Month: August 2024

Gilded Age grotto mural restored in the nick of time

Modern(ish)

A rapidly deteriorating 107-year-old ceiling mural on the in the swimming pool grotto of a Gilded Age mansion in Miami will be restored thanks to a $750,000 grant from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures program. The grant is coming in the nick of time, because the mural was made using water-soluble paint on plaster. Yes, the mural over a pool in a grotto in sub-tropical Miami was made with materials that can’t withstand moisture.

This inexplicable choice was made by Robert Winthrop Chanler, eccentric artist and scion of several families of the American aristocracy including the Astors, Winthrops and Stuyvesants. He trained as an artist in Paris and when he returned to New York, built a successful career as a muralist to the wealthy. Today only three of his surviving murals are available to the public.

In 1916, he was commissioned by Chicago agricultural industrialist James Deering to paint a fresco on the ceiling of the swimming pool and grotto at Villa Vizcaya, his winter estate in Miami. The grotto and swimming pool is an indoor/outdoor space. Located on the north side of the house, the grotto was built underneath the first floor of the main house. The pool extends from the garden into the grotto right under the living room.

The motif of the fresco was to be undersea fantasy, coordinating with the ornate decorations of seashells, mosaics and fountains in the grotto. The idea was to make visitors feel like they were themselves sea creatures in a marine environment. Chanler created plaster casts of shells, lobsters, sea turtles, octopi and alligators to populate the ceiling. The fresco featured a seascape with fish, marine plants and coral. He used metallic paint to make the scales of the fish shine in the sun and in the reflections of the pool below.

The grotto is below sea level and afflicted by the high humidity, saline air and hurricanes endemic to Miami. Within a couple of years of its completion, the mural was already beginning to deteriorate. The decay accelerated in the humid climate, and went into overdrive when the grotto was completely submerged by storm surges in 1992, 2005 and 2017.

Saving the mural has been an uphill battle for the last 100 years, and there have been some past efforts to preserve it, Kuh Jakobi said. The two-year NPS grant will go toward getting the grotto and mural as beautiful and historically accurate as possible. But the process is not so simple. In accordance with the grant, Vizcaya pledged a match of $750,000 to deal with the first part of the project. Starting in January, the conservation team needs to deal with the corroding substructure underneath the living room floor that’s above the grotto. They’ll remove all of the objects from the room, remove the terrazzo floor panels, repair the corroding metal slab and put everything back in the room.

Then, in the grotto, they’ll re-attach the panel. And finally, there’s the tedious process of repairing and restoring the ceiling mural. While standing in the grotto, Kuh Jakobi pointed out a section of the ceiling conservators recently did a successful test run on. The difference is striking: the shades of blue are rich and vibrant and the marine life pop. Soon the rest of the mural will be just as lifelike.

It’ll take a team of four about seven months to finish the ceiling, Kuh Jakobi said. Vizcaya intends to finish the entire process by July 31, 2026, she said.

You can get a closer look at the extraordinary mural in this video by the Vizcaya Museum & Garden.

Roman military camp found high in Swiss Alps

Ancient

The remains of a previously unknown Roman military camp have been discovered at Colm la Runga in Switzerland’s Oberhalbstein Alps at an altitude of 7,218 feet above sea level. It dates to the last two decades of the 1st century B.C.

When the camp was built, Roman legions were fighting to conquer the Swiss Alps, the last remaining region of modern-day Switzerland that was not yet under Roman control. Augustus saw control of the Alps as essential to the security of northern Italy, and Tiberius finished the job.

A battle between Rome and the local Suanetes tribe was known to have been fought 3,000 feet below the Colm la Runga site near the Crap Ses Gorge in 15 B.C.. Lead sling bullets stamped with the marks of the 3rd, 10th and 12th Legions have been found there, as have spearheads, brooches, caligae hobnails and an exceptional silver and brass dagger.

Archaeologists have been excavating the battlefield since 2021, supported by volunteer metal detectorists. Cutting edge LiDAR laser scans revealed differences in height in the topography of the Colm la Runga terrain that indicated there were man-made ditches and ramparts up there. Initial test pits dug confirmed the data.

Following geophysical surveys and non-destructive documentation in July 2024, students from the University of Basel and volunteer prospectors will be researching the wall-ditch system and the structures inside the camp from August 11 to 31, 2024. The finds so far include weapons and equipment belonging to Roman soldiers, including slingshots and shoe nails. The slingshots found bear the stamp of the 3rd Legion, which was also involved in the battle at Crap Ses. It can therefore be assumed that there is a close connection between the ancient battlefield and the newly discovered military camp.

The location of the camp on the Colm la Runga was certainly chosen for strategic reasons. From here there is a wide panorama of the most important surrounding valleys: the Landwassertal, the Albulatal, the Domleschg and the Surses. In addition, Lenzerheide, which was an important passage at the time, can be ideally viewed.

