Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Rolling Twenties, Roaring Art: What French Automotive Mascots Teach Us About Heritage

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Rolling Twenties, Roaring Art: What French Automotive Mascots Teach Us About Heritage · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Break Fix's History of Motorsports Series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argo Singer family.
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What can a small sculpture tell us about the big questions of automotive
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heritage in her award-winning exhibition?
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Rolling twenties, roaring Art, French automotive mascots at the Revs
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Institute, Lauren Goodman reveals how these elegant ornaments, once
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perched proudly in the hoods of cars, embody the tensions and triumphs of
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preservation, design and cultural memory.
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They may be small in size, but they carry enormous meaning sparking debates about
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how we honor and interpret the past.
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Lauren Goodman, associate curator of exhibitions at the Revs Institute in
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Naples, Florida, joins us to share her insights, passionate about the
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history of women in Motorsport.
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Today, she invites us to consider whether these mascots, these miniature works of
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art, might point us towards new directions in understanding automotive heritage.
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Stay tuned as we explore how the smallest details can spark
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the biggest conversations.
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Thank you.
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Thank you for that wonderful introduction.
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I feel very important right now.
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Thank you very much.
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If we haven't met, my name's Lauren Goodman and I am here in my
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capacity as the associate curator of exhibitions at Revs Institute.
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Representing Revs.
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I'm very excited because last time I was presenting here in 2022, I
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was working a different job and just volunteering at Revs on the weekend.
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So I was only here in my capacity as a huge nerd instead of as an official
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representative of Revs Institute.
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So I'm gonna give you about a 20 minute presentation about interesting findings
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I had while working on an exhibition.
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I wanted to talk to you about French mascots.
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Mascots are the fancy waves saying hood ornament much the way.
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Concur is the fancy way of saying car show, specifically French
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mascots of the interwar period between World Wars one and two.
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Revs Institute is fortunate to enjoy the friendship of Mr. John in Zola,
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and he's one of the foremost collectors of mascots of all types in the world.
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You may have seen some of his collections, if you've ever been to
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the Auburn Core Dusenberg Museum, where he has a lot of beautiful American
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examples on display in the past.
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He's also lent us his lovely glass mascots, so not just lik but.
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Sabino and Che.
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Just beautiful examples.
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And Mr. Zola also self-publishers catalogs of his collections, which is
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just a real boon to having documentation.
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So in 2024 with Mr. Zola's collaboration, our team at Revs decided to refresh
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some of our display cases with some of his beautiful mascot.
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And what began as a fairly simple display became instead my own looking glass, and
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I, as Alice dug into the wonderland of French mascots from the interwar period.
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I'd like you to come on that journey with me.
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I'm happy to say that the resulting exhibition is beautiful on
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even a little bit educational.
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In fact, you could see here we were able to put all the information on a
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website, QR codes and the display cases.
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So if anyone was interested, they could drill down and discover more about each
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specific piece, see a video about it.
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Pretty proud of that.
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And even some other materials that illuminate some of things going on,
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design wise, culture wise, economy wise at the time in France, that would've
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influenced the design of these mascots.
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Pretty cool.
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So if you have ever put together an exhibition.
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You understand that the final installation is only the tip of the iceberg.
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The bulk of the labor is spent in suffering, or it's
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also pronounced research.
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I thought after I did all that work, maybe I should find a way to compile and
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share my research so future generations can pull from it for their own uses.
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So I wrote a lit review.
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It's very fancy and very long, and my mom is very proud of me.
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My mom.
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So more importantly, when I was writing about what I found about mascots, I
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began to realize what was missing.
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So that paper, yeah, it's about automotive mascots, but it's also a paper about
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where automotive heritage is losing time in the corners compared to other
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heritage organizations and disciplines.
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Now, let me say now, up front, I'm not assigning any blame.
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There's no malfeasance here.
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We're all passionate about these automobiles and their
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associated automobilia.
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I simply used mascot collecting as a lens through which to view
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the automotive heritage ecosystem.
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So the paper helped me understand and elucidate.
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My own work and my own mission at the museum.
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So I'll spend a little time sharing some of the points from the paper.
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I'm not gonna go over the whole thing, but I just wanna spark some
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more conversations about our future and the future of these objects that
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we love First, some clarifications.
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Since the exhibition focused mostly on accessory mascots, they
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form the bulk of this discussion.
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But some of these findings apply to mark specific designs
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for high-end manufacturers like automobile farming, for example.
