Cottingley Fairies

[Krepostnoi]

Ah, tracing pictures. Does anyone even do that anymore? So many lost things in the age of computers and smartphones and t'internet.




I can't see owt on there.. 'cept maybe a labrador, looking to the right:
View attachment 12009

... but that's it.

I can see loads of faces - see numbers 2-7 for half a dozen examples, but I can see more. But I am staggered by number 1 and number 8.

Spoiler: Say what you see

For me, number 1 is incredibly reminiscent of an old fashioned racing car, while number 8 looks like the top half of an Edwardian motorcyclist. Anyone else see that?

 

[Tribble]

They sold for over £20K - ten times the estimate.

The fairy picture sold for £15,000 while the gnome image fetched £5,400.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-45748927

 

[JamesWhitehead]

They sold for over £20K - ten times the estimate.

The auctioneers say the price was driven up because of internet publicity but the nearest I can find to an explanation of what these prints actually are comes in this statement from the BBC article:

"Auctioneer and photography specialist Chris Albury said the photographs were likely printed for sale at lectures advocating spiritualism."

It does not even claim they were printed by the father, who may well have delegated this sort of job when the band-wagon began to roll. I wonder how many other copies may reside in attics and scrap-books? The rule usually is that an item that is hot in one auction encourages a search for similar lots, which go on to sell like damp squibs. :horr:

 

[Lord Lucan]

They're up for sale again, though this time from the family themselves. If I had a spare £70,000, I'd buy them myself, just because I like to own unusual things:

Photographs of what is considered to be one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century are expected to fetch nearly £70,000 when they are sold at auction. Pictures of the Cottingley Fairies were taken in July and September 1917 by 16-year-old Elsie Wright and her nine-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths, in the village of Cottingley, near Bingley in West Yorkshire. Vintage images of the hoax are rare and 14 lots of period photographs and a camera - including some owned by the daughter of Frances - are now going on sale.

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/original-cottingley-fairies-hoax-photographs-to-be-sold-at-auction-1-9682641

 

[gattino]

Here is the interview in which the girls, now old ladies came clean and explain how they made them...

 

[gattino]

The interesting thing about that interview is there appears to be little evidence in it that Frances insisted one photo showed genuine fairies...she's clearly completely dismissive and bewildered at people's credulity. There doesn't seem room in her words or her tone for a "but".

 

[PeteS]

They're up for sale again, though this time from the family themselves. If I had a spare £70,000, I'd buy them myself, just because I like to own unusual things:



https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/original-cottingley-fairies-hoax-photographs-to-be-sold-at-auction-1-9682641

The Yorkshire Post image is a very much cleaned up version. Original was nothing like this. Of course only the first images taken from the negatives could be classed as original. It would be great to have a set of the first ones- I like unusual stuff too.

 

[PeteS]

I can see loads of faces - see numbers 2-7 for half a dozen examples, but I can see more. But I am staggered by number 1 and number 8.

Spoiler: Say what you see

For me, number 1 is incredibly reminiscent of an old fashioned racing car, while number 8 looks like the top half of an Edwardian motorcyclist. Anyone else see that?

View attachment 12089

What would be interesting is a "now" shot of this location to see if the faces are still there. I don't think you can get access to this spot anymore although I'm going to try this summer when I revisit some of my old haunts.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

The rule usually is that an item that is hot in one auction encourages a search for similar lots, which go on to sell like damp squibs.

The family-connection may ginger-up interest in the new lots on offer but it certainly comes hard-on-the-heels of the last sale.

Perhaps there are pressing medical and care bills to consider but I would have left it a year or two!

 

[Krepostnoi]

What would be interesting is a "now" shot of this location to see if the faces are still there. I don't think you can get access to this spot anymore although I'm going to try this summer when I revisit some of my old haunts.

This is a slightly different angle, but I'm fairly sure it's the same small cataract. Photo taken c. 2016 by this blogger (I really rather hope they were sporting those pointy ears when they went exploring)

 

[Frideswide]

Yes, looking at the rocks I'd say it was the same place. Isn't it gorgeous?

