My writing time this week has been swallowed up by an article for an e-zine issue coming out in October about my genealogy research.  So I’ve turned over my regular post today to four “guest bloggers:” a couple of sadly-anonymous writers from the year 1916; Congressman “Speedy” Long in the 1967 Congressional Record; and the 2010 National Conference of State Legislators.

They each published articles about my grandfather Bornett L. Bobroff’s invention of the roll-call voting machine.

First article: from Popular Science Monthly, 1916

Article from 1916 Popular Science Monthly, with a composite photo showing what Bobroff's roll-call voting machine would look like in the United States Congress. Note the two panels on either side of the dais. These list each Congressman's name, along with lights indicating a yes or no vote.

Snippet from 1967 United States Congressional Record listing states in which the electric roll-call voting machine had been installed. Louisiana Representative "Speedy" Long (of the dynasty begun by Huey Long, in whose time Louisiana adopted Bobroff's voting machine) had just introduced a 1967 amendment that the US Congress finally install electric voting.

Bobroff’s most ubiquitous invention was the automobile turn signal, which he patented and manufactured at his Teleoptic factory in Racine, Wisconsin.  But he got more press coverage for inventing the roll-call voting machine.  Bobroff’s own state of Wisconsin was the first to install this machine in its legislature.  Other state legislatures followed.

In 1916, the US Congress was considering installing the machine in the Capitol in Washington DC.  This never came to fruition because  Congressmen were apparently afraid that speeded-up voting would eliminate filibusters.  But meanwhile, there was a brief window of excitement that a Wisconsin inventor, an immigrant from Russia, might make the national scene.

Milwaukee Free Press cartoon and article

My next 1916 guest blogger is the author of a Milwaukee Free Press article about my grandfather, adorned with a wonderful cartoon drawing.

May 1916 Milwaukee Free Press article with a great cartoon drawing of my grandfather, Bornett L. Bobroff

Well, unfortunately this article prints too small for the text to be legible.  And it isn’t available anywhere else online.  At some point down the trail, I’ll try to post it magnified enough to read.  Meanwhile, if you’re writing a school report or doing historical research on the American voting system, shoot me an email, and I’ll be happy to send the whole article to you.

National Conference of State Legislatures article

Last, let’s return to Louisiana.  I’m honored that this past February, 2010, the National Conference of State Legislatures decided to reprint a Louisiana article about my grandfather and his voting machine.   To see this 2010 article in a larger, more readable .pdf version, click here.

2010 National Conference of State Legislatures reprint of a Louisiana article about the introduction of Bobroff's roll-call voting machine into the Louisiana State Legislature.

The Borisov ghetto at liberation, 1944.

At the end of this post is Alexander Rosenbloom’s list of Borisov (Barysaw) victims of the Nazi genocide, transliterated from his Russian language website.  This list contains something close to 3,000 names.

By publishing Rosenbloom’s lists on my English-language website, I’m making them available to non-Russian speakers searching for relatives, and other interested readers.

I want to thank Rosenbloom (Rosenblyum) for the many years of research he has devoted to compiling this list.  I also want to thank Leon Kull for transliterating the names from Cyrillic for my website.  And thanks to my son Nicky Hajal for doing the programming needed to accommodate such a massive list on this blog post.

Leonid Smilovitsky’s book, Katastrofia Evreev v Velorusii 1941-1944 (“The Holocaust in Belarus”) has an excellent chapter about Rosenbloom’s work, translated by Judith Springer,  available online at JewishGen.com here.  I highly recommend reading this interesting placement of Rosenbloom’s efforts within the context of new Holocaust history developed by Russian Jews who emigrated during the 1990s after the fall of Communism.

Nazi genocide of the Jewish population of Borisov (Barysaw)

According to information pointed out to me by JewishGen member Rhoda Weiss, in 1939, there were 10,011 Jews in Borisov.  They made up 20.4% of the total population.

Borisov was occupied by German troops on July 2, 1940.  According to one account, a ghetto was established on the outskirts of Borisov in the late summer of 1941.  The Slavic population was moved out of an area of a few blocks and told to take Jewish homes on other streets.  The ghetto was surrounded by barbed wire, leaving only one gateway.  Resettlement occurred in a single day, with Jews allowed to take only what possessions they could carry by hand.  Extreme overcrowding led to terrible sanitary conditions and disease.

The ghetto of Smolensk, USSR, roughly 150 miles east of Borisov (that is, deeper into Soviet territory). We may wonder whether similar scenes played out in Borisov.

On Oct. 20-21, 1941, in a single, organized operation, the Germans (along with some number of Soviet collaborators) rounded up and shot or buried alive some 7,245 Jews.  Other separate actions brought the total of those murdered to around 9,000.

As one reviewer wrote of Rosenbloom’s lists of Jews killed by the Nazis and in the Soviet GULAG,

“The author…defined his work as a requiem to those who perished, an expression of gratitude to the righteous, and a curse on the traitors.  In this he sees a tribute to the memory of the generation that went through the trials of the war, Soviet construction, and liquidation of national and religious life.”

Rosenbloom’s list

This list included the names of those who lived not only in Borisov, but also in other areas in Borisov uyezd (district).

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* Zembinsk ghetto prisoners shot on Monday, August 18, 1941.
** Prisoners of the Ivyevsk ghetto.
? There may be an error with respect to the name, according to an informant.

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How to join in “The World of Jews in Borisov/Barysaw”

If you would like your Borisov/Barysaw family included in future posts and have pre-1917 information to share about them, please click on the “Comments” link at the end of any post.  Use the Contact Anne or the Leave a Reply box to email me.  I will respond to all contacts, and write about your family as time and material permit.  Earlier posts about family members of those who have been in contact with me are here.

This is Part 2 of Finding Elkinds of Borisov/Barysaw.  Part 1 is here.

A spectacular example of a tile-covered Russian stove in the peasant style, with a space for sleeping on top, and steps to climb up there. See more about these tiles and stoves below.

These two posts about Borisov Elkinds began when Logan Lockabey emailed me about his search for family members named Elkin or Elkind.  In last week’s post, I wrote about a tragic chapter in Elkin/Elkind history: the deaths in Stalin’s Great Terror of five Borisov/Barysaw natives by those names.

This week, I promised a happier Elkind chapter, about information I found while researching for the first post.  On an unofficial Russian-language Borisov City website, I had found short bios of seven additional Borisov Elkinds from the past.

These “new” Elkinds may or may not have been Logan’s family members.  I haven’t had time to translate of all of their bios perfectly enough to post online (as I’ve said before, my Russian is good but not fast, since I use the dictionary a lot).  I’ve passed along all these short life stories to Logan, in case any may be members of his family.  I will update this post in future if he determines that.

Meanwhile, though, two Elkinds on this new list were  intriguing to me.

Two Borisov entrepreneurs

Here are the brief bios from the Borisov website:

“ELKIND Nekhama Girshevna, entrepreneur.  She owned one of Borisov’s pottery-tile enterprises, which opened in 1898.

“ELKIND Yudel, merchant. In 1883, he opened a tobacco manufactory, one of the first Borisov enterprises of the capitalist type.”