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And although mascots were produced in a range of prices and quality, I was
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focusing really on the ones that I was displaying, which are the upmarket pieces.
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They were typically cast in bronze using the very complicated lost
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wax process, and then coated with silver, and even occasionally gold.
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They were prized by collectors even then, meaning that many pieces enjoyed
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a protected life on a desk or a shelf instead of on the radiator cap of a car.
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And there are of course mascot examples that predate 1914, but the
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golden age for accessory mascots.
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Aftermarket mascots really began in France after World War I and peaked
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during the 1920s and early thirties.
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Eventually, streamlining and underhood radiators made the
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mascot an old fashioned accessory.
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So by 1938, the Paris Salon had practically no mascots on display,
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on the automobiles on the show floor.
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So where does one begin researching these objects?
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Especially in the English language?
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I identified three major works published in the late seventies
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that became the source for most of the later literature in English.
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And you're probably gonna recognize some of these names.
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We are indebted to these authors, and the literature in the eighties and
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nineties relies heavily on these works.
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To paraphrase Don Caps, the difference between fiction and history is footnotes.
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So in these three books, for example, you're lucky to find a list of sources
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at the end, let alone an EndNote.
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But the absence of those things actually makes sense when
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you consider the following.
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These authors were creating the literature.
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No one had bothered to write about it before.
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It was either a tacit knowledge, it was trade knowhow.
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So those who are writing about it, especially if they wanted photos,
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often had to negotiate access to privately held collections.
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These authors had an audience in mind and that.
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Was enthusiasts and collectors.
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These were the people driving the demand for information.
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They weren't necessarily demanding an academic bibliography.
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The next major author emerges in the mid nineties.
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Michel LaGrand is so important.
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You can really divide the literature into a pre LaGrand era and a post LaGrand era.
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Although some of his work is only available in French, the captions are
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really short, easy to read and translate, which is why he's still a major source
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for those writing in English today.
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LaGrand first began by reproducing period catalogs, period sales catalogs.
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Then he began photographing mascots and ephemera from private collections.
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Authors in the present day are still largely enthusiasts and collectors who
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draw heavily on LA gra and the three major works from the late seventies.
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Now, the magic of the internet allowed me to search contemporary French
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periodicals for more information about the mascots that I had on
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display and those who designed them.
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In my paper, I make some really nitpicky points about provenance,
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contrasting primary sources with the later English literature.
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As I scoured the primary sources, I wondered why hasn't the
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scholarship been done before?
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And there are a few major reasons for that.
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One is the participation of collectors.
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These are key collaborators, but they may feel they risk
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devaluing an investment piece.
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If new research casts a shadow on what was said in the auction
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catalog, there is risk as well.
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And sending their collections out for public display or research,
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it's reasonable that a private collector would want to avoid risk.
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The acquisition and maintenance of mascots like any other collection represents an
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investment of creativity, time, money, and the collection itself contributes
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to the collector's own happiness.
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The most obvious solution, I think would be for collectors to plan what
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happens with their collections after their lifetimes, while continuing
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to enjoy them in the present.
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By collaborating today on a plan with a public institution such as a museum
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or an archive, the collector can be assured that these mascots will be
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held in trust for future generations.
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These institutions have a duty of care for their collections, but they
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don't assume financial risk or reward based on authentication and research.
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That is because collection items do not appear on the balance sheet as an asset.
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If you are a museum, I think the next typical barrier is an echo chamber.
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Now cross pollination between automobile, heritage and other disciplines from the
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humanities and social sciences that would equip automotive historians with better
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tools and encourage experts from other fields to conduct research on automobile.
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For example, the 1970 sources do make reference to the Anier School of
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Sculpture and its impact on French bronze production, but the subsequent literature
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kind of dropped the ball on that.
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It doesn't take up that thread again, which is really interesting when you
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consider that there are numerous collector guides and art historical texts on
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the Maier School of Sculpture and its artists such works date back all the way
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to the seventies, and the most recent major one I could find was from 2007.
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And finally, I think it's also the novelty of our field.
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The phrase automobile heritage is itself fairly new.
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In fact, in the scope of human history, the car itself is fairly new.
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The Turin Charter, the conservation charter for most historic cars was
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adopted in 2013, which is nearly 50 years after the Venice Conservation
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Charter addressed the heritage of architecture and our built environment,
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the mascot as worthy manifestation of automotive material culture.
