A Business Obituary - TearDrop Memories

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the closing of the best “mourning arts” retail store in the known galaxy. My friend Greg Cristiano is retiring and closing his New Hope, Pennsylvania store doors forever. I am reposting his self-penned obituary here on The Cemetery Traveler. Good luck Greg, feel better, and thank you for many years of enlightenment!- Ed Snyder

TearDrop Memory Post Mortem Gallery Shop Closing - A Business Obituary

TearDrop Memories NorthFork Pet Antiques, a long-time New Hope tradition is closing its Post Mortem Gallery on Mechanic Street. R.I.P.  A major tourist destination in town for more than a decade, owner Greg@TDM is closing down his one of a kind retail shop, due to major health issues. His museum-worthy treasures and historically-based traveling talks will remain available on his four websites (linked below).

Detail of Victorian mourning artwork (TDM collection)

A Business Obituary

Queen Victoria mourning pin (TDM collection)

TearDrop Memories has been a leading organizer of in-town events. It’s resume includes the Almost Art Show, Liberty Festival, High Heel Drag Race, Liberty Pole, Monroe Crossing, National Honey Bee Day, Coryells Ferry Militia, New Hope Meter Angels and Colonial Christmas. As advisor to the New Hope Chamber of Commerce, Greg fought hard for New Hope businesses and against the town’s repressive regulations. In the style of the Late Captain Bob Gerenser, Greg remained one of the town’s last curmudgeons, NRA and Tea Party Conservative.

Greg Cristiano holding court in Teardrop Memories

Many will miss Historian Greg’s cheeky greeting, “Can I be of any help or make up a story?” A line that while eliciting smiles, really exemplified the store’s main talent, storytelling. “I never wanted to be a cashier, as most of today’s wannabee antique stores are. I wanted my customers (friends) to feel the same passion for the past as I do,” said he. A shop crowded with everything from antique coffins, Victorian bird cages, real gothic Georgian mourning jewelry, ancient hair art memorials, early medical tools and antiquarian books, became a wealth of material for his epic tales. The shop’s motto “Nothing with a barcode or ‘Made in China’ label” was rarely equaled in Town. This unusual shop and his reenactments of both Revolutionary War Rebellion hero Capt. John Fries and a 19^th century Victorian Undertaker, drew visitors to New Hope from around the world.

Post-mortem portrait (TDM collection)

Survived by his 4 websites and traveling talks, the B&M Post Mortem Gallery; TearDrop Memories will close in October [2016]. Gone but not forgotten, Memento Mori!

TearDrop Memories NorthFork Pet Antiques
http://www.NorthForkPets.com/ 
http://teardropmemories.com/
http://www.MaidensMemoirs.com/ 
http://www.WeSpeakAntique.com/
 
BIO
http://WeSpeakAntique.com/aboutus.html
Email
info@WeSpeakAntique.com
Phone
(215) 862-3401
12 West Mechanic St. 1C
New Hope Pa. 18938
We Speak Antique You Tube
http://www.youtube.com/user/WeSpeakAntique?feature=mhum 
Member
Greater New Hope Chamber Of Commerce
http://www.visitnewhope.com/
U.S. Chamber Of Commerce
http://www.uschamber.com/

"TearDrop Memories" and the Mourning Arts

If you’re at all into the mourning arts, you owe it to yourself to visit a shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania, called TearDrop Memories. The proprietor, Greg, is well-versed on the subject and can be wildly entertaining and informative. If you’re also into antique bird cages, he has them as well. I’ve never asked him about the connection – I’m sure there is one.

Pre-Civil War Hair Work Memorial

I just made my second visit to TearDrop Memories in six months. I suppose it will be a routine stop for me from now on when I visit New Hope or Lambertville (in Jersey, just across the river). Greg’s shop is unparalleled as to the extent of his collection, all but one item of which is for sale (you can ask him what that singular item is!). He has an inventory of thousands, large and small. Yes there are coffins and Victorian mourning attire, but there are also death masks and fine examples of Victorian mourning jewelry. (All the close-up images of mourning art pieces in this article are from TearDrop Memories' website.)