The sensational discovery of a Roman military camp in Graubünden once again shows that archaeological research into “Roman Switzerland” continues to hold great surprises. The discovery on the Colm la Runga is also internationally outstanding because the advance of the Roman forces 2000 years ago can now be precisely traced over several dozen kilometers: from Bergell over the Septimer Pass to the Tiefencastel area – and from there on towards Chur and the Alpine Rhine Valley.

Postcard delivered 121 years after sending

Modern(ish)

A handwritten postcard posted through the British Mail in 1903 was delivered to its destination August 16, 2024, 121 years after it was sent. The person it was addressed to was no longer there; in fact, there isn’t even a home there anymore. It’s the headquarters of the Swansea Building Society. Staffers found the postcard in the pile of regular mail and had the sharp eye to notice the date of the postmark.

The postcard has an evocative black-and-white print of The Challenge, an 1844 painting by English Romantic artist Edwin Henry Landseer depicting a stag on a beach in a wintery landscape with a sky full of stars. It is addressed to Miss Lydia Davies at 11 Cradock Street in Swansea, Wales. It was sent by a fellow named Ewart from Fishguard, a town on the Wales coast.

The note reads:

Dear L. I could not, it was impossible to get the pair of these. I am so sorry, but I hope you are enjoying yourself at home. I have got now about ten/- [shillings] as pocket money not counting the train fare, so I’m doing alright. Remember me to Miss Gilbert & John, with love to all from Ewart.

According to Henry Darby, communications manager for the Swansea Building Society, 11 Cradock Street used to have private homes, but they were destroyed by bombs in World War II. The current office building was built on the street after the war.

A spokesperson for the Royal Mail, the U.K.’s postal service, said in an email: “It is likely that this postcard was put back into our system rather than being lost in the post for over a century. When an item is in our system, we are under obligation to deliver it to the correct address.”

The Swansea Building Society hopes to get in touch with one of Lydia Davies’ relatives, and has posted about their surprise mail on social media. The replies on their Facebook post include one from a possible great-niece and a whole bunch of rather fascinating research by interested folks into the identities of Lydia and Ewart.

27th Roman rostrum found off coast of Sicily

Ancient

Another bronze rostrum from the 3rd century B.C., the 27th since underwater excavations began 20 years ago, has been found in the waters of the Aegadian Islands in western Sicily. The vicious ramming beak was mounted to the bow of a Roman warship that fought in the 241 B.C Battle of the Aegates, the last naval battle of the First Punic War.

The rostrum was first spotted on the seabed at a depth of 260 feet by the research vessel Hercules. The deepwater submarine of the Society for Documentation of Submerged Sites (SDSS) then explored the site and confirmed that the object was indeed a rostrum. It was raised and transferred to a laboratory for examination and conservation by archaeologists of the Superintendency of the Sea of the Region of Sicily.

The new rostrum shows similarities to others found in previous campaigns, with a relief decoration on the front representing a Montefortino helmet with three feathers on top. However, the marine encrustations covering it still prevent the verification of any inscriptions.

The Battle of the Aegates (aka Egadi Islands) saw a fleet of 200 Roman ships arrayed against 100 Carthaginian ships (many of them previously captured from Rome). The Roman navy won a decisive victory that led to Carthage’s surrender and the end of the war. The large number of ships in the comparatively small field explains the extraordinary concentration of rostra have been found in the waters of the Aegatean archipelago. Before the explorations at Aegates began, the number of rostra found could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Animal figurine found in early Viking settlement in Iceland

Medieval

A carved animal figurine believed to be a child’s toy has been unearthed at the Fjörður farm mound in Seyðisfjörður, eastern Iceland. The animal looks like a pig to me but archaeologists hypothesize it might also represent a wild boar, a bear or a dog. It was found in the floor layer of a 9th century Viking longhouse.

The Fjörður farm site contains the remains of the first settlement of Norwegians in Iceland. Founded at the end of the 8th century or beginning of the 9th, the settlement encountered repeated mudslides and avalanches until it was buried under a major landslide in 1150. The thick soil layer protected the earliest settlement from later construction. Over five years of excavations, archaeologists have unearthed a weaving room, a barn and four pre-Christian graves as well as the longhouse.

The dogbearpig was carved from palagonite tuff, a yellow volcanic stone, and is 5 cm (2 inches) long and 2.7 cm (1 inch) high. One ear has broken off, but the rest of it is intact and in good condition. It can still stand on its four feet. Here is a 3D scan of the affable fellow:

The excavation of the floor layer this year has uncovered a wealth of more than 600 objects from the first settlers of Seyðisfjörður who built the longhouse. Some of the objects found are almost 100 pieces used in the game of Hnefatalf, spinning whorls, beads, crucibles and molds for metal casting, lamps, pots and one silver coin. The coin is still encrusted with soil and therefore unrecognizable, but will be examined and hopefully identified by coin experts after cleaning and conservation.