Trunk Show

When I was small, my sister, Diane, fashioned an elephant out of mud she obtained from our backyard. Surprisingly, the little guy has held it together for more years than anyone would have imagined, although it has crumbled away part of its trunk.

Photo Courtesy of Rocky River Public
Library and the Cowan Pottery Museum

Maybe this is where my fondness for elephants was born. In any event, I love the huge, trunked creatures. So when I happened upon one particular pachyderm recently, I was intrigued.

As I mentioned in an earlier article, the Rocky River Public Library has a collection of Cowan Pottery. On the day of my visit, one of the featured pieces was a ceramic elephant, designed by Margaret J. Postgate. Alongside it was the inspiration for the piece, a soap carving.

Alas, doesn't take much to send me right down the rabbit hole. In this case, it was a bar of Ivory Soap.

Curiouser and curiouser. What was with the soap? 

My artsy friends may already know this, but I didn't. In 1924, Proctor and Gamble held a competition of carvings made out of Ivory soap. As it happens, there's something in the molecular composition of Ivory that makes it uniquely suited to carving. (It resists shearing or somesuch.)

Postgate entered her Elephant into the contest in 1925, and it became part of a traveling exhibition that made a stop at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The success of the competition spurred P&G to continue running the annual soap carving contest, and Postgate submitted entries year after year.

By-and-by, P&G asked Margaret to write out instructions on how to carve each of her critters in soap. These how-tos were immortalized in children's publications like Boys Life, giving youngsters the opportunity to carve their own frog, elephant or other animal out of Ivory soap.

A few of these soap carving renderings were transformed into ceramic objets d'art at the hands of Cowan Pottery. The elephant in the photo shown here was created in 1930. Keeping to the elephant theme, Postgate also designed a pair of bookends. (One elephant is pulling, the other is pushing.) She did a religious piece on the three Mary's (Jesus' mother, Mary Magdalen and Mary, Martha's sister.) And Postgate was responsible for a whimsical pair of polar bears that Cowan produced.

As a result of her success with soap sculptures, Postgate was asked to carve models in soap for various projects, including pieces that were cast in porcelain (Lenox) and bronze  (Gorham Manufacturing Company). She was also commissioned to do soap renderings for architect Francis Keally.

Soap sculpture went on to become ever more popular, acquiring a place in New York City hobby shows in 1935. These days, soap sculpting is part of art education.

I thought about attempting to make one of the soap sculptures following Postgate's instructions. 

But in the immortal words of Bones on Star Trek, "Dammit, Jim, I'm a writer, not a sculptor."

I may have just taken certain liberties with that quote.

Who Was Margaret J. Postgate?

The artist (not to be confused with the poet Margaret Postgate Cole) studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her family moved to Manhattan in 1910, where she continued her studies at Cooper Union, the Art Students League of New York and the School of American Sculpture. Her home was in Brooklyn, NY, where she resided until her death in 1953 following a long illness. Margaret never married or had children and left no surviving relatives, according to her New York Times obituary. (I wasn't able to dig up anything else about her life after her soap carving days.)

Diane's now-ancient elephant
(photo used with permission)