Check this out on Amazon.com

If you’re unfamiliar with mourning arts items, there’s a good book called Mourning Art and Jewelry (2004), by Maureen DeLorme. According to the author, decorative art to commemorate and memorialize the dead reached its zenith in beauty and popularity in the Victorian era. When the husband of Britain’s Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, died in 1861, Victoria went into a period of mourning that was unheard of up to that time. She eventually emerged from her overwhelming grief, and although she resumed her official duties, she dressed in black crepe for the remainder of her life. An entire industry of mourning arts grew out of this.

DeLorme explains: “Life spans were short … with the average age of Victorians at death being forty to forty-five.” Due to prevalent wars and the filth and grime of cities in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, people frequently did not live past the age of seventeen. Out of respect for the dead and a desire to preserve their memory, things like hair jewelry and mourning clothing were invented.  DeLorme states:

“Thus the pressures of continually facing death as an intrusion into everyday family life made the need to keep both the presence of the “Lost Beloved” near while simultaneously bidding farewell, a preoccupation. Victorians met this need by creating an extensive mourning culture employing elaborate mourning dress, jewelry, and funeral trappings; memorial portraits (both drawn and painted); postmortem photographs; sculptures, busts, and death masks; and a myriad of commemorative artifacts.”

Example of Victorian Mourning Jewelry:

Human hair Memento Mori Remembrance Mourning Brooch

And by no means was this mourning culture isolated to Britain - mourning arts spread across the United States as well. You can see hundreds of full-color examples of these memorial items, with their histories, in DeLorme's book. You can also see most of them in person at TearDrop Memories. I’ve included in this article some photos I took in the shop, and you can see more on Greg’s website. Honestly, until you see such objects up close or hold them in your hand, you cannot fully appreciate their intense human connection.

Scene inside TearDrop Memories Antiques, showing Victorian bird cages

TearDrop Memories is located at 12 West Mechanic Street in New Hope (click for map), a block up the hill from New Hope’s storied Main Street (two blocks south of the bridge over to Lambertville). If you’ve never been to New Hope, you’re in for a surprise. This little town has a most intense tourist trade! Custom automobiles cruise the main street on sunny Sunday afternoons, while packs of deafening Harleys rumble by. In a four-block length of road, its not unusual to find fifty motorcycles parked. Leathers and feathers co-exist among the shops as well as on the shoppers themselves. Leaving the tourist traps one can veer up Mechanic Street past the quiet coffee shops and restaurants to number twelve, a storefront that welcomes you with an antique birdcage and an arrow inviting you down the steps to the back of the building, where TearDrop Memories is located. Goth girls, couples, and Victorian enthusiasts alike amble in to the small shop at a regular rate.

Greg Cristiano of TearDrop Memories

Outside on his patio, Greg stands a bird cage on a pole with a child’s white coffin propped against it. A curious juxtaposition for Main Street tourists to see. Once lured in, TearDrop Memories can certainly give you the willies. However, the one thing you can never fear is the act of asking questions. Greg, the owner, is most engaging, entertaining, and I might add, extremely well-schooled on his subject. He has been in this business since about 1996. He supplies both private collectors as well as cemeteries and museums with authentic mourning arts items.

Photo from TearDrop Memories' website

What can you find at TearDrop Memories?

One of  many displays at TearDrop Memories

Probably many things you never knew existed, like antique embalming pumps, mourning jewelry, wall hangings, clothing, memorial plates and other ceramics, coffin handles, coffin name plates, oh yes, coffins themselves. There are books, creepy dolls, death masks, post-mortem photographs, antique funeral parlor signs from when undertakers also built furniture. Many of the wall hangings and many of the brooches, pins, and rings incorporate the woven hair of the deceased (think weeping willow trees made of human hair). All in all, TearDrop Memories is a fabulous history lesson in our seldom discussed past.