Photo of my grandfather, Boris L. Bobrov, taken in Mogilev in the early 20th century

I was excited about these two Elkinds for a couple of reasons.  The first is that they lived in Borisov at a time when my grandfather could have known them.  My personal focus in most of these blog posts has been on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before my grandfather, Boris L. Bobroff (Bobrov) emigrated to the United States.  I’ve wanted to know more about the places he and his family lived, and about the people he might have known (or known of).

The second reason I was interested is that these two Elkind bios give information on the manufacturing enterprises that each created.  I love discovering the kind of work people did in the towns I’m researching because it also tells us something about the nature of the town itself.

Not only do these little Elkind bios list the type of company run by each Elkind.  If you read them closely, they also hint at a bit more: Borisov apparently had several pottery tile companies.  And the tobacco manufactory which Yudel Elkind opened was “one of the first of the capitalist type” in Borisov in 1883.

Yudel Elkind and tobacco manufactory

The Berezina Match Factory in Borisov

So far, I’ve had little luck finding information about tobacco manufacturing in late 19th-century Russia.  So for the time being, I can’t explore Yudel Elkind’s work.  The one bit of tangential imagery I have is 1907 photos of two match factories in Borisov.  You can see the Victoria Match Factory here, and the Berezina Factory (left).

These photos give a feeling of the factories beginning to develop in Borisov/Barysaw around the turn of the century.  We can only wonder for now whether Yudel Elkind’s tobacco “manufactory,” opened about 25 years before these match factory photos were taken, resembled them in any way.

It’s conceivable that Elkind’s tobacco manufactory, described as “one of the first Borisov enterprises of the capitalist type,” may have been fairly large.  The word “manufactory” (in English and Russian) suggests some kind of production-line process done by hand, without machinery.  But it can also be an archaic word for “factory.”  What kind of machinery might Elkin’s manufactory have involved, if any?

I believe that figuring out what the next questions are is the first stage in good research.  That means we’re making progress!

Nekhama Girshevna Elkind and the pottery-tile business

Tile from a Belarusian website. This tile is decorated with a relief design.

I would love to know the story of Nekhama Girshevna Elkind herself, because she must have been a very enterprising and clever woman.  Since I don’t have her specific life history, I turned to researching the type of work she did.  And here I discovered something interesting: there were a lot of Belorussian Jews in the pottery-tile business at the end of the 19th century.  So it seems that Nekhama was in good company with her business.  She had other similar examples in her area, and maybe some solid competition.

According to the 1904 Collection of Materials about the Economic Position of Jews in Russia (Сборник матеріалов об економическом положенiи евреев в россiи), several places in Belarus had “favorable soil characteristics, conducive to the rise of the pottery and tile business.”   There were abundant clay deposits not far from the surface, along with plenty of the fuel needed for firing pottery.  And everyone needed to buy dishes and tiles.  So Nekhama Elkind had a guaranteed market.

Snippet from Collection of Materials about the Economic Position of Jews in Russia, 1904. Gives the number of Jewish potters and tile masters in Minsk, Vitebsk, and Mogilev guberniyas (alphabet written in the pre-revolutionary style).

Borisov uyezd’s neighbor, Mogilev province, had the hottest hotbed of Jewish tile and pottery makers.  By 1909, there were 415 Jewish pottery and tile makers there, and 14 tile plants.  The tiles they produced were sold in all cities of Mogilev, and in Kiev and Kremenchug in the Ukraine.

The famous green-glazed tiles (muravniye). "Green tiles from Ivenets may be seen very often in homes in surrounding cities and towns." (left)

Nekhama Elkind’s neck of the woods: Borisov in Minsk province

Minsk guberniya, where Borisov is located, came in second to Mogilev, according to this source.  Of 733 Belorussian Jews involved in making pottery and tile, 160 lived in Minsk guberniya (province).

“The town of Zembin (in Borisov uyezd) sells its wares in nearby cities and small towns at a yearly sum of 2,000 rubles.  In the small town of Ivenets (Minsk uyezd), traveling merchants yearly buy 5,000 rubles worth of earthenware dishes and tiles from the makers.  Green tiles from Ivenets may be seen very often in homes in surrounding cities and towns.

“In Rakov…there are about 25 pottery workshops.  Of them 6 are Jewish….  The quality of the work of Jews and Christians is equivalent: it is possible that that of the Jewish masters is even higher since they depend entirely on this trade, while among the [Christian] peasants, it is only a secondary trade to their agricultural work.”

Borisov (here "Barysau") is in the bottom right corner of the map. The red star marks Zembin in the center.

The city of Borisov isn’t mentioned here.  So we might wonder whether Nekhama Elkind’s tile enterprise, along with the others referred to her bio, were actually in the town of Zembin in Borisov uyezd, rather than in the city of Borisov/Barysaw, 14 miles southeast of Zembin (see map, right).

How large was Nekhama’s workshop?

The Economic Position of Jews in Russia says that the average size of ceramic shops in Belorussia was two people, generally a master and an apprentice.  So Nekhama Elkind’s tile shop was likely small.  Was she only the owner of the shop, or did she create the tiles herself?  For now, I can’t answer this question.  But I did find descriptions of the process of creating the tiles, the method that Nekhama Elkind’s workshop undoubtedbly used.

How did Nekhama Elkind create her tiles?

A Russian English-language website describes the process, and I like to try to envision Nekhama going through each step – or maybe directing as some one else did it.  Can you picture her in the description below?

When starting to make a tile,

“the potter would temper clay with his hands, his fingers penetrating inside the clay and removing small pebbles and clots, anything that could lead to cracks during baking. The clay took in the warmth of the master’s hands and became pliable. Then the master would fill it into a wooden mould with a carved ornamentation on the bottom.

Russian tiles of the 16th-17th centuries. One is glazed, the other isn't (earthenware).

This carved design inside the mold created a relief design such as the birds on the blue tile above and the two tiles left.  The bottom of the mold was first “sanded” to prevent the clay from sticking.

Then the potter

“consolidated it and pressed into the tracery holes. After processing it on the potter’s wheel he dried it and baked in a furnace. The pattern was not always relief. Sometimes the front side of the box [that is, the part of the tile that showed in the finished tiled object] was smooth and painted.”

Last, the decoration, whether relief or painted, was glazed or enameled.

As this description suggests, the earliest Russian tiles, beginning in the 15th and 16th centuries were decorated with relief designs.   By the 18th century, the front of tiles was often left flat and painted with elaborate designs (see photo below).

What was Nekhama Elkind’s market for her tiles?

St. Basil's Cathedral, Moscow.

We can all imagine how large the market for pottery dishes must have been in Russia, since everyone needs dishes.  But what about tiles?  Why were they in such wide demand?

Tiles were used in Russia to decorate lavish interior and exterior walls.  The most famous example of tile decoration on the outside of a building is undoubtedly St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.

But the real reason there was such a market for tiles in Russia was the Russian stove, which was used for heating and sometimes also for cooking and sleeping (see photo at top of this post).

