Myriorama
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Myriorama originally meant a set of illustrated cards which 19th century children could arrange and re-arrange, forming different pictures. Later in the century the name was also applied to shows using a sequence of impressive visual effects to entertain and inform an audience. The word myriorama was invented to mean a myriad of pictures, following the model of panorama, diorama, cosmorama and other novelties.[1] These were all part of a wider interest in viewing landscape as panorama, and in new ways of presenting "spectacular" scenes.[2]
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[edit] Myriorama cards
The early myrioramas were cards with people, buildings, and other images on compatible backgrounds, and could be laid out in any order, allowing a child to create a variety of imaginary landscapes. Jean-Pierre Brès, a French children's writer, published an early version which he described as a polyoptic picture (tableau polyoptique) in the early 19th century, and John Clark of London took up the idea and designed a set of cards he called a myriorama. Clark's "second series" myriorama, an "Italian landscape", was produced in 1824,[3] the same year as a similar set of English cards called a panoramacopia created by drawing teacher T.T.Dales.[4] Reproductions of cards from the period are on sale today with other "traditional toys". Various contemporary artists have used the idea as inspiration for work they have named myriorama.
[edit] Myriorama as public entertainment
Later in the 19th century Myriorama came to mean a visually exciting presentation of dramatic landscapes, stories of adventure or major public events. In the UK the name was used for the Poole family's moving panoramas, while in New Zealand the Myriorama Company based their shows on the magic lantern.
[edit] Moving panoramas
Painted panoramas mounted on rollers so that a landscape or impressive scene could be scrolled in front of an audience were a popular 19th century entertainment. Even before these became well-known, Philippe de Loutherbourg devised the Eidophusikon which used a moving backcloth and other theatrical effects on a small stage to show, among other things, a stormy shipwreck or an episode from Paradise Lost. In Breslau in 1831 a pleorama placed viewers in a rocking boat to experience changing views of the Bay of Naples rolling past them on painted canvas.[5]
Moving panoramas (or sometimes moving dioramas) often recreated grand ceremonies. In Philadelphia in 1811 nearly 1300 feet of painted cloth were unwound to display the federal procession of 1788,[6] and George IV's coronation in London was treated as a "Grand Historical Peristrephic Panorama".[7] Exotic landscapes and travel were popular themes. Banvard's enormous Mississippi River panorama was shown on both sides of the Atlantic and a moving panorama of "Romantic and Picturesque Scenery in the Environs of Hobart Town" taken to London in 1839 allowed people in England to get an impression of Australia.[8] A narrator explained the scenes passing in front of the audience and music played.
[edit] Poole's Myriorama
In the United Kingdom full-time travelling panorama shows started around 1840 and are particularly associated with the Poole family who took them all over the country. Later they started to use the name Myriorama and by 1900 they had seven separate shows touring for 40 weeks of the year.[9] They added elaborate effects to the scrolling paint-and-cloth panoramas: cut-out figures moving across the scene, accompanied by music, lighting and sound effects. The narrator, often one of the Poole brothers in evening dress, would describe and interpret. "Poole's Myriorama" was well-known and is even mentioned in James Joyce's Ulysses.
Stories of travel and adventure, often military adventure, were popular: the action was conveyed by hidden stagehands moving shaped flats across a fixed backdrop. One naval battle had them manoeuvring ships accompanied by gunshot noises, puffs of smoke and Rule Britannia with waves on a rippling cloth at the front of the stage.[10] Some shows, with variety acts as well as myriorama displays, employed dozens of people.
Some of the first films seen in the UK were presented in late 19th century myriorama shows.[11] Although cinema eventually replaced the myriorama, this kind of entertainment stayed popular until the late 1920s, and was considered a Christmas-time treat. In December 1912 the Pooles first presented their Loss of the Titanic in "eight tableaux", starting with "a splendid marine effect" of the ship gliding across the scene.[12] A descendant of theirs, Hudson John Powell, gathered together the family story in Poole's Myriorama!: a story of travelling panorama showmen (2002). The Guardian has called their myrioramas part of the "popular visual culture of the 19th century".[13]
[edit] Fuller's Myriorama
A Myriorama company formed in New Zealand in 1896 by John Fuller (1850–1923) used magic lantern images rather than paintings wound on rollers.[14] Their shows offered a changing display of pictures accompanied by commentary and music.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Words ending -orama (from Greek something seen) were popular at the time for visual novelties and displays: cosmorama, georama, pleorama etc. (OED)
- ^ Sophie Thomas, Gothic Technologies: Visuality in the Romantic Era
- ^ Blackwood's Magazine Jan–June 1824
- ^ Cambridge library
- ^ Sophie Thomas
- ^ Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day & the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (U. of Mass. 1997)
- ^ peristrephic means "panoramic, unfolding" (OED)
- ^ Australian Centre for the Moving Image
- ^ The Scotsman obituary of Jim Poole, 21 January 1998
- ^ Auld Reekie: An Edinburgh Anthology ed. Ralph Lownie
- ^ Richard Buckley and Heidi Addison, An Historic Building Record of the former Cannon Cinema, Abington Square, Northampton (2001)
- ^ Stephen Bottomore, The Titanic and Silent Cinema
- ^ Guardian, 21 January 1998
- ^ Online Dictionary of NZ Biography
[edit] References
- Jill Shefrin, Educational Games for Children in Georgian England Princeton Library Journal (1999)
- Mr Clark's myriorama
- Oxford English Dictionary
- French National Library
- Cambridge University Library