 

[PeteS]

Yes, looking at the rocks I'd say it was the same place. Isn't it gorgeous?

Does seem to be the same place. It is an amazing shot- you would think it was in the middle of nowhere, but sadly it's a small spot surrounded by housing at the southern edge of Cottingley. Hop skip and a jump though to acres of fields on the other side of the housing.

 

[bob61]

ah , the cottingley fairies , those two young girls sure took the world for a ride didn't they ? .

 

[bob61]

Cottingley: why the village is in thrall to a fairies tale
David Barnett
17 July 2017 • 6:27am

One hundred years after the photographs were taken, why is one community still transfixed by the hoax? By David Barnett
At the bottom of Luke Horsman’s garden, there are fairies. Or at least, there were, a century ago, when two young girls unwittingly created a modern fable that brought together two worlds; the relatively new one of photography and the ages-old sphere of spirituality and folklore, entrancing as redoubtable a figure as Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle.

Mr Horsman, 35, lives in Main Street, a narrow road of terraced houses, in the village of Cottingley in West Yorkshire. He’s an illustrator and is working on a graphic novel called, with perhaps a nod to the idyllic outlook from his end-of-terrace house, Edengate. But he had no idea when he and Ruth purchased the property in November 2015 that he was buying a slice of the history of the famous Cottingley Fairies.

“It wasn’t mentioned to us at all,” says Mr Horsman, leading me to the kitchen, which overlooks the garden behind the house. “It was only when we moved in and one of the neighbours said to us, ‘Ah, you’re the ones who’ve bought the fairy house’ that we had any inkling. I had no idea what they were talking about at first.”

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/cottingley-village-thrall-fairies-tale/

nice little read , thanks for the link .

 

[bob61]

The Case Of The Cottingley Fairies (1998) by Joe Cooper is a fascinating account and publishes both ladies' 'confessions' https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Cottingley-Fairies-Joe-Cooper/dp/0671010263

i'll have to pick up a copy , even today people still find the cottingley fairies fascinating

 

[pandacracker]

The interesting thing about that interview is there appears to be little evidence in it that Frances insisted one photo showed genuine fairies...she's clearly completely dismissive and bewildered at people's credulity. There doesn't seem room in her words or her tone for a "but".

Ages ago, when I had a dial up internet, I read how the fifth photo, supposedly, showed real fairies.

I searched for a site that had all the photos (so I could compare the fake ones with the "real" one) and waited patiently as they slowly downloaded. As the fifth photo slowly began to appear I grew quite excited when it stopped with less than a quarter of the photo visible. And that was it!! Every time I tried after that the same thing happened, it was as if "something" didn't want me to see it

I've seen it now and it is different to the others but as to it showing real fairies...

 

[PeteS]

The most shocking thing about the 100 anniversary, is that I distinctly remember as a teenager the fuss made about the 50th anniversary. (I lived nearby) How time (and fairies ) fly...

 

[Frideswide]

I hear you @PeteS , I hear you!

 

[escargot]

I came across this advertising image today while looking something up.*
The fairies in it resemble the Cottingley ones.
While they're not the same Rackham fairies their dress and postures are similar.




*Found something in my shed which I'd believed to be a kitsch copy of a Victorian implement. Turns out to be genuine!
Not valuable, just, y'know, old.

 

[feinman]

I came across this advertising image today while looking something up.*
The fairies in it resemble the Cottingley ones.
While they're not the same Rackham fairies their dress and postures are similar.


View attachment 26705

*Found something in my shed which I'd believed to be a kitsch copy of a Victorian implement. Turns out to be genuine!
Not valuable, just, y'know, old.

And later when she grows up a bit:

 

[GNC]

I came across this advertising image today while looking something up.*
The fairies in it resemble the Cottingley ones.
While they're not the same Rackham fairies their dress and postures are similar.


View attachment 26705

*Found something in my shed which I'd believed to be a kitsch copy of a Victorian implement. Turns out to be genuine!
Not valuable, just, y'know, old.

