SEA NOTES

Of Ships and Sea
The Influence of a Catalog

Of SHIPS and SEA:

A Catalog of Ship Models, Nautical Brassware, Ship’s Lights and Clocks, Figureheads, Marine Pictures, and a host of Decorative Nautical Ideas for the Home.

We go through life daily, enjoying certain things, like painting and art, not thinking about how we became enamored with certain subjects. Rummaging through some of my old material, I came across a few Preston’s catalogs from the 1970s. Like the madeleine biscuit out of Proust’s A Remembrance of Things Past, I was transported to my past. A flood of memories and feelings came back to me in a rush, remembering what that catalog meant to me. It was a moment that made me realize how I came to enjoy all things nautical. Preston’s is a ship chandlery based out of Greenport, New York, established in 1882 to supply the many ships arriving and leaving the port. They also have a separate store that sells nautical-themed objects and paintings and had a catalog of their wares for mail orders of Ships & Sea.

As artists, we all have our influences, especially in a specialty such as marine art, a unique genre in the arts. These Preston’s catalogs reminded me of my influence and a drastic change that had occurred early in my life. Growing up in Syracuse, New York, I was not surrounded by water. There are the Finger Lakes, rivers, and especially the Erie Canal, but nothing to create a fascination with the sea. In 1971 I saw an ad in the back of a magazine advertising Preston’s with an address you could send away for their catalog. I was intrigued, so I cut out the ad, filled out the information, and sent it by mail. It was a spontaneous action, so I was not sitting by my mailbox like Ralphie, waiting for the Little Orphan Annie ring.

A couple of weeks later, I returned home from school, and there on the table was the catalog. I thumbed through it and was bitten by the nautical bug. At nine years old, my imagination exploded. The catalog begins with model ships and canons, followed by figureheads, of which every Christmas I would ask for a figurehead, and Santa never brought me one. Then on to lamps, clocks, and a “host of nautical items.” Finally, at the end of the catalog was a section titled Prints and Pictures of Ships & Sea. This is the section that changed my life. Seeing Montague Dawson for the first time, I was blown away. Winslow Homers Eight Bells and Breezing Up took my breath away. I fell in love with the sea and everything nautical.

Every year I would wait patiently for the next issue of Ships & Sea, even though the content was practically the same, it was a new issue. It offered the opportunity to daydream some more, leafing through the catalog, seeing the Charles W. Morgan, and romanticizing life on board a ship. The model ship, coupled with the paintings by Montague Dawson, enriched the experience, and the imagination ran wild. It was during this time in my childhood that my family took a trip to Nantucket Island. During the visit, we stopped at the Whaling Museum. Pow, right in the kisser! That was it, I was forever hooked. Viewing objects and paintings in reproduction is fine. Still, to see the objects in person created a whole new impression on me, models, paintings, scrimshaw, harpoons, there was no limit to the imagination.

To delve deeper into the romance and excitement of sea life, I started to copy the paintings reproduced in the catalog in pencil. I did not realize it at the time but doing these copies taught me a lot about ships, rigging, water, and basic seafaring life. My father was an artist, and I was always captivated by how he could take all the colors on his palette and create beautiful works of art. He set me up once with a canvas board and some paints, and I tried to copy a Dawson, at ten years old, it was a challenge. Although fun and frustrating at the same time, the results were more abstract than a faithful copy.

It took me a few more years to tackle painting, but by high school, I was regularly painting in watercolor. The lessons that I learned and the information that I was able to glean from these catalogs in the early developmental period of my life cannot be overstated. The days pouring over the catalogs and the constant daydreaming has filled my memories with sites and, more importantly, romantic reflections of the sea, sailing, and maritime adventures. The rush of feelings I had when I rediscovered these catalogs was intense and revealing. I never gave it much thought through the years how something as simple as a catalog from Greenport, Long Island, can have such a longstanding influence. Also important is the need to keep the child’s curiosity and imagination alive, rediscovering these catalogs has reminded me of this.

We all have stories about our influences in life and art, from growing up on the sea, sailing with family, or simply a catalog. If you have a story to tell, let me know, and maybe it can be featured in Sea Notes

— by Stephen Bluto