Turkish Floating Exhibition

Something about a cruise is just exciting. In Baltimore, we love adventures on the Chesapeake Bay, whether we’re spending a day as a pirate with Urban Pirates, watching the cannons fired off the USS Constellation, or taking my students crabbing on the Lady Maryland. So I imagine that if a ship with exotic music and art from Turkey showed up in the harbor, a lot of Baltimoreans would check it out.

In the 19th and early 20th century, if you wanted to learn about cultures and technological advances around the world, you could go to a World’s Fair, where countries would host booths and pavilions featuring everything from belly dancers to the Ferris Wheel. Turkey took the idea further and, in 1926, developed a “Floating Exhibition” to showcase Turkey’s modern culture and business at port cities around Europe.

The Baltimore Sun reported on July 25th that, “Beautiful Turkish women gowned in Paris modes and emancipated from the veils of former years added a feminine touch to a reception held on the Kara-Deniz at Havre during the stay of a floating exhibition of Turkish goods and products, the first of its kind ever seen in European waters.”

In 1954, the Turkish government launched a new display with the SS Tarsus. The ship (originally the SS Exochorda) had previously operated in the Caribbean as an export liner. During WWII, the US Navy purchased it (renaming it the USS Harry Lee), using it in both the Caribbean and Pacific theaters. (Read the full history of the ship here.) By 1954, Turkey was still trying to secure its place in an emerging Cold War world, and it took the ship for a new Floating Exhibition, showcasing Turkey’s immense value and potential. Just six years later, a freak three-ship collision destroyed the Tarsus.

Many American tobacco companies packed their cigarettes with “Turkish” tobacco, which is a strand of the tobacco crop species. The Floating Exhibition featured genuine Turkish-made cigarettes. I’m curious if they taste different… but I’m not curious enough to light up a 60-year-old cigarette!

I haven’t figured out what influenced the artwork on this pack, but it’s quite lovely, even a bit psychedelic if you stare at it for too long: a flower with a red center surrounded by white petals and surrounding blue petals.

The pack is for sale at my store: http://cigarettecollector.net/2016/06/08/turkish-floating-exhibition-1954-70mm-vintage-turkish-cigarette-pack/

The Turkish Floating Exhibition set sail most recently in 2011. But I’m afraid the SS Tarsus didn’t take part. Just six years after the 1954 exhibit, it was destroyed in a freak three-ship collision.

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P.S. Ships make great classrooms. Take your children (or, in my case, students) out on the water, raise a sail, inspect the water, catch some seafood. If you come to Baltimore, check out the Living Classroom’s Lady Maryland.

 

The Kaiser in Arab Headdress

One snowy morning in World War I Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II was fed up with the cold and the seemingly-stalemated war. “Which of our allies has the warmest climate? Where does Mexico stand?”

“It seems,” replied his American Affairs adviser, “as though our negotiations with El Guapo fell through after Ned Nederlander shot one of our agents.”

“What!?! That shrimp from Hollywood… I didn’t know he was an American agent.”

“Nederlander’s friends, Lucky Day and Dusty Bottoms, also American agents from Hollywood, then proceeded to wipe out El Guapo’s forces and stole all the rifles and tequila we’d sent them.”

“We paid good money for those guns. Oh well, just like the Western Front. Who else has a warm climate?”

“Your highness’ friends among the Senoussi brotherhood are still fighting the Italians in the Libyan desert. A little dry, but warm.”

“Sounds delightful! We must visit them immediately.”

His advisers were all too happy to shed their winter uniforms, so they visited the Grand Senoussi. In diplomatic fashion, donned the flowing red-and-white capes and rimmed headdresses of their allies. For a final touch, they armed themselves with long Arab rifles and posed for a photo-op.

Years after the war collapsed and Hitler came and went, a lonely student of history in Berlin named Franz Kopfschmuck took a job as a graphic designer in a Berlin tobacco company. Charged with finding a cigarette brand name that recalled a happier era in German culture, he sifted through his textbooks until he stumbled upon the Senoussi revolt against the Italians in World War I.

Read about the Senoussi Campaign.

Intrigued, he couldn’t recall any notes about the Senoussi in General March’s lauded History of the World War. Reading further, he discovered that the Kaiser had encouraged the Senoussi – a political movement begun decades earlier as a Sufi brotherhood – to fight the Italians. On one of the Entente’s few Arab World achievements, the Senoussi revolt had helped keep untold numbers of British and French troops tied up in North Africa for much of the war. Some years later, the Senoussi even gained sovereignty over Libya! And to think Germany had helped them along the way.

Senussi going to fight English in Egypt (circa 1915). By Bain News Service, publisher [Public domain], Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons.

At the end of the chapter, Franz stumbled across one of the photographs from the photo-op. With some artistic flair, he transformed the black-and-white photograph into a stunning cigarette cover, which graces the pack displayed above. Pleased by his work, the cigarette manufacturer gave Franz enough pay to complete his studies, though he soon disappeared into the thick of German academia.

Disclaimer: I like to write fiction occasionally, though the impact of the Senoussi Campaign in WWI is a matter of historical record. I’m grateful to the designer of this German pack – perhaps his name really was Franz – for encouraging me to learn more about the Libyan front in the war that was supposed to end all wars.

For further reading on the Senoussi campaign, check out:

(1) David Olusoga’s The World’s War (Head of Zeus, 1914).

(2) Hew Strachan’s The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (OUP, Oxford, 2001).