Makes you wonder how common that image of a ring of dancing faeries was, and if it was common, why nobody at the time identified it as a paper cutout. Maybe because it confirmed their mental image of how faeries should behave, informed by pop culture? Sort of like the UFO boom in the 1950s at the same time as the science fiction movie boom?

 

[Analogue Boy]

ah , the cottingley fairies , those two young girls sure took the world for a ride didn't they ? .

Er. No. Even as a very small kid I saw the Twenties styling of the fairy costumes and hairdos. I was drawing as soon as I could pick up a pencil and would ask people to draw something for me so I could copy it. They generally drew in the style of their time so I picked this up pretty early.

 

[feinman]

Makes you wonder how common that image of a ring of dancing faeries was, and if it was common, why nobody at the time identified it as a paper cutout. Maybe because it confirmed their mental image of how faeries should behave, informed by pop culture? Sort of like the UFO boom in the 1950s at the same time as the science fiction movie boom?

Although it is kind of chicken-and-egg; in the 50's folks were just coming out of the huge wave of the '40s:
https://www.project1947.com/
that culminated in things like this:

 

[Tempest63]

I had to do a double take, I thought the title of the thread was Cottaging Fairies.

 

[escargot]

Er. No. Even as a very small kid I saw the Twenties styling of the fairy costumes and hairdos. I was drawing as soon as I could pick up a pencil and would ask people to draw something for me so I could copy it. They generally drew in the style of their time so I picked this up pretty early.

The photos were taken in 1917, not the 1920s.

 

[Analogue Boy]

The photos were taken in 1917, not the 1920s.

Oh. I forgot. They didn’t have a style in 1917 apart from ‘Decomposing Horse in Mud on Barbed Wire‘. I was going to say just after the turn of the century but generally 20’s.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Makes you wonder how common that image of a ring of dancing faeries was, and if it was common, why nobody at the time identified it as a paper cutout. ...

The notion of fairies dancing in a circle / ring dates back centuries in western European myth and folklore.

Western European traditions, including English, Scandinavian and Celtic, claimed that fairy rings are the result of elves or fairies dancing. Such ideas dated to at least the mediæval period; The Middle English term elferingewort ("elf-ring"), meaning "a ring of daisies caused by elves' dancing" dates to the 12th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_ring

For example, this illustration from an 1880 book is based on the already longstanding meme of a fairy dance circle ...

"Plucked from the Fairy Circle"
From:
Sikes, Wirt (1880). British Goblins: Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions.
London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, p. 74.
​

 

[GNC]

That's right, and there's the fairy rings under toadstools as well, that lore must go back to pre-Christian times.

 

[PeteS]

Makes you wonder how common that image of a ring of dancing faeries was, and if it was common, why nobody at the time identified it as a paper cutout. Maybe because it confirmed their mental image of how faeries should behave, informed by pop culture? Sort of like the UFO boom in the 1950s at the same time as the science fiction movie boom?

Probably in 1917 people had more to worry about than where the images actually came from. Also the whole thing was likely to have been a nice distraction from the millions of deaths that were occurring at the time.
In fact the images were traced from a children's book of fairy images, and someone on the interweb did find a copy of the book they were taken from. Apparently glued onto stiff paper and held in front of the girls with long hatpins.
Any apparent photographic manipulation of the images was carried out subsequently by others and not by the girls. As already mentioned, the original images are completely different, all you can see on those are vague tiny figures, so perhaps not surprising that people were taken in.

 

[gordonrutter]

Probably in 1917 people had more to worry about than where the images actually came from. Also the whole thing was likely to have been a nice distraction from the millions of deaths that were occurring at the time.
In fact the images were traced from a children's book of fairy images, and someone on the interweb did find a copy of the book they were taken from. Apparently glued onto stiff paper and held in front of the girls with long hatpins.
Any apparent photographic manipulation of the images was carried out subsequently by others and not by the girls. As already mentioned, the original images are completely different, all you can see on those are vague tiny figures, so perhaps not surprising that people were taken in.

The book the illustrations are copied form is Princess Mary’s Gift Book, it also contains a short story written by Arthur Conan Doyle.