Image from TearDrop Memories' website

On my most recent visit, I asked Greg to show me the weirdest thing in his shop. I won’t tell you what it was, but I’m guessing if you asked him on a different day, he’d pull something even more shocking out from under the counter! This place is not for the faint of heart. On one of the walls hangs an 8 by 10 inch lithographic remembrance of a child’s death (maybe from the late 1800s) – with four small coffin handles surrounding a little broken white porcelain angel. I commented “Why would you want something that grotesque hanging in your home reminding you of your child’s death?” Greg very astutely pointed out that it was one of the few things the family had to remind them of their child, not simply its death. He added, “Photography was invented in 1840, but it really wasn’t until after the 1910s that people could actually afford to have their picture taken. Up until then most people only had their photograph taken once in their lifetime.  So they wanted SOME tangible memory of the child.

Post Mortem Ambrotype Photo 1850

As a photographer, I obviously have a soft spot in my heart for photographs and photography. I never thought about how precious a photograph could be, or used to be. Back in the Victorian era (1837 – 1901), it was a major life event to have your photograph taken. So after a child’s death, a remembrance of some sort was needed. I’m sure that if the cost of a photograph was great, the cost of a commissioned oil painting must have been out of most people’s reach. That said, people who had the money at the time of their child’s death would sometimes have a post-mortem photograph made of the child. Such photos might show the child in a coffin or dressed up and sitting up in a chair. Sometimes open eyes were painted on the closed eyelids, so as to appear alive, the way the family wanted to remember the child. TearDrop Memories has photographs of this sort for sale.

Queen Victoria Mourning Pin

The items in Greg’s store (and on his various websites, listed below) are not inexpensive. Even (at the time) throwaway Queen Victoria commemorative death pins can cost forty dollars. But you must remember that most of Greg’s inventory is unique, like the human beings they were designed to memorialize. So if you need an antique wicker casket or old marble headstones, this is the place to get them. Unlike the epitaphs carved on grave markers, Greg’s hours are not set in stone. It’s best to call him (215-862-3401) and leave a message regarding the day you’re planning to come by. He’ll phone you back and most likely have the door open for you whenever you’d like to stop in.

References and Further Information:

TearDrop Memories Antiques website
TearDrop Memories photos on Yelp site

Visit TearDrop Memories' web shops for great antique treasures:
http://www.TearDropMemories.com
http://www.NorthForkPets.com
http://www.MaidensMemoirs.com
http://www.WeSpeakAntique.com

TearDrop Memories Antiques
12 West Mechanic St. 2B
New Hope, PA. 18938
215 862-3401

Stolen Art

I’ve been known to exaggerate a bit, the title being a prime example. Let me explain. If you’re an artist who wants to sell the art you create, you need to put it into the public eye. (I make that distinction because there are, in fact, artists who do not want to sell their work and keep it secreted away; there are more people like this than you can possibly imagine!)

So, I have this issue with leaving my work hanging in places and then ignoring it for months. You know, you get wrapped up in other things. Believe it or not, I’ve left my framed and matted expensive cemetery photographs in the same venue for a year, without even ONCE checking the status of the show! (If my photos were children, they would have been legally removed from my custody years ago.) I used to think I was just scatter-brained, but other artists have confessed to the same sin.

Sometimes you get lucky and all your work is still there – and possibly the venue has even sold a few pieces for you. However, there are times when I’ve gone back to the venue and it was closed! Empty! Gone! You wait too long, and you’re screwed. Take my advice − don’t EVER leave a show unchecked for more than two months!

Now of course this is not likely to happen at a reputable gallery which has you sign a contract (which spells out both the artist’s and gallery’s responsibilities) before your work goes up. However, it’s far easier for emerging artists to get shows in coffee shops, book stores, and restaurants.

Galleries typically rotate their shows on a monthly or quarterly basis, so with these venues, you’re held to the gallery’s strict scheduling guidelines. Occasionally, I’ll do a show in a bar or other business establishment because it’s fun and the foot traffic is usually better than in an art gallery (however, your asking prices might need to be somewhat lower). Sometimes the establishment might say, “You can leave your work up until we find another artist.”

