The History and Magic of Honeycomb. - book reviews

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1997 by Alfred Mayor

Honeycombs are about five percent matter and ninety-five percent air. At their most productive, the six-sided cells are filled with honey by industrious bees. At their most fantastic, they are the inspiration for panels to create houses that use only ten percent of the wood traditionally needed. At their most familiar, they are the fanlike structures of tissue paper incorporated into elaborate greeting cards. All these uses are soberly considered in The History and Magic of Honeycomb, and, indeed, as you open pages 24 and 25 and pages 72 and 73 tissue-paper honeycombs pop up on appropriate backgrounds.

In nineteenth-century America beehives were a familiar sight in rural backyards. Bees gathered nectar individually but pooled their resources to create the hive and fill it with honey. As the authors note: "Only by working together as well as individually could bees thrive and survive. Thus the familiar symbol from the rural past was equally fitting for a nation where thou-sands labored in factories."

In the two decades before the Civil War the pressed-glass factories were among the first to draw on the honeycomb as a convenient and well-known motif for their patterns. The hexagonal cell was adapted for woven blankets, patchwork quilts, and smocking on clothing. Production of the paper honeycomb was stimulated by the large and well-received influx of Japanese goods after that country was opened to foreign trade in 1854. New holidays such as Mother's and Father's Day, Flag Day, Decoration Day, and Arbor Day, invented in the late nineteenth century for the express purpose of selling things, contributed to the proliferation of thematic paper honeycombs with which to celebrate them.

A chapter on the paper honeycomb in the Orient and Europe begins rather slowly with a consideration of paper making in China during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220). But it gathers momentum with a description of the laborious method by which the Japanese handmade pads of honeycomb tissue paper. In Germany, the honeycomb was combined with elaborate chromolithographed images beginning about 1865.

Influences from both countries are found in the American use of tissue-paper honeycombs, both in the card industry and as a component of decorations for the home and public displays. This chapter follows the history of the various companies involved, of which only Hallmark Cards, Incorporated, developed its own technology for making tissue-paper honeycombs. The others often bought what they needed from the Beistle Company of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. This company cornered the market on Valentine's Day cards from 1925 until 1939, with more than 425 of a thousand different cards incorporating honeycomb mesh.

The final chapter presents an overview of the honeycomb in the nondecorative arts: sneaker soles; wings, floors, and walls of airplanes; hulls of boats; packing materials; and, of course, the economical house.

There is a useful glossary of industry terms, such as '"Balloon Dancer," defined as "Beistle's 1930's version of today's Helium Hoppers," and"glanzbilders," defined as the "German word for scraps." An appendix leads the interested reader to collections and manufacturers of honeycomb materials and relevant collectors' clubs.