The Land of Cockaigne

 

      Food Insecurity is a major topic of concern these days. The closing of the border and the disruption of supply chains has caused food shortages and higher prices and increased our awareness of the facts that we can't grow a lot of it here and, if we can, we don't have anyone around to get it out of the fields for us. That we might not have enough guacamole for the Super Bowl was of real concern to those who were already worried about not having enough avocados for their toast. But, I am not going to talk about Food Insecurity. If you are disappointed, you can read all about it in this report from the Library of Parliament: Covid-19, Food Insecurity and Related Issues. 

   Recently there has been a lot of good news about food in London as these headlines indicate: "Federal Funding Plants Seeds for Agri-food Growth in London," and more recently: "Innovative Factory Turning London Crickets Into Food Nets $17M Backing," by Norman De Bono, LFP, Feb. 18, 2021. It is a good thing that some of our land is now being used for food processing facilities, rather than for just supplying shelters for those retirees from Toronto who we see increasingly in our grocery stores. For really good news about food, however, one needs to look to the past, when we actually grew crops and constructed palaces out of grain and corn and used cereal in our architecture.

   To learn about such things, the book pictured above is useful. It "explores the background, history, development, and meaning of corn palaces, crop art, and butter sculpture from 1870 to 1930, concluding with a consideration of the implications of food art for today.” Such items were icons of abundance and provided visual evidence that we lived in a land of plenty. Definitions are provided: 
“A word about terms: corn palaces and their sister grain palaces are sometimes referred to as “cereal architecture.” These large exhibition buildings are covered inside and out with a cladding of grain and other natural products. “Crop art,” as the term is used here, refers to sculpture and smaller-scaled architectural forms such as street kiosks covered in grains, seeds and grasses. Butter sculpture is simply sculpture made from butter; it might be layered over an armature or carved from a solid block, but butter sculpture must be cooled in some manner to survive.” (p.x.)

Butter Sculptures

  

   The book focuses on the huge corn palaces in places like Sioux City, Iowa and Mitchell, South Dakota, but crop art also existed in Canada, as did butter sculpturing. One of the practitioners of this fine art lived close by and produced the "Life Size" sculpture made of butter pictured above. Simpson provides this information:

 “Ross Butler, a Canadian artist known for his lifelike animal sculptures, began working for the Canadian dairy industry in the 1940s, and in 1952 modeled an equestrian Queen Elizabeth II for a Toronto show. It drew so much attention that he was invited to re-create it for the coronation that summer in London. But the thought of so much butter being wasted in a sculpture drew angry newspaper letters from Britons, who were still facing food shortages. The anger was compounded by a newspaper typographical error that reported the sculpture was to be made of 15,000 pounds of butter rather than 1,500. The incorrect amount would have been enough to supply a week’s butter ration to 120,000 people. Butler and his sponsors defended themselves, first by correcting the typo, then by pointing out that the Canadian industry was shipping tons of butter to Britain as part of the celebration, and finally by assuring people that the butter would not be wasted but would be recycled. Nevertheless, it took considerable effort to offset the unexpected bad publicity.”

I suppose it would be in bad taste if the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair (upcoming virtually in March) displayed a lot of food that was being wasted.

   Lest you think this is all ancient history, having occurred in the early 1950s, there was another butter sculpture incident in Toronto sixty years later in 2012.  If you think a Life Size butter sculpture of Winston and the Queen was huge, imagine how big this one was. 

   That is a bust made of butter of the late Rob Ford, brother of the current Premier of Ontario, which was on display in the CNE in 2012.  The 230 kg depicts the Mayor reading a Margaret Atwood book, while resting against a steering wheel. Apparently Ms Atwood and others were upset about library funding issues and Ford had recently been chastised for driving while distracted.

But What About The Land of Cockaigne?

   I sometimes use trickery to try to get someone to read this blog. For example,  I wrote earlier about London's new cricket factory, under the heading ENTOMOPHAGY. The assumption is the reader will see such an odd word and peek at the post rather than go to Wikipedia, where there is, for example,  a good definition of  "The Land of Cockaigne."  It is written about in the book above as well. It is a land of plenty where fences "were made of sausage and houses were roofed with bacon." (p.9) The kind of place mentioned in the song, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain", where there are lemonade springs, where the bluebird sings and the farmers's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay and the chickens lay soft boiled eggs. 

While Canada can never be an agricultural paradise or Cockaigne, perhaps the current pandemic will at least teach us to pay more attention to the food we can grow and eat and where it is from.