Why did the Russian style of stove create such a huge market for pottery tiles?

Russian stoves were big, with a vast surface area.  Covering them with tiles meant buying a lot of tiles.

I don’t think that the average peasant stove was sheathed in tiles.  But anyone who could afford them wanted them, for their beauty and practicality.  Tiles added to the stove’s heat transfer capacity.  And they were much easier to clean than earthen surfaces.

Tile-covered Russian stove from the Rostov Prince's Palace. Note many of these tiles are the flat-surfaced, painted style.

Why did the Russians have gigantic stoves that required so many tiles to decorate, creating a great market for Nekhama’s wares?  I’ve always wondered what was going on inside all that bulk that would make Russians want to sacrifice so much of their living space to them.

A fascinating article in Low Tech Magazine explains that inside Russian stoves were labyrinths of smoke channels (see diagram below).  These channels held onto the heat, allowing it to be absorbed into the masonry rather than escaping up a chimney.  They also allowed more complete combustion of the fuel, unlike the partial combustion of our fireplaces, which coat the chimney with half-burned fuel (creosote).  Over many hours, the Russian stove’s masonry and tiles slowly radiated their heat (they didn’t use convection, as most of our heating systems do in the US).

Interior diagrams of Russian stoves. The one on the left appears to be a more vertical stove, while the one on the right seems to be the more horizontal peasant style.

These stoves were incredibly efficient at heating homes through frigid Russian winters – much more efficient and non-polluting than the American hearth or iron stove.  Properly operated, a Russian stove heats 60 square meters for an entire season using a single tree.  (If you’re interested in more on these stoves, along with many gorgeous photos, read the Low Tech article here.)

Did Nekhama sell her tiles only to the wealthy, or was her market broader?

All Russians, from the poorest peasants to tsars, heated their homes with these huge stoves.  But did the average Russian’s stove have a layer of tiles?  Was Nekhama Elkind likely selling her tiles only to the wealthy, or could her market have been wider?

According to one source,

“In the nineteenth century, tile production became widespread.  Products were manufactured in a wide assortment, varying in cost and artistic value for a broad section of consumers.  Tiles were designed primarily for finishing stoves, perhaps the primary and indispensible part of Russian life.”

Well, this general statement doesn’t answer the question fully.  I’ll be on the lookout for more information on Nekhama Elkind’s tile customers in future.  Meanwhile, though, it seems clear that the frigid Russian winters, and the stoves designed to cope with them, likely created her market.  And the rich, accessible clay deposits of Borisov uyezd gave her the raw materials to meet that market.

I’ll end this post with some additional images of exquisite Russian tiled stoves.

Before I do, though, I’d like to take a moment to dedicate this post to a dear friend, Saul Scheidlinger, who died this past week, and to his wife, Rosalyn Tauber-Scheidlinger.  Saul was a psychologist who made great contributions to the field of child and adolescent group psychotherapy.  He was appreciated worldwide for his wisdom and as a great teacher and trainer.  He was a cultured and lovely man, who, with extraordinary grace, overcame profound tragedies earlier in his life.  I miss him.  And I think he would have enjoyed these images of artistic Russian stoves.

Left to right: Russian tiled stove, 1680; Fairy tale illustration by I. A. Bilibin with tiled peasant stove in background; Red (earthenware?) tiled Russian stove.

"Moving Out" by Nikolai Getman, who himself was imprisoned in Stalin's Gulag.

Last week, I posted a translated version of Aleksandr Rosenblyum’s list of Jewish GULAG victims from Borisov.   Within a day, over a hundred JewishJen Belarus participants had already checked the list for their family members.

Logan Lockabey was among those who emailed me.  He had searched my site’s list and found several Elkins and Elkinds, the names he was looking for.  He wrote to take me up on my offer to translate the short bios that accompany each name on Rosenblyum’s Russian-language list.

Julius Grigorievich Elkind, born in Borisov in 1902, died in Stalin's Terror, 1938.

Rosenblyum has spent years compiling his list, and some names include photographs.  These photos are breathtakingly moving, posted next to the stories of each person’s arrest and sentencing on invented charges.

Checking for Logan’s Elkin/ds, I found that one of them, Julius Grigorievich Elkind, was among the entries that included a photograph (left).

Julius was 36 years old when he lost his life in Stalin’s Great Terror.

As I began the translations for Logan, I decided I’d post them here and use this opportunity to show a little of how I’ve been working through the research for my “The world of Jews in Ryazan” articles (and currently “The world of Jews in Borisov/Barysaw”).

First, here are my translations for Logan

Getman's painting of a morgue in a goldmine prison camp in Russia's far northeast. The Jamestown Foundation played a major role in preserving and protecting these paintings, which are the only known visual record of Stalin's camps. Unlike the Nazis, who recorded and preserved a detailed visual history of the Holocaust, the Soviets made no images of their camps.

Please keep in mind as you read these bios that the charges were fabricated.  There were no real trials or any other form of due process.  None of these arrests and deaths were warranted.  They were part of a program of terror by Stalin against his own people, during which millions of Russian citizens lost their lives by being summarily executed or through starvation and exposure in labor camps.

ELKIN Ilya Isaakovich (1888 -?), [my information for this entry is taken partly from a more complete entry for him here.]  Born in the village of Ratutichi. Expert in and promoter of Esperanto.  Worked at BELRAD (Belarussian Radio), where he managed broadcasts of programs in Esperanto.  Because the authorities found this language [Esperanto] objectionable, Elkin was arrested January 26, 1936, and immediately charged with anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.  His Esperanto department [at BELRAD] was eliminated.  There is as yet no information about his fate beyond this.  Rehabilitated in 1990.

ELKIN Miron Aronovich (1900 – 1946),  Party secretary of the Borisov Glass Plant. Arrested August 8, 1937, on charges of being a Trotskyist.  On 10 October 1938, by extra-judicial decree, he was sentenced to imprisonment in a labor camp for 5 years.  He was not released at the end of this period, and he died in prison.

ELKIND Boris Isaakovich (1891 -?), Born in Priyamino near Borisov.  Collective farmer at “Chyrvony Uskhod” Collective Farm in the Smolevich district of Minsk oblast. Arrested December 22, 1932, on charges of sabotage and immediately sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.  Rehabilitated in 1989.

Getman's painting of the daily sled-pickup of bodies of prisoners who died overnight. Estimates of the numbers who died in Stalin's camps range upward of 10 million.

ELKIND Boris Mikhailovich (1899 – 1936), native of Borisov.  Lawyer.  Lived and worked in Moscow.  Member of the Regional Board of Defense Lawyers. Arrested 24 November, 1935, on fabricated charges of espionage and shot on May 11, 1936.

ELKIND Julius Grigorievich (1902 – 1938), native of Borisov.  [See photo above.]  He lived and worked in Moscow.  On Aug. 26, 1938, Assistant Chief Transport Prosecutor of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him on fabricated charges to capital punishment and he was shot on the same day.

Finding more Elkinds

I found these brief biographies deeply affecting, and wanted to see whether I could find out more about these these people in happier times, before their arrests.  Following my usual process, I googled each name (I used the Cyrillic version because Russian language websites are more likely to give information on relatively unknown countrymen and women than English language ones).

Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything new about these five GULAG victims.  But I did find short bios of seven other Borisov Elkinds from the past.

I had been planning to write about some of these new (to me) Elkinds here.  But the process of writing about Stalin’s Terror and seeing Getman’s images has put me in a very somber mood.  I can’t write now about the lives of other Elkinds who lived in different times.  And it doesn’t feel at all appropriate to include that material in this entry.

So it will wait till a later time.  And that post will be fuller of life than of death.

1911 New York Times announcement

I’ve been writing for several months now about my grandfather, whose name in the US became Bornett L. Bobroff.  My grandmother Edna Finch, his wife, had a unique career of her own.

I hadn’t yet been planning to write about Edna Finch because it’s been very difficult to find information about her.  But googlebooks has done it again: their scanning all kinds of esoteric old documents has given me another unexpected portrait of one of my grandparents.  In this case, the document is a 1911 issue of Life and Health, The National Health Magazine (see below).

I’m not sure who at googlebooks is standing around scanning all these dusty tomes.  But I personally am very grateful.

Edna Finch, by very early adulthood, had become the main support of her mother and siblings.  Trained as a nurse, she somehow or other brought her family from their home in upstate NY to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  There she became a visiting nurse.  And then she was appointed by the city of Milwaukee’s Commissioner of Health as its public health inspector.  Later, she stepped into the job which gained her the most press coverage (see above for one example from the New York Times): the United States’ first “woman policeman.”  (Her police powers were to arrest factory owners who flouted labor and sanitary laws.)

I’ll write more in future posts about “the first woman policeman.”  For now, by way of introduction to Edna Finch, here is my most recent treasure-find via googlebooks:

First page of article from Life and Health, The National Health Magazine, 1911.

Borisov's "public security" building, called "the beginning of the road to the Gulag" by Rosenblyum. Victims arrested on fabricated charges were brought to its basement: "At night, in this evil building, electricity was always burning as interrogations and beatings went on."

Yesterday, I discovered that Aleksandr Rosenblyum, whose website I wrote about in my last post, had compiled a list of Borisov Jewish victims of the Gulag, beginning with Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937-8.

This morning, I found an email in my inbox: overnight, Leon Kull had generously transliterated the names from Cyrillic so that English-speaking readers doing geneological research can check here for relatives.  I’ve posted Leon’s translated list at the end of this article, below.

Rosenblyum’s webpage provides a paragraph of information about each person: occupation, the invented charges against them, and their fate (e. g. “sentenced for so many years,” “shot”).  Some entries include photographs of the victim.

For example, one victim in the list is named Boris Bobrov – the same name as my own grandfather, but born a decade later.  In fact, I had found Rosenblyum’s list as I was searching the web for information about my grandfather’s family.  I was startled and shaken to suddenly come upon the following entry (my translation from the Russian):

“BOBROV Shmuel-Ber (Boris Yakovlevich).  Born in 1894 in Borisov.  Managed the insurance fund of the Industrial Cooperative.  Accused of belonging to the Polish intelligence service and sentenced to capital punishment by a “special troika” [extra-judicial local sentencing body during the Great Terror*].  He was shot October 1, 1938.”

(*The “troika” was made up of head of the local secret police, the local Party secretary, and the prosecutor.)

So this Boris Bobrov, quite likely a relative of mine, once lived a routine life managing an insurance fund.  And then everything changed.  He faced false accusation and terror.  He was arrested, “tried,” and shot to death, quite likely in the basement of the very building pictured above.

Memorial recently placed in Borisov's Jewish Cemetery. Engraved on the memorial are the names found by Aleksandr Rosenblyum during many years of research. Photo sent to me by Rosenblyum.

Boris Bobrov was but one of millions of innocent men, women, and yes, children, of all ethnic groups in the USSR who were murdered under Stalin.

A full accounting of all of Stalin’s victims has never been possible because records were not maintained.  Rosenblyum’s list is the result of years of searching, and he says it is still incomplete.  He asks for readers to send in any additional information they may have.

Estimates of the total number of deaths in Stalin’s prisons and labor camps, together with famine deaths resulting from his policies, range from around 15 million to 25 million.

How to search for your family member

Non-Russian speakers who find family members in the list below can check Rosenblyum’s website for the additional information.  My son’s NiceTranslator Firefox plugin is a great tool which, once downloaded, creates pop-up translations on foreign language websites, with no cutting and pasting to another translation website (usable only with the Firefox browser).  Like all computer translations, these are very rough, but they give a general sense of the text.

If you find your family member listed here and would like help navigating the additional Russian-language information on Rosenblyum’s website, feel free to contact me or leave a comment below.

Aleksandr Rosenblyum’s list of Borisov’s Jewish Gulag victims, transliterated from Cyrillic by Leon Kull ________________________________________

Postcard of an unidentified street in the city of Borisov, Russia

A few weeks ago, I discovered – through Russian Census and Ellis Island material sent to me by Leon Kull – that my grandfather’s family probably came from Borisov uyezd (county) in what is now Belarus.  Ever since then, I’ve felt an unsettling transition underway inside me.

For years, the only place in Russia that I knew my grandfather had lived was Ryazan. Several months ago, I started writing a blog thread about the world of Jews in Ryazan.  My interest was not only my own grandfather, but also other people he might have known or been close to.  Ryazan was outside the Pale of Settlement, to which most Jewish citizens of the Russian Empire were confined by law beginning under Catherine the Great.  To live outside the Pale, Jews had to obtain official permits given only to people in certain professions and a very few other cases.  So I began by looking at a tiny group of Jewish residents of this rather unlikely spot in central Russia.

Map showing rough locations of Borisov, within the Pale of Jewish Settlement, and Ryazan, outside the Pale

It’s still a mystery to me exactly how my grandfather, Boris L. Bobroff, got to Ryazan, and I certainly haven’t given up trying to figure that out.  Meanwhile, though, I feel a bit as if I’m being called home, to the place where my grandfather – or at least his family – were likely born and lived some part of their lives.  So now I’ve decided to begin a new blog thread, the world of Jews in Borisov.

Dangers ahead inside the Pale?

In facing back toward Borisov, I feel I’m moving into somewhat dangerous emotional territory.  Life inside the Pale was what so many of our ancestors struggled to leave behind.  It was often a life of confinement, restriction, poverty, and lack of opportunity.  And of course those who were unable to get out were caught up in the Holocaust.  The Borisov towns where my ancestors originated are now dotted with memorials to Jews massacred in mass shootings.  An example is the small village of Es’mony, the childhood home of Rokhilya Bobrova, probably a close relative of my grandfather who also lived in Ryazan.

Polynskaya Street in Borisov, during the 1918 German occupation (electrification installed by the Germans). Visible are a pharmacy, hat shop, and mercer (textile dealer).

By living in Ryazan, and later the United States, my grandfather had, by 1904, escaped the Pale.  Now I’m plunging right back into it.  Why?  I suppose it’s because the Pale is where so many Russian Jews came from.  We can’t fully understand their lives unless we have some idea of their origins, and of the conditions in which they dreamed of other lives.

