like combs). There are a few large items, too,

like a grainmill and a whaling boat. He also had a lot of cast iron

stoveplates, which are displayed in the attic rooms. He often got

ideas from the designs and figures cast into these plates for his

tiles.



A lot of the items are displayed on the ceilings or lashed to the

balconies of the atrium. When building (casting?) the museum,

he embedded loops of wire in many of the ceilings and walls, to

facilitate suspending the exhibits.



Best bit of trivia I learned: The name "Nagler" means nailmaker in

German. A proficient Nagler could make a thousand nails in a day.



Things I had never seen before: tools for making watermains from tree

trunks, a wicker coffin, an original gallows and a vampire killing

kit. The last appeared to be an actual commercial product from England,

probably dating back a century or two, and intended for travelers

to Eastern Europe. It contained a small pistol, silver bullets,

a bullet mold, an ivory crucifix, powdered garlic flowers, a wooden

stake (but no mallet) and a vial of Prof. Blomberg's Serum along

with a syringe to inject it. (Not clear if you used it on the vampire,

or on your self after getting bitten.) All fitted into a nice leather

case that stows easily in your luggage.



A fascinating place. I hope to go back someday with a little more

time, and a little warmer weather.



Concretely,

Dave

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Corrigenda: The book by Aldo Leopold I referred to a couple reports

ago is "A Sand County Almanac," not "Sand County Diary."