Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 1, 1994 TAG: 9411010066
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
The store, which offers custom framing, prints and posters and an assortment of crafts, artwork, folk art and clothing, will also have a grand opening ceremony at 5 p.m. that day. It is at 69 W. Main St. and owned by Pat Gooch and Michael Dowell.
The photographs by Claudia Lea Phelps, who participated in the first around-the-world tour by steamship in 1922, are from early roll films.
Stephanie Wilds, Phelps' grand-niece who grew up in Aiken, S.C., listening to stories from ``Miss Claudia'' of her travels in the Orient and elsewhere in the 1920s, inherited her slide collection when she died in 1984. Wilds had the slides re-photographed to produce prints suitable for exhibition, and transcribed Phelps' written journals.
The resulting exhibition, ``Strange Souvenirs: the World in the 1920s,'' will be on display during November and December at the store.
Wilds said the convenience of roll film had just recently become available when Phelps went on her tour. ``While most amateur photographers were satisfied with paper prints, Miss Phelps took her hobby one step further. She sent her negative film to photographic laboratories in Europe and Singapore to be processed and transferred into positive images on glass,'' Wilds said.
``These would be hand-tinted by laboratory artists, according to Miss Phelps' written instructions, and made into glass `magic lantern' slides. Later these slides became a major drawing room entertainment in idle evenings of the winter months, as Miss Phelps recounted to her friends the stories of her journeys,'' said Wilds, who is now working on a master's degree in plant ecology at the University of North Carolina.
The store's regular hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday.
by CNB