The Toxic Book of Faces

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before the invention of photography, only the rich could afford to have portraits of themselves. But in the early 1800s, a device called the physiognotrace democratized portraiture, making it possible or everyday people to have their images captured in silhouettes. A man named William Bache traveled the United States creating hundreds of silhouette portraits with the aid of the physiognotrace, leaving behind a ledger book that gives us a rare glimpse of early America. A ledger book…laced with poison.

Guests

Robyn Asleson, curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

Nora Lockshin, senior conservator for archives at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Wendy Bellion, Sewell C. Biggs Chair in American Art History, and associate dean for the humanities at the University of Delaware

Carolyn Hauk, doctoral student in the art history department of the University of Delaware, former intern at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX, I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:23.8	Nora Locciens sees a lot of books, but over a decade ago, she came across one she still remembers.
0:31.1	It was one of a few hundred books we're surveying. This one was particularly impressive as it was large.
0:38.3	Nora is a senior conservator at the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. It's her job to protect
0:43.7	the Smithsonian's oldest books, which involves everything from research to mending.
0:48.4	Sometimes it involves looking in dark corners for bugs.
0:51.5	Oh, that sounds less glamorous than I thought you were going to say.
0:56.2	Sometimes we were microscopic janitors.
0:58.6	The book in question had come to her from the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery for some TLC.
1:04.1	To me, it looks like something pulled from the set of Pirates of the Caribbean.
1:08.3	Like if there were a book that were buried in some cave for hundreds of years and you pulled it out,
1:14.0	it would look like this.
1:15.5	That's such an interesting perception. I would say it has marks of use.
1:19.5	That's museum-speak for a little bit falling apart.
1:22.6	The book had obviously been cared for, but there were some things about it that made it structurally
1:28.9	unsound. The spine was coming off, the front and back covers separating. Still, it wasn't pretty good
1:34.8	shape for a more than 200-year-old book. Well, no book, actually. Because back when this book was
1:41.2	new, the pages were blank, but not anymore. When you open the book, you go from this dirty cover
1:49.2	looks dirty, but we have cleaned it to this first page of these glorious silhouettes.
2:01.6	Page after page after page of this book is covered in dozens of little silhouette portraits.
2:09.1	Two-inch tall, exquisitely detailed, black, paper cut profiles.
2:15.5	Oh, there are certainly hundreds in there.
	...

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