2024-01 Raynors Americana Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/21/2024
In Fowler's Hand While phrenology is now regarded as pseudoscience, in the nineteenth century many believed that the elements of a person's character were located in specific parts of the brain that manifested as bumps on one's skull, which a skilled reader could interpret. The only other we were able to locate is in the Duke Libraries - a Fowler "Reading" of Walt Whitman. .. https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2019/05/31/happy-200th-birthday-walt/ Here is a "Reading" by L.N. Fowler: Four page reading, "August 18, 1884 of G.M.P. 20 years of age, by Fowler". In small part, "You have force of character which enables you to grapple with difficulties and oppositions with an earnestness which means victory. In other words you are a good worker, you push that of which you have an occasion to do ... your ambition and force and energy are equal to the occasion. ... You want a good name and are willing to work for riches, but you want to work honestly, squarely. You are known for firmness and stability ... You love life for its own sake, are inclined to and are inclined to cling to existence ... Intellectually you ought to be known as a thinker, reasoner ... Your perception of things and qualities and facts - would make you a good buyer, people can never coax you to do something that you did not come to do ... You have mechanical judgement, you have artistic taste, you have logical power, and ability to take hold of life's affairs by the common sense side, and then by the decorative side." Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-96) In 1834 his elder brother Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) Orson Squire Fowler became a convert to phrenology while a student at Amherst College New York from fellow students and from reading J.G. Spurzheim and George Combe. Lorenzo soon followed his brother. Before long, they were reading heads and offering lectures on the subject assisted by their sister Charlotte. They immediately found the new science of the mind profitable and eventually gave up on the idea of becoming clergymen. In 1836 Lorenzo set up a phrenological establishment in New York and in 1838 Orson set up a similar establishment in Philadelphia. Here in the same year they founded the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany American Phrenological Journal which would continue until 1911. Lorenzo was particularly interested in the casting of plaster phrenological busts. With a phrenological office to serve as a museum, they began to collect copies of the collections of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society and James De Ville in London. The Fowlers expanded into publishing reprints of the phrenological greats such as Spurzheim and Combe as well as their own works. By the 1840s they had one of the largest publishing concerns in New York. ... Plus, The well known L.N. Fowler Ceramic Phrenology Head, Ludgate Circus, London, cranium divided by ink lines into areas representing the sentiments, with maker's title on the front and his inscription on the reverse of the base, "For thirty years I have studied crania and living heads form all parts of the world, and have found in every instance that t is a perfect correspondence between the conformation of the healthy skull of an individual and his known characteristics. To make my observations available I have prepared a bust of superior formed and marked the divisions of the organs in accordance with my researches and varied experience. L.N.FOWLER.", 8-1/2"T x 3-3/4"W x 3-3/4"D.
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