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That may be an idea that takes time.
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As opposed to people thinking it's a mere collector's hobby.
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Here's the crux.
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These obstacles, I believe, are symptomatic of a larger issue.
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Automobile heritage is still the purview of private collectors and enthusiasts.
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We don't have an academic market for automotive history like other disciplines.
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I'm talking about the market where the publisher parish imperative creates
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volumes of peer review journals.
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And where tenure tracks, endowed chairs and research
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grants underwrite the research.
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Rather, the automotive historian today makes his or her living by teaching in
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another specialty, by working in another field entirely and devoting his or her
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free time or retirement years to the topic, or by researching in authenticating
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for auction houses and collectors.
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Now it's this less instance that's the most potentially problematic enthusiasts
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and collectors rely on auction catalog.
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Which in rely on the writings of enthusiasts, collectors, and
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it becomes a vicious circle.
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Future scholarship should aim to break this particular feedback loop.
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I think about this a lot in my work as a museum.
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Professional museums must maintain the public trust.
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We cannot status satisfact, which we only hope to be true.
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And if we cannot provide the funding for academics to draw them
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to automobile heritage, then we'll have to pull information from
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other disciplines and find ways to apply it to what we do and to cars.
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In my paper, I then turned my attention to other disciplines.
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Maybe they had something to teach us about French mascots.
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I wondered what I might find, but surely, surely it was too much to
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hope for an art historical book.
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That covers a topic as niche as bronze art foundries in 20th century Paris.
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Mad voila.
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Here it is.
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Dictionary of bronze art.
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Foundries in France is one of the most important works in
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this space by Luis Be Leal.
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It incorporates previous scholarship in French and was made available
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in English translation in 2015.
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Leal helped me understand something that had been bothering
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me as I researched mascot.
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One of the central issues in English language literature is identification
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and attribution, and oftentimes the different people involved in making
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a mascot that would be people like the artist, but also the modeler, the
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fabricator, the editor, the chaser, and the retailer, and the associated marks
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on these pieces would get conflated.
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English language catalogs have used dubious language when attributing mascot.
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To the point where a reasonable person might believe the artist was
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a central part of the manufacturer, and that the final piece received
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an intervention by the artist himself, the reality is murkier.
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So we'll jump right in with one example from Leal and this particular case,
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the role of the Fa k and French.
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And I'll just read aloud the quote here for anyone who can't see.
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This is a quote from Lab, LeBron's book, an editor of Art bronzes, also called
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himself a manufacturer, Fabricant.
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When he ran a factory fabrik, a term which designated a company where semi
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fine products are completed for marketing.
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The casting operations were very generally carried out by an independent
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foundry man who delivered the raw bronzes to the manufacturer who would
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handle either in his own workshops or by calling on molders and the final
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chiseling and patina operations.
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Large houses like Continental Lure and Pinedo, which have always
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subcontracted their foundry work are therefore excluded from this study.
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Now if you are by any chance somebody who has read a lot of auction catalogs
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about mascots, you know the term company Continental and Lily Ever, 'cause they
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later merged, are often attributed as foundries in the literature.
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And already we could see here in art history, they say that's simply not true.
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Furthermore, the introduction of the term Fab K to the literature
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in English is important.
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There were enough self-described fab camp in the late 19th and 20th century Paris,
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that they had their own trade organization with their own professional standards.
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Understanding their role sheds new light on issues of attribution.
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For example, at the premises of the fabricant, the separate pieces delivered
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by the foundry would be assembled by the chaser, as stated in the previous
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paragraph, since several designs were being assembled at a given time, a
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system of numeration with letters and with numbers would indicate to
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the chaser which pieces together.
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These numbers are therefore nothing like a print number, and do not give
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us any idea of the number of additions produced of a particular mascot.
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However, it does stand to reason these small marks could be useful
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for the authentication of mascots.
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Labone dictionary addresses the changing relationship between artist
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and foundry in 20th century Paris.
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There was an industry of smaller foundries and these enterprising
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artists who were also creating multiple editions of their pieces.
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Now, these same topics are actually briefly mentioned by
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Michelle Gronk, the major author in in the 1990s about mascots.
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He even addresses some of these enterprising artists, editors, and
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there were a number of small craft foundries, not fine art foundries, but
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craft foundries and the 11th r and d Mall of Paris that created both say,
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bronze light fixtures and fittings.
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And also mascots as a sideline.
