skeleton leaves & stereoscopes

After my recent post on doppelgängers, in which I included an image
of a stereoview card of Lincoln, my sweet artist friend, Suki, was
kind enough to surprise me with one of my very own! The vintage
stereoview card she sent, pictured below, (click to enlarge) shows a
lacy funerary arrangement of skeleton leaves, in memory of
Abraham Lincoln.

After the death of Queen Victoria's beloved Prince Albert, in 1861,
funeral art became quite an elaborate fashion. Skeleton leaves,
those from which the pulpy part has been removed by chemical
means, and the fibrous part alone remaining, have been an element
of artistic design for years. They're also known as "phantom
flowers", a perfect ingredient to a frilly Victorian death memorial.

I'm sure you've seen these wonderful bits of vintage ephemera, the
stereoview cards, with dual images side by side. They were slipped
in the rear tray of a stereoscope and viewed through an eyepiece,
creating the illusion of depth, similar to the perspectives that both
eyes naturally receive in binocular vision, or 3-D. The stereoscope
was an early version of my beloved little red plastic Viewmaster.
Oh, the hours of complete bliss, clicking away to the magical land of
Sleeping Beauty, and visiting far off places like the Grand Canyon.


Thank you so much, Suki. You know how nutty I am, not only for
Lincoln, but for wonderful vintage ephemera, as well. If you're not
familiar with this talented, red beret clad little lady, pop over to her
artsy blog, Paint, Poems and Ponderings and say hello. Tell her
Willow sent you.
.
photos: skeleton leaves click [here] for source
stereoscope and viewmaster from google images