Souvenirs

During their travels, sailors often acquired mementos for their loved ones back home. Shell mosaics are presently referred to as sailors’ valentines, because twentieth-century collectors believed that sailors had created these objects. Many sailors did spend time making scrimshaw, wool-work embroidery, and knot work. However, it was Barbados islanders who made sailors’ valentines and sold them to sailors who stopped in their ports. Scholars studied the shells commonly used in sailors’ valentines and discovered that they were in fact native to the West Indies. The similarities in their designs also suggest that sailors’ valentines were created in one place rather than on ships that sailed different routes.

During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, generations of privileged young Englishmen, Germans, and Scandinavians traveled on the Grand Tour as part of their formal education. During the nineteenth century, the advent of mass transit made the Grand Tour accessible to greater numbers of travelers, including Americans who could more easily cross the Atlantic Ocean. Those embarking on the Grant Tour typically had a background in classical languages and knowledge of the arts.Tourists often began their journey in London before traveling to France and Italy. Many travelers included additional destinations such as The Netherlands, Germany, and even Greece, to their itineraries. The trip served as a rite of passage that lasted one year or more, with lengthy stays in Rome and Paris. For many, Italy and the ancient ruins of Rome represented the highlight of the trip, where some of the world’s most famous structures including the Pantheon, built in the second century CE, were located.

Travelers returned home with a greater understanding of art and architecture formed by exposure to renowned masterpieces. They acquired souvenirs such as marble busts, paintings, prints, and other artifacts representing classical antiquity for display in their studies and libraries. Grand Tour souvenirs illustrated the knowledge one acquired from their travels and symbolized the tourist’s refined taste.

New technologies such as the moving picture and the computer were first introduced at world’s fairs. But new inventions were only part of world’s fairs, which also featured a variety of cultural exhibitions and entertainment. The Panama Pacific International Exposition, held in San Francisco in 1915, celebrated the completion of the Panama Canal. It also helped the city recover economically after it was nearly destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire. The Fair featured a scaled replica of the Panama Canal that covered five acres.

The Century of Progress International Exposition was held in Chicago in 1933­–34. Shortly after, the 1939 New York World’s Fair introduced the television, FM radio, and color photography. At the same time, the Golden Gate International Exposition celebrated the completion of the Golden Gate and the Bay bridges. Man-made Treasure Island was created specifically for the Exposition in San Francisco.

By 1958, the Brussels World’s Fair demonstrated how rapidly technology was progressing. The Fair’s Atomium showcased the achievement of atomic energy. It consisted of a giant 360-foot steel and alloy structure. A few years later, the Seattle World’s Fair, “Century 21 Exposition” featured the famous Space Needle. The 600-foot observation tower featured a revolving restaurant atop its saucer-shaped platform. The last of the great world’s fairs was held in Osaka, Japan, in 1970. It was the first major international exposition to be held in Asia. The painter and sculptor Taro Okamoto created the symbolic monument, the Tower of the Sun, to embody the exposition’s theme “harmony and progress for all.”

Souvenir collecting has taken place for centuries. Travelers purchase, collect found objects from the natural environment, and even steal what they consider to be harmless tokens of their travels. Hotel ashtrays are particularly popular clandestine keepsakes. But acquiring souvenirs illicitly is nothing new. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the home of William Shakespeare. Supposedly, at some point during the tour the two American statesmen carved a few slivers from a wooden chair that was allegedly Shakespeare’s and took them home as souvenirs.

Today, vacationers continue to acquire souvenirs in unprecedented numbers. Souvenirs commemorate trips and capture the exotic or foreign atmosphere of a place. They also serve as useful or decorative items and are given as gifts to family and friends. Sometimes these souvenirs are quality examples of indigenous crafts or close reflections of architectural, cultural, and historic sites. At other times, they are merely frivolous trinkets that signify a well-known symbol such as the Tower of London or the Loch Ness monster.

Heraldry developed in the 1100s throughout Europe so that armored men in battle could identify one another. Shortly after, each noble family had their own shields. Eventually cities and towns also developed coats-of-arms. Armorial dinner services became fashionable among the aristocracy in the eighteenth century. By the mid-1800s, the Industrial Revolution in England enabled the general public to afford porcelain. The Englishman William Henry Goss (1833–1906) first began making miniature heraldic china in the 1880s at his Falcon Pottery at Stoke-on-Trent. His small versions of ewers, jugs, urns, and other shapes decorated with imagery associated with various British towns and their coats-of-arms quickly became popular. Other Staffordshire potteries as well as German and Austrian firms also began to make similar wares.

The Industrial Revolution in England resulted in greater numbers of people who could now afford to escape to the seaside via train on short holidays. In response, British coastal towns teemed with heraldic china from the 1880s to the 1930s to fulfill the new tourists’ desire to take home small keepsakes from their excursions. At the turn of the twentieth century in England, nearly every household had at least a few pieces of miniature heraldic china in their homes.