Christo Cassimisi

Take a good close look at this cigarette pack, and a few things begin to jump out.

First, “Christo Cassimis” is an awesome brand name. It’s more Greek than Egyptian, and it’s Christian rather than Muslim (imagine how the Muslim Brotherhood would boycott these packs!). This manufacturer goes back to 1882 and produced some stunning designs. Its more colorful packs are true pieces of art, suitable for display in any gallery. The art here is a bit more subtle, from the post-WWII period, but nevertheless impressive. More on that in a bit.

King Farouk of Egypt

Second, there are a lot of English and French phrases for an Egyptian pack. The English and French also appear above the Arabic and/or in larger letters. That’s a dead giveaway that it comes from the days when Egypt was still considered part of the British Empire, before the 1952 coup d’etat against King Farouk and the British Empire’s influence over his regime. Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser’s Egyptian nationalism (later, Arab nationalism) in the years after the revolution led a movement away from English and French influence.

Third, the design inside the trademark features two figures portrayed in ancient Egyptian style on a small boat. Was the Pharaoh trading in tobacco 3,000 years ago? Probably not, but Egypt was a mercantile powerhouse in the ancient world, controlling much of the land bridge connecting the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and the caravan routes due east and north. Then there’s the Nile, the great river whose steady flow unites the region from Sudan to the Delta, and whose regular floods provided the irrigated fields that fed the empire. The boat appears to be a Nile ferry or barge, powered by paddle rather than mast and following a steady current down the Nile (learn more about ancient Nile river shipping).

After some centuries of economic stagnancy, Egypt’s mercantile strength was reviving after World War II, and looking to a bright future. This artwork therefore does a nice job of bridging the romance of the ancient world with the industrialism of the modern era (check out “From Cleopatra to the Suez Canal”).

Proof of Egypt’s ability to stretch its trade across the world can be found in the stamps that seal this pack closed: they’re from two different countries! Most of my international packs were purchased abroad, but this one made its way to my hometown of Baltimore in the hands of tobacco merchants. The Egyptian stamp bears the symbol of state for the Kingdom of Egypt (a crescent moon with three stars, which seem to represent the unification of Egypt, Nubia, and Sudan) under a bird spreading its wings and over a certification that the cigarettes were made in Egypt. At the bottom of the stamp are the marks of the Egyptian Customs Administration, permitting the packs to leave the country.

On the other side is the classic American cigarette stamp, a picture of DeWitt Clinton, the New York governor who ordered the construction of the Erie Canal. (Curious about the scandal that led to DeWitt Clinton being on the stamp? Read about it on stamps.org.) In tiny print you can find the words “Series 119,” which tell us that it came from 1949.

Last but not least, the two City of Baltimore revenue stamps on the side of the pack display the Washington Monument. That’s the real Washington Monument in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Place, not the later one in Washington, D.C. (which, in the unforgettable words of ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s character Ahmed the Dead Terrorist, “looks more like a tribute to Bill Clinton”).

Unfortunately, the Baltimore stamps are pretty worn on this pack, so I’m posting a picture from another pack so you can catch the monument in its full stamp-laden beauty. Speaking of which, Baltimore’s been renovating our Washington Monument and it looks prettier than ever. Pay it a visit if you haven’t recently.

Upcoming post: French cigarettes

From Cleopatra to the Suez Canal

My Arabic translating and typing skills are a bit rusty but getting better with this round of cigarette packs. Fortunately, half of these packs are from the same brand – CLEOPATRA!

Cleopatra captures the world’s imagination as a symbol of ancient Egypt. Rather curious, considering that despite adopting the symbols and title of the ancient Pharaohs, her heritage was actually Greek, last active ruler in Ptolemaic dynasty.

Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison in the Mankiewicz production “Cleopatra” (1963). (Wikimedia, Public Domain)

The Egyptian packs all display Cleopatra wearing a Pharaoh’s crown and depicted in profile, more reminiscent of King Tut or Rameses II than the age of Caesar and Marc Antony, her equally famous lovers. The image ties Egypt’s glorious ancient past with the height of Greek-Egyptian culture

How did Cleopatra become the symbol of ancient Egypt in the second half of the 20th century? Just a guess, but it may have had something to do with world fascination with Cecil B. DeMille’s award-winng film Cleopatra in 1934 and Elizabeth Taylor’s smashing performance in Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1963 production. Historical accuracy often gives way to Hollywood glamour and fantasy.

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On the other end of Egyptian history, we have the Suez Canal with its famous Port Said. Built in 1859 at the Mediterranean entrance to the newly-constructed Suez Canal, it stands as a symbol of Modern Egypt. The symbol but elegant pack features a ship’s anchor in a green circle.

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I’m the son of a graphic designer, so I love to analyze fonts, and there’s a stunning font-related difference in these packs. The name “Cleopatra” is written in an elegant, whimsical font reminiscent of Koranic calligraphy. “Port Said” couldn’t be more different. The letters have straight lines, drawn to look as though they were printed by a typewriter, symbol of the machine age. (Anybody who knows how the Arabic alphabet works, with three forms for most letters and with numerous vowel-combinations, can imagine the immense technical skill typing it on a typewriter would require!) If Cleopatra symbolizes Egypt’s romantic past, Port Said symbolizes its industrial future.

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Port Said postcard (ca. 1915), featuring the Coptic Church. (Wikimedia, Public Domain)

*Working on my next post: A tribute devoted especially to a rather unique Egyptian pack.