 We are all familiar with this signature piece from the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin and today's Blog features this and other beautiful Parade Floats ordered by James A. Bailey for Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth in 1903.  |
Monday, February 19, 2007
America Calliope
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6 comments:
Where were all these magnificent wagons made?? I have seen a few, from a distance, so do not even know if they are all wood??, cast?? or other. cc
The series of wagons created for the Barnum show upon its return from the 1898-1902 European tour are the best documented of all the great circus parade wagons. The Sebastian Wagon Company of New York built the wagons but the carvings are the work of the shop of Samuel A. Robb (1851-1928) and his employees. Robb began carving ship’s figureheads, among else, about 1864 for Thomas V. Brooks who is known to have done a circus wagon or two himself. In addition to this apprenticeship, Robb also took formal art courses at the National Academy of Design and the Cooper Union.
When he established his own shop late in 1876, Robb made tobacconists’ figures—primarily Indians but also firemen and famous actors, Turks and dandies, among numerous other popular characters—as well as carved letters for storefront signs and steamboats or fancy eagles and other ornamental carved work to decorate buildings. Robb’s shop also created the several fairy tale floats for Barnum in the 1880s (discussed on this blog a couple of months ago), three of which survived to travel on the Cole show and are now at the Circus World Museum. Robb probably did the work on a series of cages built by the Fielding firm for Barnum in the 1880s and two of these are also in the Baraboo collection.
It should be noted that the carvers of carousel animals did not do circus work; circus carvings were produced by sign shops such as Robb’s. Incidentally, carousel animals are typically roughed out on pantographic carving machines (used in the early 1800s, for example, for rifle butts) since the basic shapes repeat. Circus wagon ornamentation is all hand carved from wood, not solid blocks but planks glued together just as are carousel animals (the larger the solid block of wood, the more likely it is to crack with seasonal weather changes).
Bailey contracted for a series of new parade wagons in January 1902 and the 13 were delivered the following winter including the mammoth Two Hemispheres. The Sebastian Wagon Company soon had another wagon order, this time from Pawnee Bill for his wild west show. Robb’s shop produced the carvings for these two wagons and one, the big bandwagon with Columbus on one side, Pocahontas and John Smith on the other, is also at Baraboo.
As is perhaps well known, the rival Ringlings also augmented their parade in response to the Barnum show and had built a series of five nation wagons but these Midwestern showman went to the Bode wagon firm in Cincinnati to have the work done. These were less successful due to some poor design around the front wheels and were soon altered. Great Britain was last on the Bill Hames carnival before arriving at Baraboo in the early 1960s. Much of the United States wagon rotted in the graveyard of the Sarasota winterquarters but the carvings from one side were saved and, years later, placed on a reconstruction of the destroyed wagon and the opposite side was carved anew. A snake den disappeared early on but one side mysteriously survived and was acquired by the Circus World Museum in the early 1970s and it, too, was applied to a replica of the entire wagon. The other wagons (Russia, France, and Germany) do not survive. The France wagon at Baraboo has an entirely different history being one of a very large group originally built for a motorized show at the time of World War I. Bode also built a nice group of wagons for the original Carl Hagenbeck shows. Sullivan and Eagle of Peru, Indiana, did many nice wagons for smaller shows, including a series of distinctive calliope wagons (
For more information on circus parade wagons, those interested should seek issues of Bandwagon magazine from the very early 1960s when the late Joe Bradbury had a frequent series, his Circus Wagon History File, and Dick Conover authored several major essays on parade wagons. Fred Dahlinger and others have occasionally resurrected this column in the intervening years. Fred Fried’s 1970 book, Artists in Wood, has several remarkable photographs of the 1902 Barnum and the later Pawnee Bill wagons being carved and tells the full story of Robb and his work as well as that of other carvers of ship’s figureheads and cigar store Indians.
Pawnee Bill’s bandwagon cost him $4000 when delivered in April 1903; his Japanese tableau was priced $3150. While it is problematic to make comparisons between 1903 dollars and today’s dollar, in terms of unskilled wages then and now, the two wagons today would be almost $730,000 or, using a nominal per capita GDP, about $931,000. That’s for two parade wagons—James Bailey took delivery of 13 parade wagons for his 1903 season and then very soon after, abandoned the parade!
Dick Flint
Baltimore
Dick Flint,
Thank you for your comments about these wonderful wagons.
Don Bloomer
I had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman that did a lot of the Baraboo restoration carvings in December while I was up there. Homer told me that all the allegorical float characters were carved from a single log such as Cinderella, her Prince, and Red Riding Hood that he is re-creating right now. He discovered this in the restoration process of the floats at Baraboo. The body was then hollowed out to lighten the load. I have carved several carousel horses myself and always used a glue-up of planks to have the grain of the wood going the direction I needed for the carving. I can't imagine using a log and having to make due with nature's own display. True Red Riding Hood is opened or split in a couple places as it dries out completely in his shop. Mother Goose was being readied for the Gold Leaf while I was there also. She was a solid log in the center with the glued on wings and lower body. Most of the Mother Goose float has been completely replaced over the years now. I'm not sure what is still original if anything.
Bob
Several carousel figure carvers did carve circus wagon decorative elements. One noted carousel carver can be identified in the Robb shop photo in Fred Fried's book "Artists in Wood." Three other carousel manufacturers also did or solicited circus carving work. The Pawnee Bill bandwagon base price was $4000, but an additional sum was paid to gild the entire wagon. This stuff was in Bandwagon, Jan-Feb 2005.
On a cruise to Haiti I bought 2 of what the peddler said was a hand carved statue of the goddess of furtility. Uglyest things on earth. While wondering around the island I came across a house where several men were using a lath to crank these things out of tree limbs by the hundreds. It did not take long for these things to split in several places after I got them home. They did not work anyway.
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