Sources:

 Although there is a Wikipedia entry for Ross Butler, there is information about him close by in Woodstock. See: Ross Butler Gallery; this exhibition brochure - "Ross Butler, Branding, Butter, and Bulls" and the Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame. 

   The Ford butter sculpture did indeed exist. See: "CNE Masterpiece: A Well-buttered Ford Reading Atwood, Leaning on a Steering Wheel: Who Said Rob Ford Wasn't Smooth," Niamh Scallan, The Toronto Star, Aug. 23, 2012 and "Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Made Into Massive Butter Sculpture," ca.news.yahoo.com, Aug. 24, 2012.

The book above: Corn Palaces and Butter Queens: A History of Crop Art and Diary Sculpture, Pamela H. Simpson. U of Minn. Press, 2012. I have the only copy in London. I am not sure why.

The Bonus: Miller & Miller Auctions  LTD.

 This provides yet another example of the bonus being better than the content. While doing the kind of exhaustive research required for an endeavour such as this, I stumbled upon this about Ross Butler: "Ross Butler, Canadian Artist. How Dawes Black Horse Brewery Made His Sculptures Famous," [he sculpted using things other than butter.] 

If you bother to check that link you will see it comes from the website of Miller & Miller. 

And, if you bother to check that link you will find The Miller Times - "an online magazine sharing intriguing stories and little-known facts about the unique items we come across at Miller and Miller Auctions." 

There is much on these websites that you will enjoy and you are likely to spend the rest of your day on one or the other of them.

Miller and Miller is apparently located in New Hamburg. I have never been there and they don't know me - that is, this is not a promotional gimmick. Given the way their website and blog looks, they would likely be embarrassed to find out they were mentioned in a blog that looks like this one. One is reminded of another classy establishment, RM Auctions in Blenheim. It was purchased by Sotheby's. 

Charcoal Fueled Automobiles

    

   This is Abandoned Project #737 and it does actually have to do with cars that use charcoal as fuel. I am really abandoning the subject in 2020 since it is highly unlikely that I will take it up in 2021, given where it resides in the queue of things which remain unfinished. You are likely to be interested in such an unusual topic and eager to learn more, but you are probably fatigued more than usual at this covid year end. So, I will make it easy for you.

   There is no specific Wikipedia entry, but there is a good article that will provide you with all you need, or probably want to know. It is found, appropriately enough, in Low-Tech Magazine - "Wood Gas Vehicles: Firewood in the Fuel Tank." One reason I am now abandoning what I thought was an unheard of subject is because quite a few people know about it. I am assuming that you are not among them.

   Although the link provided above has been around for many years, it may not be around in the years to come - it is, after all, found in a publication that is 'Low-Tech'. Where would that leave readers of this blog who happen to stumble over this post a few years from now? It is out of concern for them that I offer more. You are free to go. 

   They would likely want to know how I came upon such a subject. I found it mentioned in what is regarded as one of the greatest travel accounts of the last century: The Road to Oxiana, by Robert Byron (no relation.) If you weren't particularly interested in the workings of internal combustion engines, you now are likely to be more intrigued. I recently discovered some old notes of mine and it is them that I am about to abandon and toss out, to make room for more projects to be abandoned in my few remaining years.

   The first mention is found in the introduction: “From Beriut [sic] they were supposed to be conveyed to Persia by some young British friends making a publicity expedition in two Rolls-Royces burning charcoal instead of gasoline. When to no one’s great surprise these failed to appear, Byron and Sykes proceeded by themselves.... There is not really much information about the charcoal burners in the Road to Oxiana and that is what led me to start poking around.

   I do not recall what surprised me most, that,  a) cars could run on charcoal or b) anyone would trust a British-made vehicle for such a long journey. Perhaps they were better in the 1930s. The trip, by the way was not a short one - it was 6,000 miles, the approximate distance from England to Oxiana, which was a vague region somewhere in northern Afghanistan. The Rolls were of the 'Silver Ghost' type and one was driven by Colonel Noel, accompanied by Mrs. Noel. They were also described as 'open tourers' and here is the proposed route: 
"The route taken will be to Brindisi and thence by boat to Haifa. From there the cars will go to Damascus, Baghdad, and on to Teheran [sic]. If permission can be obtained Colonel Noel will go through Afghanistan.
   You will agree that it was surely an exciting adventure, the purpose of which was described in The Times on Oct. 19, 1933:
Colonel Noel stated that the objects of his 6,000 mile journey were to revive the charcoal industry in India and to keep in this country money now spent on imported petrol. Charcoal was able to do the work of petrol and it was cheaper. Twelve pounds of charcoal were equal in power to about one gallon of petrol.

