#worldsfairs — Public Fediverse posts

#AmusementParks and #WorldsFairs

Reinhardt, Richard: "Treasure Island" (about the 1939 San Francisco World's Fair)

Jennings, Jay: "Knott’s Berry Farm: The Early Years"

Merritt, Chris: "Knott’s Preserved"

Berger, Meyer: "At the Fair"

The Meyer Berger thing isn't actually a book... yet -- I read all his newspaper columns from the two years he spent on the World's Fair beat as the New York Times local color correspondent. (I'm going to try to get it published next year; wish me luck.)

Thanks to the #WorldsFairs in the second half of the 19th century, #Japan had infiltrated Western popular culture. For example, this is a postcard from a charity bazaar in T(h)iengen in Southwest Germany in 1902. Setting up a Japonist booth helped sell stuff in the middle of nowhere in rural Germany!

The postcard is only hand-drawn, and maybe there was no such elaborated booth with kanji. Nevertheless, it is still fascinating that the #FarEast sparked local imagination!

Hello! I see people doing this #introduction thing with hashtags. Here's a few things I find fun: #comics #indiecomics #graphicnovels #autobiocomics #classicfilm #oldhollywood #silentera #silentfilm #stereophotography #3dphotography #stereoslides #guitar #homerecording #midcentury #60sjazz #worldsfairs #seattle #seattleworldsfair #catsofmastodon

So I'm into researching #JapaneseGardens. I really like #JGardens. However, what we see today is a product of the 19th century, when #Japan got more entangled with the West. The first JGardens were built for #WorldsFairs as a cheap backdrop for selling stuff. Of course, gardens in Japan have been around for a long time. However, only since the 1870s, all of this turned into a national symbol – and only a fraction of styles and types in Japan. This process is what I am interested in.