Ruby-Stained Glass
Ruby glass was a popular keepsake found at world’s fairs and regional fairs as well as popular resorts, such as Atlantic City. This pressed glass was widely produced in Ohio and Pennsylvania where glass-making industries were located. Pieces were molded in a variety of forms, from pitchers to wine glasses. Ruby glass is named for the dark red color of the precious gemstone known as a ruby. The red color is added to clear glass by a process called staining. Stained glass has color painted onto the clear glass. Then it is re-fired so the stain fuses with the glass. Ruby-stained glass was mostly made from the 1880s through the 1930s. Separate firms often completed the inscriptions. Etchers inscribed the ruby-stained decoration with names, dates, and places, noting various cities, towns, and resorts. Often verses expressing the sentimentality of the Victorian era were inscribed on the glass such as, “for my wife from your loving husband” or “remember me.”

Mass-Produced Souvenirs: From Floating Action Pens to Snow Domes
After World War II, a desire for playful souvenirs developed. Snow domes, floaty pens, salt-and- pepper shakers, mugs, ashtrays, and magnets were some of the colorful trinkets that the general public began acquiring at roadside attractions, parks, and historical sites across the country. The ubiquity and low cost of these types of souvenirs made them easily accessible to nearly everyone. 

The Eskesen Company, located in Denmark, first manufactured floaty pens in 1946. The company, which officially calls these writing implements Floating Action Pens, has produced over one-half billion pens. They continue to make more of these pens than any other manufacturer.

Water-filled glass snow globes originated in France in the late 1800s. After the 1889 Paris Exposition featured miniature Eiffel tower versions of these novelties, the craze for snow globes quickly followed. The 1939 New York World’s Fair also featured snow globes as keepsakes of the event. By the 1950s, low-cost plastic versions of glass snow domes had become ubiquitous at souvenir stands throughout the nation.

California: The Golden State
California has long drawn visitors for its sunshine, rugged coastline, deserts, and fertile valleys. After the railroads were installed as far as the West Coast, greater numbers of travelers came to view the natural wonders of the golden state. American railroad companies and local California businesses encouraged tourists to see the redwood forests and Yosemite Valley. In later decades, aside from natural sites, engineering feats and movie stars have also drawn visitors to the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Colorful cable cars, iconic emblems of San Francisco, continue to provide public transportation to local residents and tourists. First introduced in 1873, the cable cars operate as they did in the nineteenth century, by a mechanism that grips cables that run beneath the street. Since its opening in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge, brightly painted in a shade called international orange, has stood as an important American landmark and symbol of San Francisco. The famous engineering feat is one of the most photographed bridges in the world.

Visitors to California have also historically been attracted to Southern California and the glamour of Hollywood. Over the years, dozens of top stars left their hand and footprints in freshly poured cement in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, which opened in 1927. Even more famous, the Hollywood sign, a worldwide symbol of the motion picture industry, was originally intended to advertise a suburban housing development called Hollywoodland. The sign, which has endured for more than eighty years, was erected in 1923. In 1949, “land” was finally dropped.

In Europe, beginning about the time of the Crystal Palace exhibition in London (1851), souvenir spoons became favored keepsakes of visited places and events. Spoons were especially popular during the era of train travel because they were easily transportable. In the United States, the souvenir spoon craze began in 1890 and lasted for approximately thirty years. Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition provided the impetus for collecting spoons. Dozens of firms manufactured these fashionable items, which were sold throughout the country.

Native American Souvenirs
The production of souvenirs or tourist art became an important source of income for many Native Americans who were forced to adapt to a rapidly changing environment in the 1800s and early 1900s. Birch bark miniatures, jewelry, beadwork, basketry, and pottery were popular souvenir items at many locations that sold Native American crafts. Knockoffs also appeared at souvenir stands from the Southwest to the Northeast. Whether authentic or not, such souvenirs allowed travelers to return home with romanticized notions of North America’s indigenous peoples.

Totem poles originally conveyed the history, legends, and ancestry of various Northwest Coast tribes. These tall, carved poles were placed at house fronts, served as interior house posts, and were used as freestanding memorials to honor deceased chiefs. In the 1800s, Northwest Coast artisans began making wooden miniatures of totem poles for sale to tourists and collectors. In the Northeastern United States and Canada, the Iroquois crafted beaded souvenirs for sale, particularly around tourist destinations such as Niagara Falls.

The Santa Fe Railway and the Fred Harvey Company built hotels, restaurants, and shops to promote mass tourism to the Grand Canyon, New Mexico, and Southern California by train during the late 1890s to the mid-1900s. The Harvey Company encouraged the sale of Southwestern Native arts. They supplied Navajo and Pueblo artisans with the necessary materials to craft jewelry for sale to tourists and collectors. This genre of silver and turquoise jewelry is collectively known as “Fred Harvey type jewelry.”

Santo Domingo is one of the Rio Grande pueblos in northern New Mexico. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, it was difficult to obtain the traditional shell or jet used to make jewelry, so the artisans in Santo Domingo used pieces of old car batteries, vinyl records, and colored plastic items to craft souvenirs necklaces.