   Future readers may be more interested than you in alternatives for petrol, since interest is inversely related to the availability of it. Right now there is a glut. While I have indicated that you can find plenty of pieces about charcoal burning cars, future readers will likely appreciate the kind of bespoke references I will offer below, which illustrate that interest was high when gasoline was scarce and that the charcoal powered vehicles were found around the globe. I will begin with Canada.

Sources;

Canada
   In 1943 one finds an article indicating that a Forestry Department boat was propelled by sawdust in Parry Sound and others indicating that newspaper publishers with plants in Canada were using charcoal to power engines at pulp mills. See: "Sawdust Drives Launch Nearly As Well as Gas," Globe & Mail, July 19, 1943. For a government study see: "Wood and Charcoal as Motor Fuel," Dept. of Mines and Resources, 1936. The pamphlet begins by indicating that there has been little interest in charcoal as a fuel in the U.S. and Canada because there was lots of gas and it was cheap. In B.C. various types of trees were analyzed with regards to their suitability as sources for charcoal and it was suggested that it could be used for fuel to run stationary engines in isolated areas in the far north.,

   The first reference I found was from 1902 in a New York Times article on Nov. 16 under "Automobile Topics of Interest."

    There are many articles from France including this one about Imbert, an early inventor: "USES CHARCOAL GAS TO DRIVE AUTOMOBILE: Alsatian Inventor Puts a Furnace on the Car and Uses the Ordinary Engine," NYT, Feb. 1, 1924 and "Big French Motor Magnate Talks on Gas," Drew Pearson, Boston Daily Globe, Dec. 14, 1924.

   "Gasoline Powered Cars May Become Oddity in Germany," The Hartford Courant, May 29, 1936.
    "25,000 French Cars, Trucks, Now Run on Charcoal," Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1941.
    "Most of Europe's Autos Driven by Ersatz Fuel," Christian Science Monitor, June 12, 1941. (The same newspaper later published a 'how-to' article: "Did You Even Wonder How an Automobile Can Run on Charcoal?", Oct. 6, 1941

   There was also interest in Italy:
"Gas-Driven Motor-Cars Fuel Derived From Charcoal," (News) FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT. The Times Wednesday, Nov 22, 1933; pg. 13; Issue 46608; col B
This is a report from Rome about a gasogene machine running on charcoal  derived from wood and fuel from “vegetable refuse or other normal waste materials.” It provides details about the cost, showing how much cheaper these fuels are.

"Charcoal Fuel For Cars Result Of Italian Experiment, 3,750 Miles For £3 (News) "FROM OUR ROME CORRESPONDENT. The Times Saturday, Sep 21, 1935; pg. 9; Issue 47175; col E
This is a good lengthy piece talking about how the Italians are trying to make themselves self-sufficient and to balance trade. An ‘open sports car’ was driven over 3000 miles around Europe and a breakdown is given of the costs – which were much less than for petrol. This is so successful that public transport is increasingly using charcoal and “that all vehicles used for passenger transport must be adapted for the consumption of charcoal fuel by December 31, 1937.”

   This from New Zealand: "Best Woods Are Sought to Make Car Charcoal", The Hartford Courant, Nov. 17, 1940. The same paper has an article about Japan: "Jap Cars to Burn More Charcoal, Less Gasoline." July 7, 1940.  In Australia it was announced that a charcoal powered car had made the 7000 mile trip from Perth to Sydney with the fuel costing $3.20 per 1000 miles. The Hartford Courant, Aug.12, 1942.

   In 1944, students at Lehigh University built one: "Ration Free Automobile Uses Charcoal as Fuel," Christian Science Monitor, April 5, 1944.

Post Script:
  Sadly, such sources led me to Project #738, which I will also now abandon to clear the decks for 2021. It was about - LOONEY GAS - an interesting subject I will leave it up to you to investigate. It is not, by the way, about gas that costs a loonie a litre, but rather about leaded gas that often caused people to go 'looney.' I should have covered it in my post about the history of Gasoline Stations. 

   Alas, as well, I am abandoning the subject of "bubble cars" which were the many tiny cars built in Europe because of fuel shortages during the war. A few year back, a collection of microcars were auctioned for over $8 million in an auction run by RM Auctions located close by in Chatham. Their story almost became another project. They have since partnered with Sotheby's to become RM Sotheby's.  See also: "Tiny Bubbles, Causing a Buzz," Robbie Brown, NYT, Feb. 22, 2013.