So on to Borisov …

So now I’ve begun a process of trying to learn about a new place, Borisov, just as I had been excited to learn about Ryazan.  I’ve begun writing to the many JewishGen participants whose ancestors also came from Borisov and started getting some responses, with new bits of information.

I’ve begun my usual search of Russian language websites – always something of a struggle because my Russian language skills are rusty (one of my most important tools is my son’s website, NiceTranslator.com, along with its Firefox plugin, which enables short translations to pop up on foreign language websites).  And there are the hassles of doing dual google searches in English and in Cyrillic without a Cyrillic keyboard (I use a good virtual one).

It’s a bit hard starting over, feeling once again how little I know about this new place, Borisov – new to me, that is.

But one of the fun parts of this research is finding amazing treasure stores of local information created by so many citizens everywhere.  When researching Ryazan, I had found the vast and rich Ryazan guberniia website, which includes extraordinary historical photos and articles.  (If you want to be dazzled, click through any of its pages to see its many different heading-artwork designs, elaborately custom-made for each topic.)

“Cocktail of My Soul”

Postcard with photo of the Borisov market bazaar.

For Borisov, I’ve found an amazing stash of old postcards and other photographs, collected by Aleksandr Rosenblyum, a present-day resident of the city of Borisov (capital of Borisov uyezd).  His website is called Cocktail of my Soul, and it’s about every aspect of Borisov past and present.  The website’s many nooks and crannies probably hold riches I haven’t discovered yet.

Sheyneman vs. Levin

Right off the bat, though, are the early 20th century postcards and Rosenblyum’s description of their history.  It’s an evocative story in itself (any mistakes in Russian-to-English translation are my own):

“In 1907, the owner of a Borisov stationer’s shop, A. Sheyneman, delighted his customers by selling postcards with photos of different corners of the city of Borisov.  Pretty soon his rival B. Levin, the owner of another stationary shop, followed his example, this time with postcards whose photographs had been colored.”

Postcard: General view of the town of Borisov and its pier on the Berezina River (the side of the town beyond the river is hazy in the background).

Rosenblyum provides images of all the postcards, some even labeled as to whose shop sold it, Levin’s or Sheyneman’s!

So here we have two clever competitors in business, each one-upping the other.  And they were competing via the latest technology of their time: photographs now available to everyone in the form of postcards of their very own town! We can imagine what excitement it must have spawned among small-town residents to suddenly see their own surroundings on cards they might be able to buy and send to family and friends.  The cards sold out quickly and soon became rarities.

Postcard of Borisov's wine warehouse (the sale of wine was a monopoly held by the Russian Imperial government).

Rosenblyum asks amusingly,

“What sort of Borisov sights were illustrated in these cards, of which about 30 were released?  Of course, in such a small provincial town, it was difficult to find 30 extraordinary places.  So the sites selected included the wine warehouse and the prison.”

The resourceful Rosenblyum

The story of how Rosenblyum came to have this wonderful collection of old postcards is as delightful as the story of the cards themselves.  Sometime after 1950, the staff of Borisov’s local history museum discovered that a famous Leningrad card collector, Nikolai Spiridonovich Tagrin, had the Borisov postcards among his vast collection.  The museum tried to buy the cards from him, but were only able to acquire a few.  Their efforts continued from various sources, but their collection remained very incomplete.

Postcard of the Victoria Match Factory in Borisov

Then, after Tagrin’s death, his wife donated his collection – consisting of 500,000 postcards – to Leningrad’s Museum of History.  And in 1987, our hero Aleksandr Rosenblyum stepped in.  He persuaded the editor of Borisov’s newspaper Communist Work to send a correspondent to Leningrad to make reproductions of the Borisov postcards.  According to Rosenblyum, the correspondent followed through brilliantly.  The postcards were eventually published with Rosenblyum’s comments, attracting great interest.

All in all, a good day on the road to Borisov

Postcard of house of Kandrian, a wealthy Swiss barrel-hoop manufacturer who immigrated to Borisov.

So this transition back to Borisov, which I began with some trepidation, has ended with pleasure.  Whatever the hardships of the Pale, there were in Borisov two inventive and successful Jewish stationary shop owners whose story – at least until the postcards sold out – is amusing and impressive.  The postcards created and sold by Levin and Sheyneman still exist today, revealing to us many hidden corners of their world.

Centrale Electrique de Zouk (Electric Station of Zouk), by Vanessa Gemeyal

When I posted a two-part online drawing lesson a couple of months ago, I received a response that got me wondering.

The response was from a wonderful young Lebanese artist, Vanessa Gemayel (who also happens to be my niece).   Vanessa paints luminously about today’s destruction of the beautiful  traditional architecture that gave Beirut its unique atmosphere, replaced by generic modern architecture that is sadly making Beirut look like every other city in the world.

Vanessa, after trying out my figure-drawing lessons, wrote to me that she found them “very cool and helpful.”  But, she added, “you make it seem a lot easier than it actually is.”  And of course Vanessa is saying outright what many people feel about drawing instruction.

That got me wondering what in the human brain makes drawing from life so not-easy to learn.

All jobs involve a learning curve, often long and hard to get through.  Drawing from life is in that sense no different from any other expertise.  Many skills, for example, require years of study before mastering them.  Others need endless practice.

I believe that the most important element of learning to draw, though, is an “aha moment” – or maybe a small series of such moments.  In those few moments, you suddenly start being able to see in a different way which enables you to draw realistically.  This alternate way of seeing is for me, and for many who draw, the single most basic and important tool we use.

True, endless practice must follow the aha.  But the practice isn’t what blocks most people who really want to learn to draw.

In learning to draw, I think what is elusive to many people is the “aha moment” when they begin to see in that all-important alternate way.

With that aha, you will be able to learn to draw easily.

What is the aha moment in learning to draw?

In my drawing-lesson posts, “Learning to Draw by Playing the Angle Abstraction Game,” I called the technique of seeing differently “angle abstraction.”  The artist is able to see what they’re drawing as a series of angles and shapes that are much easier to draw than when their subject is seen “normally.”

Other artists have given other names to their alternate way of seeing.  Betty Edwards has written two groundbreaking books in which she calls it “right-brain mode,” or “R-mode” (as distinct from left-brain mode, or L-mode).

L-mode is how we consciously think in our everyday lives.  It’s language-based.

R-mode – the one that enables us to draw – is non-verbal and does its work mostly outside our conscious awareness.

The “aha moment” happens when you are suddenly able to consciously access and use R-mode to see differently and draw.

One frame from my free online drawing lesson, "Learning to Draw by Playing the Angle Abstraction Game"

But why would our brains withhold from our conscious grasp a way of seeing that can be so useful?  Why shouldn’t we all be able to easily dip into that mode of thinking when we want it to draw?

Why do our brains block our aha moments?

Portrait of the Steinbergs, by Anne Bobroff-Hajal. Notice how different each of the hands looks.

I was pondering this question when I recently ran into a wonderful answer in one of Betty Edwards’ books, Drawing on the Artist Within (p. 208).