When such an opportunity presents itself, it’s very tempting to leave your work up for several months. With more potential sales resulting from extended public exposure, why not?  In one instance, I had work hanging in the same restaurant for three years, rotating my work about every six months. It was a great opportunity in a popular location in an affluent neighborhood; they charged no commission and I made regular sales. Unfortunately, I sometimes fall victim to the “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome. Before you know it, six months or more may have gone by, when you finally remember to go check on your work. One time I went back eight months after not checking a show, and all my work was stacked in the basement, soaked with water, ruined.

The images I’ve sprinkled about this blog today are some MIA (Missing In Action) photographs that I recently lost when a venue that was exhibiting my work closed up shop. Gothic Creations in New Hope Pennsylvania was in business for sixteen years. For the past five, they sold my work, at a commission. I didn’t get a lot of sales, but it was good exposure and my cemetery angels kind of fit in with the Medieval gargoyles in the shop. Foot traffic in New Hope is immense, as it is a tourist mecca.

After I got married in 2008, and had a child in 2009, it became more difficult to make the forty-mile trip to New Hope. The proprietor never answered his phone or emails. If the venue is quite distant from where you live, laziness can set in. Worse yet, after a time you begin to feel embarrassed that you’ve waited so long, and you AVOID making contact!

I decided to make a final trip to Gothic Creations, to collect my work and any monies from sales. I hadn’t been there in over a year and I was not able to reach them by phone or email. Imagine my surprise when I found a DIFFERENT business occupying the physical space! The new proprietor told me that Gothic Creations disappeared overnight, about six months prior. Rumor had it that the proprietor got himself a divorce for Christmas and moved to Germany.

What happened to all my work? I lost eight photographs in 16x20 inch frames and about forty photo greeting cards whose total value was about $1500. Perhaps my artwork now adorns the walls of some burgermeister’s chalet:

(Guest enters burgermeister's art-filled salon, eying pastry on table)

 Guest: "Herr Burgermeister, can this be stollen?"

Burgermeister (guiltily alarmed, whips around to face guest): "Of course not! I bought zem over zee Internet!"

More than likely, all of my work probably ended up in the dumpster behind the Gothic Creations shop. If I had been in closer contact with the proprietor, I probably would not have suffered this loss. While it’s tempting to enter a “Gentleman’s Agreement” with someone who is willing to exhibit your artwork and front sales for you, it’s also very dangerous.

Many people have suggested using ETSY (“the world's most vibrant handmade marketplace”) instead of physically exhibiting my work. The notion of doing all business over the Internet is tempting (and I do plan to become an ETSY artist), but just as hanging your work in venues implies a certain responsibility, online sales demands even greater responsibility, as you are now entering into direct agreements with customers. The Internet also offers greater anonymity, however, allowing you to remain up in the cloud somewhere, just out of reach of mere mortals. Read the cute announcement on the Gothic Creations website, and note there is no way to contact the person/people in charge.

Deerly Departed

This morning I woke up to rolling thunder, lightning, and darkness that spread like a funeral pall over the city. Perfect day for some cemetery photography? Possibly, yes, though certainly challenging under such conditions. 

However, as I went out to my car about an hour later, I saw the blue sky and felt the heat. The day quickly turned into one of those white-hot summer days where birds, caught in the intensely magnified rays of sunlight reflected off plate-glass office buildings, burst into flame in mid-air.  As Buddy Holly sang in Raining in My Heart, “The sun is out - the sky is blue there’s not a cloud to spoil the view.” 

You can photograph the most typical cemeteries in the rain and everything looks new. But on a sunny, scorching day, I needed something new. Even with scores of cemeteries to photograph in and around Philadelphia, you would think I’d have hit them all. Not so. Mount Hope Cemetery in Lambertville, New Jersey, was in my sights. This is a little rural tourist town across the Delaware River from New Hope, Pennsylvania, about ten miles north of Trenton, New Jersey.

I found the cemetery down a side road, off the main street running through town. Cleverly hidden, as some of them are, from non-residents. I drove up the small hill road for a couple blocks until a grassy embankment appeared on my left. Quaint houses, bungalows, really, populated the right. As I slowed down expecting to find the entrance, I noticed quite a strange sight.

