VintageGriffin.com

For the uninitiated, the Dennison Manufacuring company is just about synonymous with Halloween. Right at the start of the 1900s, Dennison was on board with the burgeoning popularity of the October holiday. It manufactured Halloween greeting cards and decorations that were used at Halloween parties that were held with increasing frequency across the United States. Then in 1909, to help promote sales and teach customers how to display their decorations and maximize their spooky fun, Dennison published its first Bogie Book ("bogie" was a name for mischevious Halloween spirits).

The Bogie Book was a hit from the start, and (excepting for a gap of three years, when it resurfaced in 1912) was pubished annually from then on, with a few interruptions, right through the mid-1930s. After that date, the title and size changed (it was renamed, variously, "The Party Book," "Parties," "Hallowe'en Suggestions," "The Halloween Book," and "Hallowe'en Parties"), but mostly everything else stayed the same.

Crate and Barrel has another Halloween thingamabob that's worth a gander. These very smart, fetching and fun washable (hand wash, thank you) drink straws. Each set of six straws sports three designs: flighty bats, skittering spiders, and gossamer ghosts. Diverting, colorful and inexpensive. Hard to do better.

I love bats. They're actually pretty gentle creatures, and very delicate. And Halloween would not be the same without them.

But I'm particlar about my bats. No cheese, please. They can be quirky, primitive, realistic, spooky, what have you, but never cheesy. This year's bat crop has produced an appealing example from William Sonoma. It's made of black straw/grass and has whispery-thin crepe paper wings. Each is outfitted with a small loop for hanging, which is what (of course) you'll want to do to please them. Sold in sets of three, large and small.

Black Straw Halloween Bats (small, set of three): $15
Black Straw Halloween Bats (large, set of three): $18

Would you like to win Edward Gorey's very own iconic racoon coat? You'll get your chance starting Saturday, October 7, when Elephant House (the late Edward Gorey's home, which is now a museum devoted to his works) holds its annual Alphabet Auction & Goreyfest.

Regarding the coat (auction description):

"Raccoon coat owned by Edward Gorey
This raccoon fur coat will be auctioned at the 5th Annual GoreyFest & Alphabet Auction. As Gorey's concern about animal welfare grew, he went from "wearing raccoons to housing them" in the attic of his Yarmouth Port home. This important artifact is for the ultimate discriminating collector who shares Edward's understanding of the importance of the care of animals and actively promoting their welfare. Fur coats were a 'trademark' of Edward's illustrations and self-portraits, and it was important to him to put his collection into storage in the late 1980's as a personal statement. Half of the proceeds from this sale will go to the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust whose mission is to support Animal Welfare. Value: beyond priceless."

Although his work seems commissioned by the spirit of All Hallow's Eve, the work of Edward Gorey supercedes it. He pushed and expanded both literary and visual boundaries, borrowing from Japanese prints, Victorian and Edwardian memes, juvenile formats as well as various poetic and literary forms. The ambiguous shapes of Edwardian dress trimmings in Les Passementeries Horribles. The banal horror of The Loathsome Couple. The doomed yet somehow not entirely pitiable children in The Gashlycrumb Tinies, who perish in alphabetical order.

Gale Wollenberg is pretty handy in a machine shop. So handy, in fact, that he decided to build his own magic lantern. His incredible accomplishments are well-known in magic lantern circles. Mr. Wollenberg shares his time with us now to tell us how he got interested in the whole business...

My interest in magic lanterns started after stumbling on to several magic lantern Web sites when looking for magician Web sites in the early years of this new century. As a teenager in the 1960s, I remember reading a comic book that told of an old magician who hired a lazy peasant (this depicted a medieval time period) to run his candle fired projection lantern. So I made all the mental connections of how the magic lantern had been used through about 300 years of it's history. I am a member of the Magic Lantern Society of the U.S. and Canada and have contributed one or two articles to the European Magic Lantern Society's newsletter.

What is a magic lantern? It's basically an early version of the slide projector, illuminated by an oil lamp. These older projectors used hand-painted (and later lilthographic and photographic) slides to project images against a screen, wall, or sometimes even fog.

The origins of magic lanterns flicker mysteriously across history. Some think that certain written accounts of ancient Egypt allude to the earliest form of magic lanterns. Its ghostly presence seems to haunt Medieval times as well, and 13th-century Franciscan friar Roger Bacon is said to have described its use as an aid in sorcery. Polymath Renaissance artist Benvenuto cellini (goldsmith, soldier, painter, musician, and sculptor -- his Perseus with the Head of Medusa in Florence is most famous) described what may have been a magic lantern when he witnessed a secret ceremony during which images of demons amidst clouds or fog were seen. Magic lanterns more clearly declare themselves in history in 1646, with the publication of Ars Magnas Lucis et Umbrae (the Great Art of Light and Shadow) by Athanasius Kircher, a German priest. Thomas Walgensten, a Danish teacher, made a small career out of giving magic lantern shows to European royalty around the 1660s.