One way of conveying  Edwards’ explanation here  is through a group portrait I painted (right) of Bob and Gail Steinberg with their grandchildren, Riley and Alex.  This portrait illustrates one of the classic problems of drawing: how to draw parts of the human body when they are foreshortened – that is when they are coming straight at us, so they look very different from what we usually think of as an arm, a leg, a hand.

The most obvious foreshortened body part in this portrait is the hand of the Steinbergs’ grandson Alex, who is pointing directly at the viewer.  Everyone who sees this painting knows exactly what that hand is doing.  But in fact, it bears little resemblance to our standard concept of what a hand looks like.  Our conscious, rational L-mode brain typically thinks of a hand as something more like the father’s hand in another portrait (below).

Detail of Edwin Ermita and Two of His Children, by Anne Bobroff-Hajal

That little pointing finger

Alex’s pointing finger appears on the canvas as a small circle, not the long tube shape we associate with fingers.  That’s strange enough.  But beyond that, the thumb seems bigger than the other fingers.  And it stretches out at an angle that we rarely think of thumbs taking on.  That thumb seemed so odd to me while I was painting it that I rechecked it multiple times to be sure I had it right.

In fact, it’s exactly because I allowed each finger to take on its actual shape – rather than what I might have consciously thought it should look like – that makes it possible for everyone who looks at the painting to know exactly what that strange conglomeration of flesh-colored blobs is.

Now for the other hands….

In addition to the little pointing finger, we can look at the other hands in the Steinberg portrait.  When we really study them, none of them is shaped like our standard concept of a hand.

Detail of Steinberg portrait hands, along with black ink outline of each

Bob Steinberg’s hand appears almost triangular, with only parts of four fingers visible.

Little Alex’s right hand is visible as only a thumb and two fingers.  And the index finger looks like it’s separated from the thumb by an interloping finger which in reality is farther away from the thumb.

Gail Steinberg’s fingers conform fairly well to our standard image of a hand.  But what about the back of the palm area?  It looks much smaller and less rectangular than it “should.”

It’s fine for us to view these shapes as being all different when we’re drawing.  But it’s also crucial for our daily functioning that we recognize all of them as the same – as hands.  It’s the job of our efficient, everyday L-mode, says Edwards, to quickly classify all these odd shapes under the general verbal rubric of “hand.”  And that verbal rubric is envisioned as in Edwin Ermita’s hand above, stretched flat, with five fingers roughly the same length as the palm.

If our brains had to go through a conscious, verbal process of debating whether each of a group of very dissimilar objects is or is not a hand from a different angle, we’d never get through our day.  We’d be mired in endless debating: “I see three of what look like fingers, two from the side and the third, a thumb, from more of a straight-on view.  But if they are fingers, why aren’t there five of them, and why aren’t they attached to a hand?  Is the hand out of my sight, or ….”

Our unconscious interpreter

It’s R-mode, says Edwards, that takes in all the differences in shape and size, and, with lightning speed, calculates from them where things are in space, what they are, and so on.  R-mode sees, for example, that the back of Gail Steinberg’s hand appears to be getting smaller not because it is smaller, but because it’s receding back from her fingers, curving around Alex’s body.  “It’s a hand, all right,” says R-mode, “it’s just shaped differently from a “standard” one because its wrist is farther away from us than its fingers.”

Edwards wrote (p. 178),

“R-mode apparently computes instantaneously and nonverbally….  This computation – and the size-change information that hits the retina – is somehow kept ‘secret’ from conscious awareness, perhaps in order not to interfere with or complicate the language system.”

I suspect this instantaneous computation is also “kept secret from conscious awareness” because language – the currency of L-mode – would slow down its lightning speed.  The rapidity with which our R-mode calculates that a flesh-colored circle is a finger pointing at us happens far faster than we could ever describe in words.

An analogy that might make this clearer is of an athlete hitting a ball.  The athlete’s R-mode brain is making calculations at phenomenal speed about how far away the ball is, how fast its moving, where its moving, and about how the athlete him/herself must move and react to all that information in order to successfully connect with the ball.  If the athlete had to bring all of this to consciousness and calculate it verbally – “the ball is now curving right and I can see it will bounce in this particular way, so I calculate that I should move this way – no, I now see that it had spin on it, so I need to redo my computations…”  – the athlete would never be able to hit the ball before it went whizzing past.

Bringing the aha to more readers

When artists draw, I believe they are making judgments and decisions at that same lightning speed as the athlete hitting a ball.  Their thought process has to be non-verbal because of the countless calculations made in a split-second’s time.

I think this is why it’s so difficult to convey drawing instruction in words.  The artist’s observations, judgments, and decisions happen in a split second of often-exciting non-verbal discovery.  But to convey to a reader that same thought process takes long paragraphs of verbiage.  That’s why I’m hoping to be able to get more video drawing demos up on this blog in future – along with text that tries to convey a small fraction of the artist’s split-second decision-making as he or she works.

We need language to communicate the artist’s process to other people.  But language is slower and more reductionist than some other processes in our brains.  Hopefully a combination of images, video, and language will bring the aha moment to more readers of this blog in the future.

Singer ads portrayed women of many countries sewing at their machines. This is a woman in traditional Russian costume, including a headdress in reality far too heavy to allow bending over her work.

This is Chapter 6 of the thread “The World of Jews in Ryazan: Beyond the Pale.” The previous chapter can be found here.

As described in a previous post, Yakov Kull and Rokhilya Bobrova both worked at the Singer Sewing Machine Company in Ryazan, Russia.

What was work like for them on a day-to-day basis?  What tasks were they responsible for at Singer?  What were their relationships with people they worked with?  With their superiors?

Rokhilya almost certainly taught sewing lessons and/or demonstrated sewing techniques on the different Singer machine models.  We can be fairly sure of this because these were the jobs the company typically hired women to do in Russia.

More details of what work at Singer was like for such women as Bobrova are hard to come by.  One thing we do know is that everyone who worked above her in the shop was likely a foreigner who did not speak her language well.  Singer had a very hierarchical structure of managers and auditors.  Non-Russians were sent from abroad to fill all supervisory roles.  They may have learned some Russian during their time there, but were likely not very comfortable in it.

We can wonder what it must have been like for Rokhilya Bobrova to interview for a job with, say, Germans or Americans, and to come to work every day in a place where all her superiors were foreigners.

Russian ad for Singer Sewing Machines

Rokhilya – a widowed mother of five – was, of course, herself something of a foreigner in Ryazan, having left her birthplace in Minsk province (now Belarus) in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, at about the age of twenty.  Her first language may not have been Russian, either.  But she had lived in Ryazan since 1887, for nearly 20 years before the Singer company arrived there, so her Russian was likely fluent.

At any rate, Bobrova would have had a number of co-workers who were longtime Ryazan inhabitants, including Yakov Kull.  Local residents were hired for all sales positions at Singer’s because the company realized that to sell lots of machines required salespeople who knew the language and the cultural and social mores of their potential customers.  (Domosh)

I like to  imagine Bobrova interacting in a friendly way with her fellow employees as she worked each day.  One of these fellow employees was Yakov Kull.