A young deer, a fawn, was struggling up the weedy embankment. This was right out my car widow, about twelve feet away. I made this photo there. I watched the fawn struggle to the top, where its siblings waited - two more fawns of the same size. At this point I had gotten out of my car and was snapping pictures. They were obviously aware of my presence and had the sense to move away. I could see from here that the cemetery entrance was blocked by a downed tree. From this vantage point I could also take in the breadth and width of this lovely hillside cemetery. It was small enough to see that there were driveway entrances around the other side of the grounds. I mounted my steed and drove around Mount Hope back to the center of the cemetery, returning to the area where I had left the fawns. 

I’m not a wildlife nut, and am a pretty bad nature photographer, so why am I so intrigued by deer? Well, for one thing, you don’t see them often in South Philly, where I live. So it’s a novelty, for sure, almost like being in a petting zoo when you can get this close to the animals. Also, I grew up in northeast Pennsylvania, where deer abound and everyone gets a hunting license – even me.

My dearly departed daddy, a Great White Hunter, forced me into it when I was thirteen. He dragged me along for about four years running, until I almost accidentally blew off my uncle’s head. Though no words were ever spoken, Dad and I both took this to be a sign and I was no longer invited  to participate in this manliest of man-sport. Happy to say I never shot a deer. Shot AT them, else I would have incurred the wrath of the Great White Hunter. No one knows this but you, dear reader, that I always aimed a little high. 

It amazed me early on that you only needed to be TWELVE years old to be licensed in the state of Pennsylvania to carry with a high-powered rifle. This was maybe 1971. At the same time, you needed to be SIXTEEN to legally drive and EIGHTEEN to legally drink! My parents had a farm out in the boonies where my cousins and I could do all these things, even before we became of legal rage. We lived in the town, but the farm was sixteen miles away, in some direction of which I am still unsure. Anyway, back to the deer.

My best friend George, with whom I grew up, used to laugh about my family’s fixation with deer. My father would be driving us to the farm in our Ford Country Squire station wagon some Saturday morning, through some godforsaken Bumfukville, when he would slam on the brakes, point out the window into a field and yell “DEER!” We would watch them off in the distance, my parents marveling at their beauty, grace, and gamey flavor, while us kids would be sneaking peeks at our much more interesting Spiderman comic books. George committed the ultimate sacrilege once by rhetorically asking me why my parents are so into deer. “They’re just deer,” he said. And so they are. 

Three fawns, with adult deer in background.

So maybe its because of my bizarre upbringing that a deer standing in a field still gets my attention. This mini-herd of three fawns sure had me intrigued. I found a shady tree under which to park my car (otherwise, this 100-degree heat would have melted my black leather seats), got out with my cameras and approached the fawns. They were now grazing among a cluster of headstones about twenty feet away. They were wary and would stop and look at me if I got closer. I was satisfied to remain at this distance and tried several times to get all three in the shot, classically posed. This I never succeeded in doing. 

If you look in the background of the photo directly above, you’ll see the brown blurred shape of a larger deer (top center, between the house and the large monument). I did not see this through my camera lens. After about ten minutes, I was taken aback by a thumping and snorting!

Doe to the left, buck (in velvet antlers) to the right.

The mama and papa deer, doe and buck, were staring me down! I suppose one or both would’ve charged had I stepped closer to their brood, but I backed away. The mother was more aggressive, the father just standing by (having just been roused from his easychair by the doe, probably). I had no intention of messing with them. The parents trotted toward their fawns and veered off toward the road. The three fawns trotted after them, as best they could on their awkward new legs. To my surprise, they deerly departed down the embankment, through the weeds, into the road, and across the lawn of a nearby house! Living here must be like living in a nature preserve.  

Although Mount Hope Cemetery has woods bordering just one side, it’s all quite rural here. The road surrounding the cemetery turned out to be a dead end, so there really isn’t much traffic to speak of. A lovely place to raise a family, it would seem. Glad I was able to witness it all without my father around.