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Here clearly is an area where more cross pollination between art history and
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automotive history would be very fruitful.
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Now, historical study is not the only way we can learn more about mascots.
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New breakthroughs in technology have already been applied to bronzes produced
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in France in the 19th and 20th century.
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Two studies available in English deal directly with the use of new
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technology to help with the provenance and attribution of friends Bronzes.
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They often use the handheld x-ray fluorescence spectrometer, which is
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a non-invasive and effective way to determine a bronze sculpture's artist
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boundary, even date of casting.
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And I think it's an ideal framework for beginning to apply some of
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these new technologies to things we already are familiar with and love.
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I will pause here to say, I'm sure there is a keen listener in the
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audience who is tapping their foot and thinking when is the Q and a?
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'cause Lauren is missing some very important French mascots.
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And I say.
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Fear not gentle listener.
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We are now at the automotive mascots of Lale.
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I've saved them for last because they're the exception that proves the rule
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literature on lale glass mascots has long benefited from that very cross
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pollination between the worlds of the automobile and fine art like mascots.
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Generally.
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The first major work in English on the lake appeared in the seventies and
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was aimed at the private collector.
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Lik made a variety of decorative objects for the home and office.
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So numerous collectors' guides mentioned automobile mascots just as they would
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VAs or picture frames and table settings.
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Yet these guides cite not only previous lite guides by 1988,
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they were also citing automotive mascot sources in their literature.
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Conversely, when Gigi Weiner devoted a two volume work to Ali Mascots, he drew
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on the wider literature of decorative art collection and art history.
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In addition to our literature on automotive mascots, this cross
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pollination means that Ali mascots are better documented than all
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other French mascots combined.
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So what, well, as I begin to think about it, I wondered perhaps the
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beauty and desirability of the Lille pieces are enough to account
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for its robust documentation.
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But I also began to consider is lite so well documented because
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it is popular or is it popular because it is so well documented?
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McClin, who is one of the ER texts in the field reproduced the mascot
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listings from L'S 1932 catalog, and this became a major point of reference
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for subsequent lite collector's guides.
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Furthermore, Ali's entree to the world of mascots through a CI
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commission in 1925 is well documented.
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And lik had an exclusive sales agent in the UK from the early
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days, meaning there was always sales literature published in English.
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As small oar mascots are not likely to have sales records to
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establish provenance, so sales catalogs are therefore the most
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common tool for identification.
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Generally, if sales literature is the main source for authentication
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of mascots, and if collectors prefer pieces, which can be authenticated.
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Then trends in collecting are driven by availability of information as much as
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if not more than the inherent aesthetic qualities of the objects collected.
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This is evident in the sheer number of sources in the current
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literature about mascots that reproduce pages from sales catalogs.
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So what does this mean for the future of these mascots?
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Well, I hope I've demonstrated that documentation creates value.
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And that we can create more documentation almost instantly just
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by drawing on work already published in other fields like art history.
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I believe that when scholars and other disciplines see their work cited in
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our publications, they will be enticed to focus a little more on cars.
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More documentation will create information which will drive collector confidence,
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thereby increasing market demand.
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The demand itself will create prices that justify spending more labor, therefore
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money on research and authentication.
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Herein is the one caveat I'll say, as with fine art, this upward spiral may
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put the price of mascots beyond the reach of all, but a few enthusiasts.
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A smaller handful of collectors will become even more important
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for the research and preservation of mascots as material culture.
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As the collections become larger and collectors become older, it seems
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likely that just as with fine art, our public institutions become the
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necessary destination of these pieces.
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Anticipating this, collectors and institutions should begin collaborating
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now in the present about what will happen to these beautiful mascots in the future.
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Such collaborations between collectors and institutions exist
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already in the world of fine art.
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Recipient institutions.
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Work closely with scholars who in turn publish work that expands on
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our collective understanding of the fabrication, history, conservation,
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and social import of material culture.
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The collector is not necessarily the first person to own an object.
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But a collector who plans to give his or her collection to a museum is in a
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very real sense holding those objects in trust for future generations.
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The current collector of significant automobiles and automobilia is now
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faced with the same dilemma that has long weighed on the collectors
20:23
of Titian, Picasso and Calder.
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Are these works purchased for my own pleasure, a financial investment for
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myself and my descendants, or are they important material culture of
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which I have been merely the steward?
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And if so.
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Who should be the next steward?
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Thanks very much.
20:48
This episode is brought to you in part by the International
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To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.
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