Manual for the Singer Model 15, a foot-powered treadle sewing machine.

Kull, according to the 1910 Russian Census, was a “sales agent” at Singer’s. These agents – often called “canvassers” in English – were the foundation for Singer’s astronomical success in Russia (and the US).  Many worked in Singer’s roughly 4,000 shops in cities throughout the Empire.  Tens of thousands more “canvassed” the countryside looking for new customers all across the vast territory of the Russian Empire.  Mona Domosh wrote,

“At the most local level, the Singer ‘man’ on horseback was a common, everyday sight….  In rural areas, this person took daily horseback rides through the countryside, visiting farms and small villages.  He (they were all men) carried with him samples of Singer’s various machines and the materials necessary to demonstrate their use, such as thread and fabric.  He also carried with him his notebook, where he marked the weekly payments that he did or did not collect.  He interacted with customers mainly in their own homes, a visitor of sorts, perhaps known by the family beforehand or at least familiar to them by name and relations.”

Yakov Kull

The canvassers were “thought to be the key to sales success; they were meant to be energetic, bright, knowledgable about the machines, and honest.”  This description definitely seems to fit the enterprising young Yakov Kull, who had moved on to Singer’s from his job as shop assistant in a clothing store.

We don’t know whether Yakov Kull canvassed the countryside around Ryazan or whether he worked primarily in the shop in town.  We do know that he had grown up in a neighboring town, Zaraysk, so he would still have had contacts – perhaps potential customers – outside of Ryazan itself.  We might wonder whether his former hometown became part of the sales territory he worked.

A Singer Sewing Machine shop in Beloomut, Russia, 27 miles southeast of Ryazan.

On the other hand, it’s possible that there was yet another Singer shop in Zaraysk which employed residents of that town.  The photo to the left (sent to me by Yakov Kull’s descendent, Leon Kull), shows a Singer shop in another small town not far from Ryazan.  The building’s traditional Russian architecture is beautifully decorated with typical peasant carved-wood trim.  Note the large Singer sign across the top of the building, which reads “Sewing Machines / Singer Company.”  Unfortunately this photo is too blurry to make out the images on the other signs, but they undoubtedly bore pictures of Singer sewing machines.  They adorned the facade’s first and second floors, and the corners as well, so as not to miss potential customers coming down the street from either direction.

Hand-operated Singer sewing machine. "Singer" is printed on the wooden case in the Cyrillic alphabet, but not on the machine itself.

Most customers bought their Singers on installment because the cost of a sewing machine was more than the average Russian’s yearly income.  In the United States, Singer installment plans were paid off in two years.  But because most Russians were too poor to pay that quickly, payments there were typically spread out over four years.

Typical Singer treadle sewing machine in table with iron stand.

Russian sales agents such as Yakov Kull were responsible for collecting the installment payments from each of the customers to whom they sold sewing machines.  It’s possible that Kull’s wealthier Ryazan customers bought their machines outright.  According to fashion designer Elena Kroshkina, sewing machines became part of the fashionable young woman’s dowry at that time, purchased by the parents of the bride.

But it seems likely that many of Kull’s customers must have paid in installments.  According to Fred Carstensen’s terrific study of Singer in Russia, the company’s

“army of sales agents collected much of Singer’s income in the homes and workshops of customers.  Controlling these monies, which passed through many unsupervised hands, was critical to the financial health of the company.  Singer controlled the agents’ sales and collections through ‘hire books,’ coupons, and numbered stamps.  Each customer received a book when he purchased a machine.  Whenever an agent received a payment, he stuck the appropriate number of coupons in the hire book, then canceled them with a numbered stamp and his own signature.  These coupons served both as receipts for customers and as a check on the agent, who had to account for all his coupons when submitting collections and his weekly report.”

Singer Sewing Machine sales bill. Note what looks like a coupon glued into the left lower margin. (This is a pre-revolutionary sales slip, though this one happens to have been filled out in 1924.)

Once a customer made a down payment on a machine, it was not delivered until a credit investigation had been done that indicated Singer would receive all the expected payments.  As Domosh explains, this was another reason the company hired local people familiar with the economic conditions of their neighbors.

“Local knowledge of, for example, a bad harvest year or labor dispute at the main factory in town was needed to assess potential credit risks.  Therefore, retail employees were familiar with the general economic statuses of their potential customers….  What exactly was involved in this ‘investigation’ is not clear; presumably, a Singer staff member drawn from the local population, and therefore with access to local knowledge, made visits and phone calls to financial institutions and other local institutions.  After the appropriate information had been obtained, the machine was delivered and regular weekly payments were either collected or brought to the store or office.”

Singer newspaper advertisement for installment plans of one ruble payments.

So Yakov Kull may also have been responsible for credit checks on customers, along with his other duties.  For his work, Kull would have been paid a fixed salary, plus commissions on sales and collections.

Carstensen tells us that, because sales agents were collecting large sums of money outside its retail shops, Singer constantly worried about theft.  To protect the company, Singer required all sales agents, before being hired, to “deposit a security in the sum of 300 rubles,” which reverted to the company in case of theft.

This 300 ruble security deposit, though, was a massive sum which most potential Russian sales agents could not pay.  As Singer rapidly expanded in Russia, its corporate leaders began to realize they would not be able to find enough sales staff if they hired only people who could afford it.  Singer also eventually realized it was to their advantage to employ people who were dependent on hard work for the company to earn their living.  Sales agents who could afford a 300 ruble security deposit did not have the same level of financial pressure motivating them to work diligently.

So Singer abolished the security deposit in 1908.  Yakov Kull began working at Singer at roughly this time. We might wonder whether this change made it possible for Kull to leave the dress shop and move to Singer, where he likely earned a higher income.

At any rate, both Kull and Bobrova worked each day with a massive, hierarchical structure above them that required them to constantly account for work done and monies collected.  Everyone employed by Singer had to make weekly reports which were sent up the chain of command along with receipts, finally reaching corporate headquarters in New York.

Singer hierarchy: canvassers (sales agents) were tracked and supervised by layers of managers above them. From Carstensen, American Enterprise in Foreign Markets.

As I’ve described in an earlier post, because of the low level of entrepreneurial experience and training among the general Russian population, Singer turned to members of minority groups living in Russia, especially Jews, who did have the necessary background.

*       *       *

As a Singer sales agent, Yakov Kull would have been responsible for selling other sewing items to his customers as well, such as thread and needles, and providing minor servicing on machines.

Small tube with Singer name, containing a pencil which may not be original.

Another item sold was tailor’s chalk, contained in small metal tubes bearing the Singer name in Russian.  Leon Kull, great-grandson of Yakov, discovered this fact via yet another extraordinary coincidence which occurred around the time I posted Extraordinary coincidence in Ryazan: Kull and Bobrova co-workers at Singer Sewing Machine.

Leon, who now lives in Israel, happened to be strolling through a flea market the day after he discovered the census records showing that his great-grandfather and my relative, Rokhilya Bobrova, both worked at Singer and lived in the same building in Ryazan, Russia.  As Leon emailed me:

“The next day after I found the records about Rakhil Bobrova and my
great-grandfather, I went to the flea market on the Dizengoff Square in
Tel Aviv.  Occasionally, as usual at the flea market, I saw an item that
attracted my attention.”

Brass container that held tailor's chalk, with "Singer Company" embossed in Russian (pre-revolutionary lettering)

Of course, Leon bought the little tube on the spot!  It had a pencil inside, stuck into the gold-colored cap.  However, when Leon later spoke to an expert on the topic, he learned that these tubes originally held tailor’s chalk, not pencils.

As I wrote in my earlier post about Kull and Bobrova, “I suppose the reason anyone searches for information about their ancestors is that they’re yearning to find connections with others beyond themselves in time and place.”

And here once again, Kull and Bobrova’s ghosts were dancing together, this time through the medium of a little brass tailor’s chalk holder!

Stuart, by Jonathan Linton

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts featuring video demonstrations of artists drawing, together with their commentary about specific choices they make as they work.  My goal in these posts is to provide insight into the moment-by-moment decisions made by artists during the flow of creating their art.

Drawing at its best is profoundly right-brained – which is to say non-verbal. So trying to translate the drawing process into words often ends up being deadly to read.  What is experienced by the artist as highly pleasurable and out-of-time appears in print as tedious and endless.

So I’m beginning to explore how to convey the artist’s process in a way that’s both fun and helpful to readers wanting to learn more about what’s going on in artists’ minds as they work.

Jonathan Linton is a wonderful portrait artist who I’ve written about before.  Two of my favorites among his portraits are Chad and Stuart (above).  The boy’s facial expression in each of these portraits conveys his very soul.  There’s no vacuous staring into the middle distance here.  Each of the two boys is fully engaged with the viewer in a way that communicates multi-faceted expectations vis-à-vis the world he is growing into.  And each painting is exquisitely rendered from a purely technical point of view.

Jonathan has put some painting and drawing demos on YouTube.  For my present post, he’s now written commentary, keyed to specific moments in his drawing video of Meg.  He’s going to take us through how he moved from reference photo of Meg (below left) to his lovely, complex finished drawing (below right).

Reference photo and final drawing of Meg, by Jonathan Linton

Drawing materials used by Jonathan Linton in his drawing demo of "Meg"

Jonathan used a number of materials to create this drawing: vine charcoal, charcoal pencil, paint brush, three different types of erasers, a paint brush, and paper towels (for his complete list, see bottom of this post).  You can trace Jonathan’s use of each during the video by referring to the photo (left) of materials he sent me.  In the video, it’s especially easy to spot the red charcoal pencil and the silver eraser-pencil.  The fat, rectangular Factis eraser is also distinctive.

I’ve embedded Jonathan’s video in this post.  But an easier way to follow through his text explanation may be for you to open the YouTube video in a second window.  Then scroll down to Jonathan’s text in my post below.  Place it next to the YouTube video, and go through the two simultaneously side by side.

It’s fun to go through the video and commentary more than once, because you’ll pick up more of what Jonathan’s actually doing as you become more familiar with both text and video.

One interesting technique Jonathan used was frequent “wiping down” of the powdery-charcoal drawing.  It may seem counter-intuitive to non-artists to repeatedly wipe out an entire drawing as you’re working, so we’ll talk a bit more about that later.

Jonathan began with watercolor-toned paper.  This means that the paper has been covered with a layer of paint to provide color and texture to the background, and as the bottom-most layer of the drawing.

The first drawing implement Jonathan uses is vine charcoal, which is a very soft, light charcoal, easily erased or wiped nearly clean.

Jonathan Linton’s text commentary for YouTube video of drawing “Meg:”

Vine charcoal was used to place the face, mark the axis of the eyes and apply an initial tone.

0:18            In order to give a softer tone to the drawing, I often wiped the drawing with paper towels.  I wasn’t worried about the awkward scribbles showing through to the final layers since the vine charcoal spreads easily.

After placing these rough indications with the vine charcoal, I used a charcoal pencil to feel out the shapes with more specificity.  Since the charcoal pencil’s marks have a lot more sticking power than the vine charcoal, I tried to keep the lines interesting by varying their weight.

0:43            Cross hatching followed the turn of the form.  The idea is that the drawing will end up having some texture in the shadow areas and I wanted that texture to give info as well as to provide interest.

1:15            Everything was wiped down to soften the drawing and unify the tones.

1:18            Back to the charcoal pencil – refining edges and adding tones.

1:50            Another wipe down.

1:52            The erasers lifted the rubbed charcoal off the lighter areas easily.  (The Faber-Castell Perfection 7056 is a great tool, because you use it like a pencil – even to the point of cross-hatching.)

2:10            Back to the charcoal pencil for further restatement.

2:39            Another wipe down – then charcoal pencil.

2:46            Using the white Factis eraser, I made horizontal strokes across the drawing for macro texture.

After this I used the charcoal pencil, the pencil eraser and the paper towels in quick succession – attempting to refine the shapes and nail the tonal variations – trying to keep the lines interesting and decorating with final details.

Now back to me:

Jonathan uses two techniques in the video which involve removing charcoal rather than adding it.  One of these techniques is erasing parts of the drawing in order to create highlights: the areas of the face and hair on which most light falls.

The second removal technique is wiping over with a paper towel the entire drawing he’s created to that point.  The basis of this technique is that the charcoal is only partly erased by the paper towel, leaving a “ghost” image behind.  The ghosts can pile up on top of each other, adding depth and texture to the drawing intermingled with more defined marks.

I recently ran into a description of this wiping technique on the very quirky and entertaining website of a wonderful artist, the 70-year-old Jack Spiegelman.  Spiegelman wrote his description in the fictionalized voice of Otto Dix, the famous German painter.  I’m including it here because there’s something in Spiegelman’s writing that captures the rhythm and highly-focused momentum of an artist’s process.  As I said above, it’s very difficult to write about drawing in a way that captures – well, maybe a tad dramatically at the end of the quote below – the non-verbal state an artist can get into while working.  So, in the “voice of Otto Dix” by Spiegelman:

“I draw and wipe out, draw and wipe out, draw and wipe out. Everything goes on the one piece of paper. The results can be interesting. An energy is produced in this way. Each sketch in some way evolves or is driven by the image that has preceded it.  The erased images remain present as ghost images….

“I draw and wipe out, draw and wipe out, draw and wipe out. Once the drawing begins to happen you switch to a pencil with a  harder lead and work in a little detail.  I draw and erase and draw and erase. Its starting to happen. There is some energy.  I slash away.  I go back and forth from the soft stick to the hard pencil.  I slash away.  The charcoal is flying.  I love this paper!”

Speaking of paper, for Meg Jonathan used Arches Hot Press.

And that brings us last but not least to Jonathan Linton’s materials list:  Bounty paper towels, pencil sharpener, kneaded eraser, Factis eraser, Faber-Castell Perfection 7056 Eraser, vine charcoal, charcoal